support for conversations live comes from the gertrude j saunt endowment and from viewers like you thank you good evening and welcome to wpsu's conversations live legalizing marijuana i'm ann danahe more states are choosing to legalize recreational marijuana should pennsylvania follow suit medical marijuana is legal in the commonwealth but recreational marijuana is not some elected leaders and residents think now is the time for the state to act on legalization but there's opposition to the idea too and so far the state general assembly has not moved toward changing the law joining us to talk about the pros and cons of legalizing marijuana and some of the legal issues it raises is law professor douglas berman professor berman is a law professor at ohio state university and director of the drug enforcement and policy center he also has a blog marijuana law policy and reform and later in the program state senator sharif street co-sponsor of the adult use marijuana legalization bill will also join us senator street is a democrat from philadelphia he and a republican in the state senate are introducing legislation to legalize recreational marijuana in pennsylvania you too can join tonight's conversation our toll-free number is 1-800-543-8242 and our email address is connect wpsu.org for professor berman thank you so much for coming in to talk with us tonight oh thank you so much for covering this issue one of the areas where your expertise is is in the history of what we've seen with these drug laws can you give us a little bit of a look a snapshot of the history of marijuana law in the united states from criminalization to legalization oh it's a it's a rich history for sure and i could probably take up the hour plus to just give you just one chapter of that i tend to like to highlight that uh the history of marijuana prohibition and legalization really is connected to other drugs more broadly and even going back to the prohibition era of alcohol it was really after we ended alcohol prohibition that marijuana became a focal point for a lot of new laws at the state level and then more attention at the federal level to prohibit marijuana which was at that time kind of a new drug that was often associated with people in mexico and had some some racist overtones to the demonization of the drugs some people may be aware of a famous movie of the era called reefer madness that suggested marijuana was linked uh to violent behavior and all sorts of uh troublesome personal behaviors and outcomes and that led to what was then called the marijuana tax act but really was a way of prohibiting marijuana without expressly calling as such and that was the law of the land along with state prohibitions up until uh the 70s we have sort of a hippie era and it was kind of well known that marijuana was becoming a more popular drug though that ended up sort of contributing again connected to other drugs with the modern sort of war on drugs framework that originally started as an effort to just organize federal drug law more effectively through what's known as the controlled substances act that went into place in 1970 the important piece of this that particularly relates to marijuana is that law created what we're called schedules what are called schedules the law still effective today that placed drugs in different categories and subjected drugs to different levels of prohibition depending on how dangerous they are potential for abuse and whether they might have medicinal value and quite controversially and really to some extent against some recommendations of some expert bodies the decision was made to put marijuana in what's known as schedule one which is kind of the most serious the most prohibited of all the schedules in the controlled substances act and that's really what started kind of our modern prohibition era in which marijuana was treated again you know as the most serious drug subject to some of the most serious many states followed that script and so through the 70s and the 80s we have blank what i call blanket prohibition but then starting in the 90s the medical marijuana movement really got started and one part of that story and it's a it's really a healthcare story that connects to other aspects of american history i think the combination of new treatments for cancer that prolong people's lives but often with some some uh competing conditions uh related to chemotherapy and other challenges as well as the aids epidemic uh started to lead to people using marijuana kind of as a sort of a folk remedy or you know medicinally but it wasn't officially allowed until california kicked off what's really our modern marijuana reform movement by passing in 1996 the first statewide medical marijuana ballot initiative that legalized the medicinal use of marijuana just and this created a bunch of legal uncertainties because federal law remained prohibition and has remained to this day a blanket prohibition reality so we started to get what continues all of this tension between states starting to allow marijuana use most states did it just medicinally like pennsylvania has now but then starting in 2012 we had colorado and washington moved to what's often called recreational or adult use shift getting that shift in legal laws in different states even though at the federal level the law still the same is still a schedule one it's still illegal but the public opinion and state laws are starting to shift beforehand i am going to um just pause there and we'll get back to to looking at the laws as they are across the state we already have a call so we just want to get our caller get them in here we have james from sandy ridge hi james thanks for calling and we have you on the line and do you have a question or comment yeah i was wondering why some states are legal in some states or why are we less better state that's that's a great question and i think 17 states recreational marijuana is legal and other states have medicinal marijuana or have decriminalized it professor can you talk about that why is it very so much state by state that's a wonderful question the reality is on lots of other things we have some state variation but it's usually not as dramatic as we see in the marijuana space right you know different states have different laws for when somebody can get their driver's license you know some states are 17 16 some even younger than that part of our federal system is to allow states to kind of be the first decision maker but usually kind of a consensus develops of kind of what's good practice and good policy that hasn't been true generally in the drug space but especially as we've moved from prohibition to legalization and especially because the federal government hasn't reformed its national laws at all and so that's created an extra layer of uncertainty as states contemplate which way they might go you sometimes hear legislators say i think i'd want to do reform in our state but because it's still prohibited at the federal level i'm not sure we should and so this patchwork of laws i think is aggravated by the prohibition at the federal level it also means that people who are using medical marijuana in pennsylvania people who are using recreational marijuana in new york which recently legalized or illinois they're technically violating federal law but federal authorities have been saying for quite some time it's not worth prosecuting people as long as they're being consistent in their activity with state law but that itself creates uncertainty and challenges and is why a lot of reformers are pushing the federal government to try to do some kind of nationwide reform and we're taking a look at the map right now that shows where marijuana is legal illegal legal for medical reasons and it is a wide variety across the country there's some over obviously around the west coast um is legal for recreational use more than in the middle of the country but professor berman do you expect that to just continue to change that a growing number of states will move in that direction that certainly is my expectation partially because as i mentioned briefly before kind of the benefits of legalization have been seen and kind of embraced by more and more folks without the obvious harms there were a lot of sort of predictions of harms both when california first did medical marijuana and when other states first did recreational marijuana and their statements the crime rates would go through the roof or there'd be uh you know terrible drug driving problems and the research so far hasn't really borne out much of a change in states that have reformed that story might be that a lot of people were using marijuana illegally even before we got reform in the state so the actual amount of use may not be changing that much we might just be seeing people moving from the black market illicit use into a more legalized market and when the legalized market brings tax revenues brings jobs that are you know above board and regulated uh the state starts seeing more and more benefits and i think that's why we've we've seen more and more states feel more comfortable moving towards legalization embracing reform because those first movers uh haven't seen a lot of the the harms but have already kind of identified significant benefits i'll be the devil's advocate for a minute and say that i know a lot of people are concerned that pennsylvania is going to look at legalizing recreational marijuana they say it's one thing if it's medical and people need it and these are adults but there are a lot of concerns about whether it will lead to more substance abuse or whether it will lead to more young people using and abusing what are we seeing you're saying that's not playing out in states that have gone that direction that's more or less the sort of early story though again i i would emphasize and i think most of the researchers who are looking at this closely would would agree sort of it's still really early to make a judgment on these on these and then first the legalization states haven't been operating for a very long period of time we don't have you know decades worth of evidence about whether in a legal state you get a lot more youth use or a lot more problematic use and so you know that one piece is sort of the the jury's still out just on what the evidence will be the other is you know the reality most public health folks would say is that limited marijuana use especially if it replaces alcohol use or maybe even you know other harmful drug use there's there's some folks who want to believe and there's some evidence to support that people can move off of opiate addictions with the help of marijuana you may get a net benefit from a public health perspective even if more and more people are using marijuana if they're using less of other substances but again that's something that's still kind of in development and hard to make a judgment on right away and that's itself where i think part of the justifiable concern is hey we can see the benefits right away we can see the tax revenue we can see the job creation and are we perhaps having kind of lurking long-term harms that are there for building but are hard to identify until we get you know 5 10 20 years out from a change in the and that's why you know i think the public health community especially is going to continue to keep a very close eye on this and see where it takes us right there is some research underway there's beginning to be research underway on the impacts of it but it sounds like you're saying we need a lot more research about the long-term effects absolutely and part of it is we're trying to learn and i think learn good lessons from some of the mistakes we made with other substances like tobacco and alcohol so for example there's been a real effort in every state that's legalized to try to limit the ability to advertise in settings that might appeal to kids you know people old people like me remember the famous joe camel campaign that had lots of evidence showing that kids were drawn into smoking by these cartoon characters and so there's a real effort to make sure when we legalize we don't you know kind of facilitate a competition that's directed towards children there's also you know an effort to keep taxes high which can often help diminish the amount of heavy use or problematic use another thing that's being debated now is whether there are to be limits on the thc levels right that's the ingredient that leads to the high and there's some developing literature that says it's the high thc versions of that have the most potentially harmful uh public health uh consequences and so again i think there's this hope that we can do it right so to speak to minimize any public health harms and get the other benefits but one concern that many uh critics of legalization highlight is once you allow these commercial enterprises they're going to want to advertise and they're going to want to skirt any regulations you put on them they're going to want to push to have as many people use their product you know to help their their profits and that's necessarily going to increase the likelihood that some of those harms come to the fore maybe not right away but but you know if if we ever let up on regulation they'll take advantage right another element in the mix and we have another question and this one is from glenn he sends us an email and glenn writes do we know what kind of economic benefits states like colorado have gotten from marijuana legalization if so what have they been what are we seeing in states like colorado they're generating a fair amount of revenue right yeah i mean that's the the pretty simple story is we're seeing a good bit of tax revenue we're seeing a good bit of job creation though uh the pushback often is is okay yes there's you know 100 million dollars being generated but that's still only you know 0.5 of the total tax revenue for the state so it seems like a big number but in context it's still not a huge amount of money in addition especially in a state like colorado they benefited as as first movers often do they got a lot of tourism they got a lot of sort of commercial development around being the first state to legalize marijuana and so one thing that a lot of opponents are eager to say is don't look at colorado and all the economic developments there you know if pennsylvania becomes the 20th state to legalize they can't assume they'll get those similar kinds of benefits i will say though and this has been i think driving a number of states there's no doubt that a state that legalizes often will get uh tourism from nearby states uh that haven't legalized so here in ohio there's plenty of stories of people driving up to michigan which is a legalization state uh to purchase product and then you know come back and i guess there's a there's a growing concern among legislators that at some point you're going to lose revenue to these neighboring states and that alone is a reason to think about uh leading because uh you just have so much of your own citizens spending their dollars and the taxes are going to a neighboring state rather than being kept kept inside yeah you're losing the revenue but it's not that you're preventing people necessarily from getting the recreational marijuana i'll just remind all the viewers and listeners out there that you can join the conversation too our toll-free number is 1-800-543-8242 our email address is connect wpsu.org and professor berman one of the things you mentioned was the cost of legalizing marijuana are there still issues with the black market in states that have legalized marijuana because people say okay i don't want to pay as much as it costs to get it legally so i'm just going to still continue to buy it illegally is that an issue that we're seeing that's a very big issue and it's got sort of two components to it one is that a lot of people who are regular marijuana users who you might want to have move into the legalized market are saying exactly like you say i'm uh they are deeper than uh maybe going to a legal store that pays taxes and has to deal with more regulations uh and so i'll just stick with what i've got and you know the evidence has suggested it's been a pretty slow process to get people out of their traditional elicit markets and and into the regulated market because of the price point concern and the like the other point though and this has been a big concern for a number of states is it's there's reasons to be worried that actually legalization is attracting new illicit market entrance that they realize hey we can do a grow without going through the regulations and we're less likely to be hassled by the police because they're just not enforcing this very much because of legalization and so there's been a real worry and again this is something that i think varies as more states come online with legalization that you end up actually attracting uh a list get players because they think they can come to colorado grow or kind of um they are inviting nebraska or wherever else they can still uh sell it illegally uh in nearby states and so there's kind of an ongoing uncertainty about how big the illicit market is and also about how much this kind of attraction problem is producing its own negative consequences right it seems like an opportunity for states that are considering doing it to learn from what states have already done in other places that have legalized and we'll get back to that too hopefully we do have a call and this is jim from bradford hi jim thank you for calling and what's your question or comment oh yeah my question is is let's say you're flying from west in michigan where recreational use is legalized and you're flying to colorado where again it's recreation is legalized but now all of a sudden you're flying you're going over state lines and that's all governed by the federal government how does that work yeah great question it is it is a wonderful question and the simple answer is it's illegal to take it across state lines you have two states next to each other that both are legalized states technically it's illegal to do interstate transportation and in fact a number of states that have legalized marijuana often have drop boxes at the airport for people who forgot that they brought rwana with them at the same time there's very little info going on right again this was true not to make suppositions about people but there's a heck of a lot of interstate marijuana transportation 20 years ago when no state had legalized right so even though technically it's it's illegal uh to get on a plane with marijuana the reality is um you know i suspect a fair number of folks still do and that's kind of one of the ongoing sort of challenges for this marketplace is it means that a an operator of one of these dispensaries say in illinois that also has one in michigan they can't take their supplies from one state to another and in fact there was a pretty notable case uh where a whole truck supply of hemp which is essentially low t8c marijuana or low tfc cannabis to be precise was being driven from legal i believe it was oregon to legal montana but it had to go through idaho and they intercepted the truck and were prosecuting the individual and and so these are issues that come up not just for individuals but it comes up for businesses that are trying to figure out how to navigate through this patchwork of state laws and federal prohibition that remains in place well that's really something to consider and i guess we'll have to wait and see if that pushes it at the federal level for change to happen at that level too we have another call and this one is from jim in sandy ridge hi jim thank you for calling and you have a question or comment yeah how much state revenue could be raised by legalizing cannabis in the state of pennsylvania thanks for that question and there have been studies about this i think there was a recent study professor what are you seeing in other states and pennsylvania what could we see yeah i mean i think in new york which is a slightly bigger market but not necessarily that much bigger you know they're talking about billions of dollars literally in tax revenue and so the reality seems to be a pretty significant amount and among the things that has been interesting is early on the first year of legalization often the sales come under projections because it takes a while for the stores to get established and as we were discussing earlier it takes a while for people to kind of be comfortable moving from an illicit market into the well-regulated market but just about every state that's legalized they've seen their tax revenues grow pretty significantly over year over year and so you know there are some estimates that this could be you know a multi-billion dollar industry you know in just about every state and a part of that as well is states can choose to ohio did for example even in medical marijuana have huge licensing fees uh you know there's a bunch of ways to generate revenue from from this industry beyond just the tax on the product uh and so you know the state goes into it with a particular focus on revenue generation they're in there's a lot of opportunity there the challenges we just before though if you set the taxes too high you may get people going back into the illicit market uh because the price point is cheaper and and folks are very sensitive to price uh in this space right i think one study had it at 400 million as like the low end of what could be generated in pennsylvania and also again it depends on how you look at it that sounds like a lot of money but if you look at it as a percentage of the overall state budget it's much less it just depends on on how you look at it and we have another call this one is from mary in state college hi mary thank you for calling and what's your question or comment oh my question is what do states where marijuana is legal or for that matter illegal do about the situation when someone's driving and for one of a better term inebriated or i guess i would say high on marijuana driving under the influence to the point of danger how is that handled in any state legally or whether it's legal or illegal great question thank you do they have an equivalent of a breathalyzer if it's made legal that they can stop someone in the same way you would think if they were drinking right it's a wonderful question and i could literally do an hour on this complicated topic because we don't have the equivalent of a breathalyzer and my understanding of the sort of you know physical uh biology is we never will there's a number of folks who are trying to sort of invent something like a breathalyzer the problem is we metabolize marijuana products much differently than we metabolize alcohol and in fact we're kind of almost the reality of alcohol is there's a very close relationship between our blood alcohol content and our ability to his blood but the studies they've done about driving under the influence of marijuana show that people who have a very high tolerance for marijuana may have a lot in their bloodstream a lot of thc and they function just fine whereas somebody who's a first-time user they have a very small amount of thc in their system and they have a very hard time staying on the road or otherwise doing the things that are necessary for driving and so some states have taken what's known as a per se approach which is to uh any thc in your system that's illegal but there have been lots of concerns that that's really unfair especially in a state that's legalized medical marijuana it's going to end up being pain that are subject in a in an important way even in a recreational state where the other part of it is that marijuana stays in your bloodstream for about a day where it's still identifiable even though for everybody the high is worn off uh much sooner and so there's a concern that you know somebody could literally go to a party friday night have a designated driver but now they're going out just for dinner saturday feel perfectly fine but they could test positive for some residual amount of thc in their system and so there's been a constant conversation about how can we regulate this effectively to minimize possible road uh roadside problems while still not unfairly catching people up in a criminal justice net when they're really driving just fine right and the idea of people getting unfairly caught in the criminal justice system that's something we definitely are going to get back to but we do have another call and this is from jacob in bald eagle hi jacob thank you for calling and do you have a question or comment you have a question comment since uh pride month's coming up have you heard of the 420 neon poster it's 420 neon poster for pride month i have not heard of that i don't know if professor berman has heard of that well you know i know that 420 is of course a kind of a number and a date and a time that is kind of legendary in the marijuana universe although nobody's even quite sure why that is but it's become kind of you know that sort of the de facto kind of holiday and celebratory uh time and and date and so i assume it's somewhat related to that and of course that's where i find studying marijuana law and policy and history so interesting because it connects to so many other social movements and as just one for example when i first started teaching a class in this area it was around the same time that lots of states were leaking gay marriage but the federal government hadn't done anything yet and people were saying oh these are similar movements where young people have a much more progressive approach than older people do well the supreme court decided to step in and kind of resolve the gay marriage issue but we're still debating marijuana policy state by state and so you know how these different movements connect and how different generations you know approach them can often be synergized i don't know if that's what the what what this is about but if it sounds like it could be something related to it yeah yeah thank you for that question and we do have another call and this is from daryl and dubois hi daryl thank you for calling hi on uh hey i got a question for the gentleman there my question is growing marijuana for hemp for uh production of uh paper uh mine reclamation uh so on go ahead you're on thanks for the question so is it legal illegal does it vary by state it's legal now but that's a very recent development one of the when i first started teaching this like i said one of the i thought strongest arguments to changing federal marijuana prohibition is marijuana was defined to include anything that was from the cannabis plant even if the thc content that which makes you high was very very low and there's this long history some people know about and like to say oh the founding fathers grew marijuana well technically what they grew was the cannabis plant in the form of hemp that was widely known as a wonderful product for roads and fabrics and all sorts of industrial uses and so there was a strong movement among farmers and others to make sure at least hemp could be grown legally and could be a developed crop and sure enough in 2018 we had that included in the farm bill and so there's a farm bill that passes at the federal government level uh almost every couple years to just deal with foreign policy and the most recent version of that included a redefinition of marijuana to say that marijuana doesn't include cannabis plant products where the thc level is below 0.3 percent in other words you can grow hemp as long as it's got a low enough level of of thc in it and now that's federally legal and legal in states across the country what interestingly about that is states have struggled with when we stop a car and we see all of this cannabis product in the trunk how can we tell if that's legal hemp or illegal marijuana and a number of states actually stop doing arrests for certain cannabis offenses until they worked out having the labs able to test to tell how much tnc in the product because you know to the visual eye they look exactly the same and there was reason to fear in fact that a bunch of illegal marijuana dealers were happily saying oh i got hemp in my car that's not marijuana and nobody could tell the difference and so uh the good news is for anybody interested in the whole world about hemp agriculture that's worth worth noticing uh that is fully legal now but that's only enhanced some of the legal and and conversations around around marijuana and and the stuff that gets you hot all the questions that still need to be worked out and we have another call and this one is from jim in phillipsburg hi jim thank you for calling and do you have a question or comment yes is the is there a provision in the law that will allow for home production so the the law that's been proposed in pennsylvania um we will have our guest on soon and who hopefully will be able to answer that question but what are we what are we seeing in other states professor vermin are you allowed to grow it at home or does it just vary by state let me say ann your callers have all the best questions because they're hitting every challenging point that comes up in this universe and the home grow question that's often how it's described is this debate over whether home grow is going to be part of a medical marijuana reform or a recreational reform and that's varied pretty dramatically from state to state and what's so interesting here is this is often issue that will divide the commercial interests and the kind of the citizen interest in marijuana right not surprisingly uh the companies that want to grow marijuana and sell it in you know regulated stores don't want there to be home grown they want to have the entire marijuana market be people who have to come and buy the product from their stores whereas a lot of the app and a lot of individuals are very uh interested in being able to at on their own grow at home interestingly it's as much as sort of the general pro-marijuana movement is is for allowing home grow the law enforcement community has been saying and saying pretty vocally in colorado problem with how we've reformed things in colorado because we've allowed home grow we make it too easy for these illicit market participants to claim they're just doing their own personal home grow but in fact they're growing to then be able to go sell maybe go sell to kids maybe go sell in other states and so there's this sort of dual story of kind of ironically law enforcement and the commercial marijuana industry often teaming up to advocate to legislators that they shouldn't allow for their home they're being home grow it just as a a little simple part to that i think the the easy compromise or at least the compromise is to allow home growth but only very small quantities and so you minimize the risk that people have their entire backyard full of marijuana plans and then just claim oh it's only for my own use right right and i do think that that is one issue that's come up in pennsylvania which we'll get to talk about in a minute but if you're just joining us i'm anne danahe and this is wpsu's conversations live legalizing marijuana joining us is legislative aide desmond mckinson to senator sharif street and ohio state university law professor douglas berman our toll-free number is 1-800-543-8242 and we're ready to take your calls you can also send us questions by email at connect wpsu.org well thank you both for joining us and we'll go to our new guest here desmond mckinson thank you for coming in to join us and we were just talking about what would be allowed possibly under the proposal in pennsylvania maybe you can talk about that the senator's proposal to legalize recreational marijuana in pennsylvania how would it address home growers if i'm a home if i'm somebody i want to grow it at home would that be allowed under the proposal well yeah currently the the alleged first of all thank you for having us on thank you for inviting the senator apologize for my mask i do have some people around me right now so i'm not in a space where i can not wear it so i apologize for that but um we believe that uh this is this is medicine uh we do want this to be regulated in a way that considers our patients and there would be home grow made available in this legislation as it stands right now we would limit it to about five plants per patient but it would be for individual use uh five plants per individual so you could have two individuals in a um in a residence and each of them would be able to grow up to five plants for personal use yeah well thanks for joining us and we certainly understand the need to wear a mask better better to take the safe approach there and it sounds professor berman that's exactly what you're talking about trying to find a compromise so somebody doesn't have their whole big one-acre yard growing with marijuana plants but they can grow enough for personal use yeah that's right and then again it's you know law enforcement has been saying out of colorado especially that you know it's it's their broad homegrown someone says that have made it too easy for you know a household can say i think they're it's it's more than it's like 12 mature plants or something along those lines and so you know we can claim oh i've got you know two families in this you know apartment building and so we we can grow a hundred plants and it's all it's all homegrown and you know again the worry the folks who actually want you know and spend the money and put in the investments to follow all the regulations are now a little bit in tension with the people who want to kind of do it you know on the side and you know whether it's just a side hustle whether it's even for their own use the commercial uh distributors are worried about undercutting their market law enforcement is worried about illicit activities and you know how you balance that with also just allowing the freedom of people to do this and not be subject to undue law enforcement as well is is an ongoing challenge that every state is facing in one form or another definitely so we have another call and this is from georgine from morrisdale hi georgine i hope i'm saying your name correctly and do you have a question or comment hi george union from morrisdale are you there yes hi thanks for calling do you have a question or comment yes my question is as an obviously well-educated well-read man where do you stand on the subject of legalization of recreational marijuana and is that a question targeted to our guest professor berman yes okay so do you have a personal position on it and can you talk about that sure i do and this really grows out of you know my experience as a professor who teaches criminal justice and criminal law issues and i've just seen the harms of marijuana prohibition uh produce very little benefits and particularly be just dramatically skewed against people of color uh ruin a lot of lives you know whether it's through incarceration through just simply having a criminal record and all the stigma that comes with that i just don't see the benefits the condition that justify that and candidly and this comes from you know a person who's fortunate to you know have not been subject to direct criminal justice experience i know an awful lot of of white folks who not only use marijuana but you know never even think twice about that fact whereas so many people of color have been caught up in the system by it for me a big reason i support marijuana legalization is i think prohibition has been a racially skewed and persistently problematic prob problem with our criminal justice system and that alone makes me think we should move toward different approaches i'm a little concerned about the public health consequences and i think that's something we need to keep an eye on and that itself could have sometimes uh disparate outcomes but i think that's a much healthier approach particularly for marijuana candidly i think we should be moving that way with all drugs because prohibition seems to have a lot more negative consequences and not a lot of public health benefits right and that disparity in enforcement that was one of the motivating factors right desmond for introduction of this legislation by senator street that there isn't equity when it comes to enforcement um yes uh that is that is true uh we believe that if you can't enforce the laws equally uh the law should probably change um and it and there are a lot of laws in our criminal justice system that fall into that category but certainly um cannabis prohibition is one of them we know that usage is pretty uh equal across the board across um communities across identities we caucasians hispanics african americans but we do know people of color and usually poor people are four times four to five times more likely to encounter law enforcement um when they do use as opposed to other counterparts or caucasians so the social equity part has been huge for us to be quite frank the war on drugs um in many respects has been a war on people it's been a failed war on drugs it's criminalized a plant that in many people's opinion is is no more uh damaging or no more dangerous in fact in many instances less so than alcohol and so we thought there was a need to correct some of those uh some of those historic wrongs and desmond we do have a call on thecube but i just want to ask you really quickly can you kind of give us a snapshot of some of the key points in the proposed legislation if this legislation were to move forward in pennsylvania we don't know if that's going to happen yet we have a republican control general assembly but if it were to happen are there some key points in it yeah so the one of the most important things about this legislation is it would create a cannabis regulatory board which would be staffed by people in the health department as well as people in ag they would be responsible for making sure that the market wasn't over flooded with product that things stayed level i don't know if you know but there's been some instances in neighboring states where we've had too much product supply and demand have not been uh have not been uh well balanced and it's caused either too much product excess product for the black market and we want to do this in a responsible way and we believe that having a a regulatory board that's responsible for monitoring and controlling the market of this is is the most responsible way to do it um we also have social equity licenses that will target people who have um historically been negatively impacted by the war on drugs if you or a family member has done time a ridiculous amount of time for non-violent cannabis offenses no long no not only would it expunge and seal those records but it would give you an opportunity to participate in the marketplace through social equity um licenses on which which you'd be able to take advantage of there are also low barriers to entry for everyone else there are licenses micro licenses that small business owners farmers would be able to take advantage of so they could be a part of the marketplace we don't want to do a thing where we have uh essentially big tobacco of marijuana coming to uh to pennsylvania and make this just something for you know the rich folks uh we do believe that this is something that regular uh people should be able to participate in and we are going to make sure that at least the legislation we finalize and we put in front of uh the general assembly um uh looks like that okay great and we have another call this is from frank in williamsburg hi frank thank you for calling and do you have a comment or question for our guests yes oh yeah hey go ahead frank all right yes uh i'm 67 years old i have determined just disease and i've been on opioids for 30 years my question will they produce the marijuana in different strengths for like different people is just going to be one straight thc or whatever it is across the board great question desmond do you want to tell us what you have in mind for pennsylvania and then maybe professor berman you can talk a little bit about how that's handled in other states all right thank you thank you um so i mean i'll i'll jump in real real quick i do know that thc uh strength and content is um something that we're looking at i believe there's going to be a certain level and then you'll have you know there'll be a range uh between that i'm not exactly sure off the top of my head what that level is going to be but i do know um how strong the product is um is something that we're keeping in mind especially um especially due to the fact that we already have an existing um infrastructure for medical marijuana and people with certain ailments or whatever else may need higher may need higher doses and we don't want to we don't want to institute this in such a way that completely deconstructs it the current um infrastructure that we have for the medical marijuana community so thc content is something um that we are going to be uh mindful of in terms of adult use um so that we don't adversely affect the medical marijuana market great and is that how it's handled in other states as well yeah you know one of the things that the caller's question sort of raises and has been a concern for those who are hoping to see reform is federal prohibition has really uh almost eliminated significant medical research about this plant and among the things that's amazing about the cannabis plant is it's got the thc that is the chemical that makes you high but then there are all these other ingredients most notably what are known as cannabinoids which there seems to be the potential medical applications and for lots of people suffering from a variety of different ailments it seems to be the combination at different levels of the cbd or other cannabinoids and the thc and yet we haven't had a generation worth of research to sort of explore all of that and so it's really kind of kind of happening on the ground in real time and one of the challenges and and a desmond sort of spoke to it you know kind of indirectly is can you get a market set up both with the regulations but also with the consumer base that's big enough that the companies have reason to produce products with a range of different you know sort of kinds of of treatments you know you can even think about the parallel uh to alcohol or even other kind of medicines where you know there can be seven different types of pain relievers and different people can find which one works best for them whatever their ailment might be it often takes a while for a market to mature in the cannabis space that there's going to be product available for a range of different folks to try out a range of different products but the hope is uh that a state like pennsylvania other states can kind of learn from the experience and that the market players are also themselves sort of figuring out what's working well for patients so somebody like the caller early on can go in and find a product that helps them the most and we do have a question from a penn state student but before we go to that i just want to really quickly ask you that this raises the question when we're talking about the thc levels in the medical marijuana or recreational marijuana we've all read stories about the getting into the hands of children or even pets do we have gummy bears or other candies that have thc in them and i wondered maybe both of you could talk about how is that addressed in other states and how would that be handled in pennsylvania to try to make sure that does it happen so that little kids aren't getting it pets aren't getting it etc well the uh doctor if i can jump in the one thing that we have made sure in our efforts to do this in a responsible way is if you are someone who purchases um uh cannabis uh for someone who's underage you will be banned uh for life uh from purchasing um if you're a medical marijuana patient you know if you're just a regular user but if you are caught um um you know giving this stuff to kids um this is something that will earn you a lifetime then um at least currently as the legislation is written uh you have to be 21 years old uh in order to use this um you will be banned um indefinitely if you get this to minors and the truth of the matter is is ultimately regulation makes it more difficult uh for kids to to get get their hands on this stuff you know i'll never forget uh our co-sponsor senator laughlin was asked you know as a republican why is this something after so so long uh the gop has stood against this is something that you would you would do and he said quite frankly he had a he had a talk with his uh his son uh and his son told him dad i could have a bag of weed uh to the house in under an hour and and that's that's better delivery than um than amazon and he realized that the regulation of it um is honestly what actually enhances the security it makes more difficult for a kid uh to get their hands on it and quite frankly it's safer um you don't know what the guy in the back alley is giving you uh sometimes it's laced um sometimes it's not a genuine product sometimes it's more dangerous at least if you can control it you can test it uh you can tax it uh i think it's a better situation for for on everyone involved right so professor berman is that something that pennsylvania can take a lesson from other states in and looking at how it's been yeah what a lot of the latest states have been eager to do and yeah and you know a lot of states have prohibited uh gummy bears or other kinds of products that would be naturally attractive one of the things that's verging and reinforces the point just made in just about every state that's had legalization for a while they do sting where they send you know 18 year olds 15 year olds to go and try to purchase at a legal store and they all get carded and told get out of here because these stores know they'll lose their license and they don't want to you know sort of take that risk that a regulated market is one that's eager to sort of you know control itself so to speak the other thing i'll say and this has been a talking point for people oppositional to reform there has been an increase usually a short spike in the number of kids brought to emergency rooms for accidental ingestion of marijuana products and that's part of where there needs to be an awareness campaign to encourage people to keep their products safe and away from from kids what i always think is interesting and there's a little bit of evidence to support this idea that a part of what that actually reflects not more kids actually consuming marijuana accidentally it's parents more comfortable taking the kids to the hospital because when you move off prohibition they're not now scared they're going to lose their kid if they bring the kid to the hospital and say you know my child accidentally got into my stash when you have you know illegal product they're going to just keep the kid at home and they're not going to seek medical help ultimately in almost all these cases the kids end up fine anyway because it's literally impossible to overdose lethally from a marijuana product alone but it has been highlighted if it's laced with something else or there are other drugs nearby that can that can prove to be a problem uh but you know you you put it exactly right in that that pennsylvania has the experience of other states working through the regulations to make it a safer product and deal with that access to kid issue yeah we were talking about the social justice questions and we did get a question and comment from a penn state student and we'll take a listen to what this penn state student has to say and then if either of you have any thoughts about it the reason that i'm in support is because it is a legalization that would do a lot of incarcerated individuals justice especially those who are incarcerated for possession of marijuana but might be incarcerated for the wrong reasons there are huge disparities in prisons especially with people of color and drug incarcerations and i think that legalizing marijuana would bring some equity to the incarceration rates and it is also something that i don't feel is strong enough in our system to [Music] lock somebody up for right so we were just talking about that desmond mckinson could you talk about the proposed legislation and if someone has that prior conviction so would that be erased if it was just a possession charge or how would that work i'm imagining that's a lot of people in pennsylvania yeah so the one thing we should be mindful of first of all when we talk about cannabis convictions of not just the non-violent offenses but we also have to consider everyone who is behind bars who has failed a urine sample um for whatever um they may be on probation or parole for we have um a uh a carousel of of recidivism um in our state in pennsylvania where there are many people who are behind bars who are just you know they feel that they failed a marijuana test they failed a drug test and now um and the way parole um works in pennsylvania is that you can go back if you fail a test or if you you don't meet a meeting or whatever else you can go back and you can serve um all the time that you got on your original sentence as if you served no time at all and and marijuana is is one of the uh is one of the drivers of this now as far as this legislation is concerned if you have non-violent marijuana offenses um this would seal your record the passage of this legislation would seal your record ultimately setting you up for expungement the record must be sealed first and then the courts would have to would have to have a court action in order to expunge uh your record not only that but then you would be a prime um target for a social equity license on somebody's whose life has been uh dis you know impacted uh by the war on drugs um you would be um able to you know uh partake in a social equity license um opportunity and what we should keep in mind of is what this legislation does is that this legislation doesn't just give you access to the social equity license but people who currently are um are dispensaries or who are currently in the business have the option to enter into a charter agreement with social equity licensees um with the expectation that the social equity license holder would become a full owner in about 10 years after the agreement it would involve helping them with capital it would involve helping them with education of the business aspect it would involve all of the all of the criteria necessary to have start and cultivate a successful business so economic opportunities could come out of it as well and professor burton we really just have a couple minutes left one or two minutes but are you hopeful that there will be those types of reform and so there is more equity absolutely and we mean this is again you know amazing part history moving very quickly the very first bills to legalize marijuana the first initiatives in colorado and washington didn't even speak to issues like record sealing and expungement and then through the years more and more states have they've moved in this direction have recognized that should be an integral part and it's even gone to you know these sort of automatic mechanisms so it happens automatically and then we're discovering that there are literally in some states i think illinois it was over a million people with some kind of marijuana record and that's just a reminder of just how pervasively impactful prohibition has been and it's disproportionately people of color and and that's where i share the the students hope that this will not only uh help create greater equity but that will continue as as desmond suggests this bill does to focus on ways to go beyond just erasing the past harms and actually trying to to uh do equity that extends towards business opportunities and beyond yeah thank you and we do have another minute left here and desmond could you speak to do you think that that will help it carry sway at the legislative level because again you have a republican general assembly you have one republican on board with this legislation so far but you're going to need more than that yeah well i think that there is some political appetite to get this kind of legislation done um hey listen uh the fact is the pandemic has created holes in our budget that we never thought we'd see um in in our time and that's just the reality um the the tax revenue the potential tax revenue from this um conservatively could provide 500 million annually that's on an annual basis now over a period of time it would feel like you know you didn't really you know the five once you get normalized to the 500 million it'll feel like okay well you know you will feel need for more revenue inevitably sorry you got the revenue and the equity i didn't mean to cut you off there but we're um running out of time and i just want to thank you thank you both so much for coming in to talk with us about this issue our guests tonight have been desmond mckinson legislative aide to state senator sharif street and ohio state university law professor douglas berman i'm anne danahe thank you for watching and listening and please join us for our next episode of conversations live get your garden on june 24th good night [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] you