 A cannabis company tries to help veterans, and we have among us, Brian Buckley, who is a veteran. This is Think Tech. I'm Jay Fiedel. Welcome to Tuesday morning. Brian, welcome to the show. Hey, it's great to be here. Thank you for having me. You're a veteran. Tell me about your veteran experience, your military experience. Yeah, I served nine years in the United States Marine Corps, started off as an infantry officer, and then I moved on to Marine reconnaissance, and then spent a majority of my career as a team commander in Marine special operations, also known as Marine Raiders, and conducted deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, Southeast Asia, and as well as Africa. You've been through it. There's not too much you can't handle, though. Yeah, you would think that, but the cannabis industry is a very unique business to be, and I don't think there's anything quite like it. How'd you get into it? Why did you get into it? In 2016, I just started seeing what was going on with our veterans, and myself being 100% disabled. I'm a very big fan of the VA, but I know they have some limitations being a federal agency. And it was at that time, we started an organization called Battle Brothers Foundation, where we wanted to provide a holistic approach to help our veterans, just so they could have that same sense of purpose like they did while they served in the military, with the hopes of avoiding a mistake that they couldn't come back from. During that time, I discovered the plant, a good friend of mine, Andy Myers, just started telling me how amazing cannabis was making him feel. He said some infamous line to me where he's like, I gave up a fifth of Jack for a joint, and started telling me, he's like, listen, I'm getting a great night of sleep. I'm not blacking out at night. I'm not drinking and driving. And when I wake up in the morning, I feel great. And furthermore, he said, I started to get into cultivation, which is really helping me transition from a warrior to a gardener. So I just thought I was really impactful, and I tried something for myself that night, and it was the first night, and I don't know how many years, I just went to sleep and stay to sleep and just started feeling really good. So I decided to say, hey, let's maybe move this forward a little bit, and not just be an advocacy group, but maybe see how far we can push the dial, and had the opportunity to talk with some members of Congress and ask them, what do we have to do to get medical cannabis into the VA system? And they said, if you can get data and get American doctors, you're gonna have a good argument. And we've done that so far. We launched our adult use brand here in California called Hellman Valley Growers Company, where 100% of our profits goes back to fund veteran medical cannabis research. And we were very fortunate to partner up through our nonprofit with a firm out of Israel called Niomedic Healthcare and Research Services, as well as University of California at Irvine Health. And we've been approved for an institutional review board, which means we've been clear to conduct human trials. And our first study is gonna happen here in the upcoming months to see if medical cannabis can reduce the symptoms of post-traumatic stress. Let me unpack some of that with you. Where is Hellman Valley? The Hellman Province is in the southwest part of Afghanistan, is an extremely volatile area. The reason being is they have the Hellman River Valley. And that is where they will throw out their poppy seeds, grow poppy, cultivate it into heroin, and it'll be sold in the Taliban will tax it. So it's a very big financial source for the Taliban. So if you're a Marine Raider and you serve in the Hellman Province, you become part of the Hellman Valley Gun Club and get an HVGC tattoo. So we really wanted to keep a military niche to what we were doing here. And we threw the letters HVGC up on the wall. And it came to us relatively quick where we just said, Hellman Valley Growers Company. I was like, well, that really works. Let's go brief the guys, make sure they're good with it. Kind of told them the whole scenario. We got a trademark this and this is our mission. Are you guys good with it? And they said, not only are we good, but when we get out of the military, can we get a job with you? So that was a pretty easy situation right there. That's great. So your materials talk about PTS. I always thought of it as PTSD, but tell me the difference and tell me what it stands for and tell me what it is and tell me whether it's the central party or the other party. Yeah, so post-traumatic stress or post-traumatic stress disorder, medically in books, you'll see it as PTSD. Really the first time I heard it called PTS was from President George Bush where he just said, this isn't a disorder. These are things that people have to live with and we shouldn't make them feel like they have some sort of problem and that bad things are happening to them or whatnot. They should be kind of open to talk about what they went through. And I'll just share on my own personal experience like I said before, I'm a 100% disabled veteran and I have 100% post-traumatic stress. And for me, it really was, I had no qualms what I did on the battlefield. The people that we engaged and had to fight with, that's just the nature of the business. However, you do see the non-combatants like IE the women and children, unfortunately get mixed up in the type of warfare we now fight. It's no longer like I tell people like the Napoleonic Wars or Civil War where you showed up on a field and two lines and you guys just fought or anything like that. You're literally fighting in people's neighborhoods. That's just a way a counter-incertancy works. And we would always go above and beyond to do what we could to protect the non-combatants even to put ourselves at greater risk. But unfortunately, we fight some very evil enemy. People should and need to realize that these are not very good people at all and life is very meaningless to them. And they would sometimes utilize women and children as human shields or use them as a way to try to blow us up or something of that nature. And to me, that really kind of struck me, especially after I started having kids, I started kind of having a little bit more anxiety, just kind of thinking back to those days when you saw some of the horrific events. One thing that you tend to do in the military is compartmentalize information. When you're on the battlefield, things happen, terrible things happen, but you kind of just see it, observe it, stash it somewhere back in your brain-housing unit and you just drive on to the next objective. But it's when you come back to America, it's really when things slow down and you have time to reflect some of those demons start popping back up again. And that's just kind of been my personal experience. And you can talk to every other veteran, they'll probably have some sort of thing that kind of hit them in a weird way. But the main thing we really wanna press here is post-traumatic stress isn't just a military issue, it's a human condition. It can happen to any of us. And we just see the benefits of medical cannabis that is helping with everything that encompasses post-traumatic stress. I mean, they're still trying to break it down like with pain, anxiety, sleep, things of that nature. We just think instead of getting someone maybe 15 pills, you might be able to solve this problem with just some sort of cannabis product that could really help them and benefit them and do some great things. You know, I heard a piece not too long ago about how living in modern society, not war even, just living in modern society can also give you PTSD, the stress and strain, especially in COVID and all the anxieties that surround people. So, you know, the process you're describing, let me throw a thought at you, would apply not only for veterans, but for everyone. 100% agree. You know, one thing we are doing here, I mean, obviously we're pushing this through in terms of our research, utilizing veterans and working with Congress to do so. And it's not just gonna be a benefit for the veterans, but, you know, we make this federally legal on the medical side, it's gonna benefit all patients throughout America and could really have a great positive impact on the medical landscape here. Yeah, and on society, I would say if it was generally available and ubiquitous, you know, in Hawaii, we have medicinal, you know, medicinal marijuana cannabis is legal here. And you've been talking about medicinal cannabis and it sounds like your company is directed there. But, you know, the next step, at least in Hawaii would be recreational cannabis. And what do you think about that? Is that where, you know, your organization is going? Is that where you think the country is going? I, you know, for us, you know, we're really, we are utilizing recreational or adult use product to help us achieve our end state. And that's where, again, we take the profits from our adult use brand to help fuel our research. You know, but I look at in terms of, what is the big deal if you do allow recreational or adult use? I mean, I always say to someone like, would you give someone a second look if they told you, you know, I went home, had a rough day and I drank two or three martinis, probably not. I mean, that's very common. People will just think, okay, it's just someone blowing off steam. What's the big deal if someone goes home and smokes half a joint and goes to bed? I mean, I bet they're gonna wake up probably with no headache and probably have a good night of sleep. So I think it's really just normalizing what cannabis is. I mean, we're fighting obviously uphill battles, like trying to push a refrigerator up the stairs by yourself and that's all, you know, manifested with the drug war and all the way up through to where we are now. But what I think you're really starting to see is, you know, I say in my generation, we are probably pretty well open to it, but I really think it was particularly interesting to see, you know, Vietnam veterans that era who were living, you know, in the Nixon days and all that stuff. And really we're like, hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, that's just bad stuff. I shouldn't touch it. Well, now you're seeing a lot of these Vietnam veterans who have retired. And again, I kind of go back to those moments of law where you have a lot of time to maybe think and process stuff. And they're starting to have some things kind of creep up on them from the war that they fought. And they're starting to turn to medical cannabis or some are just using adult use cannabis because they're afraid to go out and get a cannabis license because that can tie in all stuff with gun laws and all that stuff as well. So I think it's starting to get opened up in, you know, as more and more people kind of talk about how they're good with it, they can accept it. You know, I always tell people, it might seem strange at times, but believe it or not, the government works for us. We don't work for the government. And if we start pushing things and saying we want this, that's what our representatives, it's literally in their name, should go out for it and do and help us so we can do what we wanna do. Couple of other things to unpack. So if I have BTS, how does it affect me? How does it affect my life? How much of a disability is it for me, whether from war or any other purpose? But let's talk about war. Let's talk about, you know, a really traumatic experience in war to see death and dying. And I come back and, you know, I begin to unravel, what is it like for me and how disabled am I by reason of BTS? You know, it really is kind of individual independent, I would say. Not everyone has kind of the same story, but maybe similar circumstances. And I have a great opportunity to meet with a lot of fellow veterans, both male and female, who are suffering post-traumatic stress or have lost limbs or even, you know, some of the families who have lost their loved ones, it all kind of impacts us similar, but yet different. And some of the worst cases I have seen are sometimes when the veteran really moves into a state of isolation. That's when you gotta really become concerned because they can be sitting there with a bunch of pills that were prescribed to them. They're living off some government benefits and they can go out and buy a handle of vodka. And that's when sometimes they sit there and they're just kind of doing the same thing over and over again, numbing themselves out. And they start thinking about, well, what's my purpose? Why am I even here? Maybe they make a mistake and do something not to becoming out in town or whatever it may be. And they just think, maybe it's just time for me to leave. And that's what we definitely want to try to avoid. And that's where I think, you know, in terms of what cannabis can do to kind of, you know, turn down the noise, kind of relax you, you know, I always say kind of lubes up the joints. I mean, if I do a squat, it's gonna sound like a crack sample pop commercial. I mean, it's just a lot of the creaking and cracking with me right now. But, you know, I always tell people it's like, with cannabis, it's more of a precision strike versus kind of a boat trying to stop. You know, with cannabis, you kind of feel it. You know, when you're there and you have a good euphoric feeling and you're like, I'm set and good. You know, with alcohol, a lot of times people drink and they feel good, but then they kind of float right over the X and they're a little bit more inebriated than they want it to be or need to be. And that's when some problems gonna occur. So I just see nothing but upside potential for what we can do with this plan, not just on the push from X level, but if you look at all the other medical benefits that I think could come from this plan, it's really an exciting time. And, you know, unfortunately it's a schedule one narcotics. So hopefully we can knock this thing down to a schedule two or even better a schedule three and really open up the research so we can really discover the power of this plan. Yeah, I wanna discuss that with you. But one of the things is, you know, you have some stats on suicide and I suppose there's, you know, the stats are at least conceptually a connection between PTS for veterans and homelessness for veterans, which is so tragic. Can you talk about that? Yeah, I think one of the most alarming stats I saw and I believe it was a Boston University study that came out either in June or July this year, where it's stated nearly, I think it's like 41,000 veterans and active duty personnel have committed suicide. And during the same time, you know, during from October 2001 until recently when we were involved in both Iraq and Afghanistan, we've lost about 7,500 military personnel on the battlefield. So if you look at that stat, it's actually more dangerous for us to be back home in America than it is for us to be in the battlefield, which I just found that to be just, I mean, I knew it was high but I didn't think it was that high. And to be honest with you, the number is probably even greater. Just due to when a veteran might commit suicide through a vehicle accident or a motorcycle accident, they'll just call it a vehicular accident, but chances are if there's a guy just crashing into a wall, they probably had some alternative plans on their mind at that point. And homelessness? You know, homelessness, it's a very big moving target in terms of, especially with Vietnam air and everything up to now. I have not seen the exact study on it. I know it's a lot. I would say unfortunate times, I think some homeless people try to say they're a veteran. You don't really know if they are or not. They just kind of wear camis and say, I'm a vet, can I have money? But it is a grave concern. And I think it's kind of goes in hand in hand with a post-traumatic stress where they are just kind of isolated and they might not go out into the workforce and things might happen and they just kind of give up and say, hey, I don't care. I'll just take it to the streets. And it's very concerning, but I think what you're starting to see now is there's a lot of programs out there that they want to help out active duty members' transition into civilian life, which is going to give them a step forward and having some hard truths with them. What I always see people in the military, they want to be the best. They set goals, they have to do this, they have to do that. Well, if you actually look at some things of your disability benefits or if you retire or you got retirement benefits on top, you could be making the same amount of money doing something that isn't some C-suite type level job, but might be something you just like and you're going to live comfortably and do well. So that's some of the things, I really stress to veterans is, discover who you are, what is your passion and what do you want to do? Don't go work for a paycheck. Just go out there and find something that just makes you live the life that you want to, because after all you raised your right hand, you wrote a blank check to the United States people, payable with your death. It's now it's your time to go live the American dream you fought so hard to defend. You bet. A little more detail on your schematic, the relationship of the profit and the nonprofit, the relationship of the two companies with the Israeli company and why an Israeli company, what can they do for you? Just like to see a sort of a schematic of your corporate organization, okay? Yeah, absolutely. So with Battle Brothers, like I said, that was started before and really went through, it was a three tier approach I came up with, a personal medical and economics. So personal, it's a lot like a big brother, big sister network. You were active duty, you're getting ready to transition. It's a lot more difficult than you think it is. You know, you'll have a battle brother there to kind of just 24 seven. You know, you want to pick up the phone and talk and just maybe voice out some issues you're going through. Chances are that veteran was there too and they can help talk it out with you. On the medical side, we help out the VA disability claim. So if a veteran did not get the disability they thought they could serve, we can look at it, take it over, resubmit to the VA and see if we can get them the disability percentage that they've earned. We also provide treatment centers. So if a veteran is suffering from alcoholism or drug abuse or post-traumatic stress or all the above, we can get them into a treatment center, let them take their need for a little bit, kind of recalibrate and get themselves right and get back out there. And obviously we've discussed some of the medical cannabis research. And then the last part is really the economic phase is where we help the veteran find a job just so they have that same sense of purpose like it did in the military. And that's where you really see the difference happen. And I really wanted to make sure like, hey, you don't have to start from point A and get to point Z. It's custom to that veteran. Sometimes a vet just needs some help with their disability or they might need treatment or they might be like, hey, I'm just trying to find a job, you guys got anything like that and we can kind of custom to them. And really the big thing too is, I'll never say every veteran needs cannabis. I don't know, if it makes sense for you, yeah, you should be able to get it. But what we wanna do is at least provide that as a tool and a toolkit for the VA to use if they deem it's necessary at that point. And when we really were looking into this research concept, we just realized how expensive it was gonna be. So it was actually the idea came from a Paul Newman salad dressing bottle where it says 100% of profits to charities. So we talked to our lawyer and our CPA and we're like, can you explain this? And you guys can totally do that if you make profits and you wanna put things back into a nonprofit, go for it, it's totally legit. So that's where we started. And then with, in terms of the Israelis, we all know how far ahead they are. They're probably about two to three decades ahead of us on their research. And I was literally at a UCLA cannabis symposium back in 2017. I went out for a coffee break and I met this gentleman named Alon Blot and he worked for a firm called Niomedic Health Care and Research Services. So he was a veteran, I'm a veteran, we just started talking and I told him about the idea and he loved it. And that's when we started working with him and they come with a very well-respected team. Our head guy is a gentleman named Dr. Victor Novak who at one point was in charge of the Harvard Clinical Research Institute. He's done numerous FDA trials. I mean, we lost him last year during the height of COVID for a couple of months because he had to take over the second largest hospital in Israel's COVID clinic. And then, like I said, the big thing we were kind of missing was the American face. I mean, we know we need American doctors to kind of validate the research. And next to you know, we got UC Irvine who said, hey, we really appreciate what you guys are doing and we'd like to be a part of this. So really the, you got the Israeli team who are going to be running the research and the American side is going to be the principal investigator basically taking notes as we're going through everything and validating it. And once we get through we figure it's going to be about three trials. We'll have a formulation, a treatment protocol. We're going to do it in multiple states. That's when I'm kind of rounds complete, if you will. And I'll go back in front of Congress and raise my right hand and say, here's your data and here's your American doctors. Can we proceed with FDA trials? Great, wonderful. Let's take a moment for a picture show. Okay, Brian, I'm going to flash some pictures we have of you, the organization and can you just give us a running narrative of what we're looking at? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so those are myself and two other Marine Raiders, Andy Myers, who I talked about before. He was the one guy who said, hey, I gave up a fist of Jack for a joint and he's actually our head of cultivation. So we're getting ready to start up a cultivation site here in California and he's going to be a guy running the show and what's going to be a lot of fun about that is we're going to be bringing more veterans in to work with us. So it's really just going to be a kind of special thing having veterans making medicine for veterans. Okay. And this is what we would say, we call these patient appreciation days. We would go out to certain dispensaries, we'll offer some site of sort of a promotional deal and it's a great time because we get a lot of people coming out, a lot of veterans and we get to just kind of talk to them one-on-one and that's what we really like is we like to talk to veterans and say what is working for you or what would you guys like to see? And from that, we take some more ideas and we'll come out with either a new strain or a new delivery system, whatever it might be, but we're just here to service the veterans. Yeah, there we are. That's, I think that's the first time we actually started filling some of our distillate cartridges. So that's us in the lab just cleaning up some of the carts right there. And there we are in the lab again. Usually isn't that happy down there but I'm glad they're smiling. So usually a lot of hard work in that area but you can see the guys are in there putting everything together, just kind of pressing the caps and just getting everything to a finished product which Andy's holding right there in his hand, one of our boxes. And that's just us holding some oil right there that just came in. So that's actually our live resin which was really exciting. I love live resin. It really just started to take off here in California where you just chop the plant, you do a fresh frozen and then you manufacture the plant as it, you add nothing to it and really just gives you a great turkey profile and you get the full entourage effect. And it's not really that huge of a head high if you will. I mean, you're gonna feel good but it really does nice work on your body and it's just almost like smoking the flower itself. And there's one of our finished products right there. So that might be our Afghanimal strain that has done very well. That's one of our sativa packaging. So one thing we like to do is we have a black packaging for Indica, lighter packaging for a sativa and a green one for our hybrid. And yep, there's our hybrid one right there. So it makes it very easy for the consumer to kind of find what they're looking for. Okay, let's move on. Let's move on to the political side of things. You've been making peripheral statements about that and I wanna get deeply into it if we can. This country has said on a national level it is really not backed cannabis for veterans or anyone else. On the other hand, a number of states that must be well over a dozen now have made cannabis legal from a medicinal point of view. And of course, as from what you were saying, you wanna change the national scene. So what is the national scene? What was it before Trump during Trump and what is it now with Joe Biden? You know, I think a lot of things were kind of taking place. I look at 2016 as kind of a big year where I think a lot of the things on the ballot we're getting a lot of attention in terms of, you know, for example, California was looking to pass Proposition 64 which would allow adult use, even though California was the first one to move for medical reasons back in 1996. It took a little while, but to me that was kind of a big tipping point. And you know, I would say towards kind of the end of the Obama administration, it was kind of like, hey, it's a state issue. There were some bills kind of getting kicked around but nothing really took hold. When the Trump administration came in, there was definitely a scare with Jeff Sessions when he ripped up the coal memo. But, you know, this is where the power of the people you had to Senator, Republican Senator Cory Gardner from Colorado, and he literally went in and said, I will not approve any more federal judges unless this whole coal memo thing gets put away from Sessions because I got roads and schools tied to cannabis tax. And if you guys take that away, it's going to crush my state. And obviously Jeff Sessions was removed and with the new AG with Trump, you know, pretty much again, it's like, hey, it's a state issue. It's state's rights. If they want to do it, it's fine. But nothing was moving on the federal side. There were some omnibus bills. We thought that might make it through and they kind of got kicked out of the curve. And then, you know, in terms of the Biden and the Harris administration, I'll be honest. You know, President Biden's been around for a long time and he was one of the guys on the crime bill and he was what he was, he was in Congress for 40 years. And Kamala Harris put a lot of people in California away for nonviolent cannabis offenses. So I was kind of like, you know, they might be seeing the right thing out there, but I don't know. And again, once they got into that seat, nothing has really changed. I mean, I look at things with, in terms of social equity, how everyone's talking about that and it's a great thing. Well, the President of the United States can make a huge dent in social equity by just releasing everyone who's in jail right now for nonviolent marijuana offense. I mean, he could make that happen right now. And I don't know, we'll see how it goes. I think, again, you're dealing with politicians, they're gonna use things for political cannon fodder. I think the Banking Act is kind of low-hanging fruit, but I bet- What do you mean by the Banking Act? What is that? So the Safe Banking Act would essentially give FDIC approval to like Bank of America or Wells Fargo or some of the bigger banks so that cannabis companies could actually operate in them. Right now, they can't touch anything from cannabis because once they schedule one narcotic and there's no FDIC approval for it, so you're really limited to working with state or charter banks. But that would be a huge win. You know, if they could do things like move it to a schedule three, that would eliminate Tax Code 280E. Right now, if you're operating cannabis, you basically have to set up four companies within your one company so you can get tax deductions. And it's totally legit, it's legal, it's just a very expensive way of doing business. So those are some of the things that I think they did would make a huge difference. And again, as you move further down the schedule, you can open things up to more research. So I think we're gonna have to kind of hold what we have until the midterm. And then I think they'll start putting some people on record to what's gonna happen. Obviously, you saw the Moor Act as gaining some steam. I'm not a fan of that. I mean, you're putting a 5% federal tax on cannabis that would mature into an 8% tax three years. And if you're looking at the state of California, you have people paying 40 to 50% tax rate. And if you're adding another 5% to 8%, I mean, you're essentially gonna be having veterans using their disability payments just to buy their medicine each month. And then if you look at Chuck Schumer's bill, that had a 25% federal tax on it, which would just kill the industry altogether. So that's where you're- Aside from 25% tax, what's the point of that? What would he say if he were here with us today to defend that? You know, the only thing I think they could say on the upside was like, well, 280 is gone. You could save money here, there and there. But I think it's just not being in touch of the reality on the ground. I really feel people look at cannabis like we're all billionaires walking around with a ton of money. That's not the case. I mean, for example, I haven't even given myself a paycheck yet because I'm just putting everything back into the company. You know, here in California, if you're running a legit cannabis business, you're making enough money to pay your people and to expand your business, but you're not driving off in a Mercedes or Bentley by any means. I mean, really the big payoff for cannabis companies is when you sell. So that's where I think people had to come to a brift with reality and understand what's happening on the ground. And that's even why you have such a problem here, especially in California with the illicit market. I mean, right now, the estimated in 2020, the legal market, cannabis market here in California made about $4 billion. They think that the illicit market made about $8 billion. And I can talk to people who are in the illicit market and they have no desire to move into the legal market just due to the high taxation and a barrier of entry. And that's where you just tell them, like, listen, go with a volume play here. You know, reduce taxes, make them somewhat normal. And you're gonna start seeing people seeing the benefits of coming in. And it's not just so much of a money issue too. You gotta look at it from a safety standpoint. When I send my products out before they even hit the shelf, they're going to a third party state tester and they're gonna go through to ensure that everything's clean, safe, and humans can consume it. You go into the illicit shop, they don't do anything like that. So you have no idea what you're putting into your body. And back in, I think, whether it was 2020, 2019, when VapeGape was happening and people were using Vape products and their lungs were getting shredded, none of that came from any legal store in California. It was all from the illicit market. A couple of other things. You mentioned that what Godner was, was a champion of cannabis for veterans and for the people for medicinal purposes anyway. Are there any other champions in Congress that you can call upon before or in connection with the 2022 election? Well, you gotta look at like Representative Bloom and Howler has been a big one. Obviously, you got Cory Booker, who was one of the people working on the Moor Act. And there's a lot more of them out there that I have been engaged with. People within Arizona, people in Hawaii, people from my home state of Pennsylvania and they're seeing the benefits. And one of the nice things I have kind of in my back pocket is, I'm a veteran. I just say to him, you sent us to war, now it's your turn to fix us. And I think they're very open to the idea, but I always tell people, I'm like, do you think Elon Musk would, we would have what he has there with Tesla if that was a government-run company? And people were like, no way. I'm like, exactly. The private world, you can move fast. I mean, people wanna know money in, money out, how can you do it? Government gets tied in with a lot of bureaucracy and there's elections and new people come in with new ideas. So that's why we kind of wanted to put the burden on our shoulders, approving the medical benefits through data-driven results. And I think once we have it, and we're very bullish, we're gonna do it because the Israelis have already, we just need to put the American face on it. Numbers don't lie. And I just wanna supply both Democrat and Republican all the ammo they need to say this stuff works. Why are we sitting on our hands and not helping out our veterans? Well, that takes me to, how would you think this issue was gonna play in the 2022 election? I mean, politics are as sick as you can imagine. There's so many other issues and fights and divisiveness and what have you in this country. The country is being threatened by so much now. How is this issue gonna play and on which side of the political fence is it gonna fall? You know, it'll be interesting because kind of what you noticed in the 2020 election, you know, you obviously had some states that were gonna either add adult use or medical use. And it wasn't a big deal. It wasn't really capturing the headlines. It was kind of like, okay, another state wants to go with cannabis, which I thought was great. I mean, it's just kind of like, okay, someone wants to put a rename a junior high or high school, like fine, great. So to me, that kind of makes it a little bit more normal. I do think towards the 2022 election, I think you will see things like the Moore Act and Chuck Schumer's bill and things like that come a little bit more to light because I think people are worried about losing power in Congress. They're gonna wanna put people on the record and see how they vote and see if it can be used for them or against them during their local elections. So your constituency politically, you know, I remember, you know, that the number of people in uniform were about a million in this country. And the, you know, the people who are actual veterans or would be what, more or less than that. And are they all in your constituency? I mean, if you were to wave a flag, so to speak, how many people would follow you down the street on this issue? I mean, people who would be beneficiaries. Absolutely, yeah, it's really interesting. I think we're gaining or winning more hearts and minds every day. In 2016, I was telling some high ranking military officers my idea of what I wanted to do. And, you know, it kind of got to pop to eyebrow and like marijuana, like they just weren't really getting it. But, you know, fast forward four years later and they start seeing some of the progress, seeing some of the stories veterans are sharing and some of the benefits are coming from it. Those same people are now coming to me saying, you guys had the right idea back then and, you know, we're in full support. I mean, I had a really good friend of mine who retires a high ranking officer. He just said, he's like, you know, I was meeting with some members of Congress and he's like, I said something I never thought I'd say and he's like, I stood up and he's like, guys I never thought I'd say this in a million years but we need more cannabis research. And he's like, we need to get ahold of my friend, Brian Buckley on California. You know, he opened a door for me to talk to some more politicians. So I think people are seeing it. People are very open to it. And definitely, you know, how long this war was from, you know, 2001 to recently. You just have a lot of Americans who served at one time or another who are dealing with a lot of issues. Again, like I say warfare is not what it once was. It's more of a 360 degree battlefield. There is no front line. So it really has impacts on everyone. And I just think, again, it's gaining more and more momentum and you're seeing that in Congress. And I think people are holding people to task for, you know, to represent them correctly. I mean, I saw it here in California in a local election in San Diego where you had some people who were adamantly against cannabis and what nothing to do with it and thought it was the devil's lettuce. They no longer have that seat. I mean, it's kind of democracy one on that one. Now, Brian, you're an amazing, you're an amazing credit to the Marine Corps. That's my first reaction. You carry that sense of excellence in what you were doing. And it sounds to me like you are the center, a founder, truly the CEO and leader of this organization. But what's the succession plan? You can't do it all alone. You can't do it forever. What happens after you? You know, really the end state for us is to get this into the VA. I would love nothing more to see this into the VA hospital and they just have it right there in the shop and the vet goes there with their script and says I need a gram of Granddaddy Purple or whatever it may be and they get it. You know, it definitely takes a village. I have an outstanding network of veterans I work with in particular a group called the Veterans Action Council where it's vets all around the country. We come together three days a week and we work on dealing with politicians. We review bills, we give our input. We also like to talk to veterans, see what some of their issues are and we hold roundtables. And you know, I think for me it's just kind of, I always want to work myself out of the job. I know there's going to come to a point where I've taken this as far as I can and it's going to have to kind of often run on its own and it's kind of like a kid. You're going to raise it and then eventually it's going to go to college and go off and do great things. So I just want to take this as far as I can take it and get it to the point where we make it federally legal then I'll gladly take a step aside and go find another problem to go solve and you know, just feel good at night knowing that veterans are taken care of. Right, I'm so glad we got you on the show and I'm so happy we had this discussion with you. It's really, it's a fabulous discussion and your organization is fabulous too. And we wish you well in all particulars. Thank you so much for coming on. Well, thank you sir. I appreciate it. It was a great time. Aloha.