 This is St. Tech, Hawaii. Community matters here. I'm Marcia Joiner, and this is Cannabis Chronicles, a 10,000-year odyssey. So tell me, Muse, that plant of many resources which wonders far and wide the ancient plant of food, fuel, fiber, cultivated from millennial. As we venture through 10,000 years, we will explore and discover the plant in which cannabis derives. The many uses of the plant, hemp, cannabis, ashes, cannabis and religion, cannabis medicine, and cannabis, dear old Uncle Sam, and so our odyssey begins. Today our odyssey is not long ago and far away. It is right here with us. And to talk about the very beginning of this journey into cannabis in Hawaii, I have asked my dear friend Scott Foster to join us because he will tell us all about his business is about managing public opinion. So, ta-da, Scott. Now, aloha Scott. Thank you so much for being there. Thank you for being my friend. Thanks for having me on your show. I feel so wealthy. Just the wealthiest person in the whole world to have such wonderful friends. And as everybody knows that watches, I only talk to my friends. I only talk to them. We don't need to talk to other people. Yeah, we only need to talk. Now, when I met Scott, it was a rather gloomy time in his life. His wife had cancer and we were sitting on a bench at the beach and that's how we started talking. And thus our relationship began. And he'll tie all this together on why we're talking about Lenny. So, again, welcome, Scott. Thank you so much. So, tell us about Lenny and how that led to this. Lenny, Lynn Ellen Ryan, my wife. I was one of the fortunate people who married their soulmate. And we were best friends and had a brief marriage because we were roommates for several years prior to marrying. And we were going to travel the world together. She was with Northwest Airlines, now Delta. And every time she got a little extra money, Lenny was off to see the world somewhere. So, my favorite story about Lenny was when she said, Scott, where do you want to go on a honeymoon? And I said, Lenny, I want to go to St. Petersburg. And she said, all the places in the world we could go, do you want to go to Florida? And I said, no, Lenny, Russia. And she loved that because she had been to Russia but she wanted to go back and do the rural thing. Anyway, Lenny was diagnosed just actually weeks after we officially married with what turned out to be terminal cancer. And we went through the whole thing. I was there to support her in whatever she wanted to do. And major surgery, chemo, radiation, atomic splinter, metal splinter implants in the bone marrow. But it metastasized into her bone and it was going to be the worst. Plus, she couldn't eat because she's had so much removed. Anyway, why I'm telling you all this is the heavy meds that we had. And I mean, we had liquid at home. We had liquid delotted, liquid at a van. Started out with, well, just the strongest painkiller drugs you could get. And what we found was that those heavy pharmaceuticals took care of the pain, but we could back off on those heavy duty IV stuff if she smoked medical marijuana. I'm still calling it marijuana. Cannabis. Cannabis, yes. In this world, since they've changed the law every place, it's now cannabis. That fixed, I'm fond of saying, fixed her head. So the combination, the very careful balance of the pharmaceuticals and the medical marijuana, the term is titrate. When you self-administer drugs and how much of the drug you take, that's called titrating. Since Lenny could smoke it and titrate it herself, she had, I'm going to say, as good a death as anyone could possibly have, watching basketball on television the day before she went into a coma and passed. And I, because I was her caregiver at home, I could keep this balance. Because I was there every 10 minutes, I was going in and checking on her. And she died. She passed in our apartment in her own bed. So it works. And that was the first medical application that I began to really appreciate the herb for what it is now. So then when did you start this movement to begin to get into this movement of you see that it works, you understand what she was going through and how this helped? So then what happened? Well, kind of a series of coincidences. I had met a group of very sophisticated, highly educated people during the AIDS pandemic when I was working on HIV issues, public education. And I worked with Pam Lictie, which is now head of the Drug Policy Forum of Hawaii, a very capable advocate, very brilliant woman, very active in the ACLU, helped us as you know, has medical aid in dying. And she and I and a group of people passed needle exchange in I think the late 80s, early 90s. Hawaii was the first state, I believe, in the nation to pass a needle exchange program. Well, why needle exchange? First of all, that was revolutionary. That you were going to give clean needles to IV drug users for dirty needles. The first pushback was enormous. But we were finally able to convince the public in the legislature that that would cut down on IV transmission by people reusing needles and passing on hepatitis, AIDS of course, and all the other horrible diseases that go through blood products. So Dr. Donald Topping at the University of Hawaii, who worked with Pam Lictie, created the Drug Policy Forum of Hawaii out of nowhere one morning. Don Topping called me and said, Scott, what would you think of trying to legalize medical marijuana? And that took me back. And I thought, well, why not? We did needle exchange, we've done some pretty amazing things. And again, people ask me what my business is. On my card it now says public opinion management, because that's what I really do. I organize, publicize, manage public opinion. And I like to think usually for good stuff. Right. Good stuff. Some people wouldn't say that, but that's what I feel, and I sleep well at night. So that's how I got involved with it. And it took us two years, and sure enough, we passed the bill. Then it took us another seven years to get it out of the Department of Public Safety into the health department. And then, of course, now it's safe to talk about it. Everybody can talk about it. Everybody talks about it. So here we are with all these wonderful pharmaceuticals and oils and tinctures. And it is the miracle drug on the face of the planet that is natural. And all we've got to do now is get it out of schedule one in the feds so we don't have to deal with the feds. Yeah, with that little widget. Sessions. Oh, my God, that man. Oh, dear, dear, dear, dear. And you know that his position on medical marijuana or cannabis or weed or whatever you want to call it comes from his very racist background. And so because that was how he locked up black people for one ounce of marijuana. Oh, yeah. Lock them up, throw them away. And so that's where he comes from rather than looking at the possibilities that this might be a good thing, that there are cures and there are people being relieved of all kinds of pain and children with epilepsy, you know. If one studies the history of the anti-marijuana push, it really comes from a number of things. But yes, it was racist. William Randolph Hearst was involved with it. The pharmaceutical industry doesn't like the idea at all of being able to grow their own medicine in their backyard. There's a number of things that have contributed to it, but you're absolutely right. But it's these, I'm going to say, predominantly white men of that mindset who like to control women who are the absolute, you know, the religious right, absolutist, religious hypocrites. It all goes together and it produces people like sessions. And look what we know what's going on in Washington. Beauregard. Can you believe Sessions' name? Beauregard Sessions. Jeffrey Beauregard Sessions. That's not a southern name. That is so southern, isn't it? Yeah. So yes, we have him. However, I think, now, Hawaii is doing very well in its growth of the medical cannabis. And at the festival, the cannabis... Cannabis festival. Two weeks ago. There were 60 vendors with CBD, 60. I mean, this has just grown like you wouldn't believe. And I understand there's about 1,800 new applicants for the card online. So we have a really healthy, robust industry growing. Well, remember, a lot of this was going on behind the scenes. Well, that's where I was going with this. There's still this behind the scenes going on. And that will go. I mean, that's... Until we get it out of schedule one with the fans. That's the whole issue with schedule one. What do we do? How do we go from here? You're the expert in public opinion. Woo. I don't know. It's a new world. It's public education. It's just keep on keeping on. It's more people credible. Look at some of the people that have stepped out now supporting. Who's the guy that the right-wing Republican that's bought into or has gone to work for a medical marijuana firm? Oh, I don't know. Yeah, I can't remember his name. Somebody prominent up there. Okay, I'll tell you what. Let's take a break. And in that time, Google him and tell me who it is. We're going to take a break. We'll be right back. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. Hello, I'm Marsha, and this is Cannabis Chronicles. And we're back talking to my dear friend Scott Foster about schedule one. What do we need to do to move from where we are with this robust industry? Even the state is looking at a hemp industry. And yet we're still stuck with this schedule one. What do we do? Where do we do? Where do we go from step one, step two, step three? How do we do this? Well, other than getting rid of sessions. Being in the public opinion management business, we just have to keep on doing what we're doing only more so. And that is putting out the good news on things, talking to people. Now that there's real money in it, a lot of people who formerly wouldn't have anything to do with it are all of a sudden very interested in it because there's money in it. And you've got the winners and losers. The pharmaceuticals don't want it. But those of us who believe in natural products whenever possible, we want it. It will come. But one thing that could happen is as states pass medical marijuana bills, they could petition Congress. And there are several people who have been talking about this. If enough states petition Congress to make it a states right issue. Well, it is now a states right issue for medical. For medical. Yes. It is a states right. But yes, but that doesn't mean that the feds can't still come in and bust them because it's still in the federal schedule one. That's what's got to change. Now you mentioned hemp and all the wonderful products that hemp could produce. Well, they've lightened up on that one. And there's an online, how many states it is legal. Well, there you have it, you see. The knowledge about the value of hemp has gotten out. I've always thought that Hawaii would be such an ideal place for hemp, all the wonderful products. Plus, hemp purifies the soil that it's in. And so much of Hawaii's agriculture land is polluted for all the years of pesticides and fertilizers. The Lord knows what, you know, I hesitate to eat a pineapple from Hawaii anymore. Yes. And now with the, what is that worm that crawls around in the lettuce and what have you? Oh, yes. Senior moment. Yes. I don't remember. I was at food land and watching the produce people go through each leaf with a hose, each leaf. But, you know, weed. Nothing new about that, but the, you know, that's an infestation. But the plants that have their roots down in the soil and all those chemicals, that takes it right into the very fiber and juice in the plant. So I worry about this country and our food supply. It's not just Hawaii. It's all over the nation that we've overused the aquifers. We've polluted the land with all these pesticides. We have nearly three times the American population than when I was born using all these resources. I don't think America can feed itself without all these chemicals. That's my fear. Well, you know, it's the same people that gave us copper tone. Bear gave us aspirin. Bear gave us copper tone. Now they bought Monsanto and Roundup and all of that stuff. Except, of course, I have to tell you about Roundup. The Holocaust in my yard loves, loves, loves Roundup. Spray me more. You cannot believe how it grows with Roundup. Well, so many things that we've taken for granted simply because we've used them for so many years. I laugh about some of these pharmaceutical ads on television. You know, there's the smiling face of the happy user and, oh, I feel so much better. And I show her playing with her kids, usually a woman playing with her kids or a grandmother playing with the grandkids. And then very quickly at the end it tells you, and by the way, if you use this, you're going to drop dead from all the side effects. But this is how our food is being advertised now also. All the buzzwords are corrupted, you know, biodegradable. They just misuse the English language and the government, the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, that once guarded us from the use of misleading language, that seems to have disappeared too. But they are now, when they retire from Monsanto, they go to work for the Food and Drug Administration. So the same people, they just moved from one job to another. So of course they're going to make sure that their product and the billions and billions of dollars that the pharmaceuticals make on opioids and those are legal, but cannabis is not. And those will kill you, cannabis will not. We've got an epidemic of cannabis, of opioids. And again, let's get this clear. We've always had this issue. Yes. As long, but once it was in a middle-class white neighborhood, all of a sudden it's an epidemic. They haven't paid attention to it before when it was with poor folks. But now when you've got little towns in Ohio, all places, and now it's an epidemic. People are paying attention. Once they saw the numbers, there's a little pharmacy in Terriot, Indiana, or somewhere that sells just incredible quantities of some of these opioids. And you've got to think, how can it be? They're selling more than 100 times the population of the county, their hand. Oh yeah, that was West Virginia, I think it was. It's simply, Dr. Fieldgood lives. And I know people right here in Hawaii that get their cannabinoids and can go out and sell them on the street. They get them one day and they're gone the next. They've got a few hundred bucks in their pocket. So it's everywhere and it's certainly in Hawaii. So now let's go back and let's say, okay, we want, we know what we need to do. We need what we want is to get rid of schedule one. And the definition of schedule one, cannabis does not fit the definition of schedule one. That's number one. It is not one of those things. It's not a heavy narcotic and that's what schedule one is. Are they heavy, heavy narcotics? So do we, what do we do, this election coming up? Is that the way we need to go? Do we need to make sure that those people like Sessions and all those others that are controlling this? Do we make sure that they're out of office? Do we start really looking at the Food and Drug Administration? Do we call attention to the pharmaceuticals that are making so much money on opiates? What, where do we go from here? Well, I think it's got to start in the individual states, as I said earlier. I'm talking right here. I haven't checked to see if the bill in the legislature passed or not, that your former guest, Dr. Cliff Otto, was trying to pass to do this very thing. And that was to get the state legislature to petition the federal government to something. And that's the part I don't remember. It was exactly what that bill did, but that was a step one. All right. Now, you are the expert in this kind of thing. Maybe. You know, you can do this. I have all the faith in the world in you. You can do this. How do you need to talk to the legislature? You need to have a conversation with them. Not a bill, a conversation. So they aren't scared. That is, I heard an attorney who was scared. Well, when you bring the federal government, you know, people are scared. Well, first of all, much like medical aid and dying, until every single member of the House and Senate have a true sense of an issue, a real understanding, it's difficult to make a bill move to change major public policy. So that's where the public education area comes in. And that's got to, that's community organizing. People in every senatorial, every House district must become involved, at least one in each district, who can organize within the districts to put a little pressure on their particular legislature. Pressure is not really a good word, but to help educate their senator or House member. Especially with state rights. Because they, I've talked to several of them and they didn't know that existed. Well, you know, elected officials are not always the most highly educated, the most brilliant. They're good people, you know, most of them trying to serve. We have an election coming up. So we need to, for those people that are on board with this issue, they need to get busy and get organized. And we are just about out of time, but we have to really talk about getting organized and really making this happen. And so I thank all of you that are with us each week. And we do need to get organized and make this happen. Aloha, and we'll see you next time.