 Good evening, my name is Jason Embry and I'm the Chair of the Future Forum Board. Thank you all for joining the Future Forum tonight for our conversation on legalizing marijuana, especially grateful that everyone came out in this less than ideal weather that we're having for getting out of the house. So thank you for being here. The Future Forum is an organization that brings together individuals with different backgrounds, experiences, and points of view to discuss local, statewide, and national topics that affect us. Our goal is to create civil, informed, and bipartisan discussion, which is needed now more than ever, perhaps. The Future Forum's events are made possible by our incredible members and sponsors, including the Jeff Eller Group, Carbock Brewing, Austin Wine Merchant, and Joe Cook's catering. So thank you very much to our sponsors. If you are not a member, I strongly encourage you to sign up before you leave. Members enjoy the best of what Future Forum has to offer, including first access to events and happy hours, networking opportunities, and benefits at the LBJ Presidential Library. Upcoming events include a conversation on the other side of homelessness on November 13th, and a member holiday happy hour on December 17th. After the new year, we'll cover the census and implications for Texas with the 2020 elections and the Texas primary. Looking forward to hearing from our guests today. Please keep in mind there will be time for questions at the end of the panel, so keep those in mind. And now I will turn it over to our moderator, Alex Samuels, political reporter for the Texas Tribune, who I especially wanna thank for being here good and early on what was a very busy news day for her organization. And so I'll turn it over to Alex to introduce our guests and moderate our discussion. Thank you. Okay, so I'll kinda get right to it so we can get to questions and whatnot. Sitting next to me is Jax Finkel, the executive director for Texas Normal, the Austin chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. She has been involved in cannabis law reform since 2005 and given hundreds of interviews, participated in many panel discussions and speaking engagements, including tonight, I'd like to add. She innovated the first ever cannabis-centric voter guide in 2012 and continues to prepare the Texas Normal Voters Guide for each election season. She created the curriculum and helps organize and execute several dozen regional advocacy trainings between 2015 and present. Next to her is Margaret Moore, who has elected DA in 2016. She is a former assistant DA, elected county attorney and county commissioner. And next to her is Yoko Miyashita, who serves as the general counsel at Leafley. She drives Leafley's position and policies on key compliance and government affairs issues to maintain and progress the company's reputation as a trusted and authoritative resource on cannabis. She also leads major transactional matters, intellectual property and litigation as Leafley continues to expand worldwide. Thank you all for being here. I'm so happy to have this panel. So I just kind of want to get a lay of the land. So where would y'all say we are right now? Are we as closer to all we're ever going to allow for medical cannabis in the state of Texas or do you guys think we're taking steps slowly in the state towards full-blown legalization? Don't tell the legislature, but yes, we are on our way. And I think that the hemp bill, whenever it became law, some of the complications that it has created for testing has kind of also paved the way to show the failed policy that we still have here in Texas. While our DA here in Travis County has some really great diversionary programs that it's not that way everywhere. And there are still some pretty hefty consequences for flower possession and even a small amount of concentrates of felony. But when we're talking about medical progress, which is what you started with, we did see progress this session. I do not think that's gonna be all that we get because it explicitly left out veterans and those who have PTSD as well as only making it available to those with terminal cancer. So there's some really glaring issues there. So I think there is a lot of work to be done and we're going to drag the legislature across that finish line at some point in the future. And it's up to civic engagement and the grassroots out there as to how far we can get, how quickly. I don't know that I can address where I think the legislature is acceptable. I know the votes aren't there now and that there was a large outcry. Some of you may have heard it when many of us in prosecution said that we were dismissing marijuana cases now that the hemp bill went into effect with a definition that made it impossible for us to prove our cases without a lab result that is presently unavailable to us. So when we all announced that, it was very clearly communicated to us that the legislature did not legalize marijuana and they expected us to do our job. And so I gather from that that we don't have leadership at the top level in this state that would get us there. But seeing where we are in my jurisdiction as far as on the enforcement level, I think the sentiment is there to legalize marijuana and I think it's time that we started that discussion very seriously. We absolutely see it just from the path. We've watched states go from illegal to recreational to medical to fully rec legal. And at each step, we see almost a doubling or tripling of user traffic. User interest increases at each step of those legalization milestones. And the other thing I'll say just looking at the polling numbers is, I've seen numbers north of 50% in terms of approval for recreational legalization and that's always a really good sign in terms of direction of where it's headed. And I'd also say just from a leafly perspective, this is one of our largest audiences. People are interested. They are very curious. They're really hungry for the information and education about cannabis. I was gonna ask Ms. Mori mentioned, the votes aren't there right now. So that being said, why should we have hope that Texas will legalize marijuana? I mean, we just barely got some version of a medical bill across the finish line. As Jack mentioned, it did have some holes in it and a due criminalization bill was shot down by the Senate. So why do you think we should have hope that legalization will be there someday down the line? I agree with Yoko that if you look at the arc of history in Texas, I'm old, okay? I'm 71 years old. So when I was a teenager, the first time I ever saw marijuana was in a courtroom where my dad was defending a guy who was going to, upon conviction, going to spend years in the penitentiary for a single joint. So in my day, a match, what we call a matchbox, for you young people, a matchbox, is this little bitty box that had matches in it. And that much marijuana would, you would spend up to life, I think, in the penitentiary at that time. So it was a very scary thing. Of course, then during the years that I was here at UT and the legislature lowered all of the marijuana possession down. And then there was a whole project to start pardoning folks who had those heavy sentences. So now here we are with the medical marijuana bill having passed. I think you have to look at the long arc of it and see where it's gonna end up. The other problem I see is that as jurisdictions around Texas legalize, then it puts even more pressure on Texas to go in that direction. And, Jax, given some of the difficulty with the law that passed earlier this year, I know you were following what happened with DPS. You had mentioned temp earlier. Do you think that the small steps we've taken towards medicinal have done more harm than good? I think that that's a really complicated question. And I think that both sides of that argument have a good reasoning for why they think that. However, I would say that as soon as marijuana started being grown in Texas legally, that that was a huge change. As soon as DPS has to come up with regulations on how we're gonna treat this plant and how we're going to grow it, that changes things. Now, can you say that perhaps the way the program was drafted was to create a stall tactic and make it difficult to access? Sure, we could say that. But it still is progress. So, you know, some people don't like incrementalism, but sometimes that's the only way you get things done. And if we don't continue to chip away at it, I don't think that we're gonna go from not having medical to retail adult use in one session, that's just not gonna happen. And we can see that through the top three leadership, you know, the AG, the Lieutenant Governor and the Governor and even the Speaker and how they have positioned themselves on legalization. Basically, everyone's excuse is, well, I support medical, but not legalization. They wanna be really, really specific about what type of marijuana they support. And it can be problematic, but whenever you have, you know, key Republican chairman signing on to civil penalties bills or signing on to medical cannabis bill, it changes the perception of who cannabis users are. And who supports cannabis. And that is where we have a lot of work to do and where we've made a really big change. The first time I ever went to a legislator's office to lobby for medical cannabis, I went with a veteran and the staffer laughed at them and said that they were only there to get high. And that galvanized me to want to say, oh, excuse me, lady, I don't think you know what you're talking about and keep coming back and keep educating them on this and bringing them along this process that we're in. Yoko, sorry, I didn't mean to, was there anything you wanted to say? Oh, no, I was just nodding along on the education and the storytelling because that I think is hugely compelling in terms of changing minds. There's not enough education out there, there's not enough data out there because this is federally illegal and those research dollars aren't there and federally funded organizations can't risk their federal funding. But once that starts to crack open, you can get that research data, you can tell these real human stories and how cannabis is helping people. I do think that has a snowball effect that leads to the outcome we're all looking for. Got it. So one of my last political questions for y'all is what change has to happen in order for this issue to advance forward in the legislature and are those changes realistic? Y'all better be registered to vote. It doesn't matter if you don't vote because in Texas, we don't have ballot initiative, we cannot collect signatures to get this on the ballot and have it approved. We are fully reliant on our Texas state representatives and our Texas state senators. So if you live in a staunchly Democrat or Republican district, you may be voting for maybe not the incumbent but have a good relationship with that incumbent so that they recognize that you're constituent, that you're actively engaged in the civic process and so that whenever you're at the Capitol during this session, they actually take the time to listen to you. So it's a lot about relationship building and reaching out to those that have the power to make change but at the same time, engaging at the local level with DAs, with your city council, they may not be able to change the law but they can pass resolutions which would prevent for example, the Austin city council is now debating if they should spend money on getting a machine that would be able to test the THC. Because they are being asked for it by APD but there is not strong will for that on Austin city council and that's because of a lot of work that advocates have done here locally. So in the two-year cycle, a lot of people think most of the work's done in the 140 days but the fact of the matter is most of the work is done during the other 18 months. I would agree with that that the work is done in between sessions. It's hard to get anything past if you haven't already worked on it hard during the interim. You know, obviously the only way you get something past is you get people elected to the legislature who are willing to vote for it but what I don't see happening yet and one of the reasons I was willing to come here tonight is to say that there are those of us in law enforcement who recognize a need for change particularly those of us in jurisdictions where our local folks who sit on juries and come down they don't want to convict people for marijuana. I only deal with felonies. So let me make that clear. I'm not dealing with possession of the small amounts of marijuana. At the felony level, what's driving my desire for this conversation to take place is one, while I bet most people in this room don't think you should be criminalized for using marijuana, it is a criminal enterprise to bring it here and distribute it and that criminal enterprise in our experience right now is attended with some fairly significant violence. We have murders that take place during what we call marijuana ripoffs and I would hope that by regulating and taxing this product we could cut down on that. I recognize it's complicated and we're gonna have to talk about a lot of details but when we have a case involving a larger amount of marijuana we often see other drugs and guns and sometimes very, very offensive conduct. So I'm concerned about that. There's that disconnect, right? And then the other thing is we have a legislature that's limiting our revenue and wouldn't it be better if we did regulate and tax this product and then dedicate those funds to education and drug treatment we're sadly lacking in those areas and it's gonna be harder and harder to fund those. So I think there are some very strong public policy reasons to discuss this openly and honestly and I think some of us in law enforcement need to step out and say this is a conversation whose time has come. And I'll get to the economic impacts in just a second. I wanna touch on the social impacts and what it might look like if we did legalize marijuana in the state of Texas. So when Representative Moody brought his decriminalization bill to the floor at that point it was more of a watered down version. I don't even know if you can call it decriminalization but one Republican lawmaker essentially went to the back mic and said this is a gateway drug and I think you could look at that term gateway in two ways in that context. One is the more probably traditional way of using the term which is if you use marijuana five years later you'll be using more basically harder drugs. The other way of looking at it is that the more we increase marijuana's medical use eventually that's gonna lead to decrim eventually that's going to lead to larger amounts of for decrim and then it's gonna lead to legalization in the state of Texas. I guess how would you each respond to the argument that marijuana is a gateway drug or that the more we lessen its penalties it's going to be this sort of slippery slope for Texas. Gateway drug to not having to use as many pharmaceuticals cool check gateway to that sounds good. Gateway drug to stress relief and mild euphoria okay check sounds good. So there I mean there's a lot of things that people wanna say it's a gateway drug to and to elicit harder drugs is not really substantiated and we can see that is the number of cannabis users is gonna be higher than the number of other elicit drug users and that would not be the case if it was leading to more right. And so I think that people are going to use it to incite fear in certain way in certain communities and certain viewpoints they use that as a fear tactic and it's up to us to make sure that we're educating on what is the reality. You know debunking the actual gateway theory and if we're talking about medical use talking about how it's actually a gateway to health for a lot of people and talk about how the criminalization and the penalties associated actually is the gateway to those people continuing to be in the system because this is someone who arguably you know none of these felony compounded accounts that we're talking about simple possession here you know these are people who are probably just living their everyday life and then they get booked and they get sent to jail and you know they may not have known criminals before but they sure do now. So I think that the way that we use the term gateway that they are putting the wrong spin on it and so it's up to us to bring a light to that. And I was just to follow up how do you bring a light to that when you have some lawmakers who are just so stuck in feeling that you know this is a gateway drug regardless of whether that is a true statement. How do you break through to them? Some people are gonna believe what they wanna believe no matter what facts and figures you put in front of them. So what you first have to decide is in my opinion is this person moveable on this topic? If it's just cause I think that's the way it is then you're not going to change their mind. If they're willing to give you an actual reasoning behind it you can then take it research that reason come up with numbers facts and figures and then you can kind of help them unpack that. So I think you're not gonna change everyone's mind that you're talking about. That's I don't think possible and it's not possible in many different types of political conversations. So it's finding people that are moveable and what that point is for them so that you can help them be more open to it. Got it. Did you two wanna add anything? Sorry, I don't mean to put you guys on the spot. No, I would just add educate everyone around that person so they do have the facts and that is our mission at Leafley in terms of what I would emphasize on the gateway issue or the fears around this cannabis is hugely complex and I think there is a responsible way to consume this but it only comes with the education and we really put that emphasis on really understanding the plant, understanding its potential effects, understanding who it might be right for and who it may not be. A good thing to try and let people make those informed choices but in the absence of that information in the absence of education in the absence of data you can't expect anyone to make rational decisions. You know it seems to me that and I'm not a social scientist but it seems to me we have confronted these exact same issues with things like tobacco and alcohol and we ought to take some lessons from that history about it. You know we're gonna face a lot of issues around the use of cannabis but we face a lot of issues around the use of other substances that are legal and you know for me it's chocolate I don't know why they won't outlaw that. But might help me. But I'm just saying this is something we have to work through together because when I talk to people who are affected by these laws it often comes down to an addiction issue and that addiction issue is gonna be there anyway. So I think we haven't pivoted to a full look at all of this from the public health standpoint but we did that with the cigarette, with tobacco usage and we struggle with it in criminal justice right now with the improper use of alcohol or conduct that occurs when you are under the influence of alcohol so I don't see it as any much different from that. And just going off that, so if we were to legalize marijuana in the state of Texas is there a legal smoking age that we would have? Would that be different from the legal age to buy cigarettes and how would that be enforced in y'all's minds in the state of Texas? Well I will tell you that I would support a legal age because we currently are struggling with the use of THC in our schools and it's not a good thing and we don't want to criminalize those kids but put them in the juvenile system so we're struggling with it but I do think that just like cigarettes and alcohol we should be putting tools in our hands to have kids grow up healthy. I also think, surprise, there's an illicit market for cannabis here and there are no ID checks happening. So if you want to talk about diversion from youth I'm gonna go with a regulated system where you can't actually get into the store, you can't actually make a purchase unless an ID is checked and I would much rather trust that system than dealers don't check IDs. It happens with alcohol, we deal with that. But if we did have some ID check in place, I mean is there an age that y'all are comfortable with? Is it 18, 21, is it something else? There's a lot of conversation I think to be had around it. Some people say that you should wait until your brain is done developing around the age of 25 and that could be... Is that when it happens? Allegedly, it's arguable. I think my sons are behind schedule. So there's some people that think that that would be an appropriate age. Some people say 21 because that's when you could have alcohol. Some people say 18 because that's the smoking age or was the smoking age I should say. The Texas legislature actually changed tobacco smoking age to 21. So in Texas, just based on that information I would assume that they would pick the age of 21. I don't have a real strong preference on it as to which it should be. If you're an adult, you're an adult and you should be able to make adult decisions. But 21 is something that may make people more comfortable. As you said, youth are using it. We see mostly out of the people that are arrested about 60% are youth. And so creating the need for an ID will affect that in some way, but we do have to also, as you said, think about how are we going to help people who are under whatever age it ends up being instead of capturing them into the criminal justice system. I think Kim Og and Houston has a great way of putting it. I just make them take a critical thinking class. Just like some critical thinking might help with that. So I think it's a good conversation to have. And I think if I had to make a guess on what Texas ultimately would end up doing, I would probably say they would go with the age of 21. But there is a healthy debate to be had about that. What about driving well high? Is that something we can address? Do we have the technology for that? I'm not an expert on that. I have heard presentations about prosecutors from states where it's legal and discussing the complications of testing for the presence of marijuana. It's very different than testing for alcohol. It clearly presents its own issues. Law enforcement will have to adapt to deal with that. And that's one of the things, this isn't something you can flip a switch and then just say, okay, now we're doing it. I think a lot of some study needs to go in it. But if we don't start a reasoned examination of what's the best way to move it towards this goal, we're just avoiding what's gonna have to happen. And there's mixed science about per se values and per se limits and what it should be based on person's body makeup and how recently they consumed it, et cetera, et cetera. So what I actually took away from a triple A drug impact conference that I went to a couple years ago was that they were really pushing for people to look for signs of intoxication. So doing roadside testing, excuse me, as opposed to doing blood testing or breathalyzers or something like that, just checking for impairment. Because driving while impaired is a charge. You don't have to say driving while under the influence of marijuana. You just need to prove that someone shouldn't have been driving as they were driving. So a simple roadside test would be able to, I think, remedy that. And Yoko, I wanna ask you, how have issues like the vaping crisis maybe affected how we discussed marijuana legalization? The what, I'm sorry. The vaping crisis. Oh, vaping, oh. Wow, I wanna take that apart in so many different ways. But let's start with, A, let's start with the facts in the vaping crisis. And when we talk about this, we have to distinguish here between nicotine vaping and THC vaping. And then even within THC vaping, illicit and legalized THC vaping. So I think so many issues are being conflated here. And you can just look to the state bans. My home state Washington just banned flavored nicotine. But all of these deaths and the majority of the incidents in the vaping crisis are arising from illicit carts purchased on the street. So you've got these legislative and emergency rules being put in place that aren't actually addressing the underlying harm. So I think that's an issue. And if you think about whether, if this starts getting used as a reason not to legalize, I think we're really missing the point here because this danger is coming from the illicit cart THC market. The best thing you can do because consumers aren't going to stop looking for this is to get this into a regulated market to get the upfront disclosures of additives that we think are causing some of these deaths. So I don't know how to answer your question because it could go in so many different ways, but I just want to make sure we're clear on what the issues and the causes are before we start talking about how that should impact regulation and legalization. I think it's allowing, so I think this differentiation is really important that we're talking about specifically illicit THC cartridges usually that are causing the problem. And it's usually being shipped in from somewhere else to Texas inside of the United States. So this isn't necessarily coming across the Southern border, right? And they're products that people are not able to sell in the legal states because they don't pass the testing. And so they can bring them over here and sell them illicitly. Illicitly, excuse me. So if there wasn't a black market, they wouldn't be able to ditch all of this bad product into the black market and be hurting people. There would be truth in labeling that would be required. So there would be the ability to charge these people with endangering the health of people. There would also be basic types of testing being done to make sure that it doesn't have pesticides or other adulterants in it because as we're learning pesticides, especially mycobutinol when it hits 401 degrees, it turns into cyanide. And then you're inhaling cyanide and people are getting chemical burns on their lungs is what a lot of these problems are. So it's the illicit market and the black market that is causing the problem. It's not the white market in these other states. In fact, we actually see if you're getting legal cartridges, there are very few that are testing poorly or testing with additives or adulterants. So I think that as a health protection, making it available to people over 18 or 21 in Texas is going to mean that they can go and get a cartridge and if it has a negative side effect, they have recourse. And it would be much less likely for it to have a negative side effect. I wanna get to the economic benefits and then close with a few things before we get to audience questions. So I think it was you, Ms. Moore, who had brought up the fact that if we legalize marijuana and tax it, we could maybe use that money to go toward education. Crack to me if I'm complaining your words there. No, you are. But thank you. But are there any other economic benefits you all see, specifically in the state of Texas, as far as legalizing marijuana and what that could do for us from a business standpoint? Well, I'll take the first swing at this. I mean, ancillary businesses as well. I mean, we've talked a lot about getting a license to grow and then you're manufacturing and then you're distributing, but who's getting, who's doing the lighting inside of these grows or the ventilation, who's running security at the dispensaries. So I think that there's a lot of ancillary business growth that can happen there as well. As the tax benefits, we can see more employment happening. Potentially, I mean, we've already got really low unemployment, but wouldn't be great if it was zero. And I think that there's a lot of other things that could be mentioned as well, but I think that the other thing that I'd like to bring up and just as a tangent is when you have a medical cannabis program that has a qualified condition list, by essence, you're picking winners and losers. And so when you have a retail adult use market that these patients that are maybe not covered by the program could access, then you actually continue to see these opioid overdoses reduced. You see Medicare Part D costs going down. And so I think it's really important to also not just think about it as like people are wanting to go out to the bar and have a drink or consume some cannabis or whatever, but also it covers all the people that are maybe left behind by a medical program and gives them the ability to have safe, consistent, and hopefully affordable access. And, oh, sorry. I'm just gonna let her comment on business. The economic part of she. Jobs, like you do a lot of research. Jobs, first and foremost. But I also think understand that a lot of states go into this thinking this is going to be a massive boom. The tax revenues are gonna be huge. This is the next gold rush for our state. And you have to just be a little bit more temperate about that. And California is a great example where they had anticipated, I think, a billion dollars in tax revenues just in the first year. But this process is slow and painstaking. Everything from getting your licenses going, your sourcing up and running, your regulatory regime, it takes time, in which case it's going to take time for these markets to grow. So I think people tend to come to the conclusion that, oh, legalization didn't work. Look, we didn't hit the tax revenues we thought we would. But that's actually a real, this is how it works. It takes time to build all of this infrastructure to put a legal regime in place. It's not an indication that legalization is not working. The other thing is, until you have some movement on the federal side, you've got 280E on the tax side, which essentially prohibits marijuana related businesses from deducting their expenses, which means they're paying massive federal income tax on their state legal businesses. I think that's an issue. So. Yeah. I do think that that, it's clear to me that you start a conversation now and maybe 10 years from now, you see, if everything worked out, but didn't main pass their bill in like 16 and they still, they're just. I just started March, 2020. Yeah. I mean, sales going. And also, in these other states, it's, there's a sort of a local option process, right? Where a community can either opt in or out in some states. Yeah, so, you know, I wouldn't be surprised to see something like that in Texas because of the vast differences between certain, you know, Travis County and. There are still dry counties in Texas. Yeah. Where they're like, no, you can't get beer here. You gotta go drive over there. Right. And I, you know, with all of that, that has to be worked out and envisioned and then we can learn from other states, go through all of that study. And it's, it's, that's why we need to be having the conversation in a realistic way. And I don't think that every state as it legalizes is gonna be the next Colorado and get all the same, you know, boom and money the first time around that Colorado did. You know, we're gonna be like X number in line surrounded by people who potentially have also retail adult use. So it, while we are a huge market and I think it'll be really great for our economy, I think we do again have to be tempered realizing like we're not the first. We're not gonna be like super cannabis tourism, you know, coming into Texas. And I would love that though. Could you think of the marketing programs behind that? You already have a lot of tourism here. Now it's ACL with the cannabis booth over there. That'd be awesome. Yeah, I have about two more questions for y'all. And then I think we'll flip it over to audience questions. So Governor Greg Abbott has previously said that lawmakers will not approve legislation that would legalize marijuana. So what does that political reality mean for the potential economic benefits of legalization and the cannabis industry at large? I'm sorry, I don't, because Governor Abbott made that comment, what effect does his comment have? Just, you know, the fact that the governor of Texas is not going to sign a bill, even if I assume it makes it past the House and Senate, what does that mean for Texas? Well, I think by the time that a governor is in the position of having to sign such a bill, a lot of societal attitudes have to change to get the votes and then who knows who'll be governor by then. I'm not, I'm just saying it's that, I believe that accurately reflects the attitude of the Texas legislature now and accurately reflects much of law enforcement in Texas. I've been at the meetings, I know how they feel that's, you know, they're still very adamant. Most of the sheriffs, for instance, are adamantly opposed. If you talk to police chiefs, there are very few that would say they're for it. So I mean, we've got a long way to go and it's not just the governor's building that from the ground up as Jack's is talking about to begin that transformation and thinking. I mean, the governor said he wouldn't sign a medical marijuana bill. And look, we have medical marijuana. We can argue about if it's a good program or not. That's a hefty debate to have there. But he said he wouldn't sign it and look, he signed it. You know, and then hemp passed unanimously out of both of the houses and has continued to move forward. So I think that people make statements, political pressure is applied, and they may change those statements or they may not depending on how they react to that pressure. Did you? Just as an observer, you know, all of the data and what we read about Texas and the changing demographic and the changing politics, I just can't wait to see what the next five years looks like. And that's my next question. Where do you all feel like we'll be in the next, although 10 years? We can just go in line. I don't know if anyone's. I think that in the next cycle, depending on how, let me preface my predictions here, okay, depending on how the hemp program continues to roll out and how people embrace or push away the idea of testing THC percentages, I think that we're gonna see a robust change in small amounts, usually four ounces or less. A lot of times people have been talking about an ounce or less, two ounce or less, but statutorily I believe it's four ounces or less in the code. It's misdemeanor. It's a misdemeanor. So I think that there's gonna be a robust conversation about that in the next cycle as well as expansion of the medical program. I think that the biggest hurdle in the medical program, I mean clearly conditions, but actually THC levels. So I think we'll see those incrementally climb. Ultimately we'd like to see no arbitrary cap. And as Senator Dondon Camel likes to say, we should be doing this by degree and not decree. So I'd like to see maybe her leadership moving us towards more of a doctor's decide type of conversation. But long term as we kind of move forward, I think it is realistic that within the next 10 years that there could be the start of a retail adult use market. I would like to have it be much sooner, but I think that that all depends on this changing political climate. There's a lot of incumbents that are not running for reelection. Who are gonna take their spots? What are their positions gonna be on this? And so I think that just my prediction alone isn't going to move it forward. It's gonna be the work that we do. And so hopefully it's not 10 years. Hopefully we can do it in half that time. That would be ideal. I think that's a pretty fair assessment. The politics are not there right now, but change is taking place and the criminalization of particularly possession cases is very unpopular in the urban locations in Texas for sure. So we're struggling. We in law enforcement, I think those of us prosecutors that recognize this, we look for how we can divert people out of the system, how we can handle these cases a different way and still deal with the reality that it's a criminal enterprise right now. It is not legal and so criminals are involved and we still have to deal with that. Don't think I can really speak to what'll happen here, but I can tell you on the federal side, I actually do predict within 10 years we'll be federally legal. And I think it just opens the door for some super interesting ways of how will cannabis be regulated at that point. And I spend a lot of time sort of staring at my belly button thinking about quasi recreational, quasi medical. How does the FDA come in and try to regulate this? Former commissioner of the FDA just came out and said marijuana should be regulated by the FDA with guidelines and just start to think about that. What does that mean for access? What does that mean for markets? How do we go forward from there? Don't know, but we have 10 years. And I think it's also, even once you have retail adult use, there's still going to be things like consumption lounges, home grow, all of these types of conversations that people are gonna still want to continue to have because no bill is perfect, no program is perfect when it first rolls out. And so there is going to continue to be some kind of advocacy on continuing to push that line as we see in other states. Well, now we can all legally use this as an adult, but there's no place for us to consume it. So how will we address that? Talking about how perhaps it could be therapeutic for people to home grow or people with low income should not necessarily be excluded from being able to have access to cannabis. So there will be other conversations to be had once it happens and I really love hearing you say that it's gonna happen in 10 years federally. I'm holding you to it. Yeah, we'll be looking for you. I think that was it for me. I'd love to get some audience questions. Not sure how many we will have time for, but the mic is up. This is for... Hi. I'm David Bass with Texas Veterans for Medical Marijuana and every legislative session after all the bills have been filed, the law enforcement organizations have a big giant press conference at the Capitol and announce all the horrible things that will happen in Texas if these bills are passed. And then when the bills are heard in front of the committee, the law enforcement organizations show up again in uniform on department time to testify against each and every bill. So my question of you is, can you give us a hint if you have one? Is there any way we can move the law enforcement organizations in Texas to at least make some move to reform marijuana law in the state of Texas? I don't see that in the law enforcement organizations that I'm familiar with. I do know there are individual officers who probably share every opinion in this room, but we're still caught in this problem that when it is illegal, we're dealing with illegal activity. So in the overall organizations, I've been in several meetings where most of the law enforcement people in Texas genuinely believe that it is not a good idea to legalize marijuana. They do believe that it leads to the trafficking of other drugs, whether they're right or wrong, they're firmly entrenched in that thinking. But young people grow up and become police officers with different views than the people before them. So attitudes change. Just right now, the leadership of law enforcement in Texas I think is pretty entrenched against the legalization right now. I think it's important that you mentioned that it's the executive organizations. I don't think that it's the rank and file member. A lot of times it's- You see, you hear different opinions when you just talk to them candidly, but the leadership, it's not moving right now. And I think that sometimes the rank and file don't really necessarily know that leadership is going up and advocating against medical marijuana for them at the Capitol. I think that that's maybe not known. And something that's maybe a secondary topic is also addressing the civil asset forfeiture component of it. That creates, it's a budgetary item. And as sheriffs and police chiefs, they oversee the budgets. And so talking about, actually sheriff A.J. Lauderbeck was talking about how maybe civil asset forfeiture money should be taken away from the police department and funneled toward mental health. Hey, that sounds all right, I guess. How about we just stop seizing things frivolously? Like let's at least have a conviction along with it, right? That's not required. Well, we can debate that part of it because I'm intimately familiar with that. But I don't think asset forfeiture is driving this. I think these people genuinely believe that it's not, it's their attitude about marijuana is that it is a criminal enterprise. Well, so we've got to deal with that. And I think as younger people grow up and become police, you'll see changes, but right now they're not, that attitude hadn't, I was actually surprised at how interest it still is. Would you say something about CBD and how fast it's rolled out and what impact it might have on the whole issue of recreation or liberalization of medical marijuana plays? CBD. Who knows what CBD is? Raise your hand. All right. Look at all these people. If you don't know what CBD is, raise your hand. Go to their local drug store and buy it. So I see one or two hands raised that they don't know what CBD is. So the cannabis plant has different active ingredients inside of it called cannabinoids. They also have terpenes and flavonoids, but cannabinoids have, there are several hundred of them. The most popular ones being CBD and THC. CBD is considered non-psychoactive and has a lot of anti-inflammation properties, a lot of health properties. And so I think what you're specifically talking about is the hemp bill, which will allow for hemp to be grown in Texas and has made it where 0.3% THC or less hemp products are legally available and they will soon also be manufactured in Texas. So that definitely has impacted the public's perception. I feel like because of not doing charges, some of the police have kind of pushed back, no, we need to be charging, whereas other people are kind of like, oh, well, yeah, we were charging people for this because people were being arrested for CBD oil because it had trace amount of THC. Not. Not in Travis County. No. It's been a legally gray area for quite some time where people have said hemp is legal in all 50 states and it has been available in many of those states. The legality behind it was questionable until recently. And so what I would say to anyone who's purchasing CBD at this point in time because there is no truth in labeling regulations yet in Texas is that do your due diligence as a consumer to research what that company is about, how long have they been around, take a look at their certificate of authenticity to make sure that what you are getting in the bottle is what the label says. So that would be my most important takeaway on CBD right now. So my question is for the district attorney. This is not fair, but good. So we've know that under four ounces is a misdemeanor for Travis County. What about when somebody gets pulled over for standard traffic violation and they're caught with a THC cartridge that weighs less than one gram, but yet it's still a second degree felony possession of controlled substance. We have put into place policies about those, particularly, I mean, first offenders with that in that typically are offered a very easy way to a dismissal, which then you can later expunge that arrest. So we look at the circumstances, but what you're describing is we're deflecting through a DA diversion, we call it diversion light. It should tell you a little something about it, but. Is that your policy? It is. What we look at, when we get into those kinds of cases, and we do have them, it's when it's a large amount and it's clear that these are gonna be resold and we have to do something about that. But right now I'm just gonna tell you, we can talk about the machine part of it, but those scenarios of the large amounts being shipped in here and being resold is really what is giving me the biggest heartburn right now because we can't get the test done. So we're working with law enforcement to say, hey, when we've got that situation, let's talk about how we're gonna get this done and how important it is to your enforcement effort to keep your public safety side of this address. So yes, APD is asking for a machine and it would test for the THC concentration, but the machine they have now already can do that, but we also use that, I said we also get lab tests from that machine for meth, K2, which is a major problem and we have to test it through that machine and so there's a redundancy issued there too, not just to test marijuana, which is really, frankly, a less, a much lower priority than those other drugs. My question's for Yoko in the States where it, yeah, I got you Margaret, I'm not gonna ask you questions. In the States where it has been legalized recreationally, have y'all noticed a common thread or a tipping point that you typically see before that point or has it kind of been a case-by-case situation? What do you mean by tipping point? Like is there a common event that happens or is it once it medically is legalized, do you tend to see it? Oh, the tipping point to get it passed. We go basically looking at what is the public approval and once you start tipping north of 55%, the state initiatives, particularly in states that have that mechanism actually go out and you have a high favorability of that passing. You also then have states like Illinois who actually went out ahead of it and said, you know what, we know the public approval is there, we're gonna go out ahead of this and their statute is being held up as the best written cannabis statute to date. And you see that happening in other states where some legislatures have sort of put the foot forward before popular initiatives come to the table. And I think Maryland and Connecticut, they were looking at certain measures to that effect. And just so you all know, we've got 11 states right now are fully rec legal plus DC, although DC can't have stores. What? Farmers markets? DC? They do pop-ups in DC is actually how they end up doing it because I guess DC has to be approved through Congress. Through Congressional? Yeah. Correct. And the Senate has blocked DC actually being able to support its own market. So basically what you see is people being like, hey, buy this sticker for $60 and you get an eighth marijuana with it. So it's like a gift add-on, you don't buy it, you can't buy it, it's like a gift thing. And so it's created this whole kind of pop-up vending culture. Just kidding. So I'd like to focus in on what you were talking about as far as the criminalization of marijuana and we can pull up any state demographics and we can see this proportionately as always been people of color who have been on the criminalization part of it. I'm more interested in as we begin to legalize it through the various states and territories, where is the opportunity for those people of color who were on the wrong side of the law to be on the right side of the law and making profit or getting in on it financially as well. I see you see a number of states coming up with their social equity programs as part of their legalization statutes. You know, Washington earlier state, we just announced our social equity program, bigger part of California. I've had conversations, for example, with the Attorney General of DC who said, do not come in lobby or come and talk to me about your organization unless you've got a social equity component. And just for those who aren't aware, these are actual programs where they've said, we're gonna take our state dollars that are generated out of this and either we're gonna invest them back into the communities that have been disproportionately impacted by the war on drugs and or ensure that when we go out to license and issue these licenses, we're taking that into effect and making sure those licenses are going back into the communities impacted so that you don't walk away with a situation where the communities that have paid the price on the path to legalization are left out in the economic benefits of it. I think it's early and we don't know yet what the outcome is and I'm sure there will be learnings but I think it's a really interesting aspect of legalization. I think there's a great debate also ongoing as to whether it works or doesn't work, what's missing, what are some of the, you're always gonna find people who are trying to beat the system and manipulate it but I think you have to, you're gonna have that in any situation so really start to focus on what's actually happening. Is it having the desired impact, tracking, success and failures and figuring out how to adjust as we go? And in Texas, they've actually written into the statute. If you've been charged with certain charges in the last 10 years, you actually, you can't apply for a license, you can't be an employee so we're not seeing those things in Texas yet and in fact during this session, the Texas Police Chiefs Association held a press conference at the Capitol. You might have been there and someone was asking them about the ACLU study and the guy straight up said that ACLU wasn't reputable and he didn't really believe their numbers so we have some work to do in Texas on that and I think that trying to have inclusive diverse groups and bringing up the conversation point as much as we can, I know Brian brought it up at the hemp consumable feedback that we gave to dishes recently making sure that it's being considered so it is a big conversation point that we have to have in Texas and we're not there yet with the way that the laws are currently written. There is no social equity. In fact, if you have charges, you are actively excluded so this is an important conversation that we all need to have moving forward. Question and then we encourage you to continue talking during the reception. Hello everyone, my name is Brian A.M. Williams, I'm the Brian Jax was talking about. Hey there. So I run a technology company called Wayne and Reed so my question surrounds tech and the state's responsibility in ensuring that what comes into and what's produced in Texas is safe for Texas consumers. Jax alluded to it earlier with knowing what's on the label and in the product. My question is for the whole panel, what do you believe is the state's responsibility to ensure that whatever is grown or whatever comes into Texas is properly identified, understood and able to be verified by any customer who uses it. Colorado uses a seed to sale and it's kind of shady. California has their system and it's also kind of back and forth but Texas has an opportunity to create something ground up or something innovative that will likely, I would say echo to the country given Texas' size. So to boil my question down to a point, it would be how will Texas take the burgeoning industry that we know is coming that it's as safe as possible and be a leader in that space to ensure that we can kind of be the stalwart and be the first person, well, first state to kind of do it well and do it right. So how can Texas make sure that Texans are safe as we legalize with CBD and THC products? There's a lot of people shopping and a lot of different products to track this and I think that you're right that we're seeing a lot of holes in other systems. One interesting concept that I heard about, I don't know if it's fiscally viable was actually tracking the chemical makeup of the plant and it's kind of like a thumbprint and so they can just check the thumbprint and if it matches, then you're good all the way through seed to sale. So it's difficult to say what the winner will be because the state only has so much money to spend on it, right? And so it may not be the perfect system. So then I think it's also, what we need to talk about is how can businesses proactively create these types of systems within themselves or within associations so that the government doesn't come down and create overburdened some regulation. I wouldn't wanna see something that, hamstrung the businesses, but I also wanna make sure that consumers are absolutely protected in the product that they're getting. So I think that the actual final decision is probably something that is not really out there yet and we've got some time to see how it develops over at least the next year and a half. I would hope that all of that interim work we're talking about and then there'll be a number of interms would address exactly that. I mean, we've got a, that would have to be a top priority that the product be traceable and safe and what it says it is on the label. I'm gonna start at the exact opposite end and I'm gonna start with the customers and the consumers and making sure they're educated so they can hold this system accountable so they need to understand that packaging and labeling is important. They need to understand what testing they wanna see. They need to know that pesticides, contaminants, and additives are not good for them because if your customers are that aware and are demanding that, the market will follow in the solutions. Y'all are a bunch of smart people. You build a lot of businesses. You're gonna build the businesses that serve those customers. Good point. I think that was it. If everyone wants to give it up for our panelists.