 I think I'm suffering fatigue. Did I say before that Mike Gray wrote the New Jim Crow? Well, you know who wrote the New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander. Another part of my job up here is I'm supposed to tell you who these awards are named after. Like when I said Andrew Weil, most of you know him, right? As the, you know, the granddaddy of Integrative Medicine in America today. But the reason the awards named after him was because of those remarkable books he wrote. The Natural Mind, Chocolate Timorphine, The Marriage of the Sun and the Moon, the many articles, the breakthrough research and thinking, that's why we named the Drug Education Award after him. And the Linda Smith Award. I mean Alfred Linda Smith, he was the first prominent academic in America to challenge conventional thinking about drugs and drug policy. He taught at Indiana University for decades, was a prominent sociologist. He was persecuted by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, but he wrote classic books and articles to fight the establishment with his academic scholarship. When I first created the Center, Linda Smith Center, I said that's who this thing has to be named after because of the quality of his work. Now the next award is named after Robert Randall. We sometimes think of medical marijuana as beginning in 1990s with California, the ballot initiative, but in fact it really began in some respects politically with Bob Randall. He was the guy who went to court, sued the federal government, said I need marijuana as my medicine and won the right for the federal government to supply him with his medical marijuana. Right, that the University of Mississippi Farm, the government runs should supply it. So he fought that out, he helped build this movement, he died prematurely, but the award for citizen activism and citizen action, which is far and away the most competitive award we give out because there's such a remarkably, remarkable number of talented people and we typically give it to more than one person. And this year it's gonna be to two people, the two are Steph Shear, the head of Americans for Safe Access, and Lorenzo Jones from A Better Way. So I'm gonna ask first my colleague Amanda Ryman, one of the leading experts about marijuana in America to present this award to Steph. Good evening everyone. So I'm gonna knock this over, there we go. So I am absolutely honored and actually very humbled to present this award tonight to the executive director of Americans for Safe Access, Steph Shear. So even though Steph is probably most known for her work with medical cannabis, her fingerprints can be seen all over drug policy reform. And whether that's training new activists and teaching them how to have a voice in this movement or working with organizations like Law Enforcement Against Prohibition to help shape their mission and help them achieve what they want to achieve, she has done so much for so many. But her biggest imprint has been in the lives of the millions. And I'm not underestimating when I say millions of people, of patients who needed someone to advocate on their behalf. And she took that charge over 10 years ago and has not stopped no matter who legalizes or what happens with the industry, she has one goal and that is to provide access to safe medicine for patients who need it. So I'm gonna bring Steph up here, but one last thing I wanna say and not to be crass, but in a movement full of men, she has the biggest balls of anyone I've ever met. Steph Shear, ladies and gentlemen. I'm really honored and a little speechless, which I know you guys aren't used to. This means a lot to me. I came from the global justice movement and I started Americans for Safe Access as a patient. I didn't envision my life here. I had a neck injury and found out that my kidneys can't process Ibuprofen and medical cannabis saved my life and means that I get to live a pretty normal life except for now I'm really busy with the fact that my medicine is illegal and as executive director of Americans for Safe Access, I still live as a criminal. I live in Washington DC and my condition doesn't qualify and it's a huge responsibility to represent such a huge portion of the US population who don't have voices that have to live with stigma and discrimination and don't have the privilege to stand up and say I need this medicine. I luckily don't have children or a house or things that I would lose that would prevent millions from being able to speak the way that I get to speak. But being a part of the drug policy movement has been very amazing. I just wanna say when I first started working in this movement, there weren't a lot of women around in positions and organizations and I just really want to applaud Drug Policy Alliance that has so many women on their staff and I think we can all see the effect of having so many women on a staff, right? Can we have a little applause for that? But when this became my medicine, I wasn't a policy expert about drug policy reform and I had to make these phone calls to Ethan and others and say so this should just be legal, right? Like there's medical evidence, what's wrong? And I think my plan was to do this in two years, right? 11 years later. But I've had the honor to work with just amazing people and I'm so moved by a movement that is willing to meet the consumers and the users where they are that are willing to take a snapshot of this country and realize that these are true human rights violations that are happening everyday and really because of at this point, corporate interests and racism and the work that you all do is just phenomenal. I love this conference. I walk away so inspired and humbled by the conversations we have in the halls and all of the panels and I just want to say that there are so many amazing people in this room that helped me get here. Whitney Taylor has been an amazing advisor of mine. Mickey Norris, Mary Lynn Mather, which is like one of the only women in medical cannabis for the longest time. And I just want to say that at the end of the day, we're all fighting for a day where we don't have to be embarrassed by what makes us well, what makes us happy and what makes us free. So thank you so much. Thank you.