Buzz Kill: How Big Business Hijacked Cannabis Legalization

Margaret 00:00:05 Welcome friends to episode 300. This is a very special episode. I am joined by Mike Davila, author of Buzzkill The Corporatization of Cannabis. Welcome to Bite Me, the show about edibles where I help you take control of your life. I'm your host and Certified Ganjier Margaret and I love helping cooks make safe and effective edibles at home. I'm so glad you're here. Hello, friends, both old and new. Welcome back to the show. This week's episode is one that I've been looking forward to releasing. Mike's book had a real impact on me and after reading it, I knew I needed to have Mike on the show to discuss. If you're joining Bite Me for the First Time, I'm glad you found me. For regular listeners, I appreciate your support and curiosity as we navigate these important topics together. I encourage you to share this episode with one person right now. Mike Davila has spent his entire career working in the field of drug use problems and solutions. He has been a counselor, teacher, community developer, collaborator, policy analyst, advocate, and a director at the center for Addiction and Mental Health, one of Canada's largest mental health and addiction organizations.

Margaret 00:01:18 He is a faculty member at the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. His book, Buzzkill The Corporatization of Cannabis asks the question does cannabis legalization get it right? When you consider that our long term legal drug industry of alcohol and tobacco cause more illness, injury, death and cost to the economy than all other illegal drugs combined, it seems an even more pressing question. But what does this mean for the consumer? The people like you and me, who are accessing the legal adult use market or the legacy market? Are our children better protected? Is our cannabis supply safer? Does government regulation prevent bad actors? How does regulation make room for craft cannabis or social injustices from the harms of prohibition? We answer these questions and many more in this eye opening conversation, relevant whether you're in Canada, the US or beyond. Please enjoy this conversation with Mike Davila. All right. And we're live. Well, live ish, I guess listeners invite me. I'm really excited to be joined today by Michael de Villar.

Margaret 00:02:40 He is the author of Buzzkill The Corporatization of Cannabis in Canada. And I mean, the book is specifically to Canada, but you do touch on a lot of other things. We're going to get into all the content of this excellent book that I think should be a must read for anybody who's accessing an adult use market, and maybe you can just take a second mic to introduce yourself to the listeners of Bite Me and tell us what inspired you to write this book?

Mike 00:03:06 Yeah, sure. Thanks for the introduction, Margaret, and thanks for inviting me on the show. It's really a kind of an interesting experience. I don't know if it was inspiration so much as a sense of obligation. Most of my career has been working in drug policy, specifically on the alcohol industry, the tobacco industry, the pharmaceutical industry and the illegal trade in drugs. And so I really, having witnessed a whole career's worth of adventures with those industries in terms of regulatory violations and including corporate crime and at times of profound indifference to public health protection and relatively weak government regulation.

Mike 00:03:57 And then this new drug industry comes along, this unprecedented event with with cannabis legalization. So the question that came up, I felt I really needed to get into this was to ask the question of would cannabis get it right? Would it do better than its elder drug industry siblings? And I guess a major message of the book is that, unfortunately, no, we didn't get it right that, in fact, the cannabis industry adopted the exact same playbook as has been used by alcohol, tobacco and pharma, and again, enabled by permissive regulation. And so the book I think people should know, it's not primarily about cannabis, the drug. I mean, obviously there's content in there about that, but it's really about the politics and the business of cannabis legalization. Now, I like that, you know, people are interested in, well, why is this important, you know? Well, the reason it's important is that it's our long term legal recreational drugs, alcohol and tobacco. They account for more illness, injury, deaths and cost to the economy related to drugs than all our illegal drugs combined.

Mike 00:05:26 So that raises a very interesting question about what are the implications for cannabis making this historic journey from, you know, illegal, demonized street drug, to this legal, commercial commodity and to even begin to answer that question, we have to get past what I think is, is kind of an oversimplistic notion that there are safe drugs and there are unsafe drugs. The reality is that any drug can be used safely, and any drug can be used in a manner that's potentially harmful. It's really not so much about just the intrinsic properties of the drug. It's about us. What are the meanings that we attach to a drug, and what are the decisions that we make in our use of that drug in terms of when and how much and under what circumstances? So that's the thing with commercial legalization, is that we're now all of a sudden we're not just allowed to use this drug. If the commercial interests prevail. We're actually encouraged to use this drug. And that's where product promotion and advertising and all that comes in.

Mike 00:06:49 And that's always been a big interest of mine to the psychology of of advertising. And what it does is it it hijacks the meaning that we attach to products, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. For example, if you're selling sustainable energy sources or organically grown vegetables, that might be a good thing to get people to think positively about those things. But we all know that drugs are not ordinary commodities. There's always some level of risk attached. And what we've seen with alcohol and tobacco is this cascade where we get an increase in advertising, then we get an increase in use, and then we get an increase in the problems related to that use. And a very fair question that people ask, well, say, well, why? I mean, why would an increase in the number of people using a drug necessarily translate into an increase in problems. And the reason that happens is because in our society, we seem to have there's a certain proportion of our society who are vulnerable to what I call appetites of pleasure.

Mike 00:08:10 And yes, that includes alcohol and tobacco and includes other drugs. It also includes things like gambling and video games and food and shopping and sex. There's a certain percentage of the population who will engage these appetites of pleasure in a way that it causes them problems. So as use of a drug increases among the general population, it also increases among that vulnerable portion of the population. And that's why we get this increase in problems. So why would we think that cannabis as an appetite of pleasure would be any different from all these other things. Now, the last point I'm going to make on that question, and it's maybe the most important one, is that none of that has ever been or ever will be a good reason to criminalize cannabis. And that is sort of the the unfortunate history we have is we're not talking this is none of this is a good reason to criminalize it. It's just a good reason to exercise some sensible caution in how we use it.

Margaret 00:09:21 Which is sort of like the the public health angle that you talk extensively about in the book.

Margaret 00:09:27 And I know you talked about in the book as well, like tobacco and alcohol being more harmful than all other drugs combined. And I think you also mentioned pharmaceuticals as well grouped into that category that even though this is something that could be potentially, you know, prescribed by a doctor that's also in that group because, you know, you watch TV and you see all the ads for a lot of pharmaceuticals that you know can potentially improve your life. But then they also include that long list of side effects that always come at the end of every commercial. And I guess, I guess maybe there's sometimes a little bit of pushback against the cannabis angle, because as somebody who's been in the cannabis space for quite some time and I'm a regular cannabis consumer, there's this notion that cannabis is relatively harmless. And so anytime there's any kind of talk about cannabis use disorder or some of the other things that can come along with using cannabis heavily or on a regular basis, there's a lot of pushback against that notion because it is deemed, generally speaking, relatively safe, especially compared to a lot of other substances that you can take.

Mike 00:10:33 Yes, you're absolutely right. And I think, again, it goes back to my point that there's always going to be a proportion of the population who are going to find a way to get into trouble with it. And I think why, cannabis enthusiasts, sometimes get sort of their backs up a bit is because for years that was used as a reason to, to support keeping cannabis illegal. It says, well, it hurts people. Therefore we have to make it illegal and know that. And this is where the public health, I think position is very important. We recognize that giving somebody a criminal record for what is for the great majority of users, a harmless activity is that does a lot of public health harm, too. So we have to separately, there's this tradition, you know, of there's a portion of people who are harmful. Then we have to make it illegal for everybody. And no, that's where public health steps in and says, no, we have to stop criminalizing this. But we still have to make tough to try to encourage people to exercise some reasonable caution in how they go about using it.

Margaret 00:11:48 Right. Now, you also I mean, you argued the legalization of cannabis was driven more by corporate interests than public health or social justice. Can you elaborate on that? And why should we care? Because from somebody like we're in Canada and we've enjoyed legal cannabis for six years now, and yeah, why should we care? Okay.

Mike 00:12:09 Well, let's let's go back a little bit in time and talk about social justice. There's there's so many interesting stories around this. If you look back to the early 1990s, the Liberal Party of Canada actually introduced legislation to decriminalize cannabis. And I just I'll just take a moment to make sure everybody understands the difference. I mean, legalization is what I call the beer store model, right? You can go in and you can make a purchase. You can't do that in decriminalization and decriminalization if you get caught, you might get your product confiscated. You might get a small fine, but you don't get a criminal record. So. So the liberals actually introduce legislation to do that much in the early 1990s.

Mike 00:12:58 But despite the fact that they held a majority government for a continuous decade, they never got around to actually passing the legislation. So, you know, and what happened is that we continue to criminalize it. So for all those years since the 1990s, almost every year there was an additional 20,000 or more Canadians who got a criminal record for, for really harmless, you know, use use of cannabis. So then fast forward a few decades to 2016, and the federal NDP introduced a motion to the House of Commons, to decriminalize cannabis, not to replace legalization, but just to be an interim measure. While the government would continue to take another two years to work out all the complex logistics of legalization and and actually make it happen. But that was defeated by block voting of the, the conservatives and liberals. So we still have a few more years of people being criminalized that could have stopped it. So then we get when the liberals form a majority government again in 2015, it very promptly sets up a task force to look into, to study this and make some recommendations.

Mike 00:14:28 And that task force made two very clear statements against decriminalization as an interim measure, even. And if you look at the Cannabis Act, it has some pretty brutal provisions still, that the the penalty, the maximum penalty for possession of cannabis from an illegal source is five years in prison.

Margaret 00:14:55 Wow.

Mike 00:14:56 Yeah.

Margaret 00:14:56 Five years?

Mike 00:14:57 Yeah. Yeah, that that's pretty heavy duty now. So the good news is that since legalization, arrests for possession have decreased quite substantially, but it hasn't all gone away. in 2019, if you look at the calendar year 2019, there were still 16,000 cannabis related arrests made in Canada. Now that's way down from what it used to be, but that's still a lot under so-called legalization. Now, what became interesting also is that while possession charges went way down, there was this big increase in import export charges. And, you know, some of us were saying, say what? What's that all about? And when you think about import and export, what do we imagine in our heads? We think of a truckload of cannabis crossing the border or, or a trunk car or a car trunk load of cannabis or.

Margaret 00:16:01 We've all seen the movies. Yeah. Like the stuff you think of in movies.

Mike 00:16:04 At minimum, a suitcase full, right? Yeah. That's not what was happening. This was people being charged with import export for a small amount of personal cannabis on their person as they cross the border, which is pretty, pretty harmless. So, you know, my point on social justice is that the Liberal Party never seemed to be that interested in cannabis law reform. From a social justice perspective, it only got Really passionate about it when it found a way to monetize it. That changed everything. So that's the social justice picture. I also want to address what you also asked about the public health approach. And for decades, all kinds of drug policy organizations have been saying, let's get rid of this criminal justice approach and use a public health approach. And that was a nice kind of cool sounding meme that a lot of people thought was good. What they did not tell us at any point was that there was a large number of Liberal Party elites and their senior bureaucrats who had already invested in cannabis production companies for therapeutic purposes.

Margaret 00:17:24 So is that more like on the medical side when you're talking about therapeutic purposes?

Mike 00:17:28 Well, that's exactly what that is. And so all those companies that had licenses for for medical production. Now we're going to get their licenses expanded to include producing for for for recreational use. And of course, all these, these top guys in the party had positioned themselves beautifully to make huge returns on legalization with this much expanded recreational market. But we never heard about that. It took investigative journalists to dig up all that stuff. So then in 2015, when the liberals again formed a majority government, in contrast to the low priority it gave decriminalization, it very quickly established the task force. And there were some really blatant conflicts of interest in this task force. So the chair, the person who was appointed chair of the task force, was a senior advisor at a law firm that had already publicly identified its aspiration to be the go to advisers for the cannabis industry. And after the work of the task force, she was seen by some journalists at The Globe and Mail attending cannabis industry meetings and handing out her business card for her law firm.

Mike 00:18:53 The co-chair had a consulting company and already had four clients who were cannabis production companies. And after the work of the task force, he was hired to a senior position at one of our country's most prominent cannabis producers. So this was not the objectivity that that we really that really should be in place. In fact, I thought it was. I've been watching drug policy for a long time, and I thought it was one of the most blatant conflicts of interest that I've seen over the course of my career.

Margaret 00:19:28 And just to clarify, for the listeners, when you're talking about the task force, you're talking about the group of people that came together to sort of shape the potential, the legalization policy that was going to be rolled out. And yet so many of these same people were also offering their services to potential licensed producers and people sitting on boards of licensed producers, the board of directors.

Mike 00:19:51 That's exactly right. Margaret. Yes. Good clarification. So what we found happened. So with that kind of bias in right from the very beginning, we we found that the task force was generally making very industry friendly recommendations.

Mike 00:20:10 And in its final report, what we saw is it did make some recommendations that would be, you know, good for public health, like like the education programs, make sure people know what the risks are and, and so forth. But it didn't recommend anything that would encroach upon, the industry's interest in market expansion and profits. For example, you know, minimum wage was a really contentious issue. And, the ranges of recommendations that were made were from 18 at the low end and 25 got the high end. And both the task force recommended and the government approved the lowest end of that range at 18, which has major implications for market expansion. Now, the proviso, of course, we need to talk about with that is that it did give a proviso where provinces, if they so chose, could raise the age. And most of the provinces, except Alberta and Quebec did raise the age to 19. And then in a couple of years later, Quebec surprised everybody by raising it to 21. Right.

Mike 00:21:24 That is interesting. So my my sort of my just to finish, I would argue this was not about social justice and compassion. This was not about public health protection. This was strictly business. Now, your question about why should we care? I love that question. It's because this is bigger than cannabis and it's bigger than our other drug industries. This is a problem in every sector of our economy where, you know, political pundits talk about neoliberalism, of this process of allowing regulatory capture, as they call it, by by industry. And it's just that our regulators are having this shift of doing more to protect industry rather than public health and safety. And the other the last point I'll make on that is that my book, I think, is often mistaken as being anti cannabis. And it's not it's it's in its essence it's anti-corporate and it's anti neoliberalism. And I really wanted to use cannabis legalization as this very contemporary example, that we were, you know, we we had this opportunity to get it right and we didn't.

Margaret 00:22:42 Well, and you say something very salient there that, that, that the government, you know, has been working more to protect industry than working to protect the people that they supposedly represent, which I think is really interesting. And there are a lot of cannabis folks that have a, you know, a certain feeling about large corporate cannabis generally when it comes to purchasing, if you're buying a product, you know, if you have the option between buying craft versus buying corporate, most of the time, people I shouldn't say. Most of the time I can speak for myself anyway. I would choose craft over corporate because I just feel like the approach that they take to growing that plant and putting out a product is completely different for and for a lot of the reasons that you're talking about, because profit. When it comes to corporate. Anything corporate is the end goal. It's not people. And that becomes the real issue. And it's so evident too, when you talk about the social justice. Like they had the opportunity to decriminalize.

Margaret 00:23:41 And I know you talked about in your book as well, that oftentimes decree can mean you can like lose your product or get a ticket. But there are some models out there where it just means nothing happens. Like you. It's just decriminalized. You just go about your life. Yeah, you can't go to a store and buy it, but you could maybe grow a plant in your backyard, or you could get some off a friend who does or something like that. And nobody is having their life destroyed by having a criminal charge for, like you said, a relatively benign plant.

Mike 00:24:11 Yeah. And, you know, you're absolutely right. And a lot of people are figuring that out. I haven't monitored it much in the last couple of years, but I know up to about two years ago, we were seeing a pretty dramatic shift in people moving away from the corporate cannabis to supporting the local craft growers. So people are figuring this out, right?

Margaret 00:24:34 And because you also mentioned 16,000 arrests and these import export charges.

Margaret 00:24:39 I mean, if you get an import export charge, that's a federal charge, you are in huge trouble with that. And that is definitely going to affect you for the rest of your life. And that's crazy. And this is happening. 2019 that was like that's after legalization. And to think that these things are still happening, it's kind of it's kind of outrageous in a lot of ways. But now the title of your book, Buzz Kill, suggests that something's been lost in the process of legalization. What do you think's been lost and who's been most affected?

Mike 00:25:09 Well, I think the first casualty and I might be speaking largely personally here, but I know there's at least a fair number of people who think this way as well. The first casualty was the ability to trust the Liberal Party in terms of its its policy on cannabis legalization. They promised us a law abiding industry that would be regulated to produce product that we could trust. What we got was a disinformation campaign that demonized the unlicensed trade and deified the licensed trade.

Mike 00:25:48 And the story we got is that the unlicensed cannabis trade was all these dangerous organized crime entities, and our children were buying their cannabis from these dangerous criminals. And not just cannabis, but they will sell other dangerous drugs to our children. And they will, they will get them to do get involved in other crimes they love. One of their favorite expressions was gun runners. Our kids were all going to be turned into gun runners. I saw that one so many times. And, you know, from a strategic point of view. It's a brilliant strategy to leverage parental protectiveness of the person. Of the children in order to traffic legalization to us.

Margaret 00:26:36 Fearmongering?

Mike 00:26:37 Yes, exactly. The problem with it is it's not true. It's not supported by the academic research. What the academic research shows is that most people who buy cannabis aren't buying it from, you know, these shadowy figures in poorly lit parking lots in the dead of night. They're buying it from their friends, and they're buying it from family members and other kinds of social contacts.

Mike 00:27:02 And even the people who are selling cannabis illegally. The very great majority of them. We're not selling any other kinds of drugs. And the only kind of crime that they had any involvement in whatsoever was selling cannabis. That was it. Now, yes, there were a few bad actors, as there always are. And often it's the bad actors that get the media attention. So I think there were a few incidents that that sort of supported the the government's narrative. But by and large, these were not the dangerous people that we were told about. And the other thing, even the government's own Intel did not support this organized crime narrative. There was a 2016 Justice Department report that looked at all the cultivation cases tried by the government, and only 5% of them had any connection to organised crime at all. And I went through year after year after year of the annual reports from the Public Prosecution Service of Canada and Criminal Intelligence Service Canada, and they all reported the same thing that involvement of organized crime in the drug trade was pretty much restricted to.

Mike 00:28:26 Cocaine, fentanyl, and methamphetamine, and its involvement in cannabis was negligible. So what? What did we get from this legal industry? Well, it wasn't a law abiding one. There's numerous. Incidents of corporate crime, even collaboration with the illegal trade it was supposed to replace. With relatively little consequences from government regulators or the criminal justice system. Now, one of the big advantages of legalization is that we have a surveillance system in place where Health Canada conducts inspections of all licensed cannabis producers in the country. And this has been happening since 2015. And since then, Health Canada has logged 153 regulatory violations and 1451 of them met the criteria for major or critical violations. So, so much for law abiding. So much for the Liberal Party. The credibility on this. The second casualty is the investors with their unbridled passion for cannabis. They some of them became unfortunately naive sitting ducks. And the early licensees, the corporate executives, who were mostly a bunch of greedy con men, never made really any money selling cannabis.

Mike 00:30:06 Where they made their money was from conning, naive investors. And the last tally I saw on this was an analysis done by a Toronto law firm, which is estimated that investors in the cannabis industry have lost $131 billion. And I want to emphasize that that's a B for billion, right? Lost gon. And it's not just their money, you know, it's their savings. It's it's debt. It's lost dreams. And there was very little protection for them from securities regulators. So, you know, these people were were left with debt and despair as our government regulators seem to almost go into kind of a coma with this industry. And, you know, there's one of the expressions I've used in lots of cases is that our regulators are in danger of being transformed from, you know, government watchdogs to corporate lapdogs. And this and as a result, cannabis investors got hurt in a big way.

Margaret 00:31:14 And it's funny you mentioned that because I know you talked a lot in your book about how the people who are running these, these corporate cannabis companies, you know, they be closing down giant greenhouses they just built and laying off people, and investors are losing money.

Margaret 00:31:29 But somehow the C-suite executives still made their bonuses. And that doesn't sit right at all with anybody. But you also, and I'm really glad you also touched on the the people selling weed on the illegal trade because you what you talk about and what the research suggests is what I've seen in my own personal life, you know, through years of being around cannabis, is that usually you went to somebody's house and you pick some up and maybe they might sell mushrooms or something, but they that's usually all they did. You'd shoot the shit for a little bit and you'd go home and they'd be like, oh, great, I just made 50 bucks and they would use it on grocery money or something like that. Like the, the, the notion that it was mostly organized crime does seem. incorrect. I mean, those are the stories that make the news because it's not exciting to have, like, you know, Bill from the house down the street got busted with, you know, an ounce of weed in his cabinet or something.

Margaret 00:32:29 It's just not it just doesn't make any sense. Yeah. And you talk a lot about, like, the the regulatory infractions and some of these things, like you said, were really serious. But it has to do with things like really shady practices where they're, you know, selling weed in the on the market that they were using pesticides that weren't allowed or like things like that. And so that really does put into some doubt around the safety of some of the legal weed. I mean, you expect to have the regulatory folks have the teeth necessary to sort of protect the public, but it doesn't seem like that's the way things are playing out. I don't know if the industry has improved since you've written this book. Maybe you can comment on that.

Mike 00:33:16 Yeah, well, it's a good question. and the short answer is no. And I've just recently done some analysis on that. And, the because we've been at this with companies legally producing cannabis, we've been at it for a decade now since, you know, if you conclude the the period of pre recreational to include the therapeutic medical, we've been at this a good decade and actually a bit more than a decade.

Mike 00:33:44 And and I just I don't have the numbers at hand. But the the take home message is is the improvement has been minimal. Right. We should have seen a lot more over the period of a decade.

Margaret 00:33:59 Well, that's disappointing to hear.

Mike 00:34:01 Yeah. Well, and it was for me too. You know, I was really hoping to see at least some good news that things were improving, but it's it's it's pretty small the amount.

Margaret 00:34:11 So in that, in that regard then what does that mean for the consumer who's going into a store to buy cannabis? If if we know that a lot of the product that could potentially be sold is not necessarily safe?

Mike 00:34:27 Yeah. Well, I know the the solution of a friend of mine is he just grows his own in his backyard and he he knows everything that goes in the ground. He knows everything that happens during the plant's growing cycle. And and I think and it's surprising that, I mean, maybe it's just too much of a hassle for most people that they don't want to do it, but that's the safest way.

Mike 00:34:53 I mean, our government just has not. I mean, I mean, growing cannabis on a large scale is very difficult. and so you have to at least acknowledge that. And that's why I'm, you know, inclined to supporting lower craft growers. It's just more manageable from an agricultural perspective. So I think that's why we need to get away from these big corporations. We need to focus on small craft and and still regulate, you know. Very tough. I mean, there are companies using illegal pesticides on products that are potentially very dangerous. And when you think there are people who are using cannabis medicinally, who are compromised in terms of their immune system, and we're feeding them poisons in this cannabis, and these companies get off with nothing but a slap on the wrist.

Margaret 00:35:51 Right? It's really a deterrent.

Mike 00:35:53 When when I spoke to a committee of the Senate on this, I talked about that and I said, you know, why is this not considered the poisoning of people seeking medicine for cancer or compromised immune system? And were we're.

Mike 00:36:10 And you've got a company deliberately feeding them poison. I said, senators, why is this not a serious crime?

Margaret 00:36:18 Right.

Mike 00:36:19 There was no answer.

Margaret 00:36:21 Yeah. And I mean, you're talking you're speaking my language in a lot of ways, because I know a ton of people that grow their own cannabis. I'm one of them. And that's also the reason why I like to make my own edibles as well, because I know exactly what's going into them. And I have spoken to a lot of edibles makers through this particular podcast, and I like what they're doing because they are usually, you know, more on the craft side than the corporate side, and they put a little more thought and care and attention into what they're doing. Then you're going to get when it's all about how cheaply can I produce this product so I can maximize my profit? And that's a very different way of looking at selling a product on the cannabis market. But, I mean, a lot of people also believe that legalization would bring a more just and equitable cannabis market.

Margaret 00:37:08 And do you really? Do you feel like we've achieved that? In any case.

Mike 00:37:13 Well, it's more bad news, I'm afraid. I don't think legalization of cannabis in Canada was ever about justice and equity. I think there were a lot of people who, in a sense, were were conned by a very expertly developed public relations campaign and the thinking that that's what this was all about. But, you know, those of us who have been around the block a few times with our other legal drug industries, we had a pretty strong suspicion of how this was going to play out. So I don't think that it was really corporations derailing anything. I think, you know, they just did what what corporations do. And I think from day one, legalization was used as a kind of Ponzi scheme in a way, for making a lot of money for a very small group of elites and, and everybody else sort of got shafted. And, the whole thing was really, I think, very much over romanticized right now.

Margaret 00:38:19 The war on drugs disproportionately affected marginalized communities, as we well know. Do you think legalization has helped prepare these harms, or is it just created new inequities?

Mike 00:38:32 Well, that'd be one of the ideas that I think, came up that was sort of an interesting one. Is that. Yeah, that, you know, the war on drugs did very negatively affect these marginalized communities, and there should be some kind of reparations. And I certainly agree with that in principle. One of the ideas that really gained prominence was that if you've got people who have been hurt by having a drug conviction, specifically a cannabis conviction, that maybe we, give them preferred easier access to a cannabis retail license. And I think this was taken on very enthusiastically. I think it was in Oakland, California, where that became a pretty major, major happening. But we heard a lot of talk about this in Canada, too. And I think, you know, that's okay if that's what the person wants. But I the more I thought about it, you know, I thought, well, if someone was had a pot charge, they got busted ten years ago or even a year ago, why would we assume that that is how they want to have some reparation to be given a cannabis retail license? I mean, there are people obviously who want that, but why would we assume that would make everybody happy? Why would you only have one option, that one as a form of reparation? I mean, maybe the person would really like some help establishing a software company or beginning a carpentry apprenticeship.

Mike 00:40:06 Or maybe they could use some free legal assistance or help with affordable housing. Food security? daycare. You know, all the issues that are so potentially and probably so much more important to these marginalized communities than getting some help with a retail license for cannabis. So, you know, right from the beginning, I was saying, no, you know, we need to offer a broad range of reparations. And, but even that was still sabotaged by big cannabis. I don't remember some details now off the top of my head, but I think in the state of New York, a lot of these attempts to give cannabis retail licenses to people, it got sabotaged by big cannabis, right? So, you know, and I haven't seen anything that shows that it was, a big success anywhere. I might have missed something, but I haven't seen anything. It's, I think, a perfect example. You know, the intent was good, but I think the execution was compromised by narrow thinking.

Margaret 00:41:09 Right. And it's interesting you mentioned that mentioned about the cannabis licenses in particular, because in many jurisdictions in Canada, there's so many retail licenses that it's almost impossible to make money at the retail level now.

Margaret 00:41:21 So making reparations in that way is not that not as can be very unattractive, actually. Even if you're a cannabis lover, there's a lot of different ways you could be in the cannabis industry without going the retail angle. But like you said, why are we assuming that they want to get into the cannabis space to earn a living? Or there's lots of different ways that it can be that it can be approached. And so I really like that. But also, I mean, they did I don't know if they've changed it, but they offered people to get they could get pardons on their past criminal convictions for cannabis. And as far as I know, that still costs a quite a bit of money to do. And why they didn't just expunge the records, like if they really wanted to help people overcome the challenges, then why wouldn't they just expunge records instead of making people have to apply for a pardon?

Mike 00:42:11 Yeah, I think it's a really good question. You know, and I just keep going back that to my, my one of my main points and it's one of the main points of the book is this was never about social justice.

Margaret 00:42:24 Right.

Mike 00:42:24 At any point that was part of the cell. But it wasn't really what was motivating all this.

Margaret 00:42:31 Right? So it was basically corporate interests at the expense of social justice and the public health.

Mike 00:42:38 Right? And, you know, there's a story that, is is a fascinating one that I'll tell that relates to this. There was, a license producer in Winnipeg, named Boniface. And what happened with them is they had over promised their ability to produce and therefore their ability to sell and therefore the impact on stock values to their investors. And they fell terribly short of of the yield they would need to fulfill those promises of revenue and stock values. So what they decided to do was that they went out and bought 200kg of cannabis from an illegal source, and then sold it to retail outlets in Saskatchewan. Now, there were some employees, and I talked to one of them on the phone. We had a long, absolutely fascinating discussion about this. and so he sort of gave me a lot of the stuff in the background that, you know, Health Canada never wrote anything about.

Mike 00:43:48 But anyway, some employees fearing their own, you know, culpability. I mean, they were unloading the illegal cannabis and loading it on different trucks. And so they said, you know what? We're committing a serious federal crime here. So they, you know, they went to management and said, look, you know, we're not comfortable with this. Management said, you know what? Just mind your own business and do your job. Let us do the thinking. So unhappy with that, the employees went to the board of directors and the board of directors somewhat reluctantly said, okay, yeah, we'll look into it. And I and I think it was the guy I talked to in the phone. He never told me, but I think he's the one who decided to call Health Canada. So Health Canada came, did its inspection, found all kinds of, regulatory violations. And in this whole process, the company did admit, yes, we did buy some illegal cannabis from what it called a broker.

Mike 00:44:55 And some of the execs were fired. I think one board member was suspended, the company's license was suspended for less than a year, and the company actually eventually went bankrupt, which meant all these employees, including the conscientious ones, lost their jobs. Now, Margaret, imagine that you and I pool our funds and we go out and we buy 200kg of illegal cannabis, and we try to sell it and we get caught. You and I are almost certainly going.

Margaret 00:45:29 To be in prison.

Mike 00:45:30 We are going to prison. And the Cannabis Act provides for that much cannabis. It provides a maximum of 14 years in prison. Wow. Yeah. Wow. Exactly. But with bona fide. No one went to prison. No one went to court. No one was even charged.

Margaret 00:45:52 That's crazy.

Mike 00:45:53 It is. And now, at the same time that I was researching this bonafide case, I just totally by accident. I just stumbled upon another case that was happening in Winnipeg at the same time, involving an Aboriginal man who had been arrested for possession of not 200kg of cannabis, but 85g.

Mike 00:46:17 And in the. And he was also found to be in possession of some equipment that could be used in the further distribution of this cannabis. And in sentencing him, the judge did not call him a broker. The judge called him a drug dealer and sentenced him to ten months in prison.

Margaret 00:46:37 Right. And that's the language. The language that you point out is so interesting and kind of infuriating, too, because in that first case with the bona fide employees, if anybody was going to end up seeing jail time, it would have been those those employees that were actually the ones handling the cannabis and loading the trucks, unloading the trucks. And then again, this the, you know, corporate execs, the the C-suite people just, you know, I guess somebody got fired, but you'll just go find another job.

Mike 00:47:05 Yeah, exactly. Another six figure salary job. Yeah. And you can afford to go on vacation for a few months, right? High fives over cocktails in the Bahamas. You know.

Margaret 00:47:15 Yeah. Yeah. That's outrageous. Now, now, you mentioned this indigenous indigenous individual who was sentenced to ten months. How has the indigenous community been impacted by corporate cannabis? Because I find that that's sort of an interesting area as well, because a lot of there's a lot of dispensaries that you can go to on reserves that are sort of outside of that.

Mike 00:47:36 Yeah. And it's a really good question. And it's one of my main answer is going to be, I don't know. I mean, I, I understand it the same as, as you that the I mean, it seems like the native community has just sort of taken upon itself and said, well, you know, you're not going to let us into this system, so we'll do it ourselves. And I don't know to what extent. they've been the police have sort of stood down and just let them do it. I have to admit, I haven't followed that issue very well, so I don't know even what the native communities think if they're happy to do it themselves.

Mike 00:48:10 Or do they would they really like to be involved in other ways of doing it legally and, you know, within the bounds of the law? I don't know. I mean, I think it'd be a great podcast to invite a couple of them in and get their opinions rather than me sort of guessing. And yeah, imposing.

Margaret 00:48:27 It is interesting because I do know lots of people that travel to reserves to purchase their cannabis because, you know, they like the bud tenders there, and it probably keeps the money in the community. But I should see if I can find somebody to come on the podcast to talk about that more specifically. Now, along those same lines, craft cannabis producers and small businesses struggle to compete with these huge corporations because they just don't have the same economies of scale. Are there any policies that you think that could help level out the playing field?

Mike 00:48:56 Well, I mean, I probably have a bit of a hard nosed attitude on this, but my approach to it would be to just get rid of the corporations, you know.

Mike 00:49:08 I mean, they I think they, they, they tend to attract a lot of bad actors. They're very difficult to manage. The politicians and the regulators are too easily seduced into letting the corporations get away with far too much. So, you know, I would be inclined to focus on small craft growers, and just have it exclusively like that. And, you know, I remember there was a CEO from one of the big, producers who was talking a little bit about the craft growers gaining market share, and he referred to them as ankle biters, which is just it just captures the attitude. You know, the condescension is so, so perfectly. But, you know, in Europe, I mean, there's a model of cannabis social clubs, right, that are like co-ops. And you pay a membership. they grow the cannabis, you come and get your supply when you want it, and there's no attempt at market expansion. It's not like we have to, you know, there's this whole thing of let's get everybody to try cannabis.

Mike 00:50:11 People who want it come and get it. But, you know, we're not going to do this big public promotion campaign. So, you know, there's that model, you know, in the book, I talk about a, a not for profit Crown corporation that could have been set up. I think that would have been interesting to try. And and I hope that somewhere in the world somebody does give it a try. and then, you know, so really I would again, it's an issue that I on which I would defer to the craft growers to get into some specifics too. Another great podcast, Margaret.

Margaret 00:50:45 Yeah. Well, and I you mentioned in your book you talk quite a bit about the small craft growers. And you reference, the the CEO. I guess I don't know if they call themselves CEOs or not, but the head of a particular craft gro company that, basically came out and said, yeah, we had some powdery mildew or something like that on our crop. And so we had to, like, destroy it and we couldn't sell it.

Margaret 00:51:09 And that kind of integrity, I think you're more likely to see in the smaller spaces because they really care about what they're doing. and that would be the kind of company that I want to buy from and kind of.

Mike 00:51:22 Somebody would want to invest in as well, I think. Yeah, there's that, there's that trust there. Yeah. I mean, it's almost, almost kind of like a religion, you know, and and with the passion and I say that as a, as a positive thing, whereas, you know, I think with the corporations it's the religion is, is all about money.

Margaret 00:51:41 Right. Absolutely. I, I find the social clubs pretty interesting as well. I mean, I've, I've been to Germany. I was in Germany last year just as they legalized, but they had nothing set up yet. The social clubs weren't really they weren't set up because it legalized in April 1st and that's when I was there, but I do I do find that sort of attractive as well, because there's sort of a community component around it as well, and people talk and then you can find out about all kinds of things.

Margaret 00:52:08 I guess if you're talking directly to the people who are growing and stuff as well. So I find that to be an interesting model. So in your opinion, would more like eliminating large like super large corporations and maybe social clubs and things like that? Is that would that be more aligned with the public health oriented cannabis model?

Mike 00:52:27 It could be. Yeah. I mean, it should be. I mean, I think you still have to regulate it. I mean, there's still could be people who are going to, you know, always push the margins a bit, right? Even among small craft growers. But generally speaking, I would have a lot more confidence in the smaller craft growers than I. I would in the large corporate sectors. I mean, it's really and it's not just about, well, you know, following the law and that it has direct implications for quality of the product for people who are very passionate about the product. And there's a lot of factors involved in that. I mean, as I said, it's not easy to grow cannabis in large volumes.

Mike 00:53:06 It's it's an agricultural nightmare that so many things can go wrong. And, you know, this is why we saw that these execs, you know, they were incentivised to build the biggest and largest greenhouses in the world. And most of them ended up sitting mostly empty. And I remember seeing an astounding thing that was reported in Marijuana Business Daily, between 2018 and 2020, the cannabis industry in Canada destroyed more cannabis than it sold.

Margaret 00:53:43 I mean.

Mike 00:53:44 Think about.

Margaret 00:53:44 That. That's wild. And they destroyed more than they sold.

Mike 00:53:49 Yeah, they destroyed more than they sold. And one company was destroying so much cannabis that it it normally these companies would outsource the incineration of it. One company actually bought its own incinerator to have in-house. That's how it was cheaper to do it that way than to outsource the amount that they had to incinerate. Now, the other thing that was interesting is that because of the way the laws were written, and the regulations cannabis company, legal cannabis companies could not hire people who had a cannabis conviction.

Mike 00:54:24 Now, there were there was a lot of expertise out there from the days of the illegal growing operations. Right. People over the years had learned how to grow larger crops without lots of problems, but the companies couldn't hire them because a lot of them had actually been charged at one point or another. So that was another, thing that happened. And the other thing that that made that I think had some implications was that, companies, because they misled their shareholders, made these promises about production yields that they couldn't keep. You know, like the bona fide story they had to start purchasing from the illegal trade. And that could have some, implications for quality as well, because by and large, that stuff wasn't being tested.

Margaret 00:55:14 Right.

Mike 00:55:14 And there's, a very recent Health Canada report, January of this year. And what Health Canada did is it collected 50 samples from the legal trade, 50 samples from the illegal trade, and did some comparisons. And the first thing they found was that the on the legal cannabis, the level of THC on the labels was exaggerated beyond the true values that showed in the testing and in some cases, grossly exaggerated.

Mike 00:55:47 And what's happening there is that the testing labs where the companies send their cannabis to be tested, they are under pressure constantly to falsify the results of the tests and to give the grower, the, the producer, thc levels that the company wants and not what the tests reflect. And if the testing lab doesn't comply with this, they don't get repeat business. So this is another level of of corruption. Now, the other thing that this report from Health Canada showed that is also very interesting is they found in both legal and illegal samples, lots of contamination. So the legal product was less likely to be contaminated with mycotoxins, which is like fungus or pesticides or microbial contaminants. And also for some heavy metals, particularly arsenic, cadmium, lead, mercury and barium. And arsenic was actually quite high in some samples. That's the in the illegal but the legal product was more likely to contain and exceed safe limits for heavy metals such as copper, nickel, molybdenum, chromium, and vanadium. So that's a problem.

Mike 00:57:18 And this is probably an issue that a lot of your audience probably understands better, possibly far better than I do. But plants vary in their potential to absorb heavy metals. And it turns out that cannabis as a plant is what's called a hyper accumulator. And that means that it more readily absorbs heavy metals than many other plants. Like 100 to 1000 times more readily.

Margaret 00:57:50 I don't know that.

Mike 00:57:51 Cannabis is particularly at risk for absorbing heavy metals. So the obvious message for the home grower is you damn well better know where your soil comes from and what's in it.

Margaret 00:58:05 Right? That's really interesting, because I do know a lot of home growers that don't do soil growing at all. They use other mediums. But that's a really interesting point about the hyper accumulation, because I was totally unaware that that was a thing with regards to the cannabis plant. I did also see, I think, a synopsis of that Health Canada Health Canada report. I do remember at one point, one of the licensed producers was talking about dynamic versus static pricing in the cannabis market.

Margaret 00:58:34 And I think that was the idea that some of the some of the LPs would have a product go to the market and they would get it tested, and then they would use that same, that same THC percentage on every label for the rest of the life of that product versus others that were testing each batch. I don't know how they got around doing, like doing the static testing, how they were able to actually do that. But I worked in a dispensary for a couple of years in 2020, and I saw that myself. I saw products that every single time we would get in a new batch, it was always the exact same percentage. And then others always fluctuated. But the problem with a lot of that stuff, too, is that there's still a lot of consumers out there that equate high THC with, I don't know, quality or they just think it's better. And so there is, of course, the pressure from the LPs to also produce something that's like, you know, as high as a percentage as they can possibly get.

Margaret 00:59:29 And so that just contributes to all of what you were just talking about. But one thing I am curious about is, is do you know the percentage of craft growers on the market in Canada versus corporate like. Is there? Do you have any idea?

Mike 00:59:44 I don't know, and I don't think I ever even looked into that.

Margaret 00:59:48 right.

Mike 00:59:49 Oh, no. Sorry. Can't help you with that one.

Margaret 00:59:51 Yeah, I was just curious. I thought maybe you might know, but it would probably take. I mean, there's so many cannabis companies out there now with all their brands and sub brands, it's hard to keep track of everything.

Mike 01:00:00 I think there's 800 licensed growers now in Canada. I mean.

Margaret 01:00:04 Is it really. That's huge. Yeah.

Mike 01:00:06 That's huge.

Margaret 01:00:07 Yeah. That's a that's a lot of competition. Yeah. Now, legal cannabis was supposed to eliminate the legacy market, as I like to call it. in your opinion, has that succeeded? I certainly have my own opinion, but I would love to hear yours.

Mike 01:00:23 Yeah, well, the last I saw, was that the, unlicensed market has been reduced by about 50%.

Margaret 01:00:32 Okay.

Mike 01:00:33 Which is not bad, I guess. I think most people imagined that it would be higher and faster than that. But, you know, we have to sort of be realistic. I mean, after a century, after more than a century, we still have illegal tobacco, alcohol and pharmaceutical products. So, you know, I think it's probably unrealistic to think that we'll ever completely eliminate the black market. And if the legal market doesn't get its act together, that's going to help it survive longer. Right. I mean, if people knew that they were getting a guaranteed, safer product by buying from the legal from the legal industry, that would help a lot. But that's not what's happening.

Margaret 01:01:18 And not only a safer product, but a good quality product, because a lot of people don't want to give up that quality. It's it's like anything. I mean, you can go out and buy your corporate beer, you can buy a really nice craft beer from the store now.

Margaret 01:01:30 And a lot of people are opting for the craft beers because they're more interesting. And it's. Yeah. So I tend to agree with that. I think some of the regulations they have in place, but maybe that's also like a public health thing. I'm not really sure. But like with edibles, you know, they're really capped at a pretty low percentage, especially considering that some people's tolerances are way outside of that. And that makes it way too expensive to buy from the legal market.

Mike 01:01:54 Yeah. And that that's unfortunate because, I mean, from a public and it's a tricky thing from a public health perspective because in one way, from a public health perspective, it's it's way better to be using edibles than, than combustion. Much safer. Right. So that's a good protection. I think where things went awry with the edibles was that they started being made as candy. And so the problem that happened, and we knew this as early as 2014, in Colorado, that people are taking them home and they're not being careful and they're leaving them out and their kids come along.

Mike 01:02:35 Don't know. And they just think it's candy and they eat it. And all of a sudden you've got a child, a small child in respiratory distress, and you're taking them to the hospital in the middle of the night. And there was clear data that that was becoming a big problem in Colorado as, as early as 2014. And there's a researcher in, in Ottawa, Adam Myron, who, and he's shown the exact same thing is happening in Canada. We've had a big increase in child admissions, to hospital and the, er, from unsupervised consumption of cannabis candy. So edibles a good thing. but when it's in the form of a confection, I think that's the reason why they're restricted to very low levels to present, to prevent a really serious, overdose in a child. It's unfortunate Fortunate that we have to do that. But, you know, there's, you know. What's that old thing from grade school, right. There's always people who ruin it for the rest of us.

Margaret 01:03:40 Yeah, that's true because obviously I.

Margaret 01:03:44 I'm a parent. My kids are older now, but like you, I don't. I never wanted my kids getting into my stash. That stuff was for me. So you lock it up, you keep it away because no parent wants to go through that of seeing their kid. And like, I mean, I've overdosed on edibles before and it is not a fun time. I can't even imagine what it'd be like if you're just a little kid. So that is unfortunate, because that's one of those areas where the illicit market will probably continue to thrive just because of the fact that it can't compete with, like the legal market, can't compete with those limited potencies of the edibles that you find on the legal market. But yeah, what do you do now if you could rewrite cannabis Canada's cannabis laws from scratch? What are their what are the top three changes that you would make?

Mike 01:04:31 Yeah. That's, I hate that question. Not not not because it's a bad question. It's a great question. And it's probably one of the best questions that could be asked.

Mike 01:04:43 I hate it because I don't have a great answer to it. Right. that's going to be really difficult. because the industry now has become so entrenched, just like alcohol, tobacco and pharma. So, you know, I think now we're in a mode where we can try to make small adjustments to improve things over time. But, you know, I want to get at the important part of your question. So let's just reframe it a bit, which is, you know, if another country was where Canada was six years ago, how would we advise them to write their laws? And I think Germany and Malta are a couple of examples that are at least thinking that through carefully. It's not entirely clear yet about where they're going to land, but it looks promising. It looks like they're going to do a lot better than Canada did, and a lot better than what happened in the US at the state level. So this would be my advice. First of all, use a hybrid model that involves decriminalization first, like immediately.

Mike 01:05:49 If you haven't already done that, do it yesterday and then work on non-commercial legalization. So no corporations, just small local craft growers and and non-profits with no market expansion activities. And I would then say make product quality a priority with meaningful penalties for deliberate or reckless regulatory violations. Now, that doesn't mean that if something kind of unavoidable happens in your production that you know, you throw the book at them. But I mean, for companies that are repeatedly flagrant.

Margaret 01:06:34 Yeah. Yeah.

Mike 01:06:35 Yeah, there should be very meaningful penalties for that, quite possibly including forfeiture of the license. And we've had a few of those in Canada. I think there's four licenses that have been forfeited to date to date, but it could have been a lot larger. And in my opinion it should have been a lot larger. The other thing I would do, and this is probably a controversial one for some people, but I I'd be willing to give it a chance, is to look into bringing the unlicensed producers into the legal system, give them the opportunity to come in because they bring a lot of expertise now.

Mike 01:07:19 Yeah, there's some understandings that have to be in place. It's not like the Wild West anymore. There are laws and there are regulations and you're expected to follow them. And if you don't, you're going to lose that license very quickly. so but, you know, given those provisos, I would be willing to give that a try. And, and the final thing, I guess, is just, the whole thing would be under, public health control. That I think, you know, forget about putting business people in charge of this. if you need financial expertise, but hire that expertise as employees. Don't put those folks in charge.

Margaret 01:08:06 Right. Those are all excellent suggestions, actually. And even the last one where you suggest might be a little controversial. I mean, the listeners have. Bite me. There are, like I said, or there's a lot of growers out there that are listening, and there are many people who would probably love to have the chance to enter the legal market or be able to do it legally, and it's just not possible right now.

Margaret 01:08:26 It's just so expensive to get into that whole business.

Mike 01:08:30 Yeah, right. And, you know, I remember another story is I think it was the year previous to legalization. I was invited to sit on a panel in a meeting organized by the magazine The Economist. They put together a session on cannabis legalization. it was held in Toronto. So here I am. I'm part of this panel up on a stage in front of this enormous ballroom of several hundred people, I think, most of whom were there to figure out how they could get into the investment in the cannabis industry. And this is, you know, a year before legalization. And I was warning them about all this stuff, you know, and they looked at me like I was a skunk at a picnic. Yeah. There were these just looks of outright alarm, as I, you know, talked about all this. And after the whole thing, one of the other panelists came up to me who was at this at that time, was a CEO of one of Canada's major cannabis growers.

Mike 01:09:35 And he came up to me and he said, you know, I my past is my background is in the pharmaceutical industry. And everything you're saying about the pharmaceutical industry is is right. You got that right. But we're going to be better doing it in cannabis. And I think it was about two years ago, two years after that, his company was in big trouble and he was fired.

Margaret 01:09:59 So much for doing things differently, I guess. But yeah, the leopard can't change its spots now. I guess the one question I would have to to sort of wrap things up is where does this leave consumers? Like as someone who consumes cannabis? Yes, I make my own edibles. I do a little growing to, but I do like to visit my dispensary and and pick up some things from time to time. And it's nice to be able to have that luxury, I guess, because there's a lot of people that don't. But for someone who's going into a dispensary, what, what where does that leave us?

Mike 01:10:31 Yeah, it's it's a good question and it's a tricky one.

Mike 01:10:34 There's there's not an easy answer. but the only thing I can suggest really is know your growers know where your cannabis is coming from. now, these, surveillance systems that Health Canada has in place, they publish it all on their website. All the information is there. So you can go on and you can see which companies are getting multiple infractions for problems with their product. And, so you can see it. And then there's a recalls database that Health Canada maintains for all consumer products. And they started adding, Cannabis, I think, in 2014. So, you know, I went through all that recently. And as of December 31st, there were 101 recalls.

Margaret 01:11:31 December 31st of what year?

Mike 01:11:33 Oh, sorry, of 2024.

Margaret 01:11:36 It's still that's still a lot.

Mike 01:11:38 Yeah, 101 recalls. And some of them are enormous recalls, too. So, you know, but again, at least in those cases, they name the companies so you can see who the repeat offenders are. And you can also if you have a particular grower in mind, you can see that, you know, hey, great.

Mike 01:11:57 There. They haven't been sighted there. Now, what I think would be a really valuable guide that for somebody to produce, it won't be me. But I think it would be really useful for cannabis consumers is to sort of put out an annual report where it sort of rates all the growers from zero infractions to 45 infractions. You know.

Margaret 01:12:21 Right.

Mike 01:12:22 I mean, if if somebody could put out an annual report like that, people might be willing to pay money for that information, right?

Margaret 01:12:30 No, those are those are good suggestions. And that information you can get from Health Canada. Yeah. All the stuff you're talking about because in Canada are the growers are like the licensed producers required to have certificates of analysis. Yeah they are.

Mike 01:12:44 Yes. And that's what often gets them into trouble is they have product in house that does not have a certificate of analysis, which almost certainly means it came from the black market.

Margaret 01:12:56 Right. Okay. So do your research essentially. And if you're looking for a specific grower that you like in in your favorite store, then you can always look them up and ensure that they don't have any infractions held against them.

Margaret 01:13:09 So you can buy with confidence. Okay. Well that's something positive. At least we can take away from that. Yeah. Now just to wrap up, mike, because I had so many other so many more questions prepared, but we just didn't ran out of time. And there is so much in this book, it's fantastic. And I recommend anybody who's interested in this topic to dig into it, because there's a lot more in this book than we were even able to touch on today. But what is one thing that you hope listeners take away from this interview from your book?

Mike 01:13:41 Right. Well, I guess the main thing is the point I want to make is there's nothing unique or new about cannabis legalization. It's not our first legal recreational drug industry, and it won't be our last. We know there's a legal psychedelics in motion that's coming, and I would also suggest that over the next decade, we are going to see an unprecedented amount of international drug policy reform. And the question is this what is going to drive it? Will it be public health protection and social justice, or is it going to be more permissive? Regulated commercialization.

Mike 01:14:21 So hopefully we can learn from cannabis legalization to do better in the legalization campaigns that are yet to come. And buzzkill, I wrote it that it has those lessons, and I just hope that every country that's in the process of legalizing will take the time to read it, because they'll find it enormously helpful.

Margaret 01:14:43 That's fantastic. Thank you so much, Mike. I really appreciate your time today.

Mike 01:14:47 My pleasure Margaret. Thank you.

Margaret 01:14:50 Friends, I hope you enjoyed that conversation. There was a lot to digest in that episode, so you'll find the link to Mike's book and detailed show notes at Bite Me Podcast and on your podcast app. And now I ask you, what was your biggest takeaway from today's episode? I would love to hear your thoughts. You can share them with me or join the Bite Me Cannabis Club to dive deeper. And until next time my friends, stay high.