 I'm Marcia Joyner, and this is Cannabis Chronicles, a 10,000 year odyssey. So tell me news of that planet of many resources which wondered far and wide the ancient plant of food, fuel, fiber, cultivated for millennia. As we venture through the past 10,000 years, we will explore and discover the plant from which cannabis derives. The many uses of the plant, hemp, cannabis, ashes, cannabis and religion, cannabis and medicine, cannabis and dear old Uncle Sam. And so our odyssey begins. Today, our odyssey is not long ago and far away. It is right here and right now. And to talk about where we are today, right here and right now, we have my new best friend. And all of you know, we only talk to best friends. Nikos, Nikos, is that for Ed? That's me. That's Nikos. Thank you for having me today. He is really very special. He is the, let me read this, get it correct now. You are the president of the board of the drug policy form of Hawaii. Is that correct? Yes, yes. I'm very happy to succeed our co-founder, Pam Lickty, who served in that capacity for 25 years. And she just unofficially retired last year. We had her, wonderful, wonderful celebration. Yeah, we had her on the show. Yeah, just the day a week before giving it up. I'm not sure. I saw her at the cannabis expo, so I'm not sure that she has given it up. No, she hasn't totally given it up, but everything is relative. And the fact that we have such a live legislative session now, she's engaged, but she's not coming to the building a lot because she's sort of retired and taking care of some family business. Well, first, for anyone that doesn't know, tell us what is the drug policy form? The drug policy form is basically the leading organization in Hawaii to promote drug policies that are sensible, that are saner, that recognize that drug use is endemic to the human condition, and it should mainly be dealt with from an individual and public health standpoint, and not a criminal justice standpoint. So it's really far afield from where we're at right now, but we actually wanna return what's essentially a medical problem to the purview of the practice of medicine, making people well, making people whole. And unfortunately, our current model, which is punitive, which subjects people to a whole host of criminal sanctions, including incarceration, is not really the best way to go. In fact, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation issued a report just last month that no underscored just how injurious any level of incarceration is to individual health, and those individuals suffer, their families suffer, and we as a society suffer because they're excluded, they're marginalized, they cost a lot of money when they're incarcerated. When they get out, they face significant obstacles through reintegration in terms of finding employment, in terms of finding housing. So we're for a better approach, a safer approach, a saner approach, a more humane approach that's grounded in wisdom and compassion that are currently lacking in a punishment first, ideology. That punishment thing, though, I don't know where that comes from, but even this last horrible accident where the young man was driving, impaired, and killed all those people on the corner, the first thing I heard from people was to increase the punishment, to increase the idea that people that are driving, impaired, need to double the punishment. It was all about the punishment. Not, I thought, this guy, now I'm not an expert, but I thought that it was more than just being impaired. He was running away from the police because he already had all of his, yes. So when we stop being punitive and start looking at, there's something else going on here, and the opiates that are legal are killing people, but they wanna penalize you for cannabis. This whole thing is crazy. Yeah, it really doesn't make sense, and what we've seen with the corporatization of medicine is sort of a skewing of priorities where relative harms between substances are really sort of calibrated toward what makes the most money for particular interested actors. The fact that we had a medical establishment that said, well, you can take copious amounts of opioids and not become addicted. That just flies in the face of, again, thousands of years of reality. Right. There's nothing about pharmaceutical-grade opioids that are going to prevent people from becoming dependent or addicted in a way that people can become dependent or addicted to heroin from the opium flower. I've seen a... Bulb, sorry, not the flower. The flower, the bulb, okay. Tell me, what's a bulb and what's a flower? The bulb is a part of the opium plant that produces a sap from which even pharmaceutical-grade heroin is made. So the flower is a nice, wonderful color, orange or yellow or poppies from the poppy flower, which I miss. I'm from California, but I lived in California for a great deal, and seeing poppies in the springtime was a wonderful sight. But as with cannabis, it's a plant. It's a plant that has been criminalized, de facto criminalized, and it can provide real benefits to people. There is a legal regulated opium market that's geared toward the pharmaceutical market. And I believe India and maybe Pakistan, Turkey and India are the main producers of opium for the international pharmaceutical market. Why Afghanistan isn't in there? I don't know, but we're going a little far afield here. We're here to talk about cannabis, right? No, but that is cannabis, yeah. That is the basis for this. Yeah, that they don't look at all of this other. Yeah, remember, no, I guess you're too young to remember, but I remember after the war, the veterans were selling poppies on the street. And they were pretty, and they were pretty, and it was a dollar or something like that, and there was no talk about it being a drug. It was just a flower. Well, not all poppies produce opium, so yeah. So it was just a flower. The power and the capacity to do that. And in England, they still mark, they remembered stay through wearing a poppy flower. Yeah, so, but we're back to cannabis, which is a 10,000 year old plant. And therefore, what could be the harm in taking a plant that's used for everything? And now that we have discovered how it is for medicine, not that that's a new discovery. Right, well, medical use of cannabis goes back on a written basis for 6,000 years. We've had a 10,000 year relationship with cannabis that the human race has. And the Chinese have recognized that, they had medicinal purposes. Cannabis has medicinal purposes, and it was included in its pharmacopia. And cannabis was not really looked at very much by Western medicine. Even in the night, there were some analgesic products that kind of included it. People were allowed to smoke it without penalty. Louis Armstrong, for example, the great Louis Armstrong. Yes. I saw a magnificent play that was based on his biography. And for half of his lifetime, cannabis was legal. So he reached middle age, he reached his mid to late 30s, and then cannabis became illegal. He still smoked and he still produced and he still produced wonderful music that soothed the world and gave us needed relief and entertainment. Here, his wife was actually nabbed for cannabis possession by local law enforcement. Oh dear. And she had two joints in an eyeglass case. This was in the 50s, I believe. And her punishment was paying a fine. She was arrested, but she posted bond and she paid a fine. If only we had that kind of situation here in Hawaii right now for the thousand people plus who are arrested for cannabis possession each and every year, including a majority of non-whites. Adults who get arrested for cannabis, over 60% of them are non-white and they're mainly native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander. When you look at juveniles who are arrested for possession, over 70% of them are non-white, mainly native Hawaiians, Pacific Islanders and Filipinos. So what we're seeing in the current application of cannabis prohibition on the ground level here in Hawaii is a system where by the implicit biases of our criminal justice system are meted out against communities of color, including our indigenous community who is disproportionately represented in our criminal justice system, including our jails and prisons here and in Arizona. Cannabis legalization, decriminalization, it's repairing the harm of decades of injustices and it's high time pun intended that we pursue a much better course, a course that doesn't over criminalize people, that doesn't criminalize addiction. Cannabis aside, we still have an approach now where people with behavioral health concerns like addiction, substance use disorder, problematic substance use, with or without a co-occurring mental health condition, they're consigned to the criminal justice system and nothing could be worse for them, these people who are struggling than to be subject to sometimes decades of criminal justice supervision, of course they're going to get worse. For some, it is a wake up call, but it's wake up call with the threat of punishment and that's not the way we should go in our society. That's not contiguous with our values here in Hawaii. It may be with the larger American culture, but again, we just need a new course. Well, when we look at this, the treatment of people with cannabis, whatever age, whatever, be it medical or not, it is so much different than people with alcohol addiction or tobacco addiction, the way they are treated. Absolutely. And even the dispensaries have to be so far from a school. Well, but you can walk out of a school, you go to Foodland Safeway, they're selling alcohol, Longs is selling alcohol and tobacco. So what is this craziness? And I don't know what else to call it. It's a lack of equilibrium and it's an intentional lack of equilibrium. They tried alcohol prohibition, it failed spectacularly. They never tried tobacco prohibition because again, it would probably fail spectacularly, even if they eradicated every tobacco plant in America. But yet these licit substances, these legal substances, these widely available substances produce levels of illness, injury and death that cannabis will never provide even if it is widely consumed in great quantity. So the question really is, how can we best not only repair the harm that has been done by cannabis prohibition, but also begin to repair some of the harms that are affiliated with tobacco use and with alcohol use? And it makes intuitive sense that if cannabis is widely available, people will drink a little bit less and they'll smoke a little bit less. It doesn't mean they're going to substitute cannabis for the drink that they have after work or on the weekends, or substitute for their daily tobacco or nicotine habit, but it can reduce the harm. So cannabis is a safer alternative. Cannabis is harm reduction in terms of individual and public health. We have to take a break. And when we come back, I wanna talk about cannabis and addiction and how it helps to bring it down. Okay? We'll be right back. Thank you. Aloha, this is Winston Welch. I am your host of Out and About where every other week, Mondays at three, we explore a variety of topics in our city, state, nation and world and events, organizations, the people that fuel them. It's a really interesting show. We welcome you to tune in and we welcome your suggestions for shows. You got a lot of them out there and we have an awesome studio here where we can get your ideas out as well. So I look forward to you tuning in every other week where we've got some great guests and great topics. You're gonna learn a lot. You're gonna come away inspired like I do. So I'll see you every other week here at three o'clock on Monday afternoon. Aloha. Aloha, I'm Wendy Lowe and I'm coming to you every other Tuesday at two o'clock live from Think Tech Hawaii. And on our show, we talk about taking your health back. And what does that mean? It means mind, body and soul. Anything you can do that makes your body healthier and happier is what we're gonna be talking about. Whether it's spiritual health, mental health, fascia health, beautiful smile health, whatever it means, let's take healthy back. Aloha. And we're back. And we are talking today about cannabis. Of course, Nikos. Is that pronounced right? Nikos. That's right. I was named Dr. Kozenzakis, the author. He wrote Zorba the Greek, most notably. He also wrote a magnificent biography, historical biography of St. Francis. Yeah, so I'm grateful that my parents had a literary sensibility, at least my dad did. Okay, real quick. Now let's talk about cannabis and we touched on these other ailments, but about using cannabis to help reduce the addiction, or if you're trying to kick it all together about how cannabis can help to bring it down to, okay. Well, what we've seen is that cannabis can effectively reduce or even supplant the use of opioids to treat pain. In medical cannabis states, opioid prescriptions have gone down precipitously, even before the recent awareness around opioids. We also see that people substitute cannabis for whatever they may feel right. And one of the real deficiencies in our current law here in Hawaii, in terms of the qualifying conditions, is that it's really narrow. It's a list of maybe a dozen. In Illinois, they have 41. In California, where I kind of came of political age, and it was done through the ballot process, some people could have access to medical cannabis for any condition that they and their medical provider deemed necessary. And I really think that's where we need to go on the medical cannabis front, because it should be up to patients and then their doctors or their medical providers. And it's too stringent. In Illinois, even, they have, if you get an opioid prescription, you are automatically registered in their medical cannabis program. And I think that's sort of the way that we need to go, unfortunately, we have resistance on the political level to trying what will work best for patients. And how much money do they get from the drug people? Well, that's neither here nor there in Hawaii, because politics here is so relatively cheap. Granted, people who run for office, they accept contributions, and that has an impact, but I don't think they're necessarily driven by that. I would like to just put that flat out there. Okay, they're gonna love it. More motivated by sort of their own critical faculties and how they feel about a particular issue. Speaking of the legislature, you have several bills before the legislature, so tell us what the bills are. Well, we have two very important bills. We have a decriminalization bill that was introduced by Representative Chris Lee of the House Judiciary Committee. And that's a really good bill and it's up for decision-making on Friday. So if you're inclined, send them an email at replee, R-E-P-L-E-E, at capital.hawaii.gov. Capital is spelled with N-O. Oh, yeah. And the bill number is H-B-1383 and it would effectively decriminalize small amounts of cannabis for personal possession, which is absolutely the right way to go. It would also provide for the dismissal of pending cannabis charges and also for the expungement retroactively of prior cannabis possession charges. So this has monumental implications given the fact that 1,000 individuals, over 1,000 individuals each year are arrested for cannabis possession in the state of Hawaii. And how much that costs to keep them locked up? Right, if they fail, if they're brought back into, if they're in probation or parole and they use cannabis, that's the driver of recidivism. Cannabis is the driver of recidivism in the probation and the parole population and that's why you see our law enforcement culture really oppose cannabis decriminalization and adult use legalization, is that they're fearful that they're not gonna be able to lock up people and control people for long periods of time without legislative oversight, which is something where we also lack here. The Decrim Bill, HB 1383, also has a working group that will look at effective cannabis regulation. So that's really wonderful. Our next bill is SB 686. That was introduced by Senate Minority Leader, Majority Leader, excuse me, Kalani English from Maui. And it's the vehicle to legalize adult use cannabis here in Hawaii and that's currently in a joint hearing between the Commerce and Health Committee chaired by Senator Ross Baker. So if you support adult use cannabis legalization, please contact Senator Baker at SenBaker, S-E-N-B-A-K-E-R at capital.o-i-e dot gov, capital with an O. The bill number is SB 686. I just took a hard look at the provisions and there's a lot of work to do. I can go through them initially, but basically it provides that the Department of Health oversee this. It kind of grandfathered in our cannabis dispensary system, which is not necessarily a bad idea because other jurisdictions have done it and they have the infrastructure. But if we do have a wide and legitimate adult use cannabis legalization regime, it has to include small businesses, small entrepreneurs, people who have been harmed by decades of the drug war, including people here, especially the indigenous community, the native Hawaiian community, women, Pacific Islanders, and some of the provisions in this bill basically say you're not eligible out of the gate. They should be made eligible at some point in time. It doesn't really provide protections for workers. Basically employers can laterally have a zero tolerance policy. There are no protections for people who are tenants. And we're not talking about people who are growing, but just consuming or ingesting a cannabis product. So if you live in a condominium and you are even medical. Yeah, that can be a problem. That's currently the case. And this is something that'll have to be remedied over time. There's a 15% added excise tax, which is not necessarily bad. One of the dangers that we've seen in California is that if you put taxes too high, the black market will still thrive. Yes, of course. And that it provides 30% of those additional taxes to be set aside for prevention and education. And in my estimation, that money should be better dedicated to the provision of low threshold substance use treatment on demand. That makes sense, yes. Because we need to build the treatment capacity of the state outside of the correctional context. And if cannabis legalization can do that, then what a wonderful way that would repair the harm of our current system. Let's see. Eventually the Department of Health should be sort of removed except for the provision of regulating the quality of the product offered on the retail level, including edibles. And right now edibles are not in our adult use legalization bill. And that's problematic because for a lot of people, they don't want to smoke. They don't want to take a tincture. Especially if you have a child. Yeah, yeah. If you've got epilepsy and you want to give the child. There are so many products out there in the states that have legalized adult use. There are little mints, five milligram tablets, a THC. It's called micro dosing. This is the way you combat people going in going for broke on a candy bar or cookie. No, people need to be told. This will have an impact on you. You have to wait for a certain period of time and you have to find out what works best for you. I would imagine that everybody would have a different, what do you call it? Side effect. Everybody ingests differently. Everybody's body is different. The process is definitely correct. So what we see here, without the edibles and even in the context of people who can currently work in the cannabis industry in Hawaii, people with a criminal record are excluded. That is not the way to repair the harm of decades of the drug war. These people need to be brought in and given a second chance and a real chance at economic participation. I think it should also go without saying that cannabis workers should be allowed to collectively associate for the purposes of bargaining with their employers. This is a proud union state or it used to be. It's not like it once was, but we do see a burgeoning movement here. And that's really about it with this legalization bill. Like I said, SB 686, to work in progress. Your viewers need to contact Senator Baker, S-E-N-D-A-K-E-R at capital.Hawaii.gov. So this bill gets heard and it moves on to the full floor of the Senate so the House can work on it as well. And the other bill? The other bill, the decriminalization bill. So what's the address? Is H-B-1383. The address is Reply-R-E-P-L-E-E at Hawaii.cap, or capital.Hawaii.gov. Yes, we have. And you will come back to talk to us as this bill moves through and see where it is. Yeah. What we can do. Hopefully they will move through and it won't be a postmortem, but we're really at a critical juncture here. When we did our survey last summer, our response in terms of the number of people running who supported adult use cannabis legalization far exceeded our expectations. Yes. Now Hawaii, why not us? Yes. Why not us? Yes. Well, it has been a pleasure spending this time with you and you will come back because you have so much information that we need to know. So again, Aloha. Thank you so much. Thank you. And we'll see you next time.