 This is St. Tech, Hawaii. Community matters here. That plant of many resources, which wondered far and wide the ancient plant of food, fuel, fiber that was 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, hashes, cannabis in religion, cannabis in medicine, cannabis and dear old Uncle Sam. So, our odyssey begins. Today, our odyssey is not long ago and far away. In fact, it is right here, right here in Honolulu. And so, as part of that odyssey, we are going to visit with Pam Lichti, who, for me, anyway, I think of her as the very beginning of this whole venture into marijuana, as it was called, in Hawaii. Pam, welcome. Thank you, Marcia. Pam is and was the drug policy forum for, what, 25 years now? Something like that. So, you were one of the beginners, one of the beginners of the whole— The co-founder, yeah. —of this movement. Now, my recollection of the war on drugs was a farce. So, tell me how you move from the war on drugs to making some kind of sense out of— or attempting to make some kind of a sense out of that. So, tell me, how does all this begin? Yeah. Well, I can't get into the whole war on drugs because that's been going for more than 50 years. No, but you're part in making sense of this. Yeah. Well, I have a public health background. I moved to Hawaii with my family in 1985 to go to the University of Hawaii School of Public Health, which no longer exists. It's now a program under the Department of Medicine, and it's shrunk. So, that was my beginning in learning about public health, which is about the well-being of individuals, families, communities, more communities than individual medical model. So, that has a lot of facets to it, of course. The war on drugs has always really been a war on people, or a war on drugs that we don't currently like. So, whereas in the Muslim world, you may—alcohol is strictly forbidden, but people may have easy access to hashish—it's all a matter of picking and choosing. And the war on drugs started in large part for racist reasons. It was the Mexicans who were bringing in the marijuana, black folks who were using cocaine in the South. Of course, the first anti-drug laws were aimed at Chinese immigrants in California, opium, opium dens. And there was also this thread of protecting white women against these drug-crazed minorities. So, it's a pretty terrible origin story. And the Yellow Journalists of that time, of course, some of your viewers or listeners have probably seen— oh, now I'm blanking—the crazy movie from— Oh, yes. —Reefer Madness, which says, you know, if you smoke marijuana, you're going to become a crazed maniac, probably a murderer, having sex in the streets, you know. So, today's—the war on drugs has not passed tense. It's still happening. Jeff Sessions, our attorney general. Jeffrey Beauregard Sessions III. Oh, let's—please, yes. I wouldn't want to give him a short shrift, yeah. No, it's in the DNA. Yeah. One of his big things is anti-drugs, and especially anti-cannabis marijuana, I'm sure he would call it. And so, that was kind of a backsliding, for sure, to have him installed as attorney general. But we don't want to focus on national because all the action these days on so many topics is at the state level. Yes. State and local level. And it's very true of the drug issue as well. So, what—I made a note here, so let me read it. As part of this—looking at the drug war differently as you're coming out of your public health, you mentioned the harm reduction. What did you mean by harm reduction? So, this is a phrase that popped up during the AIDS epidemic, or the height of the AIDS epidemic, I should say, mid-'80s to probably mid-'90s. When I graduated from the School of Public Health, all the jobs were either in bioterrorism or in the AIDS area. And after working at the legislature briefly, which is where I got my addiction to public policy, maybe, I worked in the AIDS area for a long time. And when that became a widespread problem in this country, there had been an ethos among treatment organizations that you had to be clean before you could seek treatment. That you had to be 20 days free of drugs or whatever before you went in to receive treatment. This includes people who were injection drug users, which was kind of the second wave of the AIDS epidemic after gay communities. But people who were treating folks realized that you have to meet people where they're at. You have to have a pragmatic approach. And so, harm reduction arose because AIDS at the time was a death sentence for practically everybody. So what can we do to improve people's lives, improve their health, improve community health, prevent this disease from spreading to their loved ones, children, and their sexual partners in particular? So, harm reduction is a philosophy and a set of strategies designed to lessen the harms, literally, from potentially dangerous behaviors like drug-taking. It's not only drug-taking. It applies to sex work and even domestic violence. So a really simple couple of examples of harm reduction would be wearing a seatbelt, having a designated driver. Those are not particularly controversial. In domestic violence, it's when you're having an argument and move out of the kitchen where the knives are. Really common sense practical kinds of things. When you translate it into the drug war, it's to look at not only the harms that the drugs themselves are creating or can be creating if there's problematic use, but also about what the policies themselves are doing. And we're talking about over-incarceration of people of color, which is true in Hawaii, just like everywhere else. The only difference is that instead of mostly African-Americans here, it's mostly Hawaiians and Filipinos have the brunt of the incarceration. And they get arrested at higher levels. They get sentenced to longer sentences. They stay in prison or jail longer. So that was a lengthy answer, but it's increasingly accepted. It used to be you couldn't even talk about harm reduction without people thinking you were a legalizer. We can get into that a little bit later. God forbid. But now it's really accepted, especially among service providers as a model that really works. So would the needle exchange be included in the harm reduction? Yes, a perfect example. Whereas the naysayers would say you're encouraging people to use drugs and to shoot up drugs. It's absolutely not true. Because it was controversial, there have been a million studies on the subject. And they all show that it does not increase drug use. But it helps people from getting AIDS, from getting other blood-borne diseases like hepatitis C. And it's really worked well in a lot of communities. And Hawaii was the first state to have a statewide needle exchange program. It started in 1990. So the needle exchange is that you give the patient or person clean needles and they give you the used ones. Correct. And you also teach them techniques about how to stay safe, one by not sharing needles of course is a biggie. But also giving people condoms and giving them and trying to create a bridge to treatment. So they're not coming there in order to get treatment, but it often happens that when you establish a relationship and they see that you care about them and their health and their community's health, then often they decide that whatever point is right for them, this is part of the harm reduction philosophy. When they are ready, which is when it's most likely to work, then they might go into treatment. So now you're, how do you translate that into the drug policy forum? Excuse me while I, this is harm reduction. That's fine. Try not to get too parched. Well, in, so the needle exchange program really started in 1990. So it was before my organization was founded. But in 1992, I went to a conference in Washington DC and there was a speaker talking from Australia talking about syringe exchange programs. They started them very early there. And afterwards, you know, how people come up to the speaker and they're chatting him up. There was another fellow there, a tall, bald headed guy, and his tag said University of Hawaii. This was in DC. So we started talking afterwards and it was Professor Don Topping, who at the time was head of the Social Science Research Institute at UH. And he was really interested in looking at the drug war in Hawaii and the harms it was doing and to see if there wasn't a way to improve the situation. And after we returned from that trip, he sent out a letter to colleagues at the University from law and public science, health, medicine, all the areas that are affected, among others. And we started meeting and formed a group in 1993. And it was very controversial, of course, and because we're questioning the war on drugs and at that time you kind of didn't do that. So the first board that we created was full of PhDs and medical doctors so that we had, you know, gravitas. And that's where it all started. So that was what? 1993? 1995 years ago. Wow. Yeah. Gee, has it been that long? I know. I was a mere child, obviously. So that was during Ben Caetano's? Let's see. Or was that, I'm trying to think. Was he before that? Well, let's see. Before him was Wahe, right? Yeah. So he... And after that was Linda Lingo. Yeah. So Caetano was in the late 90s. Right. And I actually have a story to tell about him. Oh, please do. So if I may. So we had started this organization but also for many years I've been on the board of the ACLU of Hawaii, the American Civil Liberties Union. And we had a legislative committee. Excuse me. And the chair of the committee was Tom Gill, the former congressman. Right. The late Tom Gill. And he and Ben Caetano, of course, knew each other from way back. And so we went as an ACLU committee to the governor to talk about what he had in mind for the coming session, which would have been the 1999 session. And to tell him what was on our agenda. So he kind of bowled us over when he said, I have three social issues that I want to promote this coming session. And the three are death with dignity, same-sex marriage, and medical marijuana. So we were pretty shocked because any of those three were kind of wildly controversial at the time. And we all know how long it took for us to finally get the same-sex marriage and death with dignity for that matter. But he introduced a bill in the next session for medical marijuana. It was a pretty, it was, California was the first state to pass by initiative a medical marijuana law. And that was in 1996. Then a whole slew of other states on the West Coast followed in 1998. So obviously Governor Caetano was looking at them and thinking this was something that could be helpful here in Hawaii. So he introduced a bill which was very, very strict. You had to go to two physicians and you had to be practically on your deathbed. And it didn't pass that year. But by the next year there was a lot of discussion, there was a lot of support for it. And after going through a million permutations, as bills do, and being watered down and so forth. It was basically based on the one that Oregon had passed just the year prior. And it was pretty careful. It did pass. And so the medical marijuana, and I'm calling it that because that's what we call it that day, has been in place in Hawaii since 2000. Many people are not aware of that because there was this enormous catch-22. Which was that you could grow it, you could use it, but you couldn't legally acquire it anywhere. So there was all this gray area, where do you get the seeds and all that. And there was no dispensary associated with it. Those were kind of the early days of the movement and a lot of those early states did not have a dispensary system. So after a mere, oh, 15 years, the legislature and their wisdom decided well maybe it would be appropriate to have a legal place to access it that was safe. And where you would get a product that had been tested and not something you might buy off the street in Waikiki. So finally, and the drug policy forum played a large role in that in trying to educate the policy makers, trying to educate the general public. So we need to take a break and we will be back in one minute and then tell us more about where we go, where the organization went from 02 to today. Okay, yeah, great. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. Don't forget to check me out right here, the Prince of Investings. I'm your host, Prince Dykes. Each and every Tuesdays at 11am Hawaii time, I'm going to be right here. Stop by here from some of the best investment minds across the globe. And real estate, finances, stocks, hedge funds, managers, all that great stuff. Thank you. Aloha. I'm Marcia Joyner and this is Cannabis Chronicles. We are having the privilege of talking to Pam Lichti who was one of the founders of the Drug Policy Forum Hawaii. So Pam, tell us now that when you begin the policy forum and how has that progressed all these years? Yeah, well first I want to make it clear that we're not only about cannabis or marijuana. That we're also involved in areas that are either directly affected by drugs, drug policy, like drug testing, which was a big thing here during the lingual years. They wanted to test teachers, they wanted to test everybody, students, drug sniffing dogs, all that. So we've been involved in things like that, but also in related issues like mandatory minimum sentencing, which has often been used for drug crimes and has contributed to the overpopulation of our prisons, which has been a problem in Hawaii for decades. But when Governor Kaitano came out with this proposal to do medical cannabis legislatively, then we jumped on that because it had the governor's imprint. And even though he wasn't necessarily beloved by the legislature, he was nevertheless the governor, and so they took it more seriously than they would have if some random legislator had introduced it. So now you become the Drug Policy Forum, so that adds weight to, as opposed to just an individual? Oh yeah, yes, of course. And initially it was a town gown organization, so it was really based at the university, at the Social Science Research Institute, and that was cumbersome. And after a number of years we decided we would go independent and become a 501c3, which is a nonprofit, which we've been ever since. And we also created a 501c4, which can do more direct lobbying. The other type is limited to the percentage of their budget. So the Drug Policy Forum has been very active at the legislature to a lesser extent at the Board of Education and the City Council. And I think we're very well known in those venues, but not so much by the general public. And however, we have become kind of the loyal opposition, if you will, so that now, after 25 years, the media and others are coming to us for our take on the situation. And they know that our members, our executive directors have really studied up on the issues, that we feel very strongly that policy should be based on evidence and science and compassion, and not by what's happening out in the street or moralistic considerations. So, but now that it is the Drug Policy Forum, I guess now we know what it is. But I wonder if the general public knows what, because of the name, do they understand, the general public understand that it is more than just drugs? That's a good question. I think drug policy, you know, it's hard to separate out. It even, it overlaps with agriculture and business. And now that we have dispensaries in town and they're private for profits, which would not have been my choice had I designed it, but they are. So now they're part of the business world and, you know, Chamber of Commerce and other organizations are all of a sudden interested. But really, we deal with, you know, and the opioid crisis, of course, is a huge deal. And the ICE problem that's been ongoing in Hawaii for decades. So I don't want to forget about them because they're the most dangerous substances that we're talking about. So one of the things we're trying to get out to people, policymakers and the general public, is to put things in context. Nothing is harmless. Your cup of coffee in the morning is not harmless. Your drink at night certainly is not harmless. So we're trying to look at it from a public health point of view to treat every drug or substance, including alcohol, appropriately. You know, alcohol prohibition didn't work. And so what have we done? We've created drug prohibition. But now people are beginning to understand that not only does it not work, but it's having terrible consequences. And I'm thinking mostly of the burgeoning prison populations. You probably know we have the largest prison population in the world, including Russia and China, which we think are so draconian, you know. And a large part of the growth has been fueled by the war on drugs, which, as I said earlier, is really a war on people. Well, now, of course, you won't remember. I don't think. We used to have the best marijuana in the world. Everybody understood that. And then when Frank Fossey came along and had the green harvest to get rid of all the marijuana, after that, the hard drugs came in before we didn't have hard drugs. That's true. That's true. And there actually, I saw a document, which is not online because it was too long ago, and I don't underestimate how old I am, Marcia. A document from, I think it was the FBI, I can't recall now, but essentially it said we've had our informants in Hawaii. And when the crackdown started on marijuana, green harvest, and other efforts to get rid of the growing that was happening mostly on the neighbor islands, not entirely. Then that's when ICE started becoming popular. It is. It came into crystal meth, came in from the Philippines in those days, primarily. And so people here were naive about it. It was brand new. And we're told, well, you know, this will get you high, and it lasts a long time, and it's cheap. And oh, by the way, we smoke it. Now, this is not how it's taken in other places where it's been popular like the West Coast elsewhere on the mainland. There they usually either shoot it up, inject it, or snort it. But here it was smoking, which seemed similar to marijuana. And how bad could it be if you just smoke it? Well, I think we all know it's pretty bad. And the attention kind of reached its peak in about 2003 under Linda Lingo when Duke Iona was her tenant governor and he was her drug czar, if you will. And he was really fanning the flames about ICE. And it was very sensationalized, the coverage, all the media bought into it totally. You know, there's no help for it. You're helpless, never talked about treatment or anything, which is useful for anything, including crystal meth. And that was kind of the heyday of this real hysteria. Yes. It's died down, but it's still in heavy use. And we have better relations these days with the police and law enforcement because they realize that we all have something to learn from each other. So speaking of law enforcement, now when this medical marijuana became legal, and how did the police department get involved in the medical marijuana? Well, they didn't really. First of all, there's two other things I need to add. One is that we were the first state to pass such a law through the legislature. Every other state until then had passed it by initiative, statewide initiative, which we don't have in Hawaii as you know. So I think the fact that the legislators decided to do this carried more weight than if it was only the people, only the populace who had voted for this, you know. So the police couldn't understand the difference between a drug dealer and a person who's sick. And you know, hasn't really been that much of an issue, but more of an issue with bureaucrats really. Yeah, well, that whole bureaucratic thing to put this under the VAM, then the Department of Health. Well, initially, that's right. Good point. Initially it was under the Department of Public Safety law enforcement, or excuse me, narcotics enforcement agency, which was really nuts because it's not a narcotic. But the thinking was it's so dangerous and this whole thing is so scary that we better put it under them, who are essentially narcotics officers. So that had the effect of scaring away a lot of potential patients. Yes. And finally, I think in 2011, I might be wrong, it was switched to the Department of Health, where it should have been all along. Well, you know, one more thing I need to ask you, and that was civil asset forfeiture law. This is an example of a law that isn't specifically about drugs, but is often used in that context. So civil asset forfeiture is, I'll give you an example, you own a house and your grandson is dealing marijuana from the house and you're not even aware of it. Well, the police will not bust him and not bust you. They will bring an order against the property, which has no rights because it's just property, and they will try to seize it from you. And then you, as the homeowner, are on the defense, and there's no due process or any of that because it's a civil procedure. It's not criminal. And this is often used in a drug context. Another example is I was on a conference call, a national conference call, and this family was traveling across the country. They had saved up money for years. I think it was a Latino family. From their little mom and pop restaurant, which dealt mostly in cash. So they had $10,000 in cash or something. And they were carrying it to California where they intended to use it for a down payment or something like that. Somehow the DEA, the Drug Enforcement Administration, got word of this and stopped them, seized the money, seized the cash because they said, we think you're going to use it, that you acquired it through drugs and that you're going to, it was about where you acquired it. And then they had to go to court and go to different organizations to try to get their money back. Oh, dear. It's a really backward system. And just one more thing about that is that there's a national organization called, blanking on the name, but it's kind of a libertarian organization, so they care about things like property rights. And they have rated all the states about how they are on civil asset forfeiture in Hawaii, got a D minus. Oh, my. So that's one of the issues we're going to be working on. Okay. Now, I want you to look into this camera and I want you to tell us all about the party with a purpose. Okay. Thank you for that, Lee. Lead in. Since the drug policy form of Hawaii has been in effect for 25 years, which seems significant to some of us who were there from the beginning, we're having a celebration on September 8th, which is a week from Saturday. Saturday. And it's going to be at Cafe Julia, which is on Richard Street, right across from the Elani Palace in the YWCA. It's a great venue if people haven't been there. Lovely place. Yeah. And it's kind of a pahana gathering. It's from four to seven. And we'll have entertainment by Tavana. We'll have a speaker who is the new head of the Drug Policy Alliance, which is a national organization that works to stop the drug war and turn it into a more responsive science-based kind of an entity. Her name is Maria McFarland Sanchez Moreno. Oh, boy. It trips right up the tongue. She's Peruvian by birth. And so she'll be our speaker. And then it's also celebrating my final year as the president of the board. I've been doing it for about 25 years since Don Topping passed away. And I'm ready to move on to the next phase of my life. So it's a party for me. It's a celebration. It's a chance to hear Maria, who's terrific. And so they can go to your website to get tickets. Indeed. And it's drugpolicyformofy.org. So D-P-F-H-I dot org. And there's tickets at various levels. And we'll have heavy poopoos, of course. Of course. So thank you so much. This has been a real pleasure. And you'll come back and tell us about your new life. I would love to. Once I figure out what it is. Whatever it is. Thank you so much and we'll see you next time.