SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Beat the Prosecution, presented by Northern Virginia criminal defense and DUI lawyer Jonathan Katz, where we are here to regularly present you information and ideas for beating your prosecution as best as possible. Nothing on any of our media sources, such as our podcast or website, is legal advice. John Katz only provides legal advice to current clients or for individuals who have paid for a consultation. And now for your host, John Katz.

SPEAKER_02 0:32

Hello, everybody. This is John Katz at Beat the Prosecution. I'm a criminal defense and DUI defense lawyer here in Northern Virginia, Fairfax. I am delighted to have Keith. Keith, how do you pronounce your last name after all these uh years? Just drop. Sorry. And the other guy's name, his is easy. Morgan Fox from Normal, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. I've said it in many forums. The way that I moved from being at a corporate law firm for the first two years out of law school to becoming a public defender. Everything hit the fan when I was reading an issue of the index on censorship. And in the index on index, there was a little section there that said that the federal prosecutor in Louisiana, or maybe even specifically in New Orleans, I don't know why it was happening there. Keith may know this story from around 1990. Hid issued a subpoena for the advertising records of uh normal, uh not normal, High Times magazine. And I knew what was going on then. There was no uh internet then to look this up. They wanted to get the uh information probably with the hydroponic sellers and then go after the people who are growing marijuana at home. So what I did was I took out a subscription to High Times magazine in protest. I sent a letter out to the then attorney general Dick Thornburg, who later on, interestingly, I got along with just fine when I met him a couple of times. And I sent a copy out to High Times saying this is in protest. Now looping it into normal. There was an article uh with a big uh interview with uh Don Fiddler, who at that time was the national director of normal. I bumped into him at the 1990 Earth Day. Remember, once again, there was no internet then, not not at least that I knew about. You bumped into people that way. We broke bread together. I asked Don, you know, how should how can I become a public defender? He told me become a no, how do how do I do criminal defense? The public defender is one way. And so what happened when I became a criminal defense lawyer? I met Keith when he was executive director of the National Association of Crimin Defense Laws. Okay, I made you wait too long for them to introduce themselves. I met Keith decades ago before I met Morgan, which was I think just today. Keith, please introduce yourself.

SPEAKER_03 2:56

I'm an 80, excuse me, I'm an 80-year-old public interest attorney. Uh, I founded normal in 1970 and ran it for 10 years. I then went away and did some other work. You made reference to part of that was I for five years I was executive director of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, a terrific group. I ended up back at normal in 1986, uh I'm sorry, 96, and ran it again for 10 years until 2005. And since then I've served as legal counsel. But certainly normal has comprised uh the majority of my professional life.

SPEAKER_02 3:38

Excellent. And Morgan, please introduce yourself to the audience.

SPEAKER_01 3:43

Uh Morgan Fox, uh political director for Normal. Uh my job uh primarily consists of federal lobbying, but uh I've been uh wearing quite a few hats of late. I originally got involved in cannabis policy reform back in 2008 and when I was working at the Marijuana Policy Project, and I spent about 10 years there uh before switching over to the National Cannabis Industry Association, where I was the media relations director, and then moved to normal in a more uh public-facing and consumer-centric role in uh 2022.

SPEAKER_02 4:14

I have a point of curiosity, gentlemen. Uh am I really one of the few people who has uh been very vocally supportive of marijuana legalization over the years who isn't even interested in toking myself or uh using THC or marijuana in any other form? Because for me, it's a civil liberties issue, really, and a and a criminal uh defendant's rights issue. There are a few others.

SPEAKER_03 4:40

Uh obviously the majority of activists uh either were smokers or are smokers, but there have been a number of uh longtime normal activists who were like yourself simply motivated by the civil liberties aspect of the issue.

SPEAKER_02 4:55

Okay, so I'll tell you the humor about it. Uh my son, who's 18 and a half, doesn't particularly like the smell of marijuana. So when we're walking down the street in DC or somewhere else and we smell the pungency of marijuana, he'll sometimes look at me and he'll say, That's your fault. He'll say, That's your fault, Dad, for advocating the legalization of marijuana. And and if that's the price of civil liberties, bring it on. I'll just smell it all day.

SPEAKER_03 5:23

My wife makes that same comment. Every time she drives downtown DC, uh, she's rolling up her window because all she smells is marijuana smoke and she's not a smoker.

SPEAKER_01 5:33

So this is actually uh really the fault of uh both Congress for refusing to allow DC uh to uh be able to regulate uh uh cannabis legally for adults, uh, despite voters passing it, um, as well as for maintaining federal prohibition overall. Uh, but also I think it's largely the fault of uh state and local governments for not moving fast enough for social consumption sites so that people can consume cannabis outside of a private residence. Uh in many places, people are not able to consume cannabis uh legally within the place where they live. And so that leaves them no option to uh uh exercise their cannabis rights other than in public.

SPEAKER_02 6:11

Okay, I'm happy we're able to turn the humor then into something serious then. Social consumption sites. I guess I just don't read enough on everything, including that. Uh what's what's that all about, Morgan? And how can that, for instance, help people like, you know, people who live in apartment buildings where the lease says you can't smoke the marijuana inside there, people who stay at hotels where uh the hotel doesn't want you smoking in the hotel rooms?

SPEAKER_01 6:37

Yeah, well, I mean, it's really just uh you know analogous to a bar, uh a place where people can consume cannabis in a social setting outside of a private residence, uh, and in some cases be able to purchase cannabis products at those locations. And uh, while there are a number of states that have actually instituted laws to allow those, uh the progress in actually providing licensing and making them more widespread and available to the general public has been very slow.

SPEAKER_02 7:03

Okay. Uh so what what would these uh what would these uh consumption sites look like? Uh are are there any uh models for them or are there any states that uh that have them right now or or any places in other parts uh of the world?

SPEAKER_01 7:19

Yeah, there are a handful of states that have instituted them and generally uh you know it they have very strict regulations regarding uh HVAC and ventilation and things like that in order to make sure that they're protecting the safety of workers there, and uh most of them have to abide by uh generally fairly strict um smoking laws that don't necessarily apply just to cannabis.

SPEAKER_03 7:41

And by the way, so far, any of the states that are that have allowed social uh lounges do not allow alcohol to be sold where the marijuana can be sold and used. They separate the two drugs. And that's based on a lot of research that shows the effects of the two are exacerbated when used together.

SPEAKER_02 8:01

Okay, I see. Now I'm gonna go back a little bit linearly on this timeline. Um I'm gonna tell you that uh when I went to the normal conference in DC, it was either in 1990 or 91, I think it was 1990. Um I realized how isolated I felt at the law firm I was at at the time, this corporate law firm. And I thought it was so cool, for instance, that um Paul Krasner was there, just you know, making me laugh my butt off, and uh and a bunch of other people, uh just able to talk openly about marijuana reform and civil liberties. I mean, I was with a traditional uh traditional law firm, uh they were representing uh financial institutions and transportation companies. You know, some things we get out sometimes. I think people go to two and two together, that I was a big civil libertarian. And uh when I found out about uh about Keith uh being involved with NACDL, because that's the first time I met you, Keith, uh, in 1991, that was really around the time that I had read High in America. And am I to understand that High in America was kind of an authorized biography of you and Or Normal?

SPEAKER_03 9:16

Yes, it was written by a friend of mine. His name is Pat Anderson. Pat's still around. He's not in great health, but he lives out uh in Virginia near Leesburg. And I I still see him periodically. But um he we we worked together on a book, but he had total editorial control. He was someone I had known for many years in the 70s. Um, in fact, he wrote that book at the end of the 70s. Um, he he was a New York Times reporter, a freelancer. He he had done a lot of uh serious journalistic work, but something caught his attention about normal, and he decided that would be a good story. So he ended up writing High in America.

SPEAKER_02 9:59

Okay, well then because it was an auto uh an authorized biography, maybe you won't mind Keith, at least I'm remembering correctly. I think there was something uh very controversial, if I'm not mistaken, that there was some sort of uh party uh in DC. I'm not gonna name his name, but I think his initials were PB, if I'm not mistaken.

SPEAKER_03 10:16

PB, I would imagine.

SPEAKER_02 10:17

Yeah, P was at a party. And uh and a certain person from uh uh from normal, maybe with initials KS, apparently was got fed up with some with uh maybe uh inertia or marijuana for reform not going fast enough in the Carter administration that he leaked that this uh uh person was uh had uh taken a toot or two of cocaine at a party. Am I uh mixing that up at all?

SPEAKER_03 10:42

No, no, that's essentially right. We what we were fighting, we we actually initially had a good relationship with Peter Bourne and the Carter administration, but at some point they began to spray paracat on marijuana just across the U.S. border into Mexico. And we were getting reports that what the paracot did, it's a very deadly herbicide. Uh it only takes a small amount to kill a person. And it was turning the marijuana into a gold color, killing it essentially. And then a lot of people were shipping it across the border and selling it as what back then was considered great marijuana, Acapulco Gold. So I approached Peter Bourne. I used to meet with him periodically at the White House, and one of the things I raised on one of those early meetings was uh you can't do that. And he said to me, Well, you know, Keith marijuana is still illegal. And I said, Well, it's illegal, but you can't poison us. That's crazy. That's a response that would never be constitutional to apply. And so finally, since they test the samples that they seize on the Mexican border on a regular basis every quarter or something, they would agree to test the next quarter's marijuana and see if any of it had paraquad. Well, when the results came back, it wasn't overwhelming, but it was as I recall now, it was 13% or 18%, it was less than 20. But it was a significant amount of the marijuana that was in fact uh infected with paraquad. And they basically told us, well, it's it's illegal, so it's just tough. So from that point on, it's true, my relationship with Peter Bourne deteriorated. And eventually uh I should have not done it. I had covered up for Peter for a lot for a year and a half or something after that party occurred. But at some point, someone called me from the Washington Post and said, Look, we we hear that Peter Bourne snorted cope. And Peter had gotten in trouble subsequently by writing a prescription for his assistant. It was for, I forget which drug, oh, it was a drug that people were using back at that time as a uh sexual uh uh uh additive. I can't remember which one it was, but he had written a prescription for her, but he had written it in a false name. Well, once the media got a hold of that, that's when they called me back and said, now we want to talk about this story of him snorting coke at the normal party. I should have simply said, I can't speak to you right now and hung up the phone. Instead, I said something silly like, um uh I can't say, I can't say he did, and I can't say he didn't, or some bullshit like that. And obviously the next day in the Washington Post, a front page story saying uh Peter Bornstorms coke at normal party. So uh that was a traumatic event for sure. And it resulted in within a year or two, I left normal and worked some other places for a dozen years and was happy when I was able to come back uh in 1996.

SPEAKER_02 13:46

Okay, now Morgan, how old were you, or were you even born yet when normal was uh born?

SPEAKER_01 13:52

Well, I was born in '83, so uh, you know, a little bit after Normal was originally founded. But uh I have been involved in cannabis policy reform uh for most of my adult life, and I gotta say it's been uh quite a journey. Um, you know, I feel really uh really privileged to be able to do this kind of work.

SPEAKER_02 14:12

So you're 20 years younger than I am. What motivated you to get involved with uh cannabis or marijuana policy, Morgan?

SPEAKER_01 14:20

Well, you know, I was a cannabis consumer and I had a couple of uh firsthand experiences with law enforcement uh related to cannabis. And uh, you know, that in and of itself I felt was completely unjust because of the relative safety of cannabis when compared to things like alcohol. Um But what really got me sort of galvanized and uh motivated me to get involved in the movement was that when I was going to court, um people that didn't look like me were getting far greater sentences for the exact same violations, uh same judge, same day. Um and that really didn't sit well with me. So I started doing more research into uh you know the uh the history of the war on drugs and uh the uh you know the various uh you know ways that uh that people have been abused under its auspices. So uh, you know, as soon as I had the opportunity, I got involved uh professionally and have been doing it ever since.

SPEAKER_02 15:15

Okay, so people who didn't look like you, like people who weren't white or people who didn't look like they were going to be college-bound or college educated?

SPEAKER_01 15:24

Oh, yeah. I mean, basically it was heavily skewed against people of color and people who looked like they were low income.

SPEAKER_02 15:32

And Keith, I think I bumped into you at the Whole Foods in Arlington about 10 or 15 years ago or so when marijuana was still solidly illegal in uh Virginia. And uh, how do I dance around this? I guess we don't have to now that it's legalized to possess it. And I think uh you said something along the lines of you were still living in, I know what it was. At that time, uh marijuana was more decriminalized than Maryland and DC and Virginia. And so I think I asked you, do you still live in Virginia? And you said yes. I said, why if you're smoking? And I think you said the cops just don't care about bothering you. Do I have that right? And and if so, uh was is that part of like what Morgan's talking about, just the cops picking and choosing who they're in with the who they were enforcing against and when?

SPEAKER_03 16:19

Oh, I think with with a question, that's true. Uh I I had white privilege, and so for me, as long as I only had an ounce or less of marijuana, I never worried about it. I lived in the progressive section of False Church in Northern Virginia. Um, however, I what what I think is shocking is that here a few years later, uh Virginia actually has legal dispensaries selling medical marijuana and for recreational users. They don't yet have dispensaries, but it's legal to possess up to two ounces. You can grow up to four plants. I did for a couple of years recently. Um so it uh the the environment has totally shifted. Um and and I think it demonstrates that at some point legislators uh when we used to try to argue that the state could make a lot of money by regulating and taxing marijuana and bringing it above ground, and they could clean up the black market where the marijuana you bought, you don't know if it has pesticides or heavy metals or anything else in it. Uh that argument about raising funds didn't sell very well, wasn't acceptable or convincing to elected officials, so long as uh marijuana smoking was still considered sort of immoral or sinful or you know, whatever term you want to use. When we founded normal in 1970, just to give you some comparison, Gallup had just done their first survey in 69 asking the American public how they felt about legalizing marijuana. Only 12% favored it, 88% were opposed to what we were proposing. 50 years later, 55 years later, um, we've got 70% support around the country. And so once you get a vast majority of the American public, including most non-smokers who no longer favor prohibition, all of a sudden those tax and regulate arguments become far more convincing to elected officials. So that's what you've seen. I think now we have 25 states that are fully legalized and 38 that have legalized medical use. Uh now it's it is getting more difficult. Margan knows more of the details, but we're running out of easy states to win. There were never any real easy states, but we're getting to where the states we have left are like Mississippi and Alabama, and you know, those are going to be slow to change. The same place that are the death penalty states. Yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_01 18:50

Keith, you brought up a really good point. I think that um, you know, as public opinion has changed, has gone hand in hand with people just having more information about cannabis. Um, you know, the advent of the internet with people being able to share information has been really a game changer when it comes to uh not only showing people the relative harms and safety of cannabis, uh, but allowing people in Avenue to talk about it, people realizing more and more that they know somebody that is a cannabis consumer, uh, but also having a lot more access to information about the harms that prohibition has caused. Um, you know, this has been absolutely instrumental in bending the needle on this issue when it comes to public opinion. Um, it's unfortunate that lawmakers are still a little bit behind the curve of uh the general public, but that's starting to change. And, you know, we're seeing less and less stigma associated with uh uh cannabis consumption these days, which I think is uh a good sign of things to come. But as Keith mentioned, uh we are running into some potential political difficulties at the state level. Um, you know, we have very few states that have the ballot initiative process yet, so it's more difficult to take it to the voters. Um, a lot of the funding for such ballot initiatives has dried up or really been so focused on coming from the industry, and then you know, a lot of industry actors necessarily want some specific carve out, so it's not necessarily the best bill for getting passed, not the best bill for consumers, but um you know, we're we're starting to see also just a lot more opposition in these uh these few states that we have left. Uh they generally tend to lead pretty heavily socially conservative. Uh there's a lot more organized opposition in some of these. And uh because of the successes that we've had over the last uh you know 10 to uh you know 25 years, really, uh we're starting to get into a position now where uh uh opponents of legalization can more easily focus their resources.

SPEAKER_02 20:47

Yeah, swelling on. Look at even Bernie Sanders. When I met Bernie when he was in the House of Representatives around 93 or 94 when he was at a uh fundraiser in DC, I think the only time I went to a fundraiser for a politician, because I was interested in what he had to say, uh, and he he wasn't sold on marijuana legalization at all of the time. I walked up to him after he didn't even do stump speeches. I give him a lot of credit. He was even deep then, and I walked right up to him and I said, Congressman Sanders, you want to go into the Senate? Will you join the movement to legalize marijuana? And he said, It's the farthest thing from my mind. I could do the Brooklyn accent or whatever world he was from, but I'll I'll do it in non non-New Yorkese at this point. It's the farthest thing from my mind when jobs, health care, and education are a disaster. And I said, Well, that's all well and good, but this is my issue, and you want my support. So if this uh matter went on to the House floor tomorrow for a vote, how would you vote? And I give him credit for being straightforward, even though I disagreed with him. He said, Okay, you got me cornered. Maybe I'm telling a fish story, I don't know. As long as they're selling to the kids on the schoolyard, I can't support it. And so what's Bernie Sanders' view now on marijuana? Please tell us. So should I can I take some credit for that? You know? I planted the scene.

SPEAKER_03 22:13

You can certainly take credit among the three.

SPEAKER_02 22:16

Uh now let's go further back. Keith, you're a lawyer. What made you go to law school? Was public defender uh work your first job? So what made you go to the public defender service? And what made you uh leave wherever you left to start normal?

SPEAKER_03 22:32

It was entirely a result of the Vietnam War and more specifically the anti-war movement. Um I graduated law school in 68, and that was the height of the anti-war movement. And my generation were focused like a laser on staying out of that damn war. Most of us didn't understand what the war was about. We couldn't understand why we were uh involved in killing people in countries we'd hardly heard of. Most of us had had friends or colleagues that was classmates. I had two fraternity brothers when I was an undergraduate who came home, they got drafted and came home in body bags. So the war seemed very real. And most of the motivation, as they say, of people my age in particular was to figure out how to avoid the damn war. Now, some people obviously burned the draft cards and told the government to take a hike or went to Canada. Uh, but it those weren't easy choices. I I went, I had some lawyers who were advising me at the time, and they offered to get me, to put me in touch with some psychiatrists in Baltimore who would say that I was gay. And back then it wasn't don't ask, don't tell. If you said you were gay, they didn't want you. Um, I thought that wasn't a bad idea, but I was married with a young child, and my wife at the time just was not comfortable. So that was out. They second asked me if uh I would like to go to Canada, leave the country. And if so, they had a network of people they would put you in touch with. Well, again, the problem there was there was no guarantee you would ever be allowed to return. That was a decision that might be for the rest of your life. Uh, so that was sort of scary for me as a as a young man. Uh, so finally they suggested I had been offered a job as I graduated with something called the National Commission on Product Safety. It was a Ralph Nader-inspired group, uh, but uh obviously created by Congress. And uh it sounded terribly important. I I think they hired four lawyers, two from Harvard and two from Georgetown. And so they said to me, uh, we could probably get you what's called a critical skills deferment. It's an idea as if the work you're doing at home is important to the health, safety, and welfare of the country, then you can stay home and do that during the two years you would have been drafted and sent to Vietnam. Well, sure enough, my draft board granted me that. It was close. I had been uh I had been drafted, I had taken my physical and had been given a report date, but uh this draft this draft deferment came in. So I spent the two years instead of Vietnam, I was at 16th of K in downtown Washington working around Ralph Nader. And it introduced me to the concept of public interest law. I honestly didn't have a clue what I don't know if anybody even used that term back then, but that's what we now refer to it as. Um so by the time that two-year commission was over, and I was old enough, I was 27 then, so I couldn't be drafted. First time in my life I'd had a choice to think what do I want to do? Otherwise, I was just hiding from the draft up till that point. And um, so I thought, well, you know, what I'd really like to do is do a Nader type project, but focus on legalizing marijuana. I had first smoked marijuana when I was a freshman at Georgetown Law School in 65. Most smokers started much younger, but I was a late bloomer. And um, so I gathered some friends around me and some other people I knew who cared about the issue, and we found it normal in late 1970. But it was all the result of the uh war in Vietnam and the alienation uh that we felt towards our own government because of that. And once we started examining and opposing the government's perspective on going to war, we began to realize there were a number of other issues that we also didn't agree with the government on. So uh at the anti-war demonstrations, by the way, marijuana was a symbol of uh opposition to the war. You would sit there, and whether you were a smoker or not, people were passing joints up and down. If they if you weren't a smoker, you just passed it on. But everybody embraced the concept that smoking a joint during those demonstrations was a way of giving your middle finger to the government.

SPEAKER_02 26:53

Okay, uh, Keith, uh, was I wrong? Weren't you at the Public Defender Service in DC for a certain amount of time?

SPEAKER_03 26:59

No, I I I actually didn't. I've always admired public defenders. I think it's a fabulous training ground. And when I was with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, some of our most outstanding and most talented defense lawyers had been public defenders. But no, I I was not.

SPEAKER_02 27:15

Okay, and uh, but didn't marijuana become very popular also among the soldiers in Vietnam, the US, uh, the American soldiers in Vietnam? And if so, uh, where were they getting that from?

SPEAKER_03 27:25

Was that the uh yeah, a lot of them didn't smoke when they were uh in the state or hadn't when they were just in the states, but when they got drafted and sent to Vietnam, uh there was a lot of good marijuana there, and a lot of people got turned on to smoking marijuana. Plus, they're in a you know a hostile situation where your life's at risk, et cetera. You're looking to either change your consciousness somehow, and smoking marijuana was one way to do that. So a lot of them brought seeds home when their tour of duty was up. And I had people, the first early years of normal, had numerous people come by the office to introduce themselves, who were veterans, who um were now moving around the country teaching other people how to grow marijuana. And what most of them did was uh the first year they provided the seeds and showed them how to grow a healthy crop, and they split the crop, and then they moved on, and that other person could continue with their own business. So um I think the the Vietnam War had a lot to do with the spread of marijuana among uh American youth.

SPEAKER_02 28:31

So correct me if I'm wrong, Keith. Uh wasn't it uh uh an often frustrating, long battle, ups and downs, ups and downs, often with a shoestring budget for normal, probably between uh 1970s, uh right up until the 1990s, uh, and uh right into the 2000s, right until there were such great breakthroughs. I mean, I remember when uh the Congress prevented the the referendum in DC from even going forward uh for medical marijuana, and that was in the 1990s.

SPEAKER_03 29:00

For several years, I guess I think. Yeah, there's there's no doubt about it. There were some tough times in terms of making progress. Keep in mind that uh I see it, I see the history of the legalization movement in basically three phases. The first phase had to do with the Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse that issued their report in 1972. Uh, and remember, that was under former President Nixon, who just hated marijuana and hated marijuana smokers. He appointed this commission that he thought were going to come back and say how terrible marijuana was and it led to heroin and was going to support his preposition. Uh, and he was shocked when they came back and said, in fact, we should decriminalize marijuana. They didn't use that word, but they said eliminate penalties for personal possession and use. They didn't have the courage to recommend full legalization because I think they knew at the time, '72, they wouldn't have been taken seriously. They would have been suggested they were all a bunch of radicals. Um, but after that commission came out with their report, the commission went out of business. So normal spent the next seven, eight years traveling around from state to state trying to convince state legislators to adopt a version of decriminalization. And we did succeed in 11 states between 73 and 78. Oregon was first in 73. Uh, I think it was Nebraska was last of the 11 in 78. We thought we're on a roll, this is we're going to get all 50 states. Well, then came Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan and just say no and the parents move. Just say no. Oh, yeah. So we didn't make any progress from 78, that's the first phase of the legalization movement, until 96. No statewide progress. We made some local progress. Um, in 96, California, by voter initiative, adopted medical marijuana. Well, that, of course, was a whole new concept. And all of a sudden, we didn't just have to argue civil liberties. We could argue that this is a drug that can help seriously ill and dying people. And that changed everything. And then by 2012, the third phase is when we picked up our first states with full uh recreational legalization. That was Colorado and Washington. So I see those distinct phases in the movement.

SPEAKER_02 31:24

Was it marijuana that one of uh Nixon's top aides, Ehrlichman or Haldeman, had said was part of uh uh Nixon's opportunity to uh just continue his racism against black people?

SPEAKER_03 31:36

Well, it was mainly it was against Jews. He had this incredible thing. He couldn't, there were there were some tapes on those Nixon tapes where he and Haldeman and Ehrlichman were were talking about those Jewish psychiatrists, and they all were favored legalized marijuana. Now, I think in truth, their their bigger opponent were minorities, black and brown people. But I couldn't believe the amount of uh uh anti- sentiment again against Jews. I I had in my lifetime, I never heard anybody talk like that. Well, the Nixon at Haldeman and Earlman certainly talked like that.

SPEAKER_02 32:12

I guess that when my parents were uh at a fine restaurant in uh in New York uh in 1989 or 88 when Pat Nixon and Dick Nixon were at the table next to them, I I guess Dick didn't pick up that they were Jewish or else just say anything. And maybe my parents weren't uh just decided to be diplomatic towards them. And in fact, I wish it would be pretty valuable. I can't find the autograph that he signed for me saying, uh, dear John, best wishes best wishes Richard Nixon, not exactly anything Ariudite. Uh now, um Keith, uh what made you uh and and Morgan too? I mean, uh well let's start with more Morgan when you started getting involved uh with with the marijuana uh decriminalization uh reform legalization movement, I'm gonna do the math for 1983. So you started in in the early 2000s when there were still a lot of struggles going on. Do I have that right?

SPEAKER_01 33:12

Well, I started in 2008, and even though um or at least professionally, and uh you know, even though we had uh you know started seeing uh uh medical cannabis start to be passed at the state level, uh, when I started, I think that there were only eight or nine states that had actually approved that. I believe uh um you know, in a very short period of time in the late teens, uh, we started to see a lot more states start to uh institute these programs. And uh you know, that really started almost a domino effect. At the same time, we saw a lot of action at the local level that was uh really focused on either uh decriminalization or lowest law enforcement priority measures that were really sort of paving the way for developing support for statewide initiatives to uh legalize cannabis for adults. Um and then you know in 2010 we saw the ill-fated uh attempt in California, um, which, you know, I think was um maybe just a little bit ahead of its time, but I think also just suffered from a uh uh primary miscalculation about voter turnout in non-presidential election years. Um this was a lesson that I think I carried on for quite some time, um, where uh in midterm elections you see uh a lot less uh uh younger voter turnout, you see uh a lot more uh conservative turnout. And those are demographics that we uh you know are absolutely important when it comes to traditional support for uh cannabis policy reform. Um so you know, running an initiative, the first ever statewide legalization initiative in uh in 2010, um, I think was uh a little bit of a misstep. But luckily, I think people learned from it, and then we saw that there was a lot of groundwork going on in um uh Washington and Colorado leading up to the uh the uh 2012 votes, um, which were ultimately successful. Um and then, you know, after that we continue to see more and more states uh start passing, including some even in midterm election years. Uh and I think that this is really, really important because uh a lot of this these victories I think were based on the fact that we did have experience. Uh I think a lot of people don't understand exactly what a regulated cannabis system looks like unless they see it firsthand. Uh but once we have concrete examples to show them, um, uh, which is one of the reasons why I really want to uh get uh regulation able to be passed in DC so we can show lawmakers very easily, even if they don't have uh uh even medical use in their own states. Um, I think uh it is important for people to be able to actually see this for them to be able to get their minds around it. Um so once we had some solid examples, we just see more and more progress. But you know, as Keith mentioned, we have run up against a little bit of a wall where a lot of our low-hanging fruit is already gone. So now we are gonna have to you know pivot and restrategize when it comes to passing state level initiatives. And I think a lot of it is gonna come back to uh a lot of that local pressure, uh, which I think normal is uh perfectly positioned to do as a volunteer organization.

SPEAKER_02 36:25

Yes. So I asked both Keith and Morgan, what was done intentionally versus just more decentralized uh to get public opinion to understand that the uh marijuana reformers weren't just a bunch of stereotypical stoners. I mean, for me, I think two of the very convincing people early on at the time when I was paying more attention to the topic, which was after I left law school, was for instance, uh uh Dr. Grinspoon. What was his first name? Lester, who was a Harvard uh medical professor, who just came right out and said that his original idea was that he was gonna find uh through scientific study that marijuana uh was dangerous, but he was convinced that he might as well just try it uh to make sure that he wasn't being disingenuous, but that turned him around to becoming a marijuana consumer. And then we had an Alan uh Friedman. Isn't that wasn't that his first name, uh Keith, the uh the the Chicago boy? Uh he he was one of those uh economists, uh some some Friedman, uh uh Milton Friedman. And I I spoke to Milton, he was he was not exactly a darling of uh any lefty marijuana smokers, but I I bumped into him at the uh I think it was the Drug Policy Foundation conference over uh it was around 19 uh 91 or 92 in DC. And I I learned at that point that it was just this whole strain of libertarians who just recognized that the drug war was just this big socialist enterprise in every which way, uh financing the cops, the the the prison system, the uh the the prosecution system, and of course, you know, the people who work in the courts and and and did urine tests. And uh just speaking to Milton Friedman and some of these very conservative looking folks, and just in every which way that they looked, acted, talked at the drug policy foundation, I realized that those are some of the best mouthpieces to convince the rest of the world. No, it's not just a bunch of stoners there. But Keith, I mean, was this something more intentional that that that got the face of uh the marijuana reform movement not to just look like a bunch of stoners and any of the normal? I I think that the normal board of directors at some points, I think it was by the 1990s, started uh, I think focusing on getting some names of people, maybe corporate executives, et cetera, who just didn't seem like the uh uh part of the stoner stereotype.

SPEAKER_03 38:46

We we we clearly realized at some point that we needed to get out of that uh 1970s radical side. Uh we we we talked a fairly good game in the 70s, but in fact, when I look back on it, I think a lot of what we did was still counter-cultural. It's sort of all we knew for activism. But at some point, like 73, I think it was, uh, I met Dr. Grinspoon, may have been 72, and he was until the time of his death a few years ago, the intellectual godfather of the legalization movement, without question. He also, uh his best friend was Carl Sagan, and it was Carl Sagan who turned him on to marijuana. Sagan was a regular marijuana smoker up till the time of his death. Uh, Lester started to write that book. It was called Marijuana Reconsidered. He started to write it with the purpose of proving Sagan wrong, that marijuana was a dangerous drug. And in the middle of his research, he discovered bullshit. There's no good research on this is all reefer madness 1930s kind of stuff. So he ended up writing the best book ever written, arguing intellectually for legalization. But by the end of it, like you say, uh he uh Sagan used to try to turn him on and he he wasn't interested. But at some point when he realized, wait a minute, this is not dangerous. Let me see what he's got here, he ended up being an enthusiastic consumer as well. Yes, we we we definitely made an effort, like Ramsey Clark, for example, right? Former attorney general, served on our normal board for a number of years. And we would reach out to anyone who we thought had a reputation of a straight, professional, credible person.

SPEAKER_02 40:28

Well, anytime Ramsey Clark's mentioned, I always sing his praises. I mentioned on the show before that he and I teamed up in defending Phil Barrigan and their three friends at their 2000 jury trial uh after they hammered on two warplanes that fired depleted uranium bullets. And I spoke to Dr. Grinspoon when I was looking for an expert for one of my marijuana cases. What a brilliant gentleman! I mean that that was just so delightful. Uh for a lot of my marijuana cases that well, I say the marijuana grow cases often involving uh 24 or more plants. I use the services of Chris Conrad, who's just a great uh marijuana cultivation guy on the West Coast. Still around, still around. And also um uh for the life of me, it'll it'll come to me. There was a medical marijuana doctor, I think it was in Los Gatos, California, uh, who I worked with uh uh several times. And and it was just such an eye-opener that it really just does come down to this idea of personal choice. It's such an important civil liberties idea, but let's go be uh to two things that are my burning questions now is okay, there's a lot farther to go with cannabis reform, but there's also even farther to go with a lot of the other drugs reform. So I ask both of you, how have you both been able to stay patient and just stay the course and dealing dealt with all those ups and downs to get uh this far with marijuana uh uh reform? And how much of those lessons can be applied to reforming and legalizing other drugs, or do we have to take other approaches to legalizing and and decriminalizing the other drugs?

SPEAKER_03 42:11

I think you have to make a distinction between decriminalization and legalization. Right. At least from my perspective. Um I look forward to having marijuana dispensaries on every block like a Starbucks. I don't see anything wrong with it. I think, in fact, it would be a step forward. But even though I don't think any drug user should be criminalized, uh cocaine use, heroin use, whatever, uh if you're making poor choices, we need to figure out ways to help you realize you're making a poor choice. But arresting you and sending you to jail is not one of them. But the point I want to make is I don't want to see cocaine stores on every corner. I don't want to see most of these other drugs being totally legalized, if by that you mean a store that you can walk in and buy it. But with marijuana, absolutely, I would like to see that in every state.

SPEAKER_02 43:05

Okay, and uh do you feel any differently, Morgan, or the same, or is this really just more of the uh uh the normal uh the the normal uh line? So there you go.

SPEAKER_01 43:18

Yeah, I think you uh you froze. Um but just to address the uh similar question, um, you know, or the uh the original question, um, you know, I I think that you do have to look at drug policy reform in a uh harm reduction lens 100%. Um, you know, I think that there are a lot of good arguments for legalizing and regulating all drugs. Uh that being said, if you're looking at it from a public health perspective, you do have to look at the relative harms of uh drugs, but you also have to look at what the uh uh existing markets for those drugs look like when you're coming up with public policy. And I think that that's something that uh is a lesson from the cannabis policy reform world that uh you know larger drug policy reformers can. Definitely learn from because you cannot make good policy unless you're looking at what the existing market looks like and responding to its pressures. And I think that that's something that people that are trying to look at larger drug policy are definitely going to have to learn, and they can probably learn a number of really good lessons to save themselves a lot of trouble. Because, you know, in uh I think in a lot of cases uh when people are talking about cannabis policy reform, they do so as if there isn't already a very complex existing marketplace and a lot of measurable consumer behavior that can help inform policy. And that's unfortunate because uh, you know, uh you know, I think the uh the most base form of that argument is people that say, oh, we don't want to legalize cannabis because we don't want to introduce another drug and it's obviously already here. There's already a huge market for it. But um it gets even more detailed uh when you look at sort of the uh the individual market forces that affect people's consumer choices, uh, you know, how, where, and why they would like to buy their cannabis uh it comes into effect when you're talking about what level should you tax cannabis, exactly how you should regulate it. Um so I think that that is definitely a lesson that can be applied to the larger drug policy reform space.

SPEAKER_02 45:16

Are neither of you gentlemen going to touch this about uh the extent to which you support legalization, decriminalization of other drugs, and how to uh do that?

SPEAKER_01 45:28

Well, the organization uh has uh marijuana in the name. You know, that's the only one as an organization that uh uh we're really concerned with. But you know, like I said, I think that there are some pretty solid arguments for taxing and regulating and uh legalizing all drugs, but you do have to treat them on an individual basis based on their relative safety profiles and the intricacies of their existing markets.

SPEAKER_02 45:51

Uh Keith, since you're so far on in yours, you want to go farther than that?

SPEAKER_03 45:57

Well, again, I'm I'm not quite as comfortable with full legalization uh as Morgan is for the other drugs, but I certainly am totally in support of decriminalizing all drugs. Uh I just don't think it should be a criminal matter, period. Uh it's a public health issue if it's any issue at all. So uh I I but I think the the folks who are working to reform laws on more dang what drugs I consider more dangerous, I think can learn a lot, as Morgan says, by looking at the years where we worked up to decriminalization. Beyond that, I'm not sure it's gonna apply to them. It's hard for me to imagine, and certainly I don't think it'd be my lifetime, that any uh elected official of any consequence is going to argue that we should have stores for cocaine or heroin. I just don't think you're gonna see that.

SPEAKER_02 46:52

So, what has made both of you willing to stay the course and be patient about getting breakthroughs for uh marijuana reform? Because I'm sure it's been very frustrating for both of you when things were moving slowly and when things would move backwards.

SPEAKER_03 47:06

Well, partly I think what has kept me in it is that starting in 2012 in particular, uh, we've had nothing but success. And so it's exhilarating. I I literally I knew long before 2012, I knew at least five, six years earlier, I could see from the survey data that we were beginning to go above 50% support. So I was reasonably certain we were going to win this issue, but frankly, I wasn't sure I would live long enough to see it. And in fact, I've been delighted that I'm still hanging on and uh we're still picking up new states.

SPEAKER_02 47:41

So you're you're better than Moses in the mountain. You've actually uh uh gone into the Holy Land.

SPEAKER_03 47:47

Well, I'm not suggesting we've achieved everything we'd like to. There are a lot of issues that still remain in marijuana policy. For example, uh parents of young children sometimes have to fight to maintain custody of the child simply because a noise uh nosy neighbor smells marijuana smoke and reports them to the state child welfare agency. Um job discrimination. There are hundreds of thousands of people who lose their job every year because they test positive for THC without any evidence that they came to work in an impaired condition. It's the fact that they don't have a good drug test to measure impairment. All they do is they measure whether you have THC. So uh the DUIDs, there are a number of states where if you get pulled over and you blow the breathalyzer and you don't show that you're drunk, they take you in and do a blood sample. And if you have any THC, you are guilty of DUID without any evidence that you were impaired. So we've got more work to do, but at least these are relatively subtle issues compared to the big question of are you arresting marijuana smokers?

SPEAKER_02 48:56

Well, let's talk about the DUID because uh Virginia is a golden place for defending against DUID because there's no uh there's no per se rules in Virginia that say if you have X uh amount of marijuana in your bloodstream that you're uh guilty. And there are no uh scientists of the Virginia government who will say there's any correlation between marijuana and the bloodstream, even if a high amount and impairment. Then the only way that you can uh tie it together would therefore be if the defendant, the suspect, has told the cops, I just had this amount of marijuana this long ago, and I feel high. Because sometimes cops like to say to drive an influence of alcohol and drug or marijuana suspects on a scale of one to ten, uh one being the lowest, ten being the highest, how high do you feel you are? You know, that's the part where you got to put the velcro on your lips and not answer that. But what's the state of affairs, gentlemen, with the rest of the country? Are the uh how many uh states have per se rules or presumption rules saying that if you have X percentage uh or or of marijuana in your in your bloodstream that you're presumed to be uh guilty, for instance, of uh driving an influence of uh marijuana or THC.

SPEAKER_01 50:09

I'm not sure exactly how many states have per se rules. Uh you know, I know that there are unfortunately still a number of them.

SPEAKER_03 50:16

Um I think around a dozen, uh Morgan. And by the way, some of them have zero tolerance per se, some have two nanogram per se, some have five nanogram per se, but those they have just picked those numbers out of thin air. It has nothing to do with science.

SPEAKER_01 50:33

So uh absolutely. I mean, across the board, uh you know, per se uh limits are completely unscientific. And until we develop the technology to do so, the best way to uh really judge whether somebody's impaired uh through cannabis is with uh a drug recognition experts. But we've also seen that there's an incredible amount of abuse in that system as well. Um, you know, we're starting to develop much better technology that judges psychomotor control uh based on things like eye twitch and response time uh that are not associated with roadside chemical tests or urinalysis that shows cannabis use for you know weeks or months previously. Uh, but those technologies are you know really still in their infancy and they're very slow to be developed, even though there's a real huge appetite among both law enforcement as well as uh people that are uh proponents of legalization to get that technology out there where we can actually judge uh you know uh impairment. The problem is that there might not be a way to do that with cannabis, no matter how much science we throw at it. So I think that developing uh better ways that are based on uh performance at the time are going to be absolutely vital. And that technology is moving forward.

SPEAKER_02 51:46

Well, I think uh drug recognition experts are uh junk science, and I'll I I argue that to the hill, but uh of and I and I don't think that they that there can be any kind of breathalyzer tests or anything else that can correlate. So, to what extent then uh are the anti-marijuana activists uh making headway in uh in slowing down marijuana reform by arguing just that that uh that the more that marijuana is available, the more you're gonna have impaired drivers and impaired drivers maiming and killing other people?

SPEAKER_03 52:18

I think that's similar to the arguments that we faced all along from our opponents. The the big argument for a long time was if you legalize marijuana for adults, you're gonna have a sharp increase in adolescent marijuana smoking. Well, in truth, after having now, you know, uh 13, 14 years of experience, it's the opposite. Uh adolescent marijuana smoking has decreased in the states that have legalized marijuana. And I don't think anyone's certain why that is, but partly it may just be that old thing that teenagers don't like anything their parents like. So if they see their their parents and other adults smoking, then they've lost interest in it. Maybe that's why it's a good idea.

SPEAKER_01 53:01

Similarly, with uh information about the younger generation visit.

SPEAKER_02 53:06

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 53:07

Similarly, when it comes to uh traffic safety issues uh related to cannabis, uh the evidence is really inconclusive. We've seen uh you know various uh different metrics being used for it, whether you're judging uh cannabis-involved accidents or cannabis involved traffic fatalities. Um the simple fact of the matter is that there's a lot more testing going on for cannabis now. So that's naturally going to cause an increase in the raw data that you're getting. Um and I think a lot of that information is being misinterpreted. Uh, but at the very least, what we aren't seeing, despite this inconclusive data from state to state, is a massive increase in uh overall traffic issues associated with uh cannabis policy reform. No matter how you look at the numbers, it is not nearly what our opponents claimed it would going it was going to be in terms of carnage on the roadways.

SPEAKER_02 53:57

Okay, both of you, I assume Keith might know more about this uh uh than Morgan. What shifted uh the ability for us to have the homegrown high-quality marijuana and to therefore reduce the demand for the imported marijuana? Because I guess it was right until the 1970s that any good marijuana was usually imported.

SPEAKER_03 54:19

Well, again, uh it had a lot to do with the Vietnam War. It was after those returning soldiers came back from Vietnam that we began to develop a really robust domestic cultivation industry prior to that time. Uh most marijuana grown in the U.S. was considered dirt wheat. Nobody smoked it except college kids and stuff. Uh, but once we began to develop really the best marijuana in the world, it's better, frankly, the marijuana in the US is better than it is in Holland. And we used to hold Holland up as a place, you know, where they had the best marijuana in the world. Um, partly I think that had to do with as you be as the public becomes more familiar and more accepting of marijuana smoking. I'm talking about responsible use, obviously. Um, then the idea that their neighbor may grow a couple of plants rather than deal with the black market doesn't necessarily seem like a bad thing. It seems like if you're going to have people smoking marijuana, wouldn't it be better that they grew their own rather than bought it in some back alley someplace that may be dangerous and they don't know what's in it, etc. So partly it is an acceptance that cultivation is not a bad thing. It's probably a positive step forward. Um, and I suppose to a large degree, um it was born out of necessity. It took us a long time, as they say, until 2012, before we finally had even one state where you had a legal alternative, where you didn't have to buy it on the black market. So uh during that time, then obviously a lot of people, thousands of people, tens of thousands, were growing marijuana even at great risk, because they didn't necessarily have a good supply of it otherwise. It used to be in the old days, there were two or three months in the fall where when you met the dealer man, it wasn't a question of what do you have? Uh, I mean, what you know, what you maybe like certain kinds of marijuana? No, the question was, do you have anything at all? And I remember several years uh during the 70s when I guarantee you, uh when you came up to harvest time or two or three months that we we called them dry months. You couldn't buy marijuana. So home cultivation again filled a need.

SPEAKER_02 56:36

Um to what extent does uh normal uh primarily focus on consumers or have some sort of mix of focus on consumers and and the corporations in the marijuana business? And if the corporations don't have a home, the large uh marijuana corporations don't have a home with uh normal, where where are they going for their umbrella?

SPEAKER_03 56:58

Uh Margan can answer that because he's worked with a group that in fact represents industry players. The short answer in the first part is we are totally consumer focused. We were set up because of my experience working with Ralph Nader. And the core element of that is we don't represent the industry, we represent consumers.

SPEAKER_01 57:18

That's absolutely right. You know, there are times when consumer and industry uh interests overlap, but when it comes down to it, normal is 100% focused on consumers and making sure to work for their benefit. Um, you know, a lot of the uh larger companies either hire their own uh mercenary lobbyists, which I personally think is a really bad expenditure of money because uh these uh a lot of these lobbyists have an incentive to just keep stringing their clients along and uh getting them just close enough. But what they're really doing is just going to meetings and talking to the activists on the ground and reporting back to their clients as that's what they did. Um there are a number of organizations representing small to mid-sized businesses. The one that I used to work at, the National Cannabis Industry Association, is a great resource for anybody that's involved in the cannabis industry, whether you're plant touching or ancillary business. Um, and you know, but normal is really the only organization that's purely focused on consumers out there. And uh, you know, it is uh kind of interesting seeing how many people that I'm contacting in Congress that automatically assume that because we are involved in cannabis advocacy, that we're automatically representing the industry.

SPEAKER_02 58:31

Interesting. Well, the name of the show is Beat the Prosecution. Uh, I haven't been doing uh much about talking about criminal defense, other when we were touching on uh DWI, for instance, but I do want to end with both of you uh both chatting up normal beyond what you've done, tell us the uh URL, tell people how they can donate and become members, and also each of you if you can share uh anything with us criminal defense lawyers with the criminal defendants about how we can beat the prosecution beyond anything you've said today, which is because we've basically been talking about more public policy uh today. So uh let's start with Keith.

SPEAKER_03 59:14

Morgan, you go first, because I'm I'm still thinking about his questions, uh, if you're ready.

SPEAKER_01 59:19

Absolutely. Um well I think that uh you know uh for your audience, uh two things that you can do to help support our work are uh aid support us uh through various financial means, and you can find that at normal.org slash support. Uh, but also contact your lawmakers, both federally and at the state level. Uh you can do that at normal.org slash act. Um and you know, as far as criminal defense uh attorneys, uh, get involved with the uh normal legal committee. Uh lots of ways that you can do that. Uh Keith can speak to that better than I can.

SPEAKER_03 59:51

Yeah, I should have, I suppose, thought of that immediately. We I we just returned from one of our legal seminars in Key West, and we put on at least two legal seminars a year, and we have the one in Key West, I think this is our 42nd year. And the purpose of that, it's twofold. One is to train criminal defense lawyers how to be specialists in defending drug cases, because there are some things that are somewhat unique about drug having drug defendants. Um, but the other is we're trying to establish and encourage a community of people with shared interests. Um, obviously, when you go to a normal legal seminar, you can imagine uh it's a different group than if you went to a state bar legal seminar. They're both training lawyers how how to be criminal defense lawyers, but uh I can tell you that ours are a great deal more fun.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:44

And you still get CLE credit.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:46

Yes, you still get CLE. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:50

Gentlemen, thank you tremendously. Uh it is marijuana that was a big part of it. It switched me from corporate law to uh being a public defender and working criminal defense uh for all these over 30 years. I thank you so much, Keith, for uh being at the forefront there from early on and bringing us so far ahead with marijuana legalization, marijuana reform. I think Morgan for just coming right out there and saying that your experience uh as a uh marijuana consumer uh before you uh uh started doing the work you're doing now uh led you to doing what you're doing. And I encourage everyone to push for marijuana legalization, heavy decriminalization of all other drugs. I thank both of you. This has been John Katz with Beat the Prosecution, I'm a criminal defense and DUI defense law in Fairfax, Virginia.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:51

Gentlemen, thank you for listening to this week's episode from Beat the Prosecution. This is a regular podcast giving people a leg up against police investigations and prosecution. Nothing discussed on our media sources, such as our podcast or website, is legal advice. John Katz only provides legal advice to current clients or to individuals who have paid for a consultation. We welcome you contacting us via email at info at beatheprosecution.com by calling our office at 703 383 1100 or texting us at 571 406 7268.