Program Notes
We are saddened to report that Eric Hart suffered a heart attack and died quite suddenly on December 9, 2011. He will be deeply missed.
Guest speakers: Eric Hart and Matthew Pallamary
“[If you are in police custody] Never say a word. Don’t ever talk to the cops under any circumstance. If you’re a suspect, or you’re being arrested, nothing can be gained from it. They will twist whatever you say. It can only be used against you, just like the famous Miranda advisement. You have a right to remain silent. So remain silent. Even if they’re yelling and screaming at you to talk, refuse to talk. That’s a basic right that you have. It’s one of the only effective rights we have left from the Bill of Rights. So exercise that right, or else whatever you say will be twisted around, and it will end up leading to your conviction.” -Eric Hart, Attorney … Email: LawyersLie (at) ymail (dot) com … Web site: www.EricDHart.com
http://astore.amazon.com/matrixmasterscom/detail/B004ZLTH4A/192-0104974-9906279Lawyers Lie (paperback) http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004ZLTH4A/ref=nosim/192-0104974-9906279?tag=matrixmasterscom&linkCode=sb1&camp=212353&creative=380549Lawyers Lie (Kindle edition)
http://astore.amazon.com/matrixmasterscom/detail/143431801X/177-1800448-2861621Spirit Matters (paperback) http://astore.amazon.com/matrixmasterscom/detail/0912880090/177-1800448-2861621 Land Without Evil (paperback)
Spirit Matters … Kindle Edition
Land Without Evil … Kindle Edition
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Transcript
00:00:00 ►
Greetings from Cyberdelic Space, this is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic
00:00:23 ►
Salon.
00:00:23 ►
This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.
00:00:29 ►
And to begin today’s program, I again want to thank some of our fellow salonners who either have bought a copy of my Pay What You Can novel, The Genesis Generation,
00:00:34 ►
or who have made direct donations to the salon, because all of those funds are going into the same pot.
00:00:40 ►
And to give you a little idea of what some of those donations are going to be used for,
00:00:46 ►
besides paying for hosting fees and bandwidth,
00:00:49 ►
I should probably give you a little preview of our long-range plans.
00:00:53 ►
And I’ll have more details about this later,
00:00:55 ►
but for the year 2012, Bruce Dahmer and I are planning on presenting a series of workshops
00:01:01 ►
that we hope to be able to do without charging admission.
00:01:05 ►
While there may be one or two venues that we can’t afford on our own, for the most part,
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we hope to be able to do them for free for anybody who can get there. And to support this rather
00:01:16 ►
ambitious project, I’ve been setting aside part of all the book sales and donations that have been
00:01:20 ►
coming in this year. Now, the only date that is for sure right now
00:01:25 ►
is that we’re going to revive the Palenque Norte Plyologs at the 2012 Burning Man Festival.
00:01:33 ►
As you may know, I retired the Palenque Norte lecture series after the 2007 festival,
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mainly because I’d become a little burned out. Pun intended, by the way. And most of the people who participated in those events
00:01:48 ►
haven’t made it back to the playa since then either.
00:01:51 ►
But hey, it’s going to be 2012,
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and I’ll also be celebrating my 70th birthday in August of that year,
00:01:58 ►
so where better to celebrate it than at Burning Man,
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where I also celebrated my 60th birthday, I guess I should add.
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Anyway, I realize that 2012 is still a long way off, but to be honest, it’s really expensive to
00:02:12 ►
go to Burning Man, and so it’s going to take a year of savings to get there and to also be able
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to produce several other workshops during that year as well. And without the wonderful support
00:02:22 ►
that we’ve been getting, I wouldn’t be able to commit to a
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somewhat, well at least for me, aggressive schedule in 2012. And this week, those wonderful souls who
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are helping this cause along are David N., Mika C., Chris B., Carol J., Murray G., Gerard D.,
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Carol J., Murray G., Gerard D., Nigel B., Darren M., Tim H., Christopher H., Bart V., and Josh B., who made a seriously substantial donation that I really appreciate, Josh.
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And I’m sure that Josh would join me in saying that it isn’t the amount, but the thought that’s so important.
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For example, one of our donors this week is a student who actually apologized for sending what they thought was a small donation.
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But hey, there’s no such thing as a small donation.
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Just like telling a friend about the salon or passing along a copy of today’s podcast to some friends who could use the information. Thank you. we’re coming from, I think the better off we’re all going to be. So thank you one and all for
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your support in so many different ways. Now let’s get on with the show, as they say.
00:03:52 ►
Well, I’ve got something a little different for you today, and hopefully this is information that
00:03:57 ►
you’ll never need, as strange as that sounds. But in the unhappy circumstance where you wind up on
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the wrong side of the fanatical
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anti-drug warriors and their war against people who prefer to use non-prescription medicines,
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cannabis in particular, well then this could be some of the most important information
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you’re ever going to hear.
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As you’re going to hear in just a minute, I have asked our resident ayahuasca expert,
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Matt Palomary, to serve as our guest
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host today and interview Eric Hart, who’s a practicing attorney in San Diego, California.
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Now, while I’m a lawyer myself, I haven’t practiced since the late 1970s when I was
00:04:37 ►
part of the firm of McInnich and Haggerty in Houston, Texas. And while I still am licensed
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to practice law in Texas, I haven’t kept up with the
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many changes in the law that are always taking place. So I’ve held back in offering any legal
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advice in these podcasts just to be sure that I’m not putting out bad information. And so when Matt
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offered to interview his friend Eric for a podcast, I jumped at the chance because if you just walked
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into a lawyer’s office and asked all of the questions that Matt asks Eric in this podcast,
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it probably costs you at least $200, if not more.
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And to my mind, there’s nobody better suited to ask these questions for you and me
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than Matt Palomary, who is as street-smarter guy as there is.
00:05:19 ►
And if you don’t believe that statement,
00:05:21 ►
you ought to pick up a copy of his autobiography,
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Spirit Matters, and you’ll see what I mean.
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Also, you can hear some of Matt’s advice on ayahuasca and other matters in podcasts number 80, 89, 132, and 182.
00:05:36 ►
So now let’s join Matt Palomary for his interview of Eric Hart, lawyer and author of the book Lawyer’s Lie,
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which you have to admit is one of the
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catchiest titles on Amazon, don’t you think?
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Hello out there, saloners.
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It’s Matteo here, and I’ve been asked as an honor to be a guest host on the salon for
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this podcast.
00:06:02 ►
So today I have a special guest, which I think you’ll find interesting.
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I want to start out by saying hello to some of my friends out there. Hi to KMO and to Cody and
00:06:16 ►
Sancho, Black Light in the Attic, and to Brother Birdwing Butterfly down under in Australia,
00:06:27 ►
Birdwing Butterfly, Down Under in Australia, and to Adrian in Romania, and Camino Sagrado,
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and the rest of you brothers and sisters who have been in touch and listening to the podcast,
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we really appreciate you listening, and we really appreciate the support that you get.
00:06:43 ►
So today, as I said, I have a special guest.
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It’s a very good, long-standing friend of mine. His name is Eric Hart. And he is an attorney. And he’s a very special attorney because he hates attorneys. And he’s been defined as a barbarian, which I can totally relate to. Now, Eric has written a really great book.
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It’s called Lawyer’s Lie.
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And he’s been an attorney in San Diego since 1976,
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and he’s practiced in a wide variety of legal fields.
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He was also a private investigator for a number of years.
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And Lawyer’s Lie, I’ll have him say more about it here in a minute,
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but we’re going to be focusing on legalities,
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specifically criminal legalities,
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and a lot around marijuana
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because we’re here in California
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and a lot of what we’re doing here in California
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is kind of the world is watching,
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I guess is one way of putting it.
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So we’re going to talk about marijuana law a bit and criminal law a bit, as they’re unfortunately related.
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And even though it’s an international audience, we’ll kind of work our way around things
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and some things that I think are important for you to know.
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So I want to just say a bit about his book, Lawyer’s Lie.
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And before I do, I want to say that I’ve known Eric for, I think,
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maybe 23 years, something like that.
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We were in writing workshops together,
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and he’s been working on a lot of criminal-type stories and things,
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a lot of fiction, some non-fiction.
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And he’s been so fed up with the legal system.
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He’s one of the good guys.
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That’s why he’s fed up with it.
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He’s one of the guys that wears a white hat.
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And he’s helped out myself
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and a number of friends with different legal issues.
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So the thing that struck me about Lawyer’s Lie is that you can look through
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and have sort of a legal issue, the day-to-day legal issues.
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It’s really, even though the title is Lawyer’s Lie,
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it’s really sort of more of a consumer’s guide to the legal system.
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And you could look up, for argument’s sake,
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you’re going to go into small claims court or arbitration.
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You could go to a chapter and find out about it.
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So it’s a really great reference book to have,
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and I highly recommend it.
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And there will be information on how to purchase it.
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It’s available on Amazon Kindle,
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and it’s also available on www.erichdhart.com. So I’m really honored to have Eric here today and we’re going
00:09:32 ►
to pick his brain and see what he’s got to say. So thank you, Eric, for coming on the show. And
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I guess the first thing I’d like to ask you is you’ve done a lot of different things in the legal field,
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both as a private investigator, as a criminal investigator, and you have a lot of expertise in different areas.
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So if you could, in your own words, tell us where you define your areas of expertise.
00:10:02 ►
Well, thanks, Matt, for having me on, and hello to everybody out there.
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I would say my major expertise is a focus on how the legal system has a bearing on consumers and
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consumer rights. It’s almost a class struggle for consumers to find access to the legal system and
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lawyers, and that fascinates me. And so I’ve done quite a bit of study in both the civil justice
00:10:36 ►
system and the criminal justice system. Good. I want to get into some nitty-gritty here because we’re going to talk about marijuana law and a lot of California marijuana law.
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So I’m going to just run a few scenarios by you and get your gut response.
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For starters, I know some people who were growers in California, and they had their medical marijuana cards.
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And they had their medical marijuana cards.
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And they had what’s been called a caretaker’s license.
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And so they could join together as a co-op.
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And four people got together and they had this caretaker’s license. So if I remember correctly, they could grow up to 99 plants legally under California marijuana law, which is what they were doing.
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And they got their plants in, and they were really starting to grow very nicely.
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And then one of them woke up.
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He woke up to an M-16 pressed to the side of his head.
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So I’m curious if you could give us advice.
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If anybody were to find themselves in that situation, what’s the way to go?
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Well, you say he woke up.
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Were they cops who entered his house?
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Do you know any more facts about how the gun ended up aimed at him?
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Yeah, they were cops.
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They were like SWAT team kind of guys, and they were all dressed in black,
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and they were like paramilitary bozos.
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Okay.
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Well, they must have had a warrant i’m assuming if they don’t
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if they don’t have a warrant then they would have no right to enter the house unless uh there was
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consent given by him which obviously didn’t occur if he was uh sleeping or if there were
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exigent circumstances uh that means uh like if a cop’s pursuing a fleeing felon into a house,
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they have a right to go in the house in that circumstance without a warrant.
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Also, they have the right to go into a house if evidence is being destroyed.
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So barring all that, they must have had a warrant that allowed them to break into the house and it sounds like it was a
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warrant for his arrest yeah okay i don’t remember the specifics but i don’t know if it makes a
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difference or not but uh he was not the owner of the house he was leasing it so could it have been
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possibly done with the landlord’s consent or something or is that really an issue i know the
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landlord can only give consent if he’s an actual resident of
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the house just because a landlord is the landlord is renting uh premises to somebody the landlord
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has no right to give consent just because the landlord owns the house only the own only the
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resident of a house would have that right.
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Okay.
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I think they just popped in on them, but, you know,
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you can have six cops and two hippies, and who are they going to believe?
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And they’re going to say what they think. They could say they thought they saw him with a gun or something crazy anyway, right?
00:13:37 ►
Well, no, not really.
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I mean, it wouldn’t surprise me if they entered the house without a warrant,
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in which case there are certain things that a person should do when that happens.
00:13:49 ►
When the police violate your rights, number one, cooperate.
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Because if they’re violating your rights, there’s something wrong with their mentality at that point in time and it and they may end up shooting you so even
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if especially if you’re right and you’re innocent you’ve done nothing wrong by all means always
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cooperate with the police and if you don’t cooperate they’ll end up adding charges such
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as resisting arrest and obstructing justice anyway and you you’ll get hurt. They’ll beat you up.
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So after that, you cooperate with them.
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Next important thing, never say a word.
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Don’t ever talk to the cops under any circumstance.
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If you’re a suspect or you’re being arrested, nothing can be gained from it.
00:14:43 ►
They will twist whatever you say.
00:14:45 ►
It can only be used against you, just like the famous Miranda advisement. You have a right to remain silent, so remain silent.
00:14:53 ►
Even if they’re yelling and screaming at you to talk, refuse to talk. That’s a basic right that
00:14:59 ►
you have. It’s one of the only effective rights we have left from the Bill of Rights.
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So exercise that right or else whatever you say will be twisted around and it will end up leading to your conviction.
00:15:17 ►
Good. Yeah, thank you. That’s good advice.
00:15:23 ►
I’m going to say a short little story from my own younger life when I was a teenager.
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I got arrested with some friends.
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One of my friends did something stupid.
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He broke a fire alarm and set it off.
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And they came and got us all.
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And they have like glow-in-the-dark stuff.
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They put on the fire alarm thing and it shows up under a black light.
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And he had been messing with it with a stick, and he threw it at me,
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and the stick hit me, and it got on my clothes.
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So they were blaming me for it.
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And he did it, but I wasn’t going to snitch him off.
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So they got me in a corner, and they said,
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okay, we already know the whole story.
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We know who did it. We know what happened.
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So why don’t you tell us your side of the story?
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And I said, well, you already know everything, so I got nothing to say. And they got really pissed off because they didn’t.
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They were trying to get me to give it up.
00:16:07 ►
So I’m telling that to reiterate what Eric said about
00:16:10 ►
keep your mouth shut because they’ll lie, they’ll twist it,
00:16:14 ►
they’ll do whatever they can.
00:16:17 ►
So in terms of the medical marijuana law,
00:16:20 ►
let’s get into that issue a little bit in California
00:16:22 ►
because we were talking about this,
00:16:24 ►
and you had in essence said, and you can correct me with your own wording, but you were,
00:16:29 ►
in essence, were saying that Proposition 215, which was, was it in 96? Yeah, 1996,
00:16:36 ►
didn’t really have enough teeth in it, I guess is the way you worded it. So why don’t you elaborate on that a little bit? Okay, yes. In 1996, the California voters, by a wide margin, approved medical marijuana in this proposition.
00:16:55 ►
And everyone felt, okay, the state is in favor.
00:17:06 ►
is in favor, the state now has to effectively allow medical marijuana dispensaries so that people who are ill or in bad health can get a marijuana card and then receive marijuana.
00:17:15 ►
Well, you know, the problem with the law, the problem with a proposition like that, is it had no teeth as to how the marijuana laws and regulations would come into play.
00:17:32 ►
For instance, what’s happened since is that 12 of the 58 counties in California
00:17:42 ►
have outright banned medical marijuana and medical marijuana dispensaries.
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And you might ask, well, how could they get away with doing that?
00:17:50 ►
If you had a proposition that said, hey, it’s the law that you can.
00:17:56 ►
Well, a lot of these counties and prosecutors, they’re going by the federal law.
00:18:03 ►
The federal law does indeed say that nobody can have
00:18:09 ►
marijuana that’s a federal crime and to support their argument they say that the federal law
00:18:16 ►
preempts state law which is a basic rule of law in almost any country throughout the world. The national or federal laws in government
00:18:28 ►
are stronger than and are more powerful
00:18:32 ►
than the state laws. So on the basis of that, some counties
00:18:36 ►
have outright banned the use of medical marijuana
00:18:40 ►
dispensaries. But when they did that, it invited
00:18:44 ►
lawsuits, obvious lawsuits saying that
00:18:49 ►
Proposition 215 is still the law and that they can’t do that. So a lot of counties countered that
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by coming up with a different alternative, a malleable alternative. They didn’t ban medical marijuana,
00:19:06 ►
but they decided to regulate it.
00:19:08 ►
And that’s what’s the current controversy
00:19:10 ►
in San Diego, California right now.
00:19:13 ►
They have 165 medical dispensaries,
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but the city of San Diego has stated
00:19:23 ►
that all of them need to be closed for a year or two, and then they can operate
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only if they satisfy certain regulations. Of course, the regulations are so impossible to
00:19:38 ►
satisfy for all intents and purposes. The dispensaries are probably, or at least most of them,
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the great majority will never be able to open again.
00:19:48 ►
So the counties and the cities are creative in coming up with ways to get around the intent of the proposition that was passed in 1996.
00:20:01 ►
Good, thank you.
00:20:02 ►
You know, it’s interesting because we also talked about the differences
00:20:06 ►
like sometimes there’s you know i shouldn’t say this maybe but like a lot of younger people and
00:20:11 ►
stuff they it’s very easy to get a medical marijuana card you can go in and say i have
00:20:16 ►
a headache or i lost my appetite or you know my nose hurts and you know they just write out the scripts. So in terms of the strictness of the medical thing, there is a lot of gray areas.
00:20:32 ►
Now, I do know a number of people who really do use it in a legitimate way.
00:20:37 ►
I know someone who is a retired fire chief, and he has a back injury.
00:20:45 ►
And he says it’s the only thing that works for him.
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And a lot of people don’t want to take painkillers
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because they just get too doped up and stupid.
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It’s arguable whether you get doped up and stupid on smoking dope,
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but it’s different than taking something like Thorazine or, you know, morphine or whatever
00:21:06 ►
for a painkiller.
00:21:07 ►
So there really is some legitimacy to the issue.
00:21:10 ►
And there are a lot of gray areas.
00:21:14 ►
Also, San Diego is known to be somewhat of a conservative stronghold.
00:21:22 ►
But there has been a lot of civil disobedience around it. You mentioned
00:21:26 ►
a case in Oceanside? Yes. Which is just north of San Diego? Yes. Actually, there’s two
00:21:34 ►
medical dispensary owners in Oceanside who, I would call it civil disobedience. What happened
00:21:42 ►
was Oceanside was one of those cities that just outright banned medical dispensaries.
00:21:49 ►
And in effect, what these owners have done is they just reopened.
00:21:55 ►
They just reopened knowing that there’s going to be a court case uh their use they uh they were they were told they had to disband and that
00:22:12 ►
they would have to then apply for what’s called a conditional use permit uh but then that would
00:22:18 ►
allow the city to issue regulations that uh would make it virtually impossible for them to satisfy.
00:22:26 ►
So rather than wait around for that process, what I consider just civil disobedience,
00:22:32 ►
they just opened up and are forcing the legal action right now.
00:22:38 ►
Okay, good.
00:22:39 ►
Yeah, there’s been a lot of that type of civil disobedience, and you may know some of this,
00:22:43 ►
but up in Northern California where there’s a lot of growing going on,
00:22:48 ►
they had been raiding some medical marijuana dispensaries
00:22:52 ►
and some of the people knew
00:22:53 ►
that they were going to get raided.
00:22:56 ►
And they got people to volunteer,
00:22:57 ►
like people who were really like
00:22:58 ►
terminally ill cancer patients
00:23:00 ►
and people in wheelchairs.
00:23:01 ►
So they went in to make this big bust
00:23:03 ►
and they’re busting, you know,
00:23:05 ►
half-dead semi-crippled people in wheelchairs. Really?‘re learning to make this big bust and they’re busting, you know, half dead,
00:23:07 ►
semi crippled people in wheelchairs.
00:23:07 ►
Really?
00:23:08 ►
Yeah.
00:23:12 ►
Didn’t make them look very good, but was really smart on that part with the activism.
00:23:15 ►
Let’s go back again. And this is sort of hitting the other question about busts from a slightly different angle.
00:23:22 ►
I’d like to maybe give a little take on being in your car
00:23:27 ►
and this is probably a general question for more of a
00:23:30 ►
national type thing where you’re in your car
00:23:31 ►
and you’re driving in your car
00:23:33 ►
maybe you’re smoking some weed
00:23:35 ►
and you roll down the window or something
00:23:37 ►
and some smoke goes out
00:23:39 ►
and then the cops pull you over
00:23:42 ►
and so there’s the
00:23:43 ►
whole possession issue and the possibility of driving under the influence kind of a thing.
00:23:47 ►
Could you maybe just talk about that a little bit?
00:23:49 ►
Sure.
00:23:50 ►
First of all, there’s a big difference when it comes to laws on search and seizure when people are driving as opposed to almost any other circumstance.
00:24:02 ►
When you’re driving, it is by a license from the state, and this would be probably
00:24:10 ►
any jurisdiction in the world, where the privilege of driving means that you have to cooperate when
00:24:21 ►
a police officer pulls you over. In almost any other circumstance, you don’t ever have to cooperate when a police officer pulls you over. You don’t, in almost any other circumstance,
00:24:27 ►
you don’t ever have to cooperate with a police officer.
00:24:29 ►
That’s the big difference.
00:24:30 ►
So when you’re in your car and you’re driving,
00:24:33 ►
here’s the things you have to do.
00:24:34 ►
If a police officer pulls you over,
00:24:36 ►
you have to show him your identification,
00:24:40 ►
and then you, if he asks you to step out
00:24:44 ►
or orders you to step out of your car, you have to comply.
00:24:47 ►
You don’t have to do anything else.
00:24:51 ►
And my advice legally as an attorney is that you should not do anything else.
00:24:55 ►
In other words, when the officer starts asking you questions as to how much you’ve had to drink
00:25:00 ►
or whether you’ve been using pot or where you’ve come from or where you’re headed to,
00:25:07 ►
you should say to the police officer, I respectfully declined to answer. You don’t
00:25:13 ►
have to answer those questions because anytime an officer asks you any question, it is with bad
00:25:20 ►
intentions. The intention is to garner information from you that will justify more
00:25:28 ►
of a detention and possibly an arrest. So when you’re pulled over and you’ve been smoking marijuana
00:25:33 ►
and the officer asks you, well, where’s the marijuana? Have you been smoking? I just simply
00:25:41 ►
say, I’m not going to answer that question. You don’t have to answer that question.
00:25:43 ►
you’ve been smoking it just simply say i’m not going to answer that question you don’t have to answer that question okay now it’s amazing the noses that police officers have um they will
00:25:52 ►
always put in their report i could smell marijuana on this person i could smell it from x number of
00:25:57 ►
feet away um i don’t know many people who have the acute sense of smell that police officers have as they document in their reports,
00:26:09 ►
but let him say whatever he wants to say.
00:26:13 ►
Don’t add to the problem by making any comments to him.
00:26:18 ►
Good. Also, correct me if I’m wrong here, but I think, and again, you can correct me here, that they may ask to search your vehicle.
00:26:30 ►
And can you decline that?
00:26:32 ►
Or how does that go?
00:26:34 ►
Well, that’s a really good question, Matt.
00:26:36 ►
First of all, an officer to search your vehicle must have what’s called probable cause,
00:26:46 ►
or else the only way you can search your vehicle is to give your consent.
00:26:53 ►
My recommendation is never, under any circumstance, give your consent to a police officer to search your car, your person, your home, or anything,
00:27:04 ►
because you’re asking for it
00:27:06 ►
i mean i mean there have been cases even when cops plant evidence on people so if you don’t
00:27:11 ►
give your consent they won’t have the opportunity to do that um whether they have a lot of times
00:27:19 ►
what an officer will do is simply start searching your vehicle okay and what you must do is articulate you do
00:27:28 ►
not have the right to do that because what they will testify in court to is that well by your
00:27:35 ►
gesture or by a grimace you gave a non-verbal consent to search and every judge that i know who are all on the side of law enforcement even though the
00:27:48 ►
officer is clearly lying about you giving consent the judge will say since you didn’t
00:27:56 ►
object in an articulable way that consent was given so consent can be given non-verbally. So to counteract that,
00:28:06 ►
you have to verbally say, anytime an officer starts to search you or your car or your home,
00:28:14 ►
sir, you do not have consent. That is something you should say almost anytime you interact with
00:28:20 ►
the police. You know, something you just said I think is important. You said,
00:28:26 ►
sir, you do not have content. And the real point there is, even though you’re telling them no and
00:28:33 ►
not going along with them, always do be polite. Because if you piss them off, they’re going to
00:28:39 ►
want to make an example of you. Well, that’s true. And also, also you know let’s keep this in mind you know police
00:28:46 ►
officers are not you know uh evil warlocks uh they are human beings and they’re doing a difficult
00:28:53 ►
job and you know a lot of most of what they do is necessary to possibly help you or me when we’re in
00:28:59 ►
a jam so they’re not they’re not an enemy i and they shouldn’t be looked upon that way.
00:29:10 ►
You treat them with respect, and maybe they’ll treat you with respect.
00:29:11 ►
Keep this in mind.
00:29:20 ►
Even though you do not have to ever talk to a cop or give consent under any circumstance, really, they have the right to ask those questions and to probe as much as possible and if in in
00:29:30 ►
other words they may ask you questions that they don’t have a right to ask you but but that is okay
00:29:37 ►
that’s part of their job it’s up to you to know what your rights are so you know sometimes you
00:29:43 ►
need to tell the officer sir i don’t have to answer those questions.
00:29:47 ►
No, sir, I’m not going to allow you to, you know,
00:29:50 ►
you don’t have consent to search my car.
00:29:54 ►
And then when they go ahead and do it anyway,
00:29:57 ►
if you’re one of those rare people who is lucky enough to get a good lawyer,
00:30:03 ►
who is lucky enough to get a good lawyer,
00:30:07 ►
that person will be able to raise a motion saying that the cop violated your rights.
00:30:11 ►
Good, thank you.
00:30:13 ►
So we have also been talking about different quantities.
00:30:19 ►
Like you were saying that you can have a certain amount
00:30:22 ►
and if you even give it to people, it could be a felony.
00:30:25 ►
Could you talk a little bit about the quantities and sort of how it scales in terms of prosecution?
00:30:31 ►
Yes, just a little bit.
00:30:32 ►
Like in California and a lot of other jurisdictions, if you have less than an ounce of marijuana, this is just in your possession,
00:30:42 ►
then it’s basically treated like an infraction, which is
00:30:45 ►
even less than a misdemeanor. The criminal standards are the highest form of crime is a
00:30:50 ►
felony. That’s where you can go to prison for more than a year. A misdemeanor is a crime for which
00:30:58 ►
you will do up to, but no more than a year in jail. And then an infraction is like a speeding ticket.
00:31:02 ►
but no more than a year in jail.
00:31:04 ►
And then an infraction is like a speeding ticket.
00:31:10 ►
So if you have less than an ounce of marijuana, a possession of it, then it’s considered to be the lowest form of criminal action that there can be.
00:31:19 ►
But there’s a lot of nuances in the law.
00:31:21 ►
There’s a lot of nuances in the law.
00:31:33 ►
Major felonies are considered transporting marijuana or possession of marijuana for sale.
00:31:37 ►
Usually those involve a bigger amount.
00:31:46 ►
But technically, if you have less than an ounce of marijuana and you give it to somebody or sell it to somebody,
00:31:52 ►
you know, if you sell it to somebody for sure, you could be prosecuted for a felony.
00:31:59 ►
And under that same law, even if you give it to somebody, you can be prosecuted as a felony, even though if you just possess it for yourself and use it for yourself, there’s
00:32:04 ►
virtually no prosecution at all.
00:32:07 ►
Good. Thank you.
00:32:10 ►
Let’s go back to the bus thing again for a little bit.
00:32:14 ►
I’m thinking, okay, like in the case of this person that I knew, they ended up in the end with a plea bargain.
00:32:30 ►
up in the end with a plea bargain. They got fined. It cost them like $10,000, I think,
00:32:36 ►
for the lawyer. They got fined, I think, $2,000. It was a misdemeanor. They got two years probation,
00:32:43 ►
two years of community service. Now, though they were in the right by terms of California laws, they didn’t have the money to
00:32:45 ►
fight and you know they lost
00:32:47 ►
they probably lost $100,000 in what they’d invested
00:32:50 ►
in time and money and everything else
00:32:51 ►
for their crop
00:32:53 ►
so maybe
00:32:55 ►
we could just talk a little bit about okay you got
00:32:57 ►
busted
00:32:58 ►
you get thrown in the slam
00:33:02 ►
you get bailed out and
00:33:03 ►
then you’re going to go to court.
00:33:09 ►
And maybe you could talk a little bit about what happens there, kind of, and what to expect and not to expect.
00:33:10 ►
And you know a little bit about that?
00:33:13 ►
Yes, you mean as far as the court process?
00:33:15 ►
Yeah, yeah. What can you expect? I mean, you know, you’re not going to just walk away if you get in that level of trouble.
00:33:19 ►
No, I see what you’re saying.
00:33:20 ►
Well, first of all, most people cannot afford a criminal defense attorney.
00:33:26 ►
An attorney might charge as much as 400 an hour or want a huge retainer.
00:33:34 ►
You mentioned $10,000 with your friend.
00:33:36 ►
A lot of times it’s even more than that.
00:33:39 ►
And usually whatever money they get up front, there’s no guarantee that they’re going to take the case to trial.
00:33:44 ►
That might be money where they’re just saying to you, we’ll try and get you as good a
00:33:48 ►
plea bargain as possible. Well, unfortunately, probably more than 95% of consumers out there
00:33:55 ►
don’t have the money to hire a lawyer, so they have to go with what’s called a public defender.
00:34:01 ►
Public defender is an attorney who works for a county office, usually called the public
00:34:07 ►
defender’s office.
00:34:08 ►
And this can be all over the place.
00:34:09 ►
In every other country, for instance, they might have similar type of organizations.
00:34:16 ►
But let’s get real about what happens.
00:34:19 ►
The public defender attorney has no interest in putting a lot of time and effort into your case,
00:34:25 ►
and they’re going to try and have you plead guilty to something,
00:34:29 ►
probably something pretty serious, as soon as possible in the process.
00:34:34 ►
So that may occur at the first court date, which is called an arraignment.
00:34:38 ►
An arraignment is where you plead either guilty or not guilty.
00:34:43 ►
where you plead either guilty or not guilty.
00:34:51 ►
And it’s amazing the pressure that is put on most consumers when they go to arraignment.
00:34:55 ►
They have two different arraignment courts.
00:34:58 ►
One is called misdemeanor arraignment, and one is called felony arraignment. It doesn’t matter which one.
00:35:01 ►
It’s amazing how many people plead guilty to a crime,
00:35:05 ►
even the chief crime charged, right there on that first date.
00:35:09 ►
And that is only because of the pressure put on them by public defender attorneys.
00:35:15 ►
So if for some reason you could sustain that assault by the attorney to plead guilty,
00:35:21 ►
your next court date is the pre-trial or readiness court date.
00:35:28 ►
And that’s when the judges put pressure on people to take a plea bargain.
00:35:34 ►
So what you really have is this mounting pressure, kind of like lava or what’s it called, magma?
00:35:42 ►
Magma?
00:35:43 ►
That’s building in a volcano about to erupt.
00:35:46 ►
You’re getting all these indicia about why you should plead guilty,
00:35:51 ►
and probably nobody will be really looking into the case on your behalf,
00:35:55 ►
unless you’re extremely wealthy.
00:35:58 ►
You’re not going to have access to an attorney who is going to spend a lot of time on it,
00:36:03 ►
or a private investigator who’s going to
00:36:05 ►
really be looking into it. So the odds are that, like your friend who spent $10,000 on an attorney
00:36:12 ►
but basically ended up getting a pretty bad bargain out of it and losing everything,
00:36:19 ►
that’s the conundrum that people are in our legal system right now.
00:36:24 ►
And that’s the conundrum that people are in our legal system right now.
00:36:29 ►
Good. And I believe I’m correct.
00:36:30 ►
In fact, I know I am.
00:36:37 ►
When they’re really pushing for the plea bargain, they want to keep you from going to court because it’s time and money and all that.
00:36:41 ►
And the legal system is really backed up, like log jammed seriously.
00:36:48 ►
Well, yeah. I mean, you know, like let me give you one example in one area of law and this is just uh typical in a lot of areas of law but take drunk driving cases
00:36:54 ►
okay a drunk driving case i uh is um so regulated by the state that once it’s filed by the prosecutor, the prosecutor doesn’t even have a right except when there is clear factual evidence to ever give a lesser charge.
00:37:15 ►
So in other words, they can’t plea bargain it down to a speeding ticket or something like that. So usually once the charge of a DUI occurs, there is very little a defense
00:37:29 ►
attorney can do unless you go to trial. But what happens? In 99% of the cases, more than that,
00:37:37 ►
the defense attorney will take a lot of money from someone, possibly as much as $10,000
00:37:41 ►
for their first DUI, and all they’ll end up doing is convincing the person to plead guilty.
00:37:49 ►
So the sad fact is,
00:37:53 ►
if that person were to represent himself and not hire a lawyer,
00:37:58 ►
he would get the same deal,
00:38:00 ►
but the fines might be less,
00:38:03 ►
because a judge has a right to give lesser fines if he perceives
00:38:08 ►
that someone is poor. So if you have the attorney, you’re not going to get the lesser fines because
00:38:14 ►
the judge perceives you’re not poor. So if you represent yourself, you’re going to get a better
00:38:20 ►
deal. I mean, representing yourself as far as pleading guilty, you’ll get a better deal, I mean, representing yourself as far as pleading guilty, you’ll
00:38:25 ►
get a better deal than if you paid $10,000 to a lawyer.
00:38:30 ►
Wow.
00:38:30 ►
That’s a fascinating conundrum, which I hope none of us ever end up in.
00:38:38 ►
You know, we were talking earlier, and you had mentioned, I know you’ll word it better
00:38:43 ►
than me, but you had talked about how the difference between civil and criminal cases one they want you in and out one they want they
00:38:49 ►
love to have you there at the criminal i think and they want you out as a civil is that how it
00:38:52 ►
goes you want to rephrase that sure i i think you said it pretty well i mean the uh the problem in
00:38:59 ►
our society is that uh civil cases are where you know that’s like suing or divorce court or unlawful detainer or state trust.
00:39:12 ►
It’s anything that’s not criminal, really.
00:39:16 ►
But the courts don’t really want John Q. Citizen, the consumer, to occupy their time with suing or going to court.
00:39:28 ►
The judges have a huge caseload and they want to get rid of their caseload.
00:39:32 ►
So they come up with all these alternative ways to get the case resolved.
00:39:40 ►
They actually call it alternative dispute resolution.
00:39:44 ►
they actually call it alternative dispute resolution.
00:39:48 ►
And that means if you file a lawsuit or your attorney does,
00:39:53 ►
the courts are going to force you to either mediate the case where you go to an attorney who tries to get you to agree
00:39:56 ►
or arbitrate a case where you go to an arbitrator
00:40:00 ►
who has the right to make a final decision,
00:40:02 ►
in which case it is no longer part of the court
00:40:05 ►
system, or you have to go to a settlement conference with a judge. Well, the point is,
00:40:12 ►
in civil cases, it’s clear that the system does not want you to be involved. They want to get
00:40:19 ►
rid of you as soon as possible. Now, in the criminal system, no, it would be nice if they want to
00:40:27 ►
not let you participate in the criminal system, but that’s not the way it happens. They are more
00:40:32 ►
than willing to let you participate, but once you are involved in the system, they still want to get
00:40:38 ►
rid of you as fast as possible. And unfortunately, and this is just my opinion, if it comes down to your civil rights
00:40:46 ►
versus the convenience of the courts, the convenience of the courts is going to win out.
00:40:53 ►
Yeah, I guess once you’re in their hands, you really are at their mercy. You get caught in
00:40:59 ►
the cogs of the wheel of justice and they can crush you, especially if you’re, as you say,
00:41:05 ►
bogs of the wheel of justice and they can crush you especially if you’re as you say john q citizen uh we don’t have a lot of resources that’s true yeah um i’m wondering we didn’t really
00:41:11 ►
talk about this and it’s probably not as as different but um maybe you could just give a
00:41:17 ►
few thoughts on aside from marijuana there’s um there’s right you know there’s psychedelic drugs like mushrooms and LSD and things like that.
00:41:29 ►
And then there are some that are in a gray area of what they call designer drugs.
00:41:35 ►
And I imagine there are different penalties for different things.
00:41:38 ►
But in terms of prosecution in court, the rules really
00:41:46 ►
would be
00:41:47 ►
the same in terms of keeping your mouth shut
00:41:50 ►
and
00:41:50 ►
not really giving up anything.
00:41:54 ►
But possibly
00:41:55 ►
because of a substance being scheduled
00:41:58 ►
in a different way, it could be
00:42:00 ►
higher penalties.
00:42:02 ►
That’s true. I mean,
00:42:03 ►
if you go to the penal codes, there are just many laws, pages and pages of laws
00:42:12 ►
detailing these various drugs.
00:42:16 ►
Whenever I have a drug case, I actually have to go look up that particular section just
00:42:20 ►
to see how all the laws affect that particular drug.
00:42:25 ►
But you’re absolutely right.
00:42:27 ►
It’s not going to do a person any good to try and explain himself to the police.
00:42:35 ►
For instance, you might be interested in knowing that when the police come to your house
00:42:42 ►
with the intention of searching your house and finding the marijuana,
00:42:47 ►
let’s say you have marijuana in your basement or in your garage,
00:42:51 ►
well, when the police knock on the door, you don’t even have to open the door.
00:42:57 ►
Unless they have a warrant, they will not be able to search your house.
00:43:03 ►
Now, you might say, well, why don’t they just go ahead and get a warrant?
00:43:07 ►
Well, a warrant is issued by a judge,
00:43:10 ►
and a judge is not going to issue a warrant unless he has probable cause,
00:43:15 ►
some facts to already justify that.
00:43:17 ►
So it might be the police are frustrated.
00:43:20 ►
They may not have the justification before they’re pounding on your door and demanding
00:43:25 ►
that you open it. Because if they don’t have the justification, a judge isn’t going to give them
00:43:30 ►
the warrant. So the only way, and this is how it usually happens, is that they end up arresting you
00:43:36 ►
is that you go ahead and let them in. You let them in and you let them search and then they see the drugs and then next thing you
00:43:45 ►
know you’re part of a criminal prosecution. So it’s really important that you assert all your
00:43:51 ►
rights. Basically, even if you open the door, a police officer has a right to seize anything that
00:44:01 ►
is in what’s called plain view of where he is.
00:44:05 ►
Now, a lot of times these guys cheat.
00:44:08 ►
Once they get in there, they may be walking around and go around a corner and say what was in plain view.
00:44:15 ►
But the bottom line is that can never happen if you don’t let them in.
00:44:20 ►
You have to really keep your composure when you’re dealing with the police.
00:44:23 ►
you have to really keep your composure when you’re dealing with the police you have to assert your rights with
00:44:27 ►
caution, you don’t want to be yelling and screaming at them
00:44:32 ►
you don’t want to give them a chance to think that you have a gun
00:44:36 ►
most of the people who end up getting shot by the police
00:44:40 ►
actually don’t have a gun, but the police get away with it because they say
00:44:44 ►
it looked like he was going for a gun so you know just for self-preservation keep your cool
00:44:50 ►
when a cop tries to enter your house good you know that brings up another little scenario maybe
00:44:58 ►
we can touch on here kind of bounces between state and federal laws and crossing state lines and things like that.
00:45:08 ►
I’ll give you a little scenario that happened to someone I know, but you can elaborate on it.
00:45:14 ►
Some years back, someone I know, they were a dentist, and they were quite successful,
00:45:19 ►
and they liked cannabis.
00:45:22 ►
And somebody mailed them some cannabis.
00:45:25 ►
And they got it, and they went, oh, great.
00:45:27 ►
And they opened it up and, oh, this is great.
00:45:29 ►
And they twisted up a spliff and they fired it up, started to smoke it.
00:45:35 ►
And there was a knock on the door.
00:45:37 ►
And bang, in came the feds and he got busted and got prosecuted pretty harshly.
00:45:43 ►
Can you maybe talk about that a little bit?
00:45:45 ►
You know, like the U.S. Mail’s not safe.
00:45:47 ►
No.
00:45:48 ►
It’s interesting that it sounds like there was some kind of setup involved.
00:45:54 ►
I think that, as it turned out, they found it, they sniffed it out,
00:45:59 ►
I think with dogs when it came through their post office.
00:46:02 ►
I see.
00:46:03 ►
And then they set it all up, and then they just went through with the regular delivery
00:46:06 ►
and figured, okay, 20 minutes has passed.
00:46:08 ►
Guy’s probably smoking now and nailed him.
00:46:11 ►
Well, were they smoking it at the time that the cops were standing?
00:46:16 ►
And the reason I say that is this goes along with much of what we’ve been talking about.
00:46:21 ►
Okay, they’re obviously in a dubious situation at that time.
00:46:24 ►
The cops have busted in
00:46:26 ►
well first of all do the cops have a warrant okay that’s a big issue uh if the cops had don’t have
00:46:36 ►
a warrant then probably their attorney would be able to get them off on that right there because
00:46:42 ►
when the when the police have information that justifies getting a warrant, then they must go get the warrant.
00:46:50 ►
Just because they have the justification for the warrant, they don’t have a justification to go in unless they actually have the warrant.
00:46:58 ►
So from my experience, a lot of times the police are lazy.
00:47:02 ►
They don’t get the warrant.
00:47:01 ►
I experienced a lot of times the police are lazy.
00:47:03 ►
They don’t get the warrant.
00:47:11 ►
So there would be a real good way for them to maybe, you know, have the charges dismissed on technicality.
00:47:19 ►
Secondly, okay, from what you told me, when the cops bust in, if they don’t say anything to the police,
00:47:24 ►
well, how is there any evidence that they’ve done anything wrong in other words if i send you know
00:47:27 ►
a kilo of marijuana in the mail to you matt um who’s to say that you even know what’s in it so
00:47:34 ►
when you open it up have you committed a crime you had no criminal intent so they would have that
00:47:39 ►
going for themselves unless they opened their mouths and blabbed and talked with the police.
00:47:45 ►
Probably in that scenario, they admitted that they knew what it was and that it was sent to them,
00:47:52 ►
in which case they’re probably going to go to jail.
00:47:56 ►
I have to comment on an interesting choice of words you used.
00:48:00 ►
You said dubious, so it was a dubious situation because uh the pun was not intended
00:48:09 ►
yeah i know but i don’t miss the puns he uh he had smoked and then uh if i remember correctly
00:48:18 ►
he put it out but they probably smelled it and they were feds and they were they were tied in with the postal inspector right so i guess um is it fair to say is it correct to say that anytime you have something to do with
00:48:33 ►
an illicit substance and you cross a state line does that make it federal or is it still a state
00:48:38 ►
thing i you know it depends on the law i don’t know all the particulars of all these laws.
00:48:45 ►
There are expert criminal defense attorneys who know that better than I do.
00:48:51 ►
It certainly is not a good idea to be caught doing anything across state lines
00:48:56 ►
because it does invoke the federal jurisdiction.
00:49:00 ►
And that’s a good question.
00:49:18 ►
Yeah, and that’s a good question. From my experience, the federal jurisdiction is pretty much like being in the Klingon world. The laws are just so onerous, you know.
00:49:19 ►
Draconian to the max. Not that the states are any better in a sense, but federal law has its own 20-year sentences for basic minor drug use, depending on times when they’re prosecuting in a draconian way, it’s only because the legislators have passed laws that mandate that they treat it that way.
00:49:55 ►
Sometimes the legislators have made it impossible for judges to be fair.
00:50:00 ►
Be fair.
00:50:10 ►
I know of several federal judges who’ve actually quit the bench because they were not allowed to be fair.
00:50:15 ►
They felt they were just part of an automated system.
00:50:28 ►
So, you know, your viewers out there should keep this in mind, that they have the right to vote out legislators who are basically overly zealous when it comes to law and order.
00:50:36 ►
Because a lot of these laws that are making the judges seem to be unfair are really passed by your legislators.
00:50:43 ►
And the judges and the prosecutors and even the defense lawyers, there’s not a lot they can do.
00:50:44 ►
That’s interesting. You know, I want to kind of reiterate that Eric’s not only talking about,
00:50:49 ►
you know, advice as a lawyer, but he really is an insider into the legal system. And
00:50:58 ►
he’s seen it from every way. You know, he’s worked on a number of murder cases. I went on a few investigations with him, which was fascinating.
00:51:10 ►
Being a writer and just being who I am, wanting to explore the outer limits.
00:51:14 ►
We also talked a little bit about the drug war
00:51:18 ►
and sort of the senselessness of it and the inevitability of some things.
00:51:23 ►
Do you want to give us some of your thoughts on that what we were talking about earlier sure absolutely i well i mean regardless
00:51:30 ►
of your politics regarding drugs being good or bad or the enforcement good or bad it seems to me sense factor is this. There are 20,000 criminal cartels in America. That’s 20,000. If some
00:51:56 ►
of them, like the Crips, may have thousands of members in each one, but we’re talking about 20,000 documented criminal cartels in America.
00:52:06 ►
That breaks down to one for every 15,000 people.
00:52:14 ►
If there’s just 100 members in each criminal cartel, that shows a vast array of influence
00:52:24 ►
over John Q. Citizen, and it’s getting worse.
00:52:27 ►
And it’s that kind of problem that is leading to anarchy in some countries like Colombia, Mexico, and many other countries in the world, actually.
00:52:36 ►
So you have to figure that of those 20,000 criminal cartels, almost all of them are sustained in some way
00:52:47 ►
because of money made from selling drugs.
00:52:50 ►
That’s the main way that criminals are able to stay in business
00:52:57 ►
and feed themselves.
00:52:59 ►
Well, if for the most part drugs were legal,
00:53:04 ►
then they wouldn’t have any basis for their business.
00:53:08 ►
And I’m sure that many of those 20,000 criminal cartels would disappear.
00:53:16 ►
Good, thank you.
00:53:19 ►
There’s also, I’ve done some research,
00:53:24 ►
and also the drug war
00:53:26 ►
is an industry in and of itself.
00:53:29 ►
Just kind of like
00:53:30 ►
the cancer industry, so to speak.
00:53:33 ►
So, there’s a lot
00:53:35 ►
of funding that these departments get
00:53:37 ►
that
00:53:37 ►
they have to submit their budget every year
00:53:40 ►
and buy their new
00:53:42 ►
flak jackets and their super Gucci
00:53:44 ►
RVs and their, youcci rvs and their you know
00:53:46 ►
ricky ranger radio gun sites and whatever the hell they got true so there’s there’s a lot of uh
00:53:53 ►
support for keeping that funding coming so a lot of that also drives the drug war from the other
00:53:57 ►
side you know that’s a really good point matt i you know also let’s not forget the role of the pharmaceutical companies in all of this.
00:54:05 ►
I don’t know much about marijuana. I have a lung condition. I actually can’t inhale. I’m the only
00:54:15 ►
person on this planet who actually understood what Bill Clinton was saying when he said he did not inhale. Even so, the pharmaceuticals are really going to be hurt if it’s a fact that marijuana really does have some healing properties to people,
00:54:39 ►
especially when they have cancer and many other ailments.
00:54:43 ►
And if marijuana does work, which I don’t know because I don’t use it myself,
00:54:47 ►
but I’ve heard from many credible people, including doctors,
00:54:51 ►
that it is really a good thing from what I’ve heard,
00:54:57 ►
then you have to question who is behind all of the oppositions to the laws that would allow something like a marijuana dispensary or medical marijuana use.
00:55:13 ►
And I suspect it’s just common sense that the pharmaceutical companies who are extremely powerful are behind all this and that they want marijuana to be illegal so that people will have to buy their
00:55:28 ►
drugs, many of which are unproven and usually turn out to be devastating as far as their side
00:55:35 ►
effects. I mean, there’s no evidence that marijuana is worse for you than at least the drugs that
00:55:43 ►
they’re peddling to people. So, you know, I think a lot of the drug war has is really, you than at least the drugs that they’re peddling to people. So I think a lot of the drug war is really a function of big business prevailing in this country.
00:55:53 ►
I could go out for hours on a tirade against the pharmaceuticals.
00:55:56 ►
That’s a big sore spot with me.
00:55:58 ►
I mean, they are constantly trying to limit and prosecute natural foods and natural supplements that have known to have healing qualities.
00:56:08 ►
Some of them, more often than not, better than the pharmaceuticals.
00:56:14 ►
They work with the body as opposed to against it.
00:56:16 ►
They don’t have side effects.
00:56:17 ►
They’re a natural healing thing.
00:56:18 ►
And when you even think about marijuana, it’s a plant.
00:56:23 ►
God put this plant out there, and somebody smoked it.
00:56:29 ►
Some people eat it.
00:56:31 ►
It has had good qualities.
00:56:33 ►
I’ve heard of people making a salve with it that was good for rheumatism.
00:56:36 ►
Really?
00:56:36 ►
Yeah.
00:56:37 ►
There are a number of qualities.
00:56:39 ►
So, God, I can really go off.
00:56:42 ►
I won’t because I’ll probably get in trouble and get arrested or something for how much those bastards drive me nuts.
00:56:49 ►
But I do want to say to reinforce what Eric just said, and that is the case of MDMA, ecstasy.
00:57:09 ►
I know a number of researchers, and they’ve done a lot of research with it, sanctioned by the government and other governments.
00:57:11 ►
A lot has been done in Israel.
00:57:15 ►
And a lot has been done, particularly with ecstasy, with post-traumatic stress disorder.
00:57:21 ►
So some interesting things about ecstasy, which I’m pretty sure I’m correct here.
00:57:30 ►
It was originally discovered in something like, I think, 1865, so it’s not patentable.
00:57:40 ►
Another thing is there have been people who have had post-traumatic stress disorder and other traumas that did ecstasy maybe twice, three times with a good psychotherapist
00:57:47 ►
and were cured of their conditions.
00:57:50 ►
Well, you think the pharmaceutical companies
00:57:52 ►
want something that you only need to take
00:57:53 ►
two or three times and you’re cured?
00:57:57 ►
Or would they rather have an automatic debit
00:57:59 ►
from your checking account
00:58:01 ►
so they can get your monthly supply of Paxil or Prozac
00:58:04 ►
or whatever the hell they got, Zoloft, you know.
00:58:07 ►
So there’s a lot of resistance behind common sense
00:58:11 ►
driven basically by greed and profit.
00:58:15 ►
And then they do things with some of their drugs.
00:58:17 ►
I won’t get off track here, but I’m going to say this last part.
00:58:19 ►
Actually, I think it’s pretty interesting.
00:58:21 ►
Yeah.
00:58:23 ►
Well, they have had different drugs, okay?
00:58:27 ►
And I can’t remember one off the top of my head because my mind is spinning
00:58:30 ►
because this is really a hot spot with me.
00:58:32 ►
But they had different drugs where they put them out there
00:58:36 ►
and they weren’t thoroughly tested and they’d make $2 billion.
00:58:43 ►
And 25 people died and there’s a class action suit and they lose
00:58:49 ►
and they have to pay 200 million dollars you think wow 200 million dollars well 200 million
00:58:56 ►
dollars out of two billion ain’t nothing hey it’s the price of doing business it’s like paying for
00:59:01 ►
advertising and that goes on with a number of different drugs.
00:59:12 ►
So they are behind a lot of bad stuff that’s not being supported. But I don’t want to get off track.
00:59:18 ►
So I think we’re going to wrap it up here in just a minute. Maybe we’ll give you a little final comment here in a second. But I want to reiterate that Eric’s latest book is Lawyers Lie.
00:59:26 ►
Again, if I was going to subtitle it, I might subtitle it
00:59:30 ►
An Insider’s Guide to the Maids of the Legal System
00:59:34 ►
because you can look up different chapters for different things.
00:59:36 ►
There’s chapters on even becoming an attorney,
00:59:42 ►
expectations in the social contract.
00:59:45 ►
There’s a chapter so you want to sue someone.
00:59:48 ►
It gets into all the details.
00:59:50 ►
Can you afford to sue someone?
00:59:54 ►
Judgment proof, punitive damages,
00:59:56 ►
all these situations that sometimes we unfortunately find ourselves into.
01:00:01 ►
It even gets into estate trusts, medical malpractice, a bunch of them. So it
01:00:08 ►
is available at www.erichdhart.com, erichdhart.com, as a paperback book, or as we say in the writing
01:00:21 ►
industry, a tree book. And it’s also available on Amazon as an e-book under Kindle.
01:00:28 ►
And I know Lorenzo will post this stuff also on the page.
01:00:33 ►
So maybe if you have any final thoughts for our listeners
01:00:37 ►
that you may want to kind of sum up or kind of put a wrap on here.
01:00:41 ►
Well, I think you covered the subject matter that we had talked about
01:00:45 ►
beforehand. I might say about that book, in case people are confused, that book is only about the
01:00:53 ►
civil side of things, the civil justice system. I have another book that I’m finishing up right now.
01:01:00 ►
It’s called Lawyers Lie Yet Again, and it’s about the criminal justice debacle.
01:01:08 ►
So that has to do with a lot of the subjects we were talking about today. The book that’s
01:01:12 ►
out right now has to do with when you want to sue somebody, that type of thing.
01:01:18 ►
Yeah, civil law.
01:01:19 ►
Civil law.
01:01:19 ►
Yeah. Okay. And then I have one last question for you, which I suspect you may know the answer.
01:01:25 ►
Okay.
01:01:26 ►
What do you call a busload of lawyers going over a cliff with an empty seat?
01:01:34 ►
I don’t know. You have to tell me that, Matt.
01:01:37 ►
It’s a tragedy.
01:01:41 ►
Okay. That’s it, folks.
01:01:43 ►
Thank you for listening.
01:01:50 ►
And please check in and help out the Psychedelic Salon.
01:01:52 ►
And thank you to Lorenzo and everybody else out there.
01:01:56 ►
It’s been great podcasting, and hopefully we’ll do a few more like this.
01:02:02 ►
Okay, this is Mateo and Eric Hart signing off.
01:02:07 ►
You’re listening to The Psychedelic Salon,
01:02:10 ►
where people are changing their lives one thought at a time.
01:02:16 ►
Well, since we’re telling lawyer jokes, here’s mine.
01:02:20 ►
What do you call 10,000 lawyers on the bottom of the ocean?
01:02:22 ►
A good start.
01:02:26 ►
Actually, that’s not the best one I’ve heard, but it’s the only one I can remember. And you’d probably be surprised at how popular lawyer jokes are with lawyers. With few
01:02:33 ►
exceptions, almost every lawyer I know has told me that I was smart to get out of that field.
01:02:38 ►
Now, I know that there are a number of law school students who are also fellow salonners, as well as
01:02:43 ►
several lawyers, and I hope I’m not discouraging you because I still think that law school students who are also fellow salonners as well as several lawyers, and I hope I’m not
01:02:45 ►
discouraging you because I still think that law school is by far one of the best ways there is
01:02:51 ►
to sharpen your critical thinking and arguing skills. To tell the truth, I really enjoyed law
01:02:56 ►
school, and once I got into practice, I also loved doing research for appellate cases and writing
01:03:01 ►
appellate briefs, but unfortunately, I never got to do much
01:03:05 ►
of that kind of work. What I really hadn’t thought through very well was what being a lawyer means on
01:03:11 ►
a day-to-day basis. You see, during my undergraduate years, I had a summer job where I taught sailing
01:03:18 ►
at the Houston Yacht Club. And there I got to know a lot of the prominent judges and lawyers in
01:03:23 ►
Houston. And they were really a great bunch of people, and I just had a blast hanging out with them during the summer.
01:03:29 ►
So that was my main reason for wanting to be a lawyer, drinking and sailing.
01:03:34 ►
What I hadn’t taken into account was the fact that the only people who need a lawyer are people who have problems,
01:03:40 ►
usually big problems, and the fact was I had enough problems of my own, but now I had
01:03:47 ►
to help a whole raft of people who had taken years to create some kind of a mess that they expected
01:03:52 ►
me to clear up for them in a day or two. So after getting calls at home and in the middle of the
01:03:58 ►
night from worried clients, and after the second guy pulled a gun on my partner, I decided that I
01:04:03 ►
should get out while the getting was still good.
01:04:06 ►
And believe me, it was one of the best decisions I ever made.
01:04:10 ►
And listening to Eric just now very clearly reminded me how depressed I was during the years that I practiced law,
01:04:18 ►
mainly because of the injustice I saw in the system each day and how unreasonable even highly intelligent people can be
01:04:25 ►
when their emotions take hold. The bottom line was that I simply didn’t have the right makeup to be
01:04:31 ►
a lawyer, which I guess is why I have such great respect for women and men like Eric who feel the
01:04:37 ►
same way I did, but who are still willing to go out there every day and stand up for those of us
01:04:42 ►
who have somehow become entangled in the system.
01:04:50 ►
I hope it never happens to you, but should you ever run afoul of the law, I hope you remember to keep your mouth shut.
01:04:52 ►
It isn’t easy, particularly if a cop is yelling at you and threatening you, but it’s a right
01:04:57 ►
you have in this country and you should never let it be waived.
01:05:02 ►
And in fairness, let me just put in a good word for the women and men who are actually
01:05:07 ►
in the law enforcement business. I wouldn’t want their jobs, would you? But without them,
01:05:14 ►
we’d all be living in a significantly more dangerous world. You know, remember, law
01:05:19 ►
enforcements have to deal on a daily basis with some of the worst elements of our societies.
01:05:24 ►
Enforcements have to deal on a daily basis with some of the worst elements of our societies.
01:05:29 ►
Now, they may not always be fair, and they may not always be nice,
01:05:32 ►
and they usually don’t know a thing about you.
01:05:35 ►
So, be sure to show them your best side.
01:05:38 ►
You can be polite, and you can be courteous,
01:05:42 ►
but you can also be firm about not giving up your right to remain silent, and your right to not have your car or home
01:05:45 ►
searched without a warrant.
01:05:47 ►
You know, those are your rights,
01:05:48 ►
but if you are polite in exercising them,
01:05:51 ►
then there’s really a much better chance
01:05:52 ►
that things are going to work out in your favor.
01:05:56 ►
Now, before I close,
01:05:58 ►
I would also like to put in a plug for Matt Palomary,
01:06:01 ►
who took the time to record this interview for us.
01:06:04 ►
As you know, Matt’s main source of income is from his writing,
01:06:07 ►
and if you haven’t read Spirit Matters, his autobiography,
01:06:10 ►
well, you don’t know what you’re missing,
01:06:11 ►
because it reads more like a novel than a non-fiction book.
01:06:15 ►
And as far as an introduction to shamanism,
01:06:17 ►
well, I don’t think you can beat Matt’s novel, Land Without Evil.
01:06:21 ►
It’s a book that you can give to a teenager without worry,
01:06:24 ►
because there’s no
01:06:25 ►
mention at all of drugs, which is why it’s taught in some schools. But mainly it’s written for
01:06:31 ►
adults who are interested in learning more about the conflicts between the Westerners who colonized
01:06:36 ►
the Americas and the indigenous people who had built thriving civilizations for millennia before
01:06:42 ►
the arrival of the Jesuits. It’s really a great tale and a page-turner that’s now also available in Kindle.
01:06:50 ►
Well, that’ll do it for now, but be sure to tune in next week.
01:06:53 ►
Hopefully it’ll be early in the week because I’ve got another interview to play for you,
01:06:58 ►
and it will feature Dennis McKenna here in the salon for the first time.
01:07:02 ►
And so I’ll close today’s podcast by reminding you that this
01:07:06 ►
and most of the podcasts
01:07:07 ►
from the Psychedelic Salon
01:07:08 ►
are freely available for you to use
01:07:10 ►
in your own audio projects
01:07:11 ►
under the Creative Commons Attribution
01:07:14 ►
Non-Commercial Sharealike 3.0 license.
01:07:17 ►
And if you have any questions about that,
01:07:18 ►
just click the Creative Commons link
01:07:20 ►
at the bottom of the Psychedelic Salon webpage,
01:07:22 ►
which you can get to via psychedelicsalon.us.
01:07:26 ►
And if you’re interested
01:07:28 ►
in the philosophy behind the salon,
01:07:29 ►
you can hear all about it in my novel,
01:07:32 ►
The Genesis Generation, which
01:07:34 ►
is available as a pay-what-you-can
01:07:35 ►
audiobook that you can download at
01:07:37 ►
genesisgeneration.us.
01:07:40 ►
And for now, this is
01:07:41 ►
Lorenzo, signing off from
01:07:43 ►
Cyberdelic Space.
01:07:46 ►
Be well, my friends.