670 - War on Drugs Recent Legal Updates

Program Notes

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Guest speaker: Gary Smith
Today’s podcast is a recording from the Live Salon on July 12, 2021 where attorney Gary Smith joined us for another update of some of the current legal aspects of the War on Drugs.

We also talked about his new book, which is an encyclopedia of drug laws. It includes both international and local laws. This new book, Psychedelia Lex, is not just a valuable resource for lawyers, it is also worthwhile for local psychedelic societies to use as background for some of their discussions.

Psychedelica Lex

Gary Smith’s email address: smith@guidant.law

“Uniform Model Law on Plants and Fungi Medicines: A Better Path to Reregulation” by Gary Smith

The Psychedelic Bar Association

Download free copies of Lorenzo’s latest books

Transcript

00:00:00 ►

Greetings from cyberdelic space.

00:00:19 ►

This is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.

00:00:24 ►

And today I’m going to play a recording of last Monday’s Live Salon,

00:00:28 ►

where attorney Gary Smith joined us for another update of some current legal aspects of the war on drugs.

00:00:35 ►

And we also talked about his encyclopedia of drug laws from the international to local jurisdictions.

00:00:42 ►

This new book of his, Psychedelica Lex, is not just a valuable resource

00:00:47 ►

for lawyers. It can also be very worthwhile for local psychedelic societies to use as,

00:00:53 ►

well, as background for some of their discussions. We seem to be undergoing a sea change in the

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public attitude about the potential for psychedelics in treating mental illnesses,

00:01:05 ►

as well as about the benefits of cannabis.

00:01:08 ►

And this shift in public opinion is finally being reflected in the attitudes of many officials

00:01:14 ►

in legal and regulatory agencies.

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A new day is dawning, and now is the time to keep building the momentum of legalization

00:01:23 ►

at every opportunity you have.

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So here’s our conversation with Attorney Gary Smith about the current state of legal affairs

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in the so-called war on drugs. And like you, I say so-called war on drugs because, well,

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no drugs are being injured in this war. It’s a war on people. This nation has declared a war on a significant percentage

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of its own citizens. So let’s keep on pushing to stop this madness.

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Well, welcome, Gary.

00:01:55 ►

Well, thank you for having me back. I appreciate it.

00:01:58 ►

You know, I guess so much has been happening lately. It seems like you were here like over a year ago.

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It was just last October.

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But I guess that’s almost a year already, isn’t it?

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You know, it’s so funny you’re saying that.

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Just before I walked in the room, I was chatting with my wife about the fact that

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pandemic has completely skewed both of our senses of time.

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Her mom got remarried a year ago

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and I was telling her,

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I thought it was three months ago.

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That’s how she’s been.

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So yeah, the last year is just a blur,

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but so much has been going on.

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Yeah, there’s a lot going on

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in the whole world of psychedelics.

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I saw an article today about Harvard even is really getting

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re-involved. Yeah, yeah, that article just came out last week. They are starting to study anew

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the question of legality and ethics in this new emerging area of medicine.

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So, you know, you say that the last year seems like three months to you. So, you know, you say that the last year seems like three months to you.

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So what all has happened in the last three months in the world of psychedelic law?

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Okay, in no particular order or hierarchy.

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Amongst other things, the world of investment right now is just going bonkers. Most of the activity for

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investment is taking place on the Canadian Stock Exchange. The Canadian laws are just way more

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liberal. You’ll also, if anybody’s into the cannabis scene, you’ll notice most of the

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cannabis stocks are traded on the Canadian Stock Exchange. The US Stock Exchange is starting to

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warm a little bit. There

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are a few domestic psychedelic companies that are doing fundraising right now on the U.S. Exchange.

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But yeah, Canada is by vast margin leading the charge. Part of what is also happening in the

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greater world of this new scientific FDA-approved universe, the out is the hotspot in the world for study

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right now. And the reason for that is most of the countries in the Caribbean have a little more

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relaxed regulation and attitude towards the study. And as a result, a lot of companies are trying to

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set up shop there in order to conduct these studies to try to get FDA approval, et cetera.

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Let’s see other things going on.

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There is a new psychedelics bar association.

00:04:29 ►

Really?

00:04:31 ►

There is.

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I’m not one of the founders.

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I’m not a board member.

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I’m friends with them.

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But a bunch of folks were working behind the scenes and have started up a psychedelic bar

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association.

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And it just is getting started right now. So if we have

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any fellow lawyers who are on the salon this evening, um, if you just Google, I think it’s

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psychedelics bar.org or something plainly obvious like that, uh, you’ll find it. And they’re taking

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signups right now. They’ve already done, I think two, possibly three initiation ceremonies. Uh,

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I was lucky enough to be in the first one. Um, somebody just posted the listing in the chat. Thanks, Egnor. Anyway, yeah, if anybody was

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curious, just go to the little chat thing. You’ll find the link to that website. And they’re still

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taking signups. So if anybody wants to join the association, they can. You know, when I haven’t

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practiced law since the 1970s, but back then in Texas, it was hard to even find somebody to defend somebody who was charged with a marijuana charge.

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You know, so this is a long, big steps, you know, that my only little, I guess you’d say, revolt is I’m still a member of the Texas Bar Association, inactive member. I haven’t kept

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up my credit, you know, my study credits, but my little revolt is that my picture on the Texas Bar

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website is a picture I had taken at Burning Man. So in my straw hat, I’m about the only one without a coat and tie on that website. I love that. That’s fantastic. Yeah,

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Texas is just one of multiple states where this weirdness extends. I understand that,

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of all things, Senator Ted Cruz is a little open to the study of psychedelics for veterans.

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The Department of Defense is a huge supporter of psychedelic studies. You know,

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we have so many psychically wounded veterans right now who, you know, conventional medicine

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just doesn’t do much for them. So to that extent, yeah, if you still have Texas connections,

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hit up Senator Cruz, see if he can’t relax some more Texas law for us.

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Not that it’s not already relaxed in some of the wrong ways, but yeah, it’s fair.

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Well, a completely deregulated energy grid so that you have blackouts and no power during the

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heat of summer. Yeah. You know, the discussion about corporations getting involved in psychedelics,

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I’m sorry, last Thursday, Leonard Picard was here, who has actually been a major subject of the war on drugs.

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And he apologized. He couldn’t be here tonight, but he has been involved in consulting with some of these companies.

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And we talked to him Thursday about that because, you know, we’ve all been kind of concerned about these companies.

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talked to him Thursday about that because, you know, we’ve all been kind of concerned about these companies. And he at least reassured us that at least in a few of them he’s worked with,

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the top people seem not necessarily number one or equal to number one with profit. They were also

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worried about the psychedelic or psychological and spiritual aspects of it too. So

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we’ve been concerned that it’s all been Philip Morris and money and stuff like that. So

00:07:50 ►

I don’t know what you’ve heard about that. Yeah, I can absolutely comment on that. And you’re not

00:07:57 ►

wrong. It’s an absolute fair criticism, Lorenzo. You’ve got to consider that right now, the money that’s being attracted towards psychedelics

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is principally coming from people who want to replace the current medications that are out there

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for people with mental illness and substitute it with these psychedelics. Their altruism,

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I guess I’ll use that word, is a little bit in doubt in some instances, but I’m absolutely banging into people on the scene who are interested in psychedelics for the right reasons and some who even have a spiritual motivation behind it.

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But we’re talking raw, naked capitalism at its most brutal right now, and that is predominantly what’s going on out there.

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And I can explain a little bit of what’s behind that. And by the way, I’m going to be speaking

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on a panel in November in Las Vegas on this as well. I just got invited to join the Delic

00:08:58 ►

conference taking place in Las Vegas. So this will be a little preview.

00:09:02 ►

So to explain what’s happening in the world of investment right now in psychedelics, which is completely different than the world of religious and theogenic use.

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And by the way, there’s a lot of litigation going on there. So we’ll double back a little bit the conversation. I’ll talk about that, too.

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pursuing patents, these investments, these securities that are being offered and these capital raises that are going on is to promote research. And these companies are looking to

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lock up patents because that’s the only thing they can financially exploit. The natural stuff,

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the mushrooms that just grow up out of the ground, you can’t patent that. You can’t grab

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a piece of nature and run to the US Patent and Trademark Office and say, hey, I found this,

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it’s mine, give me exclusivity. You only get patents for unique invention. So the scientific

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groups are trying to do things like find a new form of the molecule, find a new way of delivering

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the molecule, find a new way of suspending the molecule, finding a way to modify

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the molecule so that it maybe has a slightly different effect or invent companion molecules

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that can maybe terminate a trip, which is actually useful, by the way. I’m not opposed to this

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research. I think it’s actually a very positive thing because it’ll make psychedelics more

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accessible to more people in a greater variety of ways.

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My worry is it loses its soul along the way.

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But to make these substances more accessible medically to people who need them just on a medical basis, you need to find ways, for example, to be able to terminate a trip if

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they’re having a really bad one, or just to be able to drive home.

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Because, you know, depending on what you’re taking, that could be a six-hour commitment

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in somebody’s office or at their location. And not everybody’s going to be able

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to accommodate that or afford it or be able to do it. So that’s what’s going on right now. They’re

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trying to lock up patents on ways to make what happens in nature unique and also ways to make

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that slightly better or medically efficacious. And that’s what we’re seeing right now.

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The problem, like you’ll notice in Oregon, which just in the last general election passed the

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psilocybin program law, first ever in the country, by the way, there have been some pharmaceutical

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companies who have been taking potshots at that because they perceive this as a direct competition.

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as a direct competition. I completely disagree. I think the modern FDA, you know, Western medicine track actually would be supported by the more entheogenic track and vice versa. I think they

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don’t dwell in the same trenches. And I think that they could actually help to bolster one another.

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So one of my other crazy little side projects that I’m

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getting started is what is going to be affectionately known as the Uniform Plant and Fungi

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Medicine Act. And the idea came to me because of the last general election. If you notice

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around the country, there were, I think, seven drug-based initiatives that were on the ballot

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during the general election, and they all passed.

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Oh, well, there you go. So thank you for pulling that up. Yeah, I actually published an article on this. So if anybody’s not aware, there are two articles that are published on psychedelics today

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that I talk about this crazy idea of mine. And the basis for it is that while I’m looking out

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and seeing that little cities and some states are opening to this idea, there’s nothing between them that’s identical.

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So, you know, when Denver passes an ordinance, that’s great for Denver, but it doesn’t do anything for anybody outside of Denver.

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Likewise, Oregon’s psilocybin program, again, fantastic, great for Oregon, doesn’t do anything for anybody outside of Oregon.

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Great for Oregon, doesn’t do anything for anybody outside of Oregon.

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So seeing that this psychedelic awakening is happening across the country and it’s gaining momentum, I thought, why don’t we try to bake in some uniformity right out of the gate and also craft a body of law that anybody in a legislature, if they had the will, could grab it and present it in their legislature as a possible model to be adopted.

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And for the lucky people in the 14 states in the country who have the ability to pursue a public initiative, which is a way of completely sidestepping your legislature to pass a law. You could also grab this and run this in a political campaign to get a public initiative passed using that body of law.

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So that’s going to be coming. We’re starting

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work on it, hopefully in the next few months. I’m also having a better website built for my

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universe here. I’ve got a dumb little website up for the book, but it’s expanding beyond that. So

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we’re going to be hosting the Uniform Plant and Fungi Medicine Act on that website. And I’m going

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to be trying to put a lot of data about it, very public facing so that the

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world can, if it wants to participate in the effort and also see what we’re doing,

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because I’m trying to lend some transparency and legitimacy to that project.

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I put a link to your website and to your book, as well as that article in chat. And so they can

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get that out. I’ll put it on the program notes as well.

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Also, you said something earlier that I hadn’t, I hadn’t heard at all before is that you said there’s a lot of research going on in the Caribbean now. And that’s something I didn’t,

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I wasn’t aware of. Yeah, I really wasn’t either until just a few months ago.

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As I’ve been talking to more people about these different opportunities.

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I’ve been seeing lots of people pointing in that direction.

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In fact, in the news, there’s a company called Silo.

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They study psilocybin naturally.

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They’ve got a big thing going on in Jamaica.

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In fact, I’ve read an article, I think about 10 days ago,

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they cut a deal with the Bob Marley estate and they’re putting

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out a line of non-psychoactive mushroom-based nutraceuticals as a way of introducing more,

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shall we say, medicated products down the line. But they’re also hosting psilocybin retreats there,

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et cetera. I see Mike has come in and Mike, you have experience, don’t you, with the medicine in the Caribbean?

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Do you know anything about that?

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I have experience with teaching medical school at Caribbean Islands.

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I met numerous researchers there.

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I never met anyone that was doing psychedelic research, but I haven’t been back to the islands in five or six years.

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So I’m sure they’re picking up on the spirit of what’s going on.

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Yeah, you might put out feelers to any associates you still have down there. I’d be curious to know

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about it. In fact, yeah, that definitely caught me by surprise and I’ll be checking things out.

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Yeah, I think it’s the Gwyneth Paltrow effect, candidly. A couple of years ago, she did one of the episodes of her show doing a psilocybin retreat, I think, in Jamaica.

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Don’t quote me on that, but I think I’m right.

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And apparently that just was like the tipping point.

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So, well, I hadn’t heard that, but, you know, it’s interesting to know.

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And, of course, you know that there’s a lot of research being done all over

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the world. I don’t think the U S is the leader in it anymore. Oh, by no means, by no means, you know,

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Johns Hopkins is doing great things. And, and as we started off the conversation today, you know,

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Harvard’s actually taking up the philosophical issues, which is great. Um, so, you know,

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more is coming every day and I’m very encouraged very encouraged. Other things going on around the country right now.

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My friend Catherine Tucker has filed a lawsuit up in Washington State under Washington’s Right to Try laws.

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And what that’s about, the Right to Try laws allow patients who are terminally ill to experiment with unapproved drugs.

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ill to experiment with unapproved drugs. There’s an application process. And essentially the thing that they would want to try has to be somewhere on FDA’s radar. It can’t just be, hey, I found

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something at a hardware store, let’s give it a shot. But if it’s on FDA’s radar, but not yet at

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full approval, there’s an application process you can go through to allow that terminally ill

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patient special permission to engage as well as allowing their doctor and

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pharmacist to administer. And the lawsuit that’s taking place right now regards some terminally

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ill cancer patients who are wanting to use psilocybin as a palliative just to give them

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some better presence in their final days because they’re diagnosed terminally ill. They’re not

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going to survive this and there’s no cure anybody can offer, but all they’re asking is for a chance to try something that might

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improve their quality for whatever time is left. And crazy, crazy DEA stepped in and said, no.

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So they’ve sued DEA. That’s a lawsuit pending right now in the federal courts,

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seeking to enjoin DEA from stepping in the middle. And the essential core argument in that

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case amongst many is that DEA has absolutely no regulatory authority whatsoever on medical

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decisions. And by refusing to grant the right to try access, that’s exactly what DEA is doing,

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is rendering a medical decision on behalf of a terminally ill patient and their physician. That’s really an interesting approach to it because, you know,

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until you just are talking about that, I was thinking that, you know, the religious approach

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is really what everybody’s been using. I know it’s been unsuccessful a lot of times and successful.

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And you actually represent one of the largest,

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the oldest peyote church, right? Yeah. Yep. Peyote Way Church of God here in Wilcox, Arizona.

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And so the religious exemption isn’t now the only one. There’s the medical approach as well.

00:18:38 ►

Yeah, absolutely. And this is virgin territory, and I think it’s going to do spectacularly well.

00:18:52 ►

Here’s why. Not only is this Washington case filed and pending, I think nine, maybe 14. I can’t remember the number, but at least nine different states attorneys general filed an amici brief in support of the petitioner against the DEA,

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arguing that this was 100 percent a states rights issue that DEA had no authority

00:19:07 ►

to involve itself in. So when you’ve got multiple states’ attorneys general taking that position,

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and by the way, you want to know how crazy that gets? Arizona’s attorney general is one of the

00:19:17 ►

amici. My own home state here, very conservative know, the legislature is very anti-drug everything.

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And even then, our attorney general stepped in and said, yeah, DEA has no voice here.

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So you’ve been rubbing off on the legal community there, Gary.

00:19:35 ►

Oh, I don’t know. I’d love to think so. I’m still dedicated at some point to making a run at trying

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to bring legality to psilocybin here in Arizona. I don’t know if

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2022 is going to be the year, but I’m still definitely pushing towards it. How do you feel

00:19:51 ►

about that? Like in the legality of it in Oregon, I know that we’ve had some debates here about,

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you know, anybody could open a clinic or maybe they couldn’t. And how do you feel about when you say the legality, what are you meaning specifically

00:20:08 ►

about?

00:20:09 ►

How would you go about legalizing?

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Yeah, and that’s an excellent question because you’re right.

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There are so many diverse points of view on this.

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And they range from where we are now, which is total prohibition.

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And the opposite of that spectrum is no regulation at all, just a completely unregulated free

00:20:24 ►

for all. I don’t advocate completely unregulated free-for-all.

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I don’t advocate the unregulated free-for-all. I feel a little conflicted because my heart,

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I would love for there to be no regulation. I would love for people to just do whatever they

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want, trusting that they’ll be responsible and not do stupid things in stupid ways. But the reality is that’s just not how most people work.

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And if you just advocate for a free-for-all,

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you are simply replacing one problem

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with a new set of problems.

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So this is right at the sweet spot

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of why I’m advocating the Uniform Plant

00:20:58 ►

and Fungi Medicine Act,

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because I think that to get all of the people

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on the no side of the room,

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at least over to the maybe side of the

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room, and that’s what you need if you’re going to lever politics here, you’ve got to give them

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some assurance, some safety measures, protocols, regulations, etc. And we’ve seen over at least

00:21:20 ►

the last decade across most of the United States with cannabis, that’s worked out pretty okay. I don’t think any state’s cannabis program is perfect, but crime didn’t explode,

00:21:31 ►

drug abuse didn’t explode, murders didn’t spike. None of that happened. And in point of fact,

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most people are doing much better than before prohibition started to lift. So I think inside

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of a regulated model where maybe people have to get some

00:21:45 ►

education before they can partake, I’d be comfortable with that. And I think it’s also

00:21:50 ►

consistent with history. You go all the way back to, I don’t know, the Eleusinian Mysteries.

00:21:56 ►

That was a world that didn’t have these regulations, but still, if you wanted to

00:21:59 ►

engage in that activity, you had to go to a certain place, behave a certain way,

00:22:05 ►

that activity, you had to go to a certain place, behave a certain way, and be led by others who were senior to you in the form of priestesses. So if you adapt that sort of ethos to it, I think

00:22:12 ►

there’s plenty of room to get all the no people to say, okay, maybe a little bit, maybe we’ll try

00:22:18 ►

this. So that’s where I think it has to go next. And then from there, look, if the sky doesn’t fall and Chicken Little proves to be wrong, you can relax the rules further.

00:22:31 ►

And like you just said, in the deregulation of cannabis, it’s, you know, irregular across the country, state by state.

00:22:40 ►

And no, no one of them is one that I think is perfect or even, you know, that close to it.

00:22:46 ►

But overall, there’s so many different variables, and yet, overall, there’s not been a huge problem.

00:22:52 ►

And I think that speaks well for it, that we have, at least in this country, with the state

00:22:58 ►

regulations, a way to test various and sundry things. And actually, you know, there may be

00:23:04 ►

different regulations for different cultures in different parts of the country,. And actually, you know, there may be different regulations

00:23:05 ►

for different cultures

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in different parts of the country, too.

00:23:08 ►

I don’t know.

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It’s a big country.

00:23:10 ►

Yeah, absolutely.

00:23:11 ►

Because you’ve got

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so many competing interests

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who want to have a voice

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and want to be protected.

00:23:15 ►

I’ll give you a great example.

00:23:17 ►

California right now

00:23:18 ►

has a decrim bill rolling around

00:23:20 ►

inside its legislature

00:23:21 ►

aimed at just making

00:23:23 ►

most of these substances state legal.

00:23:28 ►

Amongst things they could have included but made a conscious choice not to was to permit home

00:23:33 ►

cultivation of peyote, which is kind of near and dear to my heart because of my affiliation with

00:23:38 ►

the church here. And I know in speaking with the church seniors, they feel very strongly that California should permit peyote cultivation.

00:23:47 ►

But because certain legislature members who were drafting that bill had some connections with the Native American church and had some conversations with them,

00:24:06 ►

to exclude peyote from the items that could be home cultivated on premise that they were trying to be respectful to the Native American church and belief in peyote’s spiritual nature, which

00:24:12 ►

the Peyote Way Church of God also supports, but has a bigger agenda. And that is literally the

00:24:18 ►

protection and preservation of peyote. So what we believe is yes, home cultivation for peyote

00:24:23 ►

should be in that bill and should be permitted because this cactus is deeply threatened right now.

00:24:29 ►

Between human incursion and climate change, its territory is diminishing, as are its numbers.

00:24:35 ►

So if we can get people home cultivating it, not only will that reduce poaching, it’ll also increase the viability of the genetics.

00:24:48 ►

poaching, it’ll also increase the viability of the genetics. Well, that’s, that’s, it makes a lot of sense when you say it that way. And it makes me feel good about my, my little peyote plants

00:24:53 ►

that I’ve been nurturing for the last 15 years here. Yeah. And for those of you, by the way,

00:24:58 ►

who don’t have experience with peyote, it takes 30 years for that plant to mature. If you’re growing

00:25:04 ►

from seed, I mean, you got to plan when you’re in high school because

00:25:08 ►

you’re not going to be visiting that plant for decades.

00:25:11 ►

It takes an egregiously long time, and that’s part of its fragility.

00:25:15 ►

Also, it’s a spineless cactus.

00:25:17 ►

Its only defense mechanism happens to be the mescaline inside of it.

00:25:21 ►

So it really needs human help desperately.

00:25:28 ►

Are there other questions that are rising here? I don’t want to dominate everything here. I know that we’ve had a lot of

00:25:33 ►

discussions about some of these issues. So anybody care to join in here? Yeah, I’m checking the chat

00:25:38 ►

room to see what people are saying. Other things I can tell you about. Let’s talk a bit about the spiritual side.

00:25:46 ►

So there are a few lawsuits pending right now by ayahuasca churches that are taking on the DEA pretty aggressively.

00:25:54 ►

For those of you who might know about the ayahuasca churches generally, the last few decades,

00:26:10 ►

The last few decades, there have been a couple of Supreme Court cases on ayahuasca, where the Supreme Court has affirmed the entheogenic use of ayahuasca for certain organizations.

00:26:23 ►

And the ayahuasca churches are making a huge inroad in the U.S. right now, I think fueled in part by the fact that the Supreme Court recognized the religiosity behind the practice. And I just did a little review a couple of weeks ago

00:26:28 ►

on the DEA denial letter to the SoulQuest Church based out of Florida. And the short story for

00:26:36 ►

those of you who aren’t in the know, and by the way, I’ll say up front, I don’t know all the

00:26:39 ►

details. I just have pieces of that file myself. But apparently in 2017, the SoulQuest parent organization had applied to DEA for recognition

00:26:50 ►

of religious exemption.

00:26:52 ►

And four years later, yep, four years later, DEA finally responded and said no.

00:26:57 ►

After taking a litany of data from SoulQuest, multiple interviews of multiple members, four

00:27:02 ►

years later just said, no, we don’t think you’re an actual religion and you’re not getting the exemption. So SolQuest right now is in the midst

00:27:10 ►

of litigation over that. And I’ll explain a little bit of the detail behind what I do know.

00:27:16 ►

So the heart of DEA’s denial of SolQuest’s request for exemption is premised on DEA’s

00:27:23 ►

belief that SolQuest isn’t an actual

00:27:26 ►

religion. And the reason SoulQuest had even reached out to DEA to request exemption is

00:27:31 ►

because they were having trouble, like most every other ayahuasca church does, during the importation

00:27:37 ►

of ayahuasca from outside of the country. You know, DEA and U.S. Customs will, as part of their

00:27:44 ►

normal duties, this is not abnormal behavior for either of those agencies, involve itself in what’s coming across the border. us, DEA, to allow your importation and access, et cetera, you’ve got to fill out all this

00:28:05 ►

paperwork and also justify and explain what the religious basis is, et cetera.

00:28:12 ►

Here’s the problem with that, though.

00:28:15 ►

The Religious Freedom Restoration Act places the burden on the government whenever the

00:28:19 ►

government wants to regulate religious freedom.

00:28:22 ►

And that’s the turning point right now that’s taking place in these cases. These ayahuasca churches are turning around and saying, hey, wait a minute.

00:28:51 ►

So when we’re coming and saying, hey, we want to import or interact with ayahuasca, we shouldn’t have to be proving the validity of our religion to a police organization.

00:29:06 ►

That’s just weird and creepy. That would be like Catholics having to justify Eucharist to a police officer. It’s no different. And, you know, we would never abide that practice. So why should these religions have to have a police agency determine and rule on its religiosity?

00:29:12 ►

So that’s, I think, the real pivot point for those cases right now.

00:29:17 ►

It sounds like they might have a foot in the door a little bit there.

00:29:19 ►

That sounds like a crack, maybe.

00:29:21 ►

Yeah. On the legal side, yes.

00:29:31 ►

On the factual side, I really don’t know. You know, DEA in their denial letter really took SoulQuest to task on the facts of their their religious practice,

00:29:38 ►

pretty much flat out saying they didn’t believe SoulQuest was a religious organization and they didn’t believe it was a religion.

00:29:42 ►

And again, I don’t have the case file, so I can’t speak to those details.

00:29:45 ►

But assuming SoulQuest could get in front of a judge and overcome that, yeah, I think they’ve got the better legal argument to be quite

00:29:51 ►

candid. I don’t know if they went on the facts, but on the law, I think they could. How far along

00:29:55 ►

are those cases right now? Still fairly in their infancy, still fairly young. And they’re in the state of Washington? No, the Solquest case, I believe,

00:30:07 ►

comes out of Florida, their home base. The Right to Try case is out of Washington state.

00:30:14 ►

Okay. Well, it’ll be fascinating to see how those come along. It’ll be a while, I assume.

00:30:20 ►

Oh, for sure. But I’m actually really encouraged. You know, during the Trump administration, he got opportunity to put three justices do really skew towards taking the First Amendment

00:30:46 ►

deadly seriously. And I think they absolutely would warm to the notion that the DEA shouldn’t

00:30:53 ►

be literally ruling on what is or isn’t religion. So I think by the time these cases work their way

00:30:59 ►

through the trial courts, work their way through the appellate levels at whatever circuit they’re

00:31:04 ►

in and make a run for certiorari at the Supreme Court.

00:31:08 ►

I think they’ve got a fair shot at getting it.

00:31:10 ►

You know, that’s a nice take on that, a positive look, because I’ve been kind of negative about the court.

00:31:16 ►

You know, I think there’s six of them are are practicing Catholics right now.

00:31:20 ►

And so, you know, I’ve been a little upset about that, but I had never thought about it as far as the freedom of religion.

00:31:27 ►

They may want to protect that.

00:31:29 ►

Oh, absolutely.

00:31:30 ►

And I’ll tell you what really encouraged me.

00:31:32 ►

A couple of things.

00:31:33 ►

Number one, we had a case come out almost a year ago now called Tonzin versus Tonvier and Supreme Court case.

00:31:43 ►

Hansen versus Tanvir and Supreme Court case.

00:31:51 ►

And it established that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act allows for money damages against government agents. So if you’re a religion that is being impacted by DEA and let’s say, for example, they’re not letting you have your ayahuasca or they’re arresting people and they shouldn’t.

00:32:03 ►

You may legitimately be able to sue those officers in their personal capacity for money damages under RFRA. That was mind-blowing.

00:32:10 ►

And RFRA has been around for years. Nobody realized you can pursue damages. So that’s a

00:32:15 ►

game changer. The other thing too, that is very encouraging about this court, weirdly enough,

00:32:21 ►

again, another benefit of pandemic were all the religion cases that came out

00:32:25 ►

over the last year because of all the church closings. You know, multiple governors around

00:32:30 ►

the country were entering orders to shut all public accommodation to try to stem the spread

00:32:35 ►

of COVID. And this included shutting down churches and a bunch of these religious organizations sued.

00:32:40 ►

And a few of these cases have worked their way all the way up to the Supreme Court. And the

00:32:43 ►

court’s been deciding in favor of the religious freedom.

00:32:46 ►

So, yeah, it’s wacky, but this might be the best Supreme Court ever for psychedelics.

00:32:53 ►

I have to admit, you know, whenever I read news about the court ruling on some religious freedom thing, you know, I just see the headlines and I kind of cringe.

00:33:03 ►

But now I’m kind of looking forward to it. I never, you know, it’s, just see the headlines and I kind of cringe, but now I’m kind of looking

00:33:05 ►

forward to it. I never, I get it’s the law of unintended consequences, I guess. Yeah. Let me

00:33:10 ►

blow your mind a little further. You know who Ken Starr is, right? Sure. Oh yeah. Okay. So Ken Starr

00:33:15 ►

put out a book about four or five months ago doing this really, I have to say, fantastic survey of First Amendment, religion, law, and the Supreme Court.

00:33:28 ►

And he was coming through the different bar organizations promoting the book. So he did a

00:33:34 ►

continuing education seminar here in Arizona, which I participated in and got to ask him a

00:33:39 ►

question at the end about psychedelic religions. And damn it all if he didn’t end up answering my question

00:33:45 ►

positively. He was very encouraging. And I will say the book is actually well written.

00:33:53 ►

If you don’t know much at all about the First Amendment and Supreme Court cases,

00:33:58 ►

this is the book for you. It encapsulates and summarizes all the major cases. Now I will say, you know, Ken Stark does

00:34:05 ►

use it as a platform to also advocate his political views, which is fine. It’s his book. I have no

00:34:10 ►

quarrel with that, but if you can overlook that and just read the book for its content, it’s really

00:34:16 ►

a good read. I can’t say enough good about it. Well, that’s, that’s a nice recommendation. And,

00:34:21 ►

you know, of course, I, I’m an of the I.F. Stone Weekly, and he

00:34:26 ►

never read anything that agreed with him. He always read the opposition. So that’s probably

00:34:32 ►

a good recommendation on two levels that way. Yeah. Well, if you consider like the history of

00:34:38 ►

the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the backstory of that comes out of um the the smith v oregon case which was a peyote case

00:34:46 ►

and this was the case in which justice scalia back when he was alive had ripped away the standard of

00:34:52 ►

review the supreme court had used for decades and within two years the public was so freaked out by

00:34:58 ►

that congress drafted and passed the religious freedom Freedom Restoration Act. And the number of disparate and different

00:35:06 ►

religious organizations that all came out and joined together in support of that was unprecedented.

00:35:13 ►

Groups that in no circumstance ever would have come together all came together for this. And I

00:35:18 ►

think if we get a good Supreme Court challenge on some of these issues, it’ll happen again.

00:35:23 ►

Supreme Court challenge on some of these issues, it’ll happen again.

00:35:31 ►

Well, that’s very encouraging. Very encouraging. You know, to kind of shift the discussion just a little bit, since there’s no immediate questions here. If I was, you know, a young law student

00:35:37 ►

right now, and I was living in California, and I had legally smoked cannabis, and I thought,

00:35:42 ►

hey, this is a pretty good thing. And I’m looking at ways to get into law and I want to get involved in working to bring an end

00:35:51 ►

to the war on drugs and get involved in all this. What direction? How do young lawyers get involved

00:35:57 ►

in this? Because obviously, you know, they have not much sway in a firm when they come out of law school. Sure.

00:36:08 ►

Boy, that is a seminar unto itself.

00:36:16 ►

First off, to the law students and young lawyers out there, know that there’s no one path.

00:36:18 ►

There are so many different paths you can take.

00:36:23 ►

Doing a solo shop, working inside a different firm and building a department for them.

00:36:28 ►

Finding different organizations that maybe want in-house counsel for assistance.

00:36:34 ►

Even these burgeoning psychedelics, pharmaceutical companies are, you know, raising enough capital that they actually do want to hire in-house lawyers.

00:36:37 ►

Because frankly, if you’re doing a lot of legal work, it’s way cheaper to have one on

00:36:40 ►

the payroll than to hire an outside lawyer.

00:36:47 ►

one on the payroll than to hire an outside lawyer. So in thinking about hiring an outside lawyer,

00:36:55 ►

you know, we all live in various parts of the country here and on Thursday all over the world. But here in the U.S., when somebody has a friend that calls them and says, hey, I just got arrested

00:37:02 ►

for this Saturday. The other thing had to do with either psychedelics or MDMA or cannabis.

00:37:07 ►

How do I find a lawyer?

00:37:09 ►

And if they don’t happen to live in your hometown, how do you tell people to find a lawyer that

00:37:16 ►

has some idea of what either psychedelic law or cannabis law is all about?

00:37:21 ►

Yeah, for sure.

00:37:22 ►

So you’re right.

00:37:26 ►

law is all about. Yeah, for sure. So you’re right. Finding a good criminal defense lawyer who’s versed in these issues is a little difficult, particularly if you’re wanting to do,

00:37:33 ►

for example, a defense based on a religious argument or you’ve got some other just not

00:37:39 ►

normal run of the mill argument. It is hard because there’s no, well, I shouldn’t say no, there are very few lawyers out there who are openly advertising that they provide these services. So

00:37:51 ►

your fallback is most likely to go find yourself a good cannabis defense lawyer. For example,

00:37:58 ►

normal is a huge organization with a tremendous legal panel. And they will help to pair you with a lawyer who does this kind of defense work.

00:38:10 ►

Now, in fairness to that, you’re still going to want to interview that person to make sure they are the right lawyer for you.

00:38:15 ►

And you’re going to want to ask important questions like, do you have specific experience defending against this substance or these particular kind of facts?

00:38:25 ►

Well, that’s excellent advice. And, you know, all of a sudden it just dawned on me, Gary,

00:38:30 ►

here I’m interviewing an author and I haven’t even brought up your book yet.

00:38:37 ►

Oh, and let me just preface this. This is like talking to Samuel Johnson who wrote the first dictionary

00:38:45 ►

that this is the first and as far as I know still only in in English at least uh encyclopedia of

00:38:53 ►

psychedelic law and and globally it’s plus look at that it’s a law book look at the cover in that

00:38:59 ►

can you can you imagine that in your law library isn’t that amazing? If I was still practicing law, I’d just have to buy one just to have it in my library on display.

00:39:11 ►

I appreciate that.

00:39:12 ►

And in fairness to the comment, I mean, the cover was absolutely deliberate.

00:39:16 ►

I wanted to have something just visually grabbing that also encapsulated the spirit.

00:39:21 ►

So I think I nailed it.

00:39:22 ►

Who did the cover for you?

00:39:24 ►

A local artist by the name

00:39:25 ►

of Eric Cox. He is just tremendous. He does a lot of murals around the cities here. He’s done a

00:39:34 ►

number of magazine covers. The way this particular cover came about pure accident. I was texting with

00:39:40 ►

a buddy of mine saying, Hey, I’m on the homestretch on this book. I need a cover. Do you have any recommendation for some art?

00:39:46 ►

He sent me that picture and said, do you want something like this?

00:39:50 ►

And I said, no, I want that.

00:39:52 ►

So within like 12 hours, I’m on the phone with Eric negotiating the rights to the to the picture.

00:39:58 ►

That is, first of all, it’s a beautiful picture.

00:40:01 ►

And absolutely for a lawyer, somebody that’s a lawyer, you know, it’s lawyer, it’s a double beauty because I could have that picture in my law office on display because it’s a book.

00:40:12 ►

I actually own the original painting.

00:40:14 ►

I would hold on to it.

00:40:15 ►

It’s hanging on a wall here at the house.

00:40:17 ►

Tell us a little bit about the book because it’s not one that’s readable from end to end.

00:40:23 ►

It’s more of a reference, but it is a readable end to end if you want to get some history of this law.

00:40:28 ►

Yeah, it’s a lot of different things.

00:40:30 ►

So the basic story behind the book was I was on vacation for my 50th birthday and we had taken a trip to Europe and I’m laying in bed, jet lagged as hell because we had jumped, I think, like seven different time zones and I couldn’t sleep.

00:40:44 ►

And I’m laying in bed, jet lagged as hell because we had jumped, I think, like seven different time zones and I couldn’t sleep.

00:40:49 ►

And so the only thing available to me because I’m sitting there awake was my phone.

00:40:50 ►

And luckily we had Internet.

00:40:57 ►

So I’m just doing some dumb little research on psychedelics, thinking to myself, you know, I want to really expand my practice into this.

00:41:00 ►

Let me go find some books to better educate myself. And after a couple of hours, I couldn’t find the damn book because nobody wrote

00:41:05 ►

it. So that is literally the genesis of this book. Nobody wrote it, so I had to. And so the content

00:41:13 ►

of it, it’s not a deep dive on any particular subject. Rather, it’s a survey of all the

00:41:18 ►

different subjects one would want to know when entering into anything dealing with psychedelic law. And amongst chapters,

00:41:27 ►

I include basics on things like the international treaties that affect psychedelics, the basic

00:41:34 ►

federal laws like the Controlled Substances Act. I’ve got chapters that would predict and project

00:41:41 ►

out if these were illicit businesses, what would the challenges be? And what I’m doing is borrowing my last decade of experience in cannabis law. So for example,

00:41:50 ►

one of the things that continues to vex cannabis, actually two of the things that continue to vex

00:41:54 ►

cannabis, you can’t file bankruptcy if you’re a cannabis business. So whatever debts you incur,

00:41:59 ►

it’s the legal equivalence of herpes. You’re going to have them for life

00:42:02 ►

because there’s no escaping it. And then the other thing is IRS Regulation 288, which says that these businesses that sell

00:42:10 ►

Schedule I substances are not permitted the ordinary tax write-offs of other businesses,

00:42:15 ►

which makes running a dispensary, for example, hellaciously expensive because you’re paying

00:42:20 ►

an effective three times tax rate. So you’re paying three times as much tax as any other business because you’re not allowed to write off the expenses. And the reality is, as we see these psychedelics businesses come online, they’re going to bang into exactly all those same problems. So I’ve got chapters in the book on that so that people can start preparing for it.

00:42:46 ►

for it. Other chapters I cover. So if you want to do, for example, have a licit psychedelic experience, but you maybe don’t live in a state that offers that to you, I offer some information

00:42:50 ►

on how to go about getting into a study. So there are many happening around the country right now.

00:42:55 ►

And if you’re a suitable subject, you could sign up and that would give you legal access to whatever

00:43:00 ►

study material is being studied. Psilocybin right now is, I think, at phase three

00:43:06 ►

door, as is MDMA. MAPS has been making huge inroads with MDMA. They are at phase three store.

00:43:13 ►

So this means thousands upon thousands of patients need to be studied. And so there’s

00:43:19 ►

opportunity for you there. Additionally, I also have chapters in the book on public initiatives.

00:43:24 ►

So if you’re politically inclined and maybe you’re in a state like mine that’s never going to wake up to it on its own

00:43:29 ►

there’s information here on how to get a public initiative going and what that looks like

00:43:33 ►

and also I wrote the book to be absolutely a practitioner’s manual but I really took a lot

00:43:39 ►

of pain to write at a level that non-lawyers could absolutely grab this book read it cover

00:43:43 ►

to cover you might not get

00:43:45 ►

everything, but it will absolutely elevate your understanding. And then other things in the book

00:43:51 ►

as well. There are a bunch of appendices. So for example, there’s a timeline. If you’re a practicing

00:43:57 ►

lawyer, there’s actually a model series of questions you could put to an opposing expert

00:44:01 ►

witness if you’re having to take a deposition in a case.

00:44:11 ►

I’ve got model specimens of different initiatives that actually did exist around the country and a whole bunch of other stuff.

00:44:21 ►

You know, here’s a question. I’ve got a couple that pop into mind, but one that I am so far away from the actual practice of law.

00:44:29 ►

I don’t know if this is still true, but at one time when I was still practicing, I know there were a lot of laws about the sale and possession and distribution of psychedelics, but there wasn’t a law about taking one, about swallowing one. Are there

00:44:35 ►

laws about ingesting psychedelics? Well, that presupposes you’re in possession of it. And yeah,

00:44:40 ►

if you’re ingesting it, you’re definitely in possession. So they would charge you with possession, but not ingestion.

00:44:48 ►

Yeah, you make a good distinction there.

00:44:51 ►

There’s no ingestion crime.

00:44:54 ►

But if you have it on you, or rather, if you have it in you, you have it on you.

00:44:59 ►

So yeah, that would be a violation.

00:45:01 ►

The reason I asked, a friend of mine, she and her husband were stopped at immigration and he had like 25 tabs of acid on blotter.

00:45:12 ►

And the immigration guy saw it and went to get his supervisor.

00:45:17 ►

And this woman’s husband just swallowed them all.

00:45:21 ►

All 25?

00:45:22 ►

All 25.

00:45:23 ►

There’s a long story that obviously came after that yeah but he he’s he’s

00:45:29 ►

very well now and this is you know 50 years later 30 years later i should say and so all is well but

00:45:36 ►

nonetheless uh i don’t think he if they couldn’t have proven that he had the acid, you know, uh, they, I guess they couldn’t have gotten

00:45:46 ►

him. Uh, yeah, well, in fairness to that, I will tell you in 30 years of law practice, I have never

00:45:51 ►

done criminal defense work once, but to my ears, what that sounds like is if they have enough

00:45:58 ►

eyewitness evidence and maybe could recreate what was lost. For example, you take a blood sample

00:46:04 ►

from the guy, you could definitely go get a court order for a example, you take a blood sample from the guy, you could

00:46:05 ►

definitely go get a court order for a search warrant to take a blood sample. If there’s

00:46:10 ►

metabolites in his blood, I think they’d have enough evidence to make the argument.

00:46:15 ►

Yeah, yeah, it would be, it would be an expensive trip for them to do that, I guess,

00:46:19 ►

a lot of tests involved. Yeah, absolutely.

00:46:23 ►

Anyhow, it was a fascinating story. I like the story.

00:46:27 ►

Anyway, you know, when I was reading your book, and, you know, I was not familiar at the time with

00:46:33 ►

any of the international treaties, no. And one of my first thoughts was that if I was a member of

00:46:38 ►

one of the psychedelic societies at the universities around the country, I’d get a copy for our group

00:46:44 ►

and then have a

00:46:45 ►

discussion about the international treaties before a summer vacation when people are starting to do

00:46:50 ►

a lot of traveling, you know, because, you know, that you can get really caught in a bad bind if

00:46:55 ►

you’re not aware of what some of the laws are in other countries. Oh, yeah, yeah. If you’re doing

00:47:00 ►

any kind of psychedelic tourism, you definitely want to be doing your research before you book and travel.

00:47:08 ►

Also smart idea.

00:47:11 ►

Don’t do your research on any computer or accounts of your own.

00:47:15 ►

You will always leave a digital trail behind no matter what you do.

00:47:18 ►

So on the off chance you get in trouble,

00:47:21 ►

you don’t want to have somebody with a search warrant going and grabbing

00:47:25 ►

your computers and just adding more evidence on top of that pile against you. So yeah, educate

00:47:32 ►

yourself and preferably do it on somebody else’s computer. You can go to the library. Or somebody

00:47:39 ►

you don’t like. So I’m kind of out of questions here.

00:47:46 ►

Does anybody have anything else?

00:47:47 ►

Go ahead, Charles.

00:47:49 ►

There are a couple that chimed in. Yuri looked like they wanted to get in a question.

00:47:53 ►

And Ed had to leave but asked a question.

00:47:56 ►

Let’s find it here.

00:47:58 ►

Ed asked, what happened to Glenn Arboir?

00:48:01 ►

Are there other lawyers specializing in mushrooms these days?

00:48:04 ►

And then, Yuri, if you want to come back in, you were next up. Well, I can’t speak about Glenn, but

00:48:10 ►

as far as other lawyers specializing in mushrooms, I don’t know if I’d use the word specialized,

00:48:16 ►

but yeah, absolutely. There are lawyers out there doing, I guess, the first starts of mushroom law.

00:48:22 ►

That case I mentioned at the start of the conversation that’s taking place in Washington right now is exactly that.

00:48:28 ►

But also, in fairness, they’re not pressing for mushroom.

00:48:33 ►

They’re pressing for a psilocybin compound that is created by a lab and is somewhere on track for FDA approval.

00:48:43 ►

Go ahead, Yuri.

00:48:42 ►

and is somewhere on track for FDA approval.

00:48:44 ►

Go ahead, Yuri.

00:49:01 ►

Yeah, I was just curious as to, like, where do, like, research chemicals fall into, like, research chemicals? Like, do they fall into, like, category one or two? Like, do they fall into category one or two?

00:49:07 ►

You’re asking how they are scheduled under the Controlled Substances Act.

00:49:11 ►

Good question.

00:49:14 ►

Sometimes those chemicals are directly on schedule one.

00:49:19 ►

Sometimes they might be precursor chemicals that aren’t on schedule one.

00:49:24 ►

You really have to know what you’re looking at, and you also have to look at the schedules.

00:49:30 ►

They’re all online.

00:49:32 ►

If you Google DEA or Google Controlled Substances Act, you can pull the schedules up, and you have to look and see if the chemical you’re interested in is on one of those lists.

00:49:41 ►

And there’s five schedules.

00:49:42 ►

You can look at all of them.

00:49:43 ►

in is on one of those lists. And there’s five schedules. You can look at all of them.

00:49:49 ►

But that may not be the end of your analysis, because if you are acquiring chemicals with the intent of further modifying them for their ultimate expression, that act alone can

00:49:57 ►

be considered a preparatory act and thus a crime in and of itself. And I’ll give you an example.

00:50:07 ►

and thus a crime in and of itself. And I’ll give you an example. You may see that there are people who will import mimosa bark, for example, to extract dimethyltryptamine. That’s a common thing.

00:50:18 ►

Mimosa importation in and of itself, not illegal. It’s just tree bark or ground up tree bark,

00:50:24 ►

whatever you want to do with it. Also, just tree bark or ground up tree bark, whatever you want

00:50:25 ►

to do with it. Also, mimosa bark has legitimate uses. For example, it’s a primary component in

00:50:32 ►

purple fabric dye. Apparently, purple is a very hard color to produce, so there are certain

00:50:39 ►

things you need to do it. So if you’re importing for legitimate purpose, that’s fine. But if you’re importing like a bulk amount of mimosa and you’re not a known fabric dye company, et cetera, customs

00:50:51 ►

or DEA might be looking at that with the premise that they think you’re in a preparatory act for

00:50:58 ►

extraction and that can get you in trouble. Sounds like a great shakedown street business.

00:51:03 ►

Chris, you’re up next. I was just going to say, how does the Federal Analog Act fit into that discussion?

00:51:47 ►

And the premise behind it is that if you’ve got some sort of chemical structure that’s like maybe one atom different than the thing that’s listed in the Controlled Substances Act, DEA could still deem that analog, that’s the quote there, to be the same thing as the prohibited item. So the DEA would, in those instances, consider the analog to be just as illegal as the actual chemical it’s simulating or modifying. I think Lorenzo just held something up to the

00:51:53 ►

screen on point. But part of the problem with the Federal Analog Act, it’s not really well-developed

00:52:00 ►

law. There’s a handful of cases out there which seem to suggest it’s enforceable, but it’s a body

00:52:07 ►

of proof that the DEA or a federal prosecutor would have to really want to grind through in

00:52:13 ►

order to make its point because there are defenses to it. So it can be ultimately a war of chemists,

00:52:21 ►

like literally expert witness chemists testifying about what these compounds

00:52:25 ►

are, and also you defending on what your purpose is with that analog. I have to brag about my copy

00:52:33 ►

of the Analog Act. It’s personally endorsed to me from Sasha Shulgin. He sent this back to me

00:52:41 ►

shortly after it came out. uh and that that would make sense

00:52:45 ►

because that is exactly sasha’s universe i mean to call and be called i mean the whole book is just

00:52:50 ►

uh slightly different variations of tryptamines you’re moving you know one oxygen over here one

00:52:56 ►

hydrogen over there and and you know sasha famously experimented on himself with almost all of it

00:53:02 ►

uh man what an opportunity to have been an intern huh yeah and and the way he experimented on himself with almost all of it. Man, what an opportunity to have been an intern,

00:53:05 ►

huh? Yeah. And, and the way he experimented too was, was so remarkable in that he, he never

00:53:13 ►

jumped into anything. He took things up just inch by inch by inch, you know, micrograms to

00:53:19 ►

100 micrograms, 500 micrograms, or even got up to a milligram. He really did it safely.

00:53:27 ►

And I think that his work is to be, you know, emulated the way he did it, not to just jump in and try something right off the bat.

00:53:37 ►

Oh, yeah.

00:53:37 ►

He was a scientist scientist in that regard, for sure.

00:53:42 ►

And also, I understood that they tested it in multiple different ways. So

00:53:46 ►

they would do inhalants, nasal insufflated, I think in some instances, injection and also

00:53:54 ►

consumed just oral. So yeah, they, they ran the spectrum of different ways and noticed that there

00:54:02 ►

were different effects depending on how you took it.

00:54:05 ►

You know,

00:54:10 ►

I got to meet some of the people that were in his, his study group.

00:54:15 ►

We went out to dinner one night and I was the youngest one in the crowd by far. And it was, you know, if you look at it,

00:54:18 ►

you look like a bunch of maybe university professors or,

00:54:22 ►

or librarians and their wives and husbands and, you know,

00:54:27 ►

a bunch of just old people maybe talking about their ailments. And instead, they’re talking

00:54:32 ►

about, remember the first time we did two CT7 and, you know, we didn’t know what was going to

00:54:36 ►

happen. And, you know, it was an amazing group of people that did all that work because in PCOL

00:54:43 ►

and T-COL and those reports in the back, I’ve seen

00:54:46 ►

the originals that Myra typed up. For each one of those, it’s maybe a paragraph or maybe two paragraphs

00:54:52 ►

long. He has like a dozen or 20 pages of reports from people, very detailed reports he got from

00:55:02 ►

everybody. This was really well researched. It didn’t follow

00:55:06 ►

protocols, you know, like today’s scientific double blind studies, but these people were

00:55:11 ►

serious about what they did. There’s a lot of solid information in those books.

00:55:16 ►

Oh, absolutely. By the way, if I can double back for a moment and continue to tout this idea for

00:55:21 ►

a uniform plant and fungi medicine act. What I’m hoping legislatures will

00:55:27 ►

warm to and the public will warm to is if that model law includes some ability to conduct

00:55:34 ►

scientific study. And what I’d love to see, for example, is if let’s say we’re going to have

00:55:40 ►

something like Oregon’s soon to come psilocybin program. Why not have a provision

00:55:46 ►

that if you’re signing up and getting qualified as a patient, that you could volunteer to provide

00:55:52 ►

some anonymous study data? You can, you know, let all the people who are partaking just sort of

00:55:58 ►

unofficially and anonymously, so they’re protected, be part of the study. And you can do some very basic but very

00:56:05 ►

effective research along the lines of race, gender, age, what you’re taking in what dosage,

00:56:12 ►

et cetera, and really generate a citizen’s body of data that could be used to great effect

00:56:18 ►

on multiple levels, including even by pharmaceutical companies.

00:56:22 ►

And along those lines, I hadn’t thought about that, but if you

00:56:25 ►

look at some of Rupert Sheldrake’s work, what he’s done with citizen scientists, and he has a lot of

00:56:31 ►

home experimentation that he’s done, like with dogs and stuff like that, and that’s a, you know,

00:56:36 ►

if there was a protocol that people were following, I bet you’d get a lot of home scientists,

00:56:43 ►

you know, giving their anonymous reports.

00:56:46 ►

You know, I’ve done that in a couple of studies, sending an anonymous report.

00:56:50 ►

But if you could build that into law, I think that’d be exceptional.

00:56:54 ►

Oh, for sure. I’ll give you like a crazy grassroots example.

00:56:58 ►

And pardon the pun, because that’ll be a pun in a moment.

00:57:08 ►

moment. There are a few cannabis cultivators who I know of that will disseminate some of their fresh genetics out to particular home growers that they trust, just so the home growers can

00:57:13 ►

report back and explain how the seeds did. So it’s a lot like that. Also, the thought occurs to me

00:57:24 ►

that we commented earlier in the conversation

00:57:27 ►

about Harvard warming up to this and starting a new program. And I was really gratified to hear

00:57:32 ►

that, but I’m also a teensy bit irked that I’m hoping that the public doesn’t start to say,

00:57:38 ►

oh, well, Harvard’s giving it its imprimatur. It must be okay. Which again again that’s a good thing but i don’t want the public to perceive

00:57:46 ►

that like harvard somehow single-handedly made this okay or invented this thing really all they’re

00:57:54 ►

doing at least in my opinion is validating what we already know and have already been doing

00:57:58 ►

so if they approach it from that perspective great but if they’re going to try to take credit for it, yeah.

00:58:08 ►

Well, of course, knowing Harvard, they will try to take credit for it.

00:58:11 ►

But having lived in the deep south and out here on the West Coast,

00:58:16 ►

Harvard doesn’t have the cachet out here and down there that it does maybe in the northeast.

00:58:20 ►

So I don’t think they can totally co-opt it.

00:58:24 ►

Yeah, I hope, I hope not. But you know,

00:58:27 ►

the folks in Washington DC and the policymakers will kowtow to the Ivy league

00:58:32 ►

before anybody else. So that’s, that’s my worry.

00:58:36 ►

And you know,

00:58:36 ►

so psychedelic research really kicked off in Arizona with the research that

00:58:42 ►

was done with DMT there. You know,

00:58:43 ►

that was the first FDA approved study

00:58:45 ►

in many years.

00:58:47 ►

Oh, Lorenzo, you’re making me give a secret away right now.

00:58:51 ►

Okay, I might as well, I’ll let this be the announcement.

00:58:55 ►

My next book is almost ready to go.

00:58:57 ►

And it’s Psychedelic Arizona.

00:58:59 ►

I’ve got, I think, 22 mini chapters

00:59:03 ►

on Arizona’s psychedelic history. And you’re absolutely right, I think, 22 mini chapters on Arizona’s psychedelic history.

00:59:06 ►

And you’re absolutely right, Lorenzo, because that’s one of my little mini chapters.

00:59:10 ►

Oh, fantastic.

00:59:12 ►

Yeah, I’ve got another artist working on a cover for that book right now.

00:59:16 ►

I’m hoping I’ll have that picture soon.

00:59:19 ►

And in the fall, I will be releasing that book.

00:59:22 ►

Well, I can proudly say that the youngest of the Hagerty children lives in Arizona.

00:59:26 ►

So I’m glad that we have a foothold in that state as well.

00:59:30 ►

Well, listen, give me another connection and I will gladly add another chapter.

00:59:35 ►

That’s not a print yet.

00:59:37 ►

I think he’d rather lay low.

00:59:40 ►

Fair enough.

00:59:41 ►

Yeah, but amongst other fun things, just a preview in the book, I discovered that when Timothy Leary was hunting for places to relocate, he was looking here in Arizona in the Chiricahua Mountains, which, weirdly enough, is right down the road from the peyote church. They would have been neighbors.

01:00:00 ►

Go ahead, Charles.

01:00:01 ►

Yeah, I have a question. And then Ragnar, did I see that you had a question?

01:00:05 ►

No, okay.

01:00:10 ►

So I want to circle back to the religious freedom decision that you just described, Gary. And I’ll preface this with I have some healthy skepticism about the religious freedom arguments for two reasons.

01:00:18 ►

One is the first thing – the two things I hear people talk about with religious freedom is, hey, I’m going to found a church so I don’t have to pay taxes.

01:00:24 ►

Or I’m going to found a church so I have access to otherwise illegal medicines.

01:00:28 ►

And so it strikes me that the government does have a legitimate point of view in determining some fact pattern about what establishes a legitimate religious practice, which might be a bias I have.

01:00:42 ►

But I’m curious as to, you had mentioned there

01:00:45 ►

were some fact issues that were at stake here. Do they address any kind of government clarification

01:00:51 ►

about what constitutes a legitimate religious practice in this context?

01:00:57 ►

The DEA denial letter to SolQuest, so far as I read it, was really just more critical of what SolQuest had reported to DEA.

01:01:08 ►

The letter didn’t really go through any sort of explanation of what DEA was preferring to see.

01:01:15 ►

And by the way, I do agree with your prefatory comment that there is a role for government in

01:01:20 ►

this analysis. My criticism of DEA is not that it’s involved at all. I think it

01:01:25 ►

needs to be involved. My criticism is that I don’t think it, as the police agency, should be the body

01:01:33 ►

deciding what is a religion, what isn’t, what is a religious practice, what isn’t. I really think

01:01:39 ►

they should be sending that up the chain of command, right up to USDOJ. And if, let’s say, for example, you have an applicant for exemption and they’re not sure if it’s legit or not, fine.

01:01:51 ►

Let DOJ investigate.

01:01:54 ►

But I think the religious right should be prime over DEA’s ability to block access.

01:02:01 ►

If DEA has the proof and is willing to go to court to establish it, fine,

01:02:06 ►

do that. But don’t unilaterally be both judge and jury. I don’t think that’s fair or reasonable

01:02:15 ►

behavior by any government agency on this topic. Because it does, in a very real sense,

01:02:21 ►

leave the decision of religious validity in the hands of a police agency.

01:02:30 ►

And that just, to my mind, just sounds crazy and violative of First Amendment principles.

01:02:38 ►

But what you say makes such excellent logic. It may not hold.

01:02:56 ►

Yeah. And in fairness, I mean, this is my opinion. Nobody’s tried this yet in front of the courts. So we shall see. But I do have another article coming out in a couple of weeks, really expanding on this. So let’s see what traction is taken from it.

01:02:58 ►

Chris is trying to get in. Go ahead, Chris. On the religious freedom angle.

01:03:03 ►

freedom angle uh you you’re breaking up terribly i didn’t get any of that i’m so your video because we can’t get your

01:03:13 ►

audio chris yeah there we go is that better yeah oh yeah uh night and day awesome well that sorry

01:03:20 ►

i’m uh i’m in a remote office next to a remote lake at the moment.

01:03:25 ►

Anyway, are you familiar with the work of the Divine Assembly in Utah?

01:03:31 ►

No, no. Do tell.

01:03:33 ►

So the Divine Assembly is a psilocybin based church in Utah, and it was formed by a former member of the Utah State Legislature.

01:03:47 ►

Fantastic.

01:03:49 ►

Yeah, he was a member of the legislature

01:03:52 ►

and like, long story short,

01:03:54 ►

encountered a bunch of drug problems and stuff

01:03:56 ►

and ended up being saved by ayahuasca

01:03:59 ►

and then had like this big change of heart

01:04:01 ►

and then went and started a psilocybin church

01:04:04 ►

after he left the legislature.

01:04:06 ►

And he’s been very vocal about his intention and desire to like create

01:04:11 ►

splintered churches and like further this movement of the religious freedom

01:04:15 ►

angle. And he’s like really,

01:04:17 ►

really super dialed in on that particular like approach to to legalization.

01:04:23 ►

And I thought that would be, if you weren’t familiar,

01:04:26 ►

it might be like an interesting angle to look into for you or for anyone else

01:04:31 ►

who was interested.

01:04:32 ►

Oh, for sure. Tell you what, let me give me one second here.

01:04:35 ►

Let me just get my keyboard turned on.

01:04:38 ►

Let me, no, good word. Is it on? Yeah, it is on.

01:04:42 ►

I’m going to put my office email address here in the chat room here.

01:04:46 ►

That was me just pushing buttons at random. Stand by. OK, there it is.

01:04:52 ►

That’s that’s my office email address. If anybody has any materials on this or just wants to reach out, please flood my email.

01:04:58 ►

It’s totally OK. I’m collecting stuff and I’m making more episodes for my YouTube channel to talk about these things.

01:05:05 ►

I’m happy to do it.

01:05:07 ►

Gary, I’ll send you some links where the founder of that church was interviewed quite nicely.

01:05:14 ►

And I think there’s two interviews on a Salt Lake podcast.

01:05:18 ►

And I would say listen to those first because he really lays out the story of how he started up the church and what’s going on.

01:05:24 ►

Oh, I appreciate that yeah and doubling back also to to an earlier comment too about people

01:05:30 ►

trying to get these churches started up in order to evade or avoid the impacts of the controlled

01:05:34 ►

substances act um yeah that is a problem and a challenge and and it’s been uh really an ongoing

01:05:43 ►

problem as far back as Timothy Leary.

01:05:45 ►

You know, Leary also tried to start up a religious organization to get around the problem of

01:05:49 ►

access to LSD, and he failed at it.

01:05:52 ►

And the problem is it’s got to be an actual religion.

01:05:57 ►

It’s got to have a psychedelic sacrament legitimately kind of at the heart of that

01:06:03 ►

religious practice. It can’t be incidental

01:06:05 ►

and it can’t be just some clever way of evading the drug laws in the U S. So for example, you

01:06:12 ►

can’t be, I don’t know, a bunch of, uh, I don’t know, we’ll just say Jewish people. Cause that’s

01:06:16 ►

my heritage. Uh, you can’t be a bunch of Jews and say, you know what, every Thursday after a temple,

01:06:22 ►

we’d like to go down to the local coffee shop, have some coffee

01:06:25 ►

and drink some coffee together and then drop mushrooms. And that’s just part of our religious

01:06:29 ►

practice. That’s not going to cut it. That sacrament’s got to be part of the religious

01:06:35 ►

observation. This is why, like you see, for example, the Native American church, which also

01:06:40 ►

gets extra credit because of the native component, but the heart of that belief system is the peyote.

01:06:46 ►

Same thing with the ayahuasca churches. The heart of their belief system is the ayahuasca. If you

01:06:51 ►

didn’t have the ayahuasca, you wouldn’t have an ayahuasca church. That’s what their courts are

01:06:56 ►

looking for. So where DEA keeps tripping over this, and again, my opinion, is that they’re not

01:07:03 ►

really good and they’re not trained at

01:07:05 ►

identifying what religions are. And again, I don’t think they even should be in the business of it.

01:07:11 ►

But a court can. There are a number of court cases that discuss what the hallmarks of religion

01:07:17 ►

ought to include. And it’s not any one thing. But the courts are going to be looking for things like, is there a belief system? Is there

01:07:26 ►

a moral or ethical code? Are any of these things committed in some sort of a writing? Are there

01:07:33 ►

doctrines of faith? Is there a belief or a contemplation of the ephemeral? Are you trying

01:07:42 ►

to answer sort of the imponderable questions of existence? That kind

01:07:46 ►

of stuff. It can’t be just a bunch of guys who like dropping shrooms and giggling. You’ll never,

01:07:50 ►

ever get past the court and probably go to jail in the effort too.

01:07:56 ►

So I think it is, it’s duration and or numbers of membership included in the analysis of what makes a legitimate religious

01:08:07 ►

organization, Gary? Oh, for sure. For example, there’s no court case that has ever supported

01:08:13 ►

a religion of one. And that’s a big problem, I think, in the psychedelic circles, because

01:08:18 ►

psychedelics people who are religious in nature or spiritual in nature, and that’s the word, tend to be more

01:08:25 ►

spiritual than religious. And the problem is when you’re talking to the authorities about this,

01:08:32 ►

the authorities tend to come from the more mainstream religions. So, you know, chances

01:08:36 ►

are you’re probably talking to somebody who’s Christian or Jewish. And we know Christianity

01:08:40 ►

and Judaism both have a certain look and feel. You know, there’s a place you go and you do your worship a certain way.

01:08:47 ►

And there’s a certain book that you follow.

01:08:49 ►

There’s a guy at the front who speaks to you and tells you certain things in a certain way.

01:08:53 ►

But a lot of the psychedelic religions don’t necessarily operate with those same optics.

01:08:58 ►

And that’s a lot of the problem that you bang into as you’re trying to convince people who think religion looks only like this.

01:09:06 ►

You’ve got to explain to them, no, it actually can look like a lot of different things.

01:09:10 ►

But that’s OK, too, because there’s huge historical record to support a psychedelic religion in that effort.

01:09:17 ►

But again, you have to meet those criteria.

01:09:26 ►

you know, remember, the nation itself was founded in part by people who came over from Europe to worship in a way that was non-mainstream. You know, these people that we call Puritans

01:09:32 ►

were really just kind of ultra-Orthodox Christians who were apparently so ultra-Orthodox,

01:09:37 ►

they didn’t really get along with most of their European brethren in the 1600s.

01:09:41 ►

So, you know, they sailed across the ocean to become founders of what would eventually

01:09:45 ►

become the United States. And the First Amendment is a hat tip to that history. We have a strong

01:09:52 ►

history in the U.S. of minority religions being supported, unusual religions being supported with

01:09:58 ►

a variety of different beliefs. It’s not all, you know, the Joel Osteens of the world.

01:10:02 ►

It’s not all, you know, the Joel Osteen’s of the world.

01:10:11 ►

So I think on that note, I don’t know if we have any other questions here.

01:10:19 ►

We’ve kept you for quite a while, but I think that the notion of religion, it keeps coming up here.

01:10:22 ►

And I hadn’t thought of it until you just now brought it up, but the notion of a religion for one,

01:10:26 ►

it seems like that should be okay, you know, because basically I have a religion that nobody

01:10:34 ►

else belongs to but me, you know, and I’ve never, I don’t think of it as a religion, but it’s my own

01:10:39 ►

internal practice and belief system, and I wouldn’t want anybody impeding on that, but I don’t have

01:10:47 ►

anything that’s a part of it as a way of a practice that would impinge on the laws of the United

01:10:52 ►

States. You know, cannabis isn’t a part of that belief system. It’s just what I do, but it’s not

01:10:58 ►

part of my spiritual practice. So, but a religion of one or a spiritual, let’s call it a spiritual practice of one

01:11:06 ►

should be just as legitimate as a spiritual practice of a hundred thousand. It seems like to

01:11:11 ►

me. Oh yeah. An opinion I share with you for sure. All I’m saying is there’s just no court case out

01:11:16 ►

there in the world of psychedelic religions that agrees with us. Let’s hope that some young

01:11:21 ►

law student is listening to this right now and they become the attorney that moves that through the Supreme Court.

01:11:28 ►

Yep. Another reason why I wrote the book was to inspire a next generation of up and coming attorneys to take this and run with it.

01:11:39 ►

I’m in my 50s. I’ve got less than a decade left before I toddle off into the sunset and do more fun things.

01:11:45 ►

So I don’t know if I will be still in active practice by the time any significant case gets all the way through.

01:11:53 ►

I hope I am, but we’ll see.

01:11:55 ►

I got sworn in to the bar in 1972, and I became one of the original members of the ABA’s Environmental Law Committee.

01:12:07 ►

And at the time, I think there were like a dozen of us.

01:12:10 ►

And our first meeting was in Chicago and four or five of us made it.

01:12:14 ►

Not long after that, I left the practice of law.

01:12:17 ►

But the environmental law section of the American Bar Association is huge now.

01:12:22 ►

Oh, yeah.

01:12:22 ►

Thousands and thousands of lawyers. So I have no doubt that

01:12:26 ►

the Psychedelic Law Association will also be very large by the time you’re my age.

01:12:33 ►

Oh, for sure. I’ve got to tell you, I have been very vocal about it. And man, the response I’ve

01:12:39 ►

been getting just announcing it, and it’s not even my group. So yeah, I, I do suspect as much. And I think it’s

01:12:46 ►

like the old adage goes, um, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best

01:12:51 ►

time to plant a tree would be right now. Yeah. So yeah, absolutely. And, and right now is even

01:12:57 ►

probably better than 20 years ago. This, the, the time is right for these trees to really take root

01:13:03 ►

and grow. So, uh, I don’t think there’s been a better time to see the insight of the war on drugs.

01:13:09 ►

At least I think I’m going to live to see it declared an end.

01:13:12 ►

So, you know, that’s something we should all be encouraged about.

01:13:16 ►

I do plan to live to be 100, though, so don’t get too excited.

01:13:23 ►

I haven’t made that plan yet for myself.‘ll see how it goes that’s how I’m feeling

01:13:27 ►

I just want to see how all this story ends you know I’m really excited about it I you know I

01:13:33 ►

at least want to live to the end of the pandemic so I figure I got at least 15 years ahead of me

01:13:37 ►

oh yeah on that on that happy note I guess I getting silly now, so we should call it a night.

01:13:46 ►

But Gary, I really appreciate you taking the time to join us and for staying in touch.

01:13:52 ►

And as things progress, I hope you’ll be willing to come back and bring us up to date again.

01:13:57 ►

Absolutely. My pleasure. Anytime. And I mean that.

01:14:00 ►

I’m staying out there on the fringes trying to you know get past the bleeding edge to see what’s

01:14:06 ►

beyond and I am happy to come back and share what I see and I’ll put a link to your YouTube channel

01:14:12 ►

in the program notes too because there’s a lot of great information in your YouTube channel as well

01:14:16 ►

oh yeah I appreciate that and and for those of you who don’t know the YouTube channel pretty

01:14:21 ►

much picks up where the book leaves off it’s’s the same name, Psychedelical X, which is just my fancy Latin phrase for law of psychedelics.

01:14:30 ►

And the show is just me doing really a variety of things.

01:14:35 ►

But at the heart of it, it’s trying to explore the legal landscape of psychedelics from every possible perspective.

01:14:42 ►

So, yeah, there’s a lot of law talk, but there’s also

01:14:45 ►

a lot of not law talk. I have professionals of all different types who come on the show.

01:14:49 ►

A lot of them from the cannabis world, because we can really readily analogize to what a

01:14:54 ►

psychedelics world would look like by looking at what’s cannabis is doing. So they come on and we

01:14:59 ►

talk about all the different business challenges and different ways to structure it and what people do with it.

01:15:07 ►

And I’ll give an example. In a couple of weeks, I’m bringing on a friend of mine who’s an insurance

01:15:11 ►

broker. And we’re going to be talking about the world of insurance because if you want to have a

01:15:15 ►

business, you really want to have insurance. And oh boy, when we’re talking psychedelics,

01:15:21 ►

that is such a challenge, but not insurmountable because there are policies out

01:15:25 ►

there you can get. So we’ll be talking about that. I would love to read the writers on that policy.

01:15:32 ►

Oh, no kidding. Yeah. Danielle Hernandez, who’s going to be coming on doing the interview,

01:15:37 ►

she is deep, deep, deep in it because she sees the potential and it’s a market that will

01:15:42 ►

make people money. Not to keep you on here,

01:15:45 ►

but I would have to presume that the retreat centers are doing some kind of

01:15:49 ►

insurance, some kind of extended liability.

01:15:53 ►

Oh, well, you know,

01:15:54 ►

let’s chat about that for a moment and I don’t mind if you keep me here.

01:15:58 ►

Lorenzo might mind.

01:15:59 ►

Yeah, Lorenzo might, but I’ll be quick and then we can go.

01:16:02 ►

I would not assume that folks don’t assume any retreat

01:16:06 ►

center has insurance. And if it does, don’t assume it’s the right insurance. Let me give you a real

01:16:13 ►

example here. I’ve never yet in my life seen an insurance policy that failed to contain a

01:16:19 ►

particular clause that says, Hey, if you’re engaged in some sort of illegal activity that

01:16:25 ►

gives rise to this claim, you don’t have coverage. That’s a violation of your insurance policy. So

01:16:31 ►

while sure, you may have been paying us premiums all these years, and we really appreciate that

01:16:36 ►

you did that, you did an act that’s not covered. So sorry, you’re on your own. That’s a thing that’s

01:16:43 ►

happened to many, many people, particularly in the world

01:16:45 ►

of cannabis. And the reason is sure. They went and got things like CGL insurance, which is

01:16:50 ►

commercial general liability insurance, which if you don’t know is like the most common type

01:16:54 ►

of insurance a business gets. Those policies don’t contain coverage for example, cannabis

01:17:01 ►

events or incidents, but there are insurance companies out there who will write

01:17:07 ►

policies that allow it, but you have to ask for it. So if you’re looking at a retreat center,

01:17:12 ►

you would not at all be out of line asking to see their policy or at least the declaratory sheet

01:17:18 ►

behind their policy. Because yeah, if you’re planning on attending thinking, well, if something

01:17:22 ►

bad happens, at least I can sue somebody and an insurance policy will cover my injuries.

01:17:27 ►

Maybe not.

01:17:28 ►

Don’t assume.

01:17:30 ►

Yeah, I think I was thinking more outside the United States, you know, places in Latin

01:17:35 ►

America where there are legalities, although that’s a whole other kettle of fish.

01:17:39 ►

Oh, for sure.

01:17:40 ►

And then what do you do?

01:17:41 ►

Let’s say, for example, that, I don’t know, you’re going to retreat in Nicaragua.

01:17:45 ►

Pick a country you want.

01:17:47 ►

Let’s pick Costa Rica or somewhere with a stable government.

01:17:51 ►

Okay. Costa Rica. That’s fair.

01:17:52 ►

You might still have to go to Costa Rica to fight that fight, to file that claim.

01:17:57 ►

And you might be dealing with a Costa Rican insurance company or some other foreign insurance company.

01:18:03 ►

So, yeah, amongst other things, besides making sure

01:18:06 ►

there is a policy that covers for what you did, you also want to look at things like jurisdiction,

01:18:10 ►

where are you going to have to go have that fight if you have to have that fight?

01:18:13 ►

Fascinating stuff. Thank you.

01:18:15 ►

Oh yeah. Yeah. It can be the stuff of nightmares, but it doesn’t have to be.

01:18:19 ►

Oh, but it’s the stuff that makes wonks really happy.

01:18:22 ►

Oh, for sure. For sure. And I see these psychedelic retreats being advertised all the time.

01:18:28 ►

And it’s weird, like over the last six or seven months, right alongside that, I’ve seen a spike in the number of articles talking about the numbers of sexual assaults taking place in some of these retreats.

01:18:45 ►

retreats, excuse me. So yeah, you know, if you’re a single woman, for example, or a single guy going off to one of these retreats, and maybe you’re going alone, and you don’t know who you’re

01:18:49 ►

dealing with, those are things to worry about, too. Yeah, there are a lot of risks involved here

01:18:56 ►

in dealing with these substances. And that’s, again, one good reason for some regulation.

01:19:01 ►

You know, we can’t just have everybody going off willy nilly. And I was never one in favor of a lot of regulation,

01:19:08 ►

but I can definitely see the need for it

01:19:10 ►

in these areas now.

01:19:12 ►

Yeah, and I don’t view it as regulation

01:19:15 ►

that needs to come into place

01:19:16 ►

so much as just sensible consumer safety.

01:19:19 ►

I think there’s a balance to be struck.

01:19:21 ►

You know, look, you want to go take

01:19:23 ►

a normal prescription drug. You still have to go to a doctor. You still have look, you want to go take a normal prescription drug.

01:19:26 ►

You still have to go to a doctor. You still have to get a prescription. When you go to the pharmacy

01:19:29 ►

to pick it up, the pharmacist is always there to talk to you about taking the drug and to answer

01:19:35 ►

any of your questions you have about it. So if that’s okay for us to go get our penicillins and

01:19:41 ►

whatever else, why would we flinch at that for psychedelics? I think getting

01:19:47 ►

a base amount of education to the end user is fine. There’s nothing wrong with that. And if

01:19:53 ►

that’s what regulation is aimed at, I’d be comfortable in that world because it means

01:19:58 ►

access and safety. And those are the two things everybody wants. And you’re right. That’s what

01:20:04 ►

we want. And of course, there’s the other side of that pancake where they over-regulate.

01:20:08 ►

And, you know, we have these, these friends that come in on the Thursday psychedelic salons

01:20:13 ►

here, and they’re living in Marrakesh right now, and they can go to the pharmacy and buy

01:20:18 ►

opioids, you know, anything they want, but, but cannabis is illegal because of the war

01:20:23 ►

on drugs.

01:20:24 ►

So, you know, there’s, there’s a lot of politics involved in this as well.

01:20:30 ►

Oh, for sure. For sure.

01:20:31 ►

Yeah, I keep thinking if you really want to understand modern geopolitics, you need to look at the opium wars.

01:20:39 ►

For sure.

01:20:40 ►

I mean, if you want to understand the Chinese ethos about how it responds to the rest of the world, look at the opium wars.

01:20:48 ►

And also, if you want to understand the Chinese policy on drugs, because they’re very, very harsh on drugs in China, look at the opium wars.

01:20:55 ►

And if you don’t know that history, jump on YouTube.

01:20:58 ►

There are tons of videos that talk about it. But in a nutshell, basically, the English government literally went in guns blazing, shooting its way into China to force China to open for the purpose of buying and consuming England’s opium supply.

01:21:16 ►

And the English government and a bunch of English merchants were dedicated to getting the Chinese population hooked on opium and succeeded.

01:21:26 ►

So, you know, you’re coming 100 plus years after that.

01:21:29 ►

The echoes of it still reverberate today.

01:21:32 ►

And it was pure economics.

01:21:33 ►

It was they had to sell, push the opium so they could have the ship’s hulls full going into China so they could carry the tea back out, you know.

01:21:42 ►

And so it was all about filling, filling as well. Cargo wasn’t about anything else. Yeah. And it’s actually worse than the tea,

01:21:49 ►

Lorenzo. It was their gambit to get their silver back. Yeah. Here’s what happened. The English

01:21:54 ►

were trying desperately to trade with China, but there was almost nothing the Chinese wanted from

01:21:59 ►

the English, but the English wanted a lot of Chinese goods. You know, the silks and spices

01:22:03 ►

were massively profitable. So amongst the few things that the English were a lot of Chinese goods. You know, the silks and spices were massively profitable.

01:22:08 ►

So amongst the few things that the English were able to find that the Chinese were willing to trade for included British silver.

01:22:12 ►

And so they were depleting their coffers.

01:22:15 ►

And this was the currency of the time.

01:22:17 ►

So it’s like, you know, emptying out the gold reserve from Fort Knox.

01:22:21 ►

So desperate to get the silver back because it was impairing England’s ability

01:22:26 ►

to engage in commerce elsewhere around the world. They desperately tried to find a way to find

01:22:31 ►

something the Chinese would trade the silver back for. And it turned out opium happened to be the

01:22:36 ►

winner. And what a great benefit. It’s also highly addictive. And boy, they knew what to do at that

01:22:42 ►

point. They just rammed opium right down the throats of the Chinese.

01:22:46 ►

And that’s how they were getting the silver back.

01:22:49 ►

And when the Chinese finally were like, hey, wait a minute, you’re crippling our population

01:22:53 ►

and really damaging our nation here.

01:22:55 ►

We’re stopping the opium trade.

01:22:57 ►

The British went in with guns blazing.

01:23:00 ►

And the coercive spirit of opium continues in the modern parlance as well.

01:23:04 ►

The parallels are incredible.

01:23:06 ►

Oh, my God, yeah.

01:23:07 ►

And if you look at the development of all the drug laws right up to today, it all started with opium, all of it.

01:23:14 ►

That’s your next book after Arizona.

01:23:17 ►

Oh, God.

01:23:18 ►

It’s a good book, man.

01:23:19 ►

I know.

01:23:20 ►

That one actually, like, that’s got awards potential in it.

01:23:26 ►

Well, I will consider it.

01:23:28 ►

That’s got National Book Award on it if you do it right.

01:23:32 ►

Okay.

01:23:32 ►

Well, me and Michael Pollan.

01:23:34 ►

I would like to unseat Pollan as the guy.

01:23:37 ►

Well, there’s going to be an oscillation because he can’t have a book come out every year.

01:23:40 ►

So you can come out in the years that his books aren’t coming out.

01:23:43 ►

You know what?

01:23:44 ►

He can, though, because that’s his full-time job. I’m still doing the law practice.

01:23:47 ►

This is my sidekick. But kidding aside, I really would like to ultimately morph away

01:23:54 ►

from my law practice so I can do this kind of stuff more full-time.

01:23:59 ►

And currently the track I’m on is to try to get these clients and pipeline built so that I can at least bring this work into the firm, let my other partners and associates do it so I can get back out there and keep sort of preaching the gospel, so to speak.

01:24:15 ►

So hopefully over the next few years, you will see that transition happen before your very eyes, but we’ll see what happens.

01:24:22 ►

Well, considering the fact that you’re a full-time practitioner,

01:24:29 ►

you’re doing a great job getting the word out too. So we do appreciate that. That’s the benefit of having no kids, by the way. My wife and I decided to stop at house cats and that leaves a degree of

01:24:36 ►

free time in the evenings. And this is how I spend it. But I appreciate your time and I look forward

01:24:42 ►

to our next visit and best of luck with this book. And as soon as the next book comes out, be sure to let us know.

01:24:47 ►

Oh, for sure. And my pleasure. And like I said, I’m happy to come back anytime you want me.

01:24:52 ►

Well, listen, everybody, till the next time, keep the old faith and stay high.

01:24:58 ►

And for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from cyberdelic space.

01:25:02 ►

Namaste, my friends.

⚗️ alembic

Explorer

670 - War on Drugs Recent Legal Updates

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