96 - Grow Your Own Medicine with Joe Evans from Kind Idaho
Too Hard For The Radio ·
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Transcript
SPEAKER_00
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What's
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going on? It's time for another episode of Too Hard for the Radio, transmitting from the future free state of greater Idaho. I am the one -armed madman. And with me today, we've got Joe from Kind Idaho. I didn't ask your last name, so we're going with Joe. Joe Evans. Perfect. We got Joe Evans. Perfect. So like I told you earlier, I've admired your organization from afar because you're doing the Lord's work here. And I figured it was time to talk to somebody and find out how the fight's going.
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Well,
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the fight's going, you know, you got the community, there's certain things that the community wants to happen. And as a result, there's certain things that don't happen because the community can't get behind certain aspects of things. And especially when you're looking at Idaho, you know, we have things that we consider important to our rights, important to our privacy,
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you know,
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and a lot of the things that have succeeded in other states, such as the medical program, you know, succeeded simply because a lot of the people who want
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to
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be able to smoke
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are comfortable
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giving up certain rights. But
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in Idaho,
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they
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aren't, and
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it makes it really difficult to go with an awful lot of the patterns that have been accepted in other states, such as a medical program that requires you
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to
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register with the Department of Health and Welfare in order to get your card, reason why is because that puts you on a list.
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Yeah.
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It puts you on probably one of the most dangerous lists in the United States, because this is an organization that is responsible, that has power over your relationship with your children. It has power over your relationship with your medical providers. It has power over so many different aspects of your life, whether or not you receive state benefits from the state, you know, under certain conditions, you know, whether unemployment or medical disability, or as a foster, or, you know, which, if you got a medical card, you're not going to be a foster.
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Yeah.
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Even when it comes to family relationships, these are things. Then you take a Let's at what the feds have decided to do, you know, even if you go in and set up the clause that, you know, you can't use somebody's marijuana card to justify removal of their firearms from their presence, you know, from the residents, you know, yeah, you may say that in the state law, but the feds do what the feds want to do. So we started taking a look at that and realized, in addition to the fact that this just being a wall of text, it's seven pages on legal paper with your 12 -point font, and it's just onerous to read. It's difficult. It's long.
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And even if you sit down and talk with volunteers and express the different points, the ability
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of a
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volunteer to remember all the points on all 14 pages of that fine font about which diseases, which conditions, which disorders you're allowed to use medical marijuana for, you know, what conditions, who's in charge of certifying the growers, who's in charge of certifying the distributors, who's in
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charge
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of certifying the individual who qualifies you for your
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medical
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card?
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You
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know,
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all
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of this goes into it.
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And how
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do you answer all of those questions, you know, in a meaningful way. And we basically figured out that because of the involvement because of the rights violations, your right to privacy, you know, you're getting something for medical reasons, yet you aren't allowed HIPAA privacy. You know, you're not allowed to not put your name on an interstate registry. You're not allowed to just have this use between you and your physician. And we said, you know what? We've tried we've tried certain other things. We've tried setting up a recreational through different organizations over the years. We just said, you know what?
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Let's just put in an exception to decriminalize personal use.
SPEAKER_00
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I'd be happy with that. My God. Right. And yeah, man, we live in such a great state, but it's like you said, it's just, there's this balancing act going on between like, which rights you are, are willing to, you know, give up to, you know, maybe grab a couple more, you know, I like, I'm a libertarian, And so I don't have any stake in how either party goes. Like I like to argue with both of them. And I feel like the best way to typically like get through to the
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right wing around here is to attack them from their own positions. Like, Hey, look all throughout COVID, you guys were screaming my body, my choice. But what happens now that COVID is over? It's no longer that anymore. You know, I remember during COVID, I was watching this. Um, I used to watch Tucker Carlson once a week. Cause I like to see what the right half of America was seeing. And, you know, he brought on some token liberal to say, oh yeah, vaccines are my body, my choice. You know, this is crazy, blah, blah, blah. And literally the next segment wasn't even a commercial in between was
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how evil is marijuana and how do we get rid of it? And it's just like, come on guys, like we have to have some principles here. If you're gonna stand on, you know, bodily autonomy as one of your principles, you have to be able to apply that to everything, not just the laws that you like.
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Absolutely.
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When you start taking a look at it, it's not just an issue of cannabis. It's an issue of what other plants you're able
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to
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use. I've got a friend who wants to see Ibogaine for recovery decriminalized. Create opportunities for other things as well that we continue to see not being properly utilized medicinally, you know, pain medications, you know, we got opiates, opiates, plant based, it's natural based, why are we paying out the,
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you know, fourth
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point and contact, you know, for somebody, you know, for a limited distribution,
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for something that somebody has a monopoly on. You know, why aren't we paying pharmaceutical companies this extreme amount of money for something that can literally be grown in our backyard? You know, and for pain management. We've understood that cannabis, THC, is better for our pain management programs than opioids. You know, so why are we using, continuing to insist on using opioids for things that we know we have better options for. You know, why can't we grow what we need? Why do we have to continue to depend upon, you
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know,
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pharmaceuticals? Why do we have to continue to depend upon state regulations? Why do we have to continue to depend on organizations that serve practically no other purpose than to exploit us for our health care, for our medicine, especially in Idaho. We talk about cottage industry, the ability to take care of yourself, grow your own garden. Farmers' rights in the state of Idaho, Idaho recognizes the right of the farmer to farm. You know, we can grow whatever we want, wherever we want, whyever we want, except cannabis. Why is that the case? Why not go ahead and decriminalize, you know, at least from a self -care perspective?
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Right.
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Yeah.
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Give us the option.
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You know, I've been a casualty of the war on drugs my entire adult life. It started with marijuana. I'm from Northern California, so a lot of my friends lost their livelihoods, lost their families. Some of them are still in jail today. And I've got other family who was on the arresting end of that, who are retired comfortably here in Idaho. And it's just a disgusting thing. When I got hurt, I got electrocuted working on power lines in North Dakota. And one of the first thoughts that I had like post burn unit and stuff like that, it was like, well, at least I'm not going to have to like deal with problems with opioids again, like at least it'll be easy now wrong, you know, being hurt in Idaho is a job, you know, you've got to go through different doctors and, and it's just been a nightmare, a complete nightmare. And, um, I I'm starting to see it turn in an opposite direction a little bit. And could just be because of the doctor that I'm seeing. But they put me on ketamine about a year ago. And I was on ketamine when I was in the burn unit and it was not a fun experience. It was really horrible. So I was kind of like, you know, I don't know if I want to do this. Like it was a bad experience for me and, you know, I guess I'll try it but I had no high expectations for it. And man, it has changed my life in such a meaningful way. I can't even express it. You know, I took it originally for pain. They said, here, take it at night. It's gonna help your pain. And it did immediately. The pain was great. And then a couple months down the line, I'm talking to my mom about something. And I'm like, you know, I kind of feel like I've felt better since I've started taking this stuff. Like not, you know, nothing, but just like a little bit better. And she was like, oh yeah, I completely notice it.
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And she doesn't tell me these things because you don't want to get into someone's head about a medication or something like that. But just an incredible change in my life, which is measurable for someone like me. Yeah.
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One of those things, you don't want to create
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The
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bias,
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you don't want to create that idea that a drug is bad or a
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medicine
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is bad. You know, that's one of the problems that we keep going back and forth on, you know, what is a drug? What is medicine? Why is it the pharmaceuticals are considered medicine, but our plants are considered drugs? You know, I got a friend who's extremely religious, you know, he goes on and on about, you know, the religious properties of Cannabis, you know and talking about well, God gave us every seed -bearing herb You know of the planet for our sustenance for our care, you know, why is it we've criminalized? God's gift to the world.
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Yeah,
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you know when up until the 1850s THC and cannabis and even opiates were the part of of every medicine that was provided to us here in the US. You know, we saw it in pain relief, we saw it in stabilization, even for anxiety. You know, over 100 different treatments, you know, that we created using cannabis -based medication, whether it was for the THC that was in it, or whether there was some other quality
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that was integrated into it, you know, and then we start getting into the whole complication. One of the great things about the way we go, way we are going with a decriminalization for personal use, especially as it applies to right to try, you know, is the ability that an individual can cultivate that variation of cannabis that works best for them, whether it's the sativa, whether it's the indica,
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whether it's
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the combination of
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terpenes that
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works best, the way it integrates into and works with the psychology, relieving the stress or creating focused depending upon what it is you need out of that medicine. What you need from a perspective of your immunosystem. How is your best able to heal yourself using this as medicine?
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And we don't turn it over to corporate America to create some all -purpose cheap weed to take care of us.
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Yeah. Yeah.
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We're allowed to grow the medicine that works for us, that heals our issues. And that goes back to why we've chosen this particular route back around to creating healing opportunities for the people in Idaho, you know, being able to teach people the means to grow their own medicine and create those opportunities. monopolies. And the great thing about that is, is it takes it out of corporate America's hands. They can't sell it here. They can't grow it here. They can't mandate a monopoly.
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That's and that's what they want. That's where I was going. They want a mandated monopoly for sure. They
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want a mandated monopoly. And
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the way
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we're going, they can't do that because is we've granted an exemption for personal use and home cultivation that allows the individual to grow and use what's best for them as an individual rather than corporate monopolies on cheap, sloppy products.
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And now we have things like YouTube where you can go on and learn. When I was growing up in Northern California,
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you couldn't get a recipe from somebody if you tortured them. Like they're taking their recipe to the grave, essentially. And now you can just go on and learn and get some top guys, top recipe. All you do is buy and do it exactly. It's impossible to stop something like that. Sure. You could say, Oh, YouTube, you're not allowed to post that kind of stuff. YouTube may or may not agree with that. You could even say, Hey, you know, you can't use a VPN anymore, but that is just going so far down the road to totalitarianism that I'm not sure that even, you know, the most totalitarian in our system
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is willing to do something like that. I've been wrong before, and I hope I'm not on this one, but.
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Right, I hope you're not wrong on this one either. But agree, this is one of those things. You can go on YouTube and you can talk. You can find, you know, that channel that shows you how to mature, grow, and harvest Northern Lights. And then find another channel that teaches you how to turn it into an edible
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It's incredible, you
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know,
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you
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pick your best medicine. You pick the way that you want to take
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it
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You know you find
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that combination that blends You know you want to make your edibles you like a little bit more vanilla in your in Northern Lights edible or a little more orange and and your dreamscape, you know, little more
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purple in your gray face. Yeah. And
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you know what's super frustrating to me is like, I'm a snob when it comes to weed. Like I grew up in Northern California,
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so I know how it's supposed to look, how it's supposed to do, like those types of things. And people that I know around here that smoke, like they show me the stuff they have and I'm like, oh my God, what are you doing to yourself? Like, don't put that in your lungs. I had a guy a couple months ago, we were at a concert and he's like, Oh, you want to smoke this stuff with me? I'm like, I don't know, you know, maybe let me see it. And he showed, look, there's crystals falling off of it. I'm like, dude, that's not crystals, that's mold.
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Throw that crap away, you know? And like you're saying, it's this ridiculous monopolization of something that we should all be able to put in our gardens to where, you know, they can step down the product. And these guys are paying top dollar for this just absolute garbage. it's not good for you. And, uh, that's kind of the game.
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You know, that's what happens when you turn it over to corporate America.
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You know,
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uh, one of my favorite,
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um, you
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know, YouTube speeches is by, um, Malcolm. God, I can't even remember what his last name is,
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but he's talking about spaghetti sauce. Okay. Now of all the things to go in and compare, you know, the different strains of marijuana and cannabis to spaghetti sauce. But corporate America went through this huge testing phase where they wanted to find out what that one type of spaghetti sauce was, that was the end -all be -all for spaghetti sauce, you know, the one brand to rule them all. So they went and did taste test, after taste test, after taste test. And what they ended up finding out was there was no such thing as one brand to rule them all. It's subjective.
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You
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there were, yeah, it's subjective. It was a hundred different favorite combinations. You
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know,
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was it the chunky? Did it have the meat sauce? Was it more garlic? You know, what was it they and which is why when you walk down the pasta aisle these days you see 50 different styles in five different brands of spaghetti sauce and they all sell
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It
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It's because people are unique the things they love the things they want. They are unique
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And if we turn our medicine, if we turn our health over to corporate America, which we've already done.
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Oh, absolutely.
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You know, corporate America owns our health. You know, 30 % of every publicly traded health industry in the United States is owned by BlackRock Vanguard and State Street. Okay, our health is owned by Corporate America, and it's planned on a 90 -day profit cycle. If we turn over our health, our medicine, to Corporate America on a 90 -day planning cycle for maximum profit, what are we going to get back? obesity. You know, it's an issue here in the United States.
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Yeah.
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It's because we turned our health over to corporate America. We turned it over to the FDA and the USDA. They were fat because we trusted them 30 years ago, 40 years ago when they built food pyramid. Yeah. And here we are, we're in a situation where we can control our medicine, where it's our body, our choice, our medicine.
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And we
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got people trying to convince us to trust the people who made America fat.
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So I have a beautiful garden in my house. It started out as one kind of garden and then the cops came and it ended up being a different kind of garden. But like, I love strawberries. I've always loved strawberries, you know? And I started growing strawberries a couple of years ago. And I'm like, man, these things are fucking dynamite. Just incredible.
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And I start buying them at the store in the wintertime. And I'm like, these taste like water. Like what is going on here with these strawberries? So I did a little research into it. And it turns out that all of our strawberries are picked green. And then they shove them into a warehouse and pump chemicals into them to turn them red. So you're not really eating a ripe strawberry. You're eating some Frankenberry
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that they're able to transport around the country for three weeks and the things are still gonna be fine. Like I see that happening in the marijuana field, in healthcare, like being an amputee and having to like go through it with the healthcare system, like the thought of government monopoly over healthcare is just terrifying. You these normal lefties who think, oh, let's just have the government take over it. It's like, oh my God, it's not a good plan. And, you I know people who live in Europe, uh, who are racers. I don't know them personally, but I watched, you know, races. I'm a dirt bike racer. So I like to watch it.
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If you tear your ACL at a dirt bike race in. You know, Europe, you're flying to California to have the knee surgery a couple of days later, because that's the only way you're going to be back in the races anytime soon. If you're waiting on DHS or whatever there, you know, you're going to be waiting three months and walking around on a torn ACL and, uh, you know, I had to battle so hard to get a prosthetic hand. I'm the first, uh, workers comp case in North Dakota history where they were able, where they gave me a prosthetic hand and I had to fight for it like crazy. They ended up, my case was so difficult for them because they're a small office in North Dakota that they outsourced me to a different corporation. Here, we'll have this corporate thing, you know, we'll, they're having nurse, they'll watch you, you know, they'll just give us updates. Unfortunately for them, they decided that I needed a prosthetic hand and I got one, but man, if they have their way, it's hooks for everyone. Hooks for all. Oh, you lost your hand?
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Great. We've got this great hook over here. You know, it's the same one that we've had for 40 years, but it works great, right?
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Yeah, that's, you
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know, that's one of the reasons
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I'm
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hoping that this idea of decriminalization, the idea of creating an opportunity for hobby pharmaceuticals, for your hobby tenders,
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you know, to
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actually come around and create an opportunity from a
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hobbyist
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perspective for mutual aid, mutual support, something that starts to take our lives back from corporate America. Because like you said, you got your garden. Your garden is so much better than what you're going down to the produce department at Albertson's or Winko and picking up. Okay. It's fresh. You know what went into it. You know the dirt it grew in. You know what got sprayed on
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it. Okay.
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Same thing with your medicine.
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You know,
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once we start working with that on the medicine. Start teaching people that,
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you know, the
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seed -bearing herbs, the planet earth, are supposed to be personally tended to. You know, stop trusting other people to take care of the things that sustain and heal you. You know, these people should be part of your network. They should be part of your community. These are people that you trust with your life because it's the food you eat, it's the medicine that heals you. Why are you turning it over to a stranger whose primary interest is the 90 -day profit cycle? Why are we doing that to ourselves?
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Because it's financially viable for the people in charge is the direction I would go on that one.
SPEAKER_02
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Well, babe, that's it. Who should be in charge of your life? Who should be in charge of your health? The people who made you fat 40 years ago? I don't think so.
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So what's the major holdups, hangups for decriminalization slash medical here in Idaho?
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Well, one of the big problems with medical is, of course, size and scope of trying to create a program. Yeah, you want to create a medical program here in the state of Idaho, Department of Health and Welfare needs to get involved. You need to come up with money to pay the Department of Health and Welfare to set up the program, run the program, manage the program, tax the marijuana to pay for the program that they're managing, and it just starts getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and it creates just a huge issue above and beyond the issues that you're talking about with privacy and personal security you know the fact that once you grab your marijuana your medical card you lose the ability to protect yourself you know these are things these are concerns these are things we need to watch out for
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and
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then second is is the nature of the community
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you know people
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don't want to give up their you don't want to trade their ability you know to smoke to get a medical card when they can still just go across the border and pick up stuff they want recreationally
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you
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know do they use
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it
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before they drive back home or do they try and drive back home before they use it without getting caught you know and which is truly the sound judgment when they make that choice you know because the
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ability to enjoy
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it in your own home is a risk. You enjoying it before you drive home 60 miles
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is a risk.
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And the test cannot differentiate whether you smoked it in Oregon or Idaho or yesterday. It's just - Or a month ago. Yeah, it's just a test, you know, pass or fail. And it's always fail at that moment. Right?
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It's always going to be failed because it can't differentiate the time frame or
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your
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current state of mind you know because of How recent or how long ago you used it?
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00:27:43
Yeah, so Take the time Decriminalize Take a slow drive home Relax because you're not worried about getting arrested because you didn't buy enough to get arrested over You don't have enough for the police to justify your taking your car and taking your license. You don't have enough to justify civil asset forfeiture. You got your personal amount that you picked up across the border and that you're driving home with. You know, you have a little that you brought with you because you're headed to a party from your home grove, you know, a party you're going to go stay the night at because you're not going to drive back home and under the influence, you know, but you want to be able to be comfortable having the medicine you need at any place at any time in the state
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00:28:49
of Idaho. Whereas, again, your big question was getting back to what is the roadblock here in the state of Idaho? Part of it's been the community. Okay. How do you get people
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how
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do you get the people
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to
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support
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something
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that they're not 100 % behind?
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You know, one
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of problems we have here in Idaho right now.
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And
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I've run into this on our page. OK, 60 % of the state of Idaho is going to vote for Trump. OK, maybe
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we
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got people, maybe more. I'm going with 60%.
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That's a good number.
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You know, I
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30
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% are going to vote for Harris just because that still leaves 10 % in this weird zone of whether they're going to vote to the Libertarian candidate, Chase Oliver.
SPEAKER_00
00:29:49
Yeah, there you go, there you go. I like Chase.
SPEAKER_02
00:29:52
For the Green, Jill Stein, she's on the ballot. We even got our Party of Socialization and Liberation candidate, Dela Cruz. She's on the ballot here. Cornel West, no, Cornel
SPEAKER_00
00:30:07
didn't make it. I think Kennedy's gonna be on all the ballots still, it sounds like, because of all the law fair that's going on with that, but he's great. I mean, he's great. Yeah, he's the best.
SPEAKER_00
00:30:18
I mean, as far as I'm concerned, like I'm not, you know, I think he would probably do some things with climate change that I wouldn't be happy of, but like, go for it. I don't care. If you're going to do that, like the health thing, nobody better to have in charge of, of health in America than Bobby Kennedy right now. I mean, there's, it's just, I was listening to, I was listening to Joe Rogan the other day and he was talking about Bobby and he goes, why is this the biggest story on every news station that America's so sick? And it's like, dude, it's because the news stations are owned by the pharmaceutical companies and they can't run stories on their, you know, main providers. Well, no,
SPEAKER_02
00:30:56
no, it's not that.
SPEAKER_02
00:30:58
How much of corporate America owns our news agencies? It's all owned by. Okay, that same corporate America and corporations owning each other? How much of Bear Monsanto does NBC own? How much of NBC does Bear Monsanto own? And that's not even taking into consideration how much of each of them is owned directly through the hedge fund management of BlackRock. Corporate America has to support corporate America on every front, because if corporate America doesn't support corporate America, corporate America doesn't do well. But who gets left out? You and me.
SPEAKER_00
00:32:25
Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02
00:32:27
Because we aren't the same type of people corporations are.
SPEAKER_00
00:32:33
That's for damn sure. Right? So about the community. So I'm from Northern California. I moved here in 2015 after I blew myself up and lost my hand and kind of got pushed out of the state that I grew up in. You know, you can't really afford to live there on disability. Um, I have noticed the community has changed a lot since I've moved here. Uh, And when I originally moved here, my friends were like, why are you moving to Idaho? There's nothing there. Like you're going up to nowhere.
SPEAKER_00
00:33:01
And now a lot of those people have moved here. And when I was, when I graduated high school, I moved to a town in Southern California called Temecula, which was a dirt bike racing town. That's all it really was. A bunch of rich people from Orange County got fed up with the taxes, sold all their shit, moved to Temecula and then bought dirt bikes and motor homes and all kinds of toys. And that was kind of the, the, that was kind of like the soul of that area. It was around dirt bikes and stuff like that. When I moved here, I started going to concerts and it was different than California. It was very different. Now I, I tend to have a little bit more of that Southern California feel when I go out to a concert.
SPEAKER_00
00:33:44
I recognize a lot of people with that Southern California look, you know, you always tell the black straight build hat and we stand out a lot of the times. Do you think that's a, is that a good thing for Idaho or a bad thing? And if it's a bad thing, I guess that's a poor way. Is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing? And is that going to lead us into better direction through legalization and medical?
SPEAKER_02
00:34:15
Okay, now you're talking politics and community and what it actually means in a lot of aspects. Now I've spent my fair share of time as a libertarian candidate running initiatives and talking about a lot of these different things to different people. And one of the things that an awful lot of people really don't understand when they come to Idaho and try and start screwing with politics is that an Idaho Democrat is more conservative than a California Republican.
SPEAKER_00
00:34:47
Yeah. Oh, for sure.
SPEAKER_02
00:34:48
Okay. I mean, they're more conservative. They want a slower process. They want to make sure that the regulations are tried and true and that they've been tested out or they want to make small gradual changes rather
SPEAKER_01
00:35:01
than, you know,
SPEAKER_02
00:35:03
rabid changes. You know, and that's one of the things that we've run into problems with here in the state of Idaho with regard to Republican political refugees from other states, okay? They're not interested in a conservative approach. What they want to do is they want to go back to a time that never ever existed.
SPEAKER_03
00:35:28
Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02
00:35:29
And they're not conservative in their approach. They're not making little changes They're making radical changes They're making radical regressive changes in a
SPEAKER_02
00:35:44
conservative state And that's problematic for a number of different reasons Yeah, now where it comes to marijuana marijuana cannabis has been criminalized in the state, it was one of the first places to be criminalized. We criminalized it in Idaho because some mayor of Boise in 1880 was upset that the field hands were coming into town chawing on cannabis stock and hooking up with the local white
SPEAKER_00
00:36:14
ladies.
SPEAKER_02
00:36:15
You know, the racism in cannabis criminalization goes clear back to the beginnings of the frigging state.
SPEAKER_02
00:36:27
You
SPEAKER_01
00:36:27
know,
SPEAKER_02
00:36:27
but here we are, we're trying to change that because we recognize its value as medicine. We recognize its value as a community ritual. We recognize the things that it brings to the community and the healing that it helps facilitate in a lot of ways. And by starting with a personal use, this is something that is 80 % supported across the state. It's a gradual increase. We're not bringing in the industry. We're not bringing in, you know, the bodegas with or the dispensaries, you know, or the gathered or the party centers. We're I'm here, learn to use it responsibly. Take care of yourself. Work with your doctors, work with your physicians. Learn how to handle what's coming.
SPEAKER_02
00:37:22
Do it gradually, integrate it into the system. Integrate it into your system, integrate it into your life so that when it does get, and it's gonna be commercialized, sooner or later, Idaho's gonna wanna tax it. Idaho is going to want to, you know, I honestly hope it never goes there. I prefer cannabis never be taxed in the state of Idaho, but there are going to be people who want to see it happen, and eventually somebody is going to make it happen. But be able to create the situation so that, one, we don't give up our right to grow our own medicine in the process of corporate America coming in and trying to take over the plant. We don't want to see the regulations around marijuana that we see around tobacco or alcohol. all. We want this to be something hobbyists can continue to enjoy, much like your micro brewers.
SPEAKER_03
00:38:33
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02
00:38:33
You know, we got micro brewers, we want to be able to do micro grows.
SPEAKER_01
00:38:37
You know, we want to
SPEAKER_02
00:38:38
allow hobbyists to be hobbyists.
SPEAKER_01
00:38:41
We
SPEAKER_02
00:38:42
want them to be able to take care of and do the things that they want to do. And if it eventually reaches that point, maybe even let them turn it into a cottage industry,
SPEAKER_01
00:38:52
you know, not
SPEAKER_02
00:38:54
massive sales, not high profit sale, you know, not like a million dollar a year sales, but like, let somebody make a comfortable living.
SPEAKER_00
00:39:05
Yeah. Yeah. You know, my neighbor raised cattle for years and he can't sell cattle to me across the street. No. And no, it seems like some law like that would probably get baked in if people weren't smart about it. So it's good to hear that.
SPEAKER_00
00:39:24
Like you got, you really know your shit, which is very, very cool for me to hear. Cause like I, I'm confident that like you guys are really working on this shit. Um, another question I wanted to ask was about cops. So when, when the cops came over here and relieved me of my garden during COVID I had, that I had a pretty decent conversation with the detective that was running the raid. When he showed up, he thought I was a drug, he was told by my neighbor that I was a drug dealer, which was a complete lie.
SPEAKER_00
00:39:53
So, you know, he's looking for, we, he's looking for all kinds of shit that just doesn't exist. You know, he asked me at one time, where are all your baggies? I'm like, dude, does it look like I operate baggies all the time? Like, come on, I'm not doing baggies. But the interesting part, after they left, they didn't take me to jail because of COVID. I asked the guy, I was look, man, is this really how like you thought you were going to spend your career was coming and knocking heads on some amputee who's just trying to like get an extra couple hours of sleep a night.
SPEAKER_00
00:40:23
And he was like, honestly, no, I'm not a fan of any of this stuff. And I wonder if that is the, the, the attitude to most police in the same, in the same, in this area. I talked to another cop who said, Oh yeah, it's got to go, you know, And I asked him, you know, what are you going to tell God when he asks you why you relieved an amputee of his garden? And, you know, while I was doing my job and I go, well, you know, that didn't work out for the Nazis very well. And this is, you know, abbreviated conversation. Oh, I thought he was I thought he was locked up there. We'll see if we'll see if he comes back. Yeah, it's an interesting thing that raid. Um, I wanted to think that the guy was coming from a good place and, you know, it's hard to really tell. I, I would hope that by like attacking these people from the right, as I suggested earlier, would lead to some sort of self realization. I would hope that like at some point that cop goes home, sits down, maybe talks to his wife about what he did for the day and goes, you know, maybe I should rethink
SPEAKER_00
00:41:35
this a little bit. Like, I don't know that cops even do that for the most part. Like I think cops don't give a shit about people. They crack heads on and I don't think they think about it later before they go to bed. I think they just crack skulls and keeps cracking skulls. And you know, I think they really like to prey on poor people. And uh, in this situation for me, luckily I'm an amputee and I am a very visual person. I can talk. So if I was able to get a good lawyer, you know, get in front of the media at some point, I would be able to tell a very good story that would not look good on local PD. It doesn't matter if they were, you know, fully within their rights or not because they were, they had every right to do what they did except for, you know,
SPEAKER_00
00:42:23
know, the backlash on from personal people, you know, backlash from my family. My mother works for the Idaho Supreme Court. She has to make, you send one email and say, hey, look, is this how you guys really want to be, you know, conducting business here? I don't know. I'm filibustering still. I'm busting that filler. Let's see if we'll see if Joe comes back. We're at 40 minutes. So we did a decent amount if he doesn't come back, you know, we can end it here. I would hope that Anybody listening to this in Idaho can help these guys out as much as they possibly can you heard him? They need lawyers guns and money. The shit has hit the fan here in Idaho they have policies baked into this state that is making it so hard for these people to do what they're doing and As I said, they're doing the Lord's work. I mean If, if we are able to get decriminalized or, you know, get medical in this state, it's going to improve the lives of everyday people, such as me, such as my aunt, who has a massive back problem, such as my uncle, who was an ex firefighter from Lahaina and got himself all jacked up during the fire. These are all people who could benefit from medical marijuana, but are instead stuck on opioids. I'm stuck on opioids. They work. They work good, but essentially like I would like to have a substitute that is not going to destroy my guts and, you know, possibly get me into a lot of physical, physical ailment.
SPEAKER_00
00:44:05
There we go. All right. I filibustered. I think I made it. I made it the entire time rambling. Rambling. Right? Rambling. Sorry about that. No, it's all good, man. You're driving. You're good. That's so cool that you're able to do this while you're driving.
SPEAKER_02
00:44:20
Now, one of the things you were talking about, the cops. And the cops are a big thing. Reason why is because a lot of the detectives, a lot of the police force, they don't want to be involved in this. They don't want to be involved in the altercations or the interactions. Every interaction a cop has to have over something as minor as possession is a real risk, and it's a risk not just to the officer, but it's a risk to the people they interact with.
SPEAKER_00
00:44:48
And community.
SPEAKER_02
00:44:49
Because, and the community.
SPEAKER_00
00:44:51
If they do it wrong, you know, if the cops do it wrong, it costs the community.
SPEAKER_02
00:44:56
Right? Because if you escalate when you shouldn't, you know, if somebody's in an altered state, And, you know, you create a situation where, you know, their anxiety kicks in when they're trying to be called, you know, when they're in, you end up escalating and next thing you know, you got a dead someone, you know, or you end up in a situation where now you got someone who's got a criminal record, okay? Right the difference between possession, you know, as a misdemeanor and possession of a felony is, you know, whether you're over three ounces or whether you have so much. Now if you run across the border, you pick up two candy bars, two edible candy bars, you're now in possession of a felony in the state of Idaho.
SPEAKER_00
00:45:46
I didn't know that.
SPEAKER_02
00:45:48
Right? Don't come back. Don't come back with candy bars. Do not come back with the THC -infused 1 .65 -ounce candy bars, two of them.
SPEAKER_00
00:45:59
Oh my God. Because
SPEAKER_02
00:46:00
that's a felony. Yeah,
SPEAKER_00
00:46:01
that's horrible. But
SPEAKER_02
00:46:02
the thing is, this
SPEAKER_00
00:46:03
is...
SPEAKER_02
00:46:05
We are trying to create a situation where this is no longer a problem. where we are not expecting the officers to police people who have been forced into a situation where they are self -medicating and providing self -care because the pharmaceuticals don't work for them. They can't afford the pharmaceuticals. They can't afford the doctor. They do know their THC works for them, they do know their cannabis works for them. They self -medicate because this is the option they have, this is the option they can afford.
SPEAKER_00
00:46:46
Yeah, they put you in such a horrible place, like I'm on Medicaid right now and I don't really have a choice because if I go get a job, I have to make enough to afford health insurance or I can't make enough to where I can't continue on Medicaid. So they put you in this position where you're damned if you do, and you're damned if you don't.
SPEAKER_02
00:47:08
Right. And it's like Medicaid, you know, depending upon what you're doing, you're an amputee. You got physical therapy. Okay. You go to your physical therapist, you get, you wait, you lose your Medicaid until you clean up. You can't continue going to physical therapy. You can't get your pain management program monitored Even if you're using your THC for your pain management program, you know now because you violated your pain management program There's a number of things you can no longer do until you go through the steps to clean up And you're looking at 30 days for a cleanup or however long, you know The different and the irony is you talk to a physical therapist Most of the physical therapists here in the Treasure Valley, after they're done you weighing you and working you through your physical therapy, they're walking out back behind the clinic and taking a toke.
SPEAKER_00
00:48:07
Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, just incredible, right?
SPEAKER_02
00:48:13
providers are higher than they allow you to be
SPEAKER_00
00:48:17
because
SPEAKER_02
00:48:18
you're on insurance
SPEAKER_00
00:48:19
I ran into this problem with this doctor I had I was like I said earlier I was going trying to find anything because doctors just didn't want to put me on any meds at all and I was really going through it and man this guy he he didn't want and give me anything. He took me off a gabapentin, which is just why anybody would do that? I don't know, essentially. And he, I asked him at one point to try this low dose naltroxin, which is another, it's a smaller, like, compound med that not a lot of people know about yet that works very well. My mother takes it and the cop told us the cop, the doctor, same thing in this, in this situation that, uh, that's a placebo and it won't work. So I don't, I don't prescribe placebos. And at some point he, he was really forcing me down the road to get a spinal cord stimulator, which I did end up getting. And it's just been an absolute fucking nightmare that I don't want to get into. Um, but at one point the guy told me there's, I'm not going to give you opioids because they don't actually get rid of the pain. They just make you not care about the pain. And you just go, what's the difference, guy? What is the difference?
SPEAKER_00
00:49:43
Like, give me some relief. That is all I'm looking for. Just a little bit of relief. And then a couple weeks later, for some reason, he sent us somebody else's medical records by accident. And we went on and we looked at it because, you know, you're gonna look. And this guy that that I got the medal. He was on so much shit. He had fentanyl coming out of his eyes and You know for me, I'm a risk because I was an opioid addict as a young, you 20 year old I've been clean seven years when I got hurt, but the guy didn't want to take the risk with his insurance
SPEAKER_01
00:50:23
Sick Right. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah
SPEAKER_00
00:50:27
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02
00:50:28
But again, that goes back to the difference of the difference, different drugs in or the different medications, you know, and what they do for you. You look at opioids. Okay. Opioids don't remove the injury. They mask the pain.
SPEAKER_00
00:50:41
Okay.
SPEAKER_02
00:50:42
You don't know that you're hurting yourself when you're on opioids, you know, you're taking opioids for an ACL.
SPEAKER_01
00:50:53
Hey, you don't feel
SPEAKER_02
00:50:54
no pain. you're up and walking. You're tearing it all the hell up again. Yeah. Okay. Your pain management program using THC or cannabis, you know, when you're hurting yourself, it doesn't bother you as much, but you know, so you know enough when you should stop. And that's the difference between using THC as a pain management versus using opioids as a pain management.
SPEAKER_00
00:51:23
And THC does not stop your guts from working, which is just right. One of the worst parts of opioids, man, is they just lock your guts up and you got a rock in your gut all the time. And it's just, I'm always taking laxatives. It's, it's a real nightmare.
SPEAKER_00
00:51:41
All right. So
SPEAKER_02
00:51:41
the opioid concept, but anyway,
SPEAKER_00
00:51:43
yeah, I got one more, one more thing we'll go on here and then we'll get you out of here. So I'm going to read you a quote. We do not need to ruin lives and waste taxpayer dollars arresting adults with personal amounts of it on them. Donald Trump. Now, when I heard this, I was like, holy cow. Like I was not expecting this at all. And I looked into it a little bit and it seems like a legit move. What are you, where are you with this?
SPEAKER_02
00:52:14
Again, one, I absolutely love it
SPEAKER_02
00:52:17
because, as we were talking earlier, 60 % of the state of Idaho is going to vote for Trump. Okay, that statement gave 60 % of Idahoans permission to support decriminalization of cannabis in the state of Idaho. 60 % now have permission to support decriminalization. Okay, this isn't the 30 % of Democrats who are already going to vote for it. This isn't, you know, the 10 % of the independents. This isn't the 30 % of people who can't be bothered to register to vote that insisted on signing the petition that they weren't qualified to sign, okay? This is 60 % of Idaho voters, okay? When we need 70 % to absolutely clear it in such a way
SPEAKER_02
00:53:10
that our state legislature will not null and void it for us, okay? That 60 % of voters that we even get half of them to come over to our side to decriminalize cannabis and stop wrecking the lives of young Americans over self -care, stop We're taxes to incarcerate people for coping.
SPEAKER_00
00:53:43
It's a real nightmare. You know, I got arrested for possession of marijuana here in Idaho. My ex -wife was a alcoholic, a severe alcoholic. And at one point she went to a hotel. I don't remember if I kicked her out or if she just went on her own. and somebody from her family called in a wellness check. And me not knowing my rights, like an idiot, I let the cops in and they saw some weed in plain view. It was like a half a gram. It barely anything. And after we did the whole wellness check and she wasn't here and I told him, she's at the hotel, she's at a hotel, probably the closest one,
SPEAKER_00
00:54:21
just start calling hotels, you'll find her. They arrested me, they beat me, they tased me and threw me in the back of the car, or asked me where my wife's body was without reading me my rights, you know, just really gave it to me. They put a cuff here, a cuff here, and then cuffed me behind my back to my arm. And by the time I got to the jail, my ex -wife was already in the process of getting me bailed out. Now, who does that help? Like, how does that situation help anyone for anything, Except maybe the bail bondsman like it's just such a joke that like You would rip somebody out of their home beat the hell out of them and then throw them in a cage for 20 minutes It's just sick
SPEAKER_01
00:55:12
Ironically
SPEAKER_02
00:55:13
We had a sheriff once sheriff on Colleen He found out that filling beds in the county jail got the county sheriff federal funds
SPEAKER_00
00:55:24
That makes sense.
SPEAKER_02
00:55:27
So the Ada County Sheriff's Office and the Boise Police Department came to an agreement. Anybody and everybody they could arrest and put in a jail bed in the Ada County Jail was going to go into jail long enough to secure the federal funds associated with putting them in that county cell every single time. That's corruption. That is a sheriff operating as unconstitutional as you can get.
SPEAKER_00
00:56:11
Sheriffs have a lot of power. Like they can do a lot of things like a sheriff can essentially decriminalize marijuana with a swipe of a pen. Am I right on that?
SPEAKER_02
00:56:21
They can tell the Ada County sheriffs. They can tell their county deputies.
SPEAKER_00
00:56:24
Stop doing
SPEAKER_02
00:56:25
it. Stop doing it. Don't do it.
SPEAKER_00
00:56:27
So do you guys, are you guys like able to work with any, are there any good sheriffs around here?
SPEAKER_02
00:56:33
We usually don't work at the sheriff level reason why is because state legislature loves to punish,
SPEAKER_01
00:56:39
you know, people
SPEAKER_02
00:56:40
for operating outside
SPEAKER_01
00:56:43
of the
SPEAKER_02
00:56:44
laws that they want enforced. Okay, Boise didn't want to support the abortion ban. Okay, so the legislature said, well, you're not going to get any tax money from the state then if you do that. Okay, now the irony is, is Idaho is a Dillon -ruled state. And that means that a city council can look at the Idaho laws and say, yeah, we have the power to enforce that, but we're not going to.
SPEAKER_00
00:57:15
Yeah, that happened in Arizona recently where I think it was Maricopa County said no more guns and then the sheriff was like, yeah, no, I'm not doing that. Screw off.
SPEAKER_01
00:57:24
Yeah,
SPEAKER_02
00:57:26
You know, so we have the ability to say, Yeah, we have the power as a city to enforce this law that the legislature gave us the power to enforce. But as a city, we have decided we are not going to enforce that law with our police department. We can do that here in this, but then the legislature likes to come down and say, well, we're going to punish you for it. Yeah, so it's one of those things, where do you actually draw the line? Where do you create the scenario that says, you know, we're not going to accept this level
SPEAKER_02
00:58:02
of human rights violations in our town? How do we create a marijuana sanctuary city? You know, which which is one of those things, okay, a cannabis sanctuary city in the state of Idaho would be making a statement.
SPEAKER_00
00:58:20
Absolutely. Oh, yeah. A
SPEAKER_02
00:58:22
second amendment
SPEAKER_00
00:58:24
sanctuary
SPEAKER_02
00:58:25
city in the state of Idaho is a fucking circle jerk.
SPEAKER_00
00:58:30
Yeah. You're right. You're completely right. You know. Yeah. It's bullshit. It's bullshit. It's bullshit. Oooo.
SPEAKER_01
00:58:40
It's something everybody in the state
SPEAKER_02
00:58:42
agrees with anyway. Good
SPEAKER_01
00:58:43
for you. Do
SPEAKER_02
00:58:44
brave. Do something brave. Stand up to prohibition. Stop making your young kids in your city limits, go to jail and go to prison. Because a bunch of people with big heads in the state legislature thinks it needs to be criminal. Do something brave. But yeah, for the most part, we don't focus on that level because, again, Idaho is conservative. We don't challenge authority just to challenge authority. We want the little steps. We want it tested. We want it proven. You know, we don't want to go through and decriminalize all drugs like Portland did.
SPEAKER_00
00:59:31
Yeah,
SPEAKER_02
00:59:32
that's
SPEAKER_00
00:59:32
that
SPEAKER_02
00:59:32
was a mistake.
SPEAKER_00
00:59:33
Yeah, my my drunken ex -wife now works for the city of Portland counseling people on how to not be drunk with their kids or You know good for them. They got they deserve each other. That's the way I looked at it last two questions Is there gonna be anything on the ballot this year? And how can people help?
SPEAKER_02
00:59:52
Okay. No, there's not gonna be anything on the ballot this year reason wise because we didn't make signatures And a
SPEAKER_01
00:59:57
lot of
SPEAKER_02
00:59:57
that was was because one it was very expensive to print People didn't want to sign it because it took their rights away. People didn't want to sign it because they didn't understand it. It was too big. It too difficult.
SPEAKER_02
01:00:13
And so, no. Best you can do is vote for pro -cannabis candidates. There's a couple out there. Some of them are even Republican. Some of them have accepted that Trump has given them permission to support aspects of cannabis decriminalization in the state of Idaho. So find the candidates that support cannabis. Each one's going to be individual to your own district, your own county, county commissioners. You know, search them out and no, we don't have names. I don't have individuals that I can say, oh, Alana Rubel,
SPEAKER_01
01:00:52
you know,
SPEAKER_02
01:00:53
pro -cannabis. Her I can say is pro -cannabis, but she's one of the few, you know. There's others that support medical programs for veterans, you know. You know, Adams out in Nampa absolutely supports veteran use for medical reasons. You know, you have, we have candidates that support that in the state of Idaho. You know, find them, ask them about it, vote for them, support them. But yeah, other than that, no, nothing on the ballot.
SPEAKER_00
01:01:27
You know, that permission is huge, like you said. And people don't realize how big... Five, well, I guess eight years ago, you'd be hard -pressed to find a conservative that said the Iraq war was bullshit. Now they all say it because Donald Trump gave them permission to do it. And I think that bodes well for us in the future. So thanks again for coming on, man. It was a pleasure meeting you. everybody go go check out kind Idaho give them some money sign the sign the petitions these guys need lawyers guns and money you know the shits hit the fan give them a look good night
SPEAKER_02
01:02:06
lawyers guns and money and grow your own medicine folks grow your own medicine
SPEAKER_00
01:02:10
absolutely good night everyone