c-span mom and every purchase you make goes towards supporting nonprofit operations. start shopping now by scanning the code on the right or visiting us online at c-spanshop.org. c-span has been delivering unfiltered congressional coverage for 45 years. there is a highlight from a key moment. >> i stand here with my colleagues from the arizona delegation, both senate and house. we are very close friends of congresswoman gabrielle giffords. to remember a tragic event that took place three years ago today. january 8, 2011 at 10:10 a.m. in 19.6 seconds 19 people, including congresswoman giffords

and myself were shot during a congress on your corner in tucson, arizona. the event was democracy in action. a member of this body, the people's house, was meeting one-on-one with her constituents. six wonderful people died that day. including my friend gabe zimmerman, my go to guy on the congresswoman staff. >> c-span, powered by cable. a discussion of policy concerning marijuana. we have kevin sabet joining us of the smart approaches to marijuana, who serves as president and ceo, and is the author of "smoke screen: what the marijuana industry does not want you to know," and paul armentano, with the organization for the reform of their deputy director. both of you, thank you for

giving us your time today. if we could start both of you, about your organizations, the perspectives you bring when it comes to marijuana and legalization, and how the organizations are funding. mr. sabet? guest: smart approaches to marijuana was founded a year or two after i left the obama administration. i served on many administrations because it is nonpartisan. we started with patrick kennedy, and it is also funded by scientists and researchers around the country to talk about marijuana in a sensible, science-based way, and rejecting the false dichotomy between legalization and commercialization, and on the one side, criminalization on the other. paul and i would agree that we

don't think people should be criminalized, arrested, or given criminal records for low-level possession of marijuana or something you plant in your backyard or whatever. the the answer does not have to be commercialization with promotion. we have a scientific advisory board of top researchers who are researching marijuana, and our policy is focused on that. host: mr. armentano. guest: we were founded many years ago to represent the right and interest of responsible adult cannabis consumers. we do not represent the commercial industry. in fact, normally founded way before there was such a thing as a commercial cannabis industry. we do not believe that cannabis is in oculus. we believe that cannabis are to be regulated and that any risk

sues by the risk of cannabis are best mitigated by legalization, elation and education. by contrast, we believe the current policy only exacerbates the potential risks associated with the use of cannabis. host: pick up there because as you talk about from a user perspective, now we are at a point where the drug enforcement agency is set to reclassified were cannabis falls on that. could you talk a little bit about exactly what the classification does and how does it impact the user? guest: sure, absolutely. this represents an about-face for an agency that historically has maintained a position when it comes to cannabis that symbolically and tangibly is significant to have the federal government. and these agencies, in

particular, fda, dea, for the first time, publicly acknowledged what tends and millions of americans have known for decades, and that is that cannabis, that is it has therapeutic efficacy, and it does not belong categorized in the same class as drugs like heroin under the federal law. host: mr. sabet, if you would pick up, because in that classification it would move from one to three. what does that mean? guest: it would move from one to three after it goes through a formal period and they will probably be legal challenges, so we are farther than that, but the reason it is scheduled is because it has a high potential for abuse, which it is not just 3% thc but this could be up to 99% concentration, the grammys,

the candy, all things put forth by the sensory and i agree and believe them. the issue i have is that there is a multibillion dollar industry that is mimicking big tobacco that is commercializing and promoting this across the country, and they just would like to make money. it is about profit. what that would do is essentially give tax incentives to the industry. i think paul would agree that it will not legalize marijuana, but what it will do is send a message that this is less time for than we once thought. it is funny to hear about flat earth because scientists are in unison in agreement with what we are saying, which is it is much more harmful than what we once thought, and this is going to send a message, and the reality is, i would actually like paul

to give his perspective, and we might agree on another thing, which is that this is really a political decision. this was a campaign promise that the president made when he was on the campaign trail, saying we will reclassify marijuana. he did not want to say we will legalize it. so this was sort of i think seeing by the white house and political establishment as a middle ground between not doing anything and legalizing marijuana. let's reschedule it. you can have our cake and eat it, too. most people think it will be legalized, and that's good from a young voter perspective, but come on the other hand, we are not actually legalizing it. by the way, legalizing it will do nothing to get anybody out of jail, and it will not even do anything to get rid of the traffickers imprisoned or do anything to get rid of expungement for records,

criminal records. it doesn't do anything with regards to criminal justice, so this idea that we have heard that it is an issue, well, they have written the wrong remedy, and rescheduling it is just going to help the industry. one thing i will say is that this is a predetermined outcome. i hate to say that. when i worked with president obama, obviously, vice president biden was a key player in the director of national birth policy where i served, but this was predetermined, and they are trying to fit a square peg in a round hole doing gymnastics to basically get this and to justify it scientifically on paper and make it defensible, which i don't think that they do, and there were a lot of flaws in the so-called scientific analysis. host: if you would like to comment on the reported reclassification and if you support it, (202)-748-8000. oppose it, (202)-748-8001.

text s at -- text us at (202)-748-8003. mr. armentano? guest: there are a couple of points that kevin may that i agree with. mainly, where does the decision fall short? kevin mentioned it is like eight square peg in a round hole. -- like getting a square peg in a round hole. i tend to agree. this decision, if it goes through, it really fails to rectify the divide that exists right now between federal marijuana policy and that cannabis legalization laws that currently exist in the majority of things in this country. right now, most things regulate marijuana, either as a medicine or for adult use, and they do so in a manner that entirely is

consistent with the federal pacification of cannabis as a schedule one controlled substance. unfortunately, if cannabis is moved to three, that does nothing to address this conflict. because the policies that are already in place now that are regulating cannabis that do not comply with marijuana schedule one status will also be out of compliance with cannabis as a schedule three substance, so i think that is going to create a lot more confusion than is necessary, and i think what will probably happen is regulators, and eventually lawmakers, when the dust settles, are going to realize that they have not addressed the core problem. they have not addressed the elephant in the room. ultimately, this issue will be punted at congress, and you will have the fda and other agencies say, look, we need u.s.

lawmakers to create a unique pathway for the regulation of cannabis so that these states can continue to engage in these activities and do so in a way that does not run foul of federal law. host: what is the ideal pathway in your mind? guest: we already know. look. this isn't rocket science. almost a century ago, the federal government repealed alcohol prohibition. they got out of the marijuana enforcement business, leaving the decision of how alcohol ought to be regulated, largely out to be to individual states. some states continue to prohibit alcohol for many years after the federal government lifted the federal prohibition of alcohol. some states do believe in regulating alcohol right away. that is like today in 2024, we have a 50-state patchwork system when it comes to how alcohol was

regulated. the way two states regulate alcohol is very different. that is because alcohol is not in the controlled substances act , like tobacco, alcohol has been de-scheduled. thereby, allowing state governments to decide largely what policies and regulations are best for their individual space with some limited oversight by the federal government when it comes to things like interstate. failed advertising, marketing, tax collection, and though sort of issues. that is what i wish that -- that is really what i wish the result of this administrative petition had been, not to move to schedule three, but a move to take cannabis out of the area and treated more like alcohol. host: before we take calls, mr. sabet, your opinion of the

pathway? guest: number one, i think it is a total unknown what schedule three even means for marijuana. most schedule three drugs are prescribed mobile medication, whether it is certain depressants, anabolic steroids, ketamine, but marijuana is not a prescribed mobile medication. we have no idea what this even means for dispensaries, let alone people who use it medically. but i would like to make some sort of clarification, the reason i do not just from a conceptual point to view think alcohol is the wrong analogy for a couple of reasons, number one, alcohol is not legal because it is good for you. it is legal because it has been used by 80% of civilization since before the old testament, used by most people in western civilization. alcohol prohibition was not going to work because, number one, there was no enforcement. really, the real issue is

because when you have 75% to 80% of americans drinking it on a regular basis, there was no way you could have prohibition, so it is a very different thing. marijuana had been used for thousands of years, but not by the majority of western civilization. i would want to say that is the last analogy we would like to look at for any marijuana regulation. alcohol is the number one drug for criminal justice issues, violence, car crashes, on and on. if your headlights are broken, you don't break your taillights to be complicit. if anything, i would much rather look at the tobacco model. marijuana is not a drug that we can regulate that is tied to the five-time increase of psychosis. it is a plant that grows quickly, anywhere and everywhere. it is very cheap to produce. if we ever have federal legalization, 49 states would not be able to grow. it would have to be exported

from one state. the industry would consolidate. and we would basically be repeating the addiction profit history we have in our country that really does not end well from a public health perspective. so i think we should slow down. we can look at decriminalization, which is removing terminal penalties. i agree -- removing criminal polities. i agree on that part, but we really also, bottom line, we need to educate the american people on the fact that this is not woodstock weed. this is a harmful drug, genetically bred, different from what you smoked with your buddies at college a couple of decades ago. i think that message is lost in this whole conversation. host: let's hear from our collar, luke. go ahead. caller: i live here in colorado and we have recreational and medical marijuana. recently, a neighbor of mine let me know that her son died by suicide after legally using

medical marijuana here in colorado. i was curious that she said he had a psychotic break and that is what led to it. i was curious, what are we saying science on marijuana and schizophrenic psychosis, and did the biden administration consider this as it relates to the decision to move to marijuana to schedule three? was that in the rationale? i just wanted to learn more about that. host: and we will let our guests respond. guest: sure, the leader on mental health, on psychosis, schizophrenia, and suicide, it is really, really upsetting, so far in that marijuana, because of its potency, is leading to outcomes that are surprising researchers. there are such dramatic land outcomes. it is five times more likely for psychosis, three times if you are a regular, non-daily user,

but in terms of your risk, what does that mean? it means complete dissociation from reality. it means violence, just something you never thought about with marijuana 30 years ago, but that is because it is a different drug. and the suicide issue, i'm glad the caller brought that up, in colorado when you look at young people who died by suicide, marijuana is the number one drug in their system. it is not because it has always been popular and was the number one drug. no, it has been the number one drug since the legalization, which was the commercialization. states are rushing to try and get tax revenue and promote this with new york state, and even in new york, there are daily infomercials for marijuana. they are desperate, it seems like, for people to use weed. the issue is, why? number one, they think they will displace the underground market. the underground market is thriving, bigger than ever, and number two, they are not getting the tax revenue that they thought they were.

it is lower than they thought they were. it is not paying for the cost, and lease costs of until illness out of marijuana, i think that stains our current policy was something very few issues would like to address or talk about. i think we would agree that young people should not be getting "medical marijuana" for stress due to homework because it is leading to some that outcomes. host: mr. armentano. guest: two for giving me a chance to respond. to set the record straight, that caller was the deputy director of kevin's organization, so that was a planted called. but i'm happy to address the issue the caller brought up. guest: it was a valid question. guest: it is, and i will answer it. first of all, this notion that marijuana today is generally different than marijuana in the past is simply an updated version of an age-old canard. i'm looking at a headline from

1978 in "the new york times" and the name of the story is -- "a moral debate on marijuana is generate a fresh debate," from 1978, claiming that the marijuana then was 10 times potent from the marijuana of the decade before. in 1995, it was said that "marijuana today is 40 times more potent than the marijuana was of the 1980's." literally every generation, people like kevin, say that the marijuana today is exponentially stronger -- host: please let him respond. guest: this is simply a way to try and persuade people that have personal experience with cannabis during their youth, that the experience they had, their first experience is no longer relevant because somehow the marijuana today is an entirely new drug.

second, when it comes to the issue of marijuana and psychosis, we have plenty of data. dr. stephanie zeller and her team at university of minnesota, looked at a 30-year longitudinal study had over 4000 twins, one used marijuana, the other did not. she found no difference in rates of psychosis or mental illness among those different twins. we had a study published last year in "the journal of the medical americans association", over 16 million over 14 years, they found no greater rates of psychosis or mental illness in states where marijuana was legal versus where it wasn't. stanford university did a similar study and found no higher rate of schizophrenia, bipolar, mental illness, in states where cannabis was legal versus where it wasn't. this idea that marijuana is

driving or spiking large rates in mental illness or psychosis of the general population level simply is not substantiated by facts. finally, if we are concerned about high potency thc, if we are concerned about people who may have a predisposition to mental illness or suffering from it and having that condition exacerbated by cannabis, then the answer is not criminalization. it is not driving this market underground. it is regulation and education. host: ok. let's hear from oleg from brooklyn, new york. go ahead. you are on our support line. hello? caller: thank you for having us. thank you for having this important discussion on c-span. really appreciate it. a couple of things, about to graduate from the university of

maryland school of pharmacy with a degree. and in this program, we deep dived into potential benefits and harms associated with cannabis use. dr. sabet, aren't you seeing that most of the harms currently poised are from the unregulated market? and researchers are rejoicing on the ability for this job, and you mentioned education is important here, so wouldn't this help spread the word of the potential harms and uses of cannabis? guest: well, it certainly did not do that for alcohol. we know it was legalized and promoted ruthlessly, so i don't necessarily think that you need to legalize something in order to research it. we would not do that for heroin or other drugs. we would not legalize it when you would like to research it when it is harmful. and this goes with what paul was saying, which goes with cherry

picking, it was opposite of what the academy of sciences said when they did they review in 2017, when prominent researchers around the world have done reviews in various countries. psychosis research was done in london, and it was published in the most prominent medical journal in the world "the lancet." i can understand that we would disagree on the policy prescription. you could argue, yes, i agree it is harmful, but even what the caller said, we can mitigate the harms by legalizing and regulating it, i don't agree. the idea that that i think that is a really dangerous path reminds me of the big tobacco executives of the 1950's when they denied every single harm. this is the same movie. i will be a broken record because it is a broken record. this is exactly what we south big tobacco in the 1950's when they try to protect their profits and their own right to smoke. i understand a lot of people would like to use marijuana, but the reality is, the fact is that

-- and this goes back to what paul was saying, whatever grounds were set in 1993, he did not have 99% potent thc concentrate. that just did not exist. it exists because of legalization. because of so-called american ingenuity and profit driving and motive, you come up with good products and you would like to make money. that is capitalism. i just don't think that capitalism and addiction are a great combination. wen yu you also take these edibles -- when you also take these edibles, sold by your buddy's friend, thc is highly concentrated. all of these are products of the legal book -- "legal market." and that is what happens when you legitimize and normalize the substance. you get these concentrates. i don't know what was said in 1978 about potency. maybe there was an increase at that time. not sure it was 40 times in

1993. it did increase from the 1960's to the 1990's -- maybe not that much. but the reality is, today, when you look at the products, they are purely a result of this "legal market," which is driven by business and profit motives. nothing to do with public health or safety. host: mr. armentano, so what degree has the federal government study potency or the impact of cannabis? guest: first, we have had a variety of potent cannabis products going back many years, in fact, a 100% purified thc has been approved by the fda since 1985. in 1999, it was rescheduled from schedule two to three because it was relatively mild safety protocol, so we do have experience with more concentrated thc products. they have been studied read like i said, they have fda approved

100% thc product's going back some 30 odd years. look, what we know, when people encounter more potent cannabis products, in general, they tend to use smaller doses. that is known as excel try tatian. this is not a novel experience. human being engaging in this happens all the time. when we look at alcohol, it comes in a variety of potency. low potency products like wine or beer, and then high potency products like the cardi 151 or everclear -- bacardi 151 or everclear. when people consume those products, they don't consume them the same way. people do not drink liquor in the same volume or in the same manner they drink beer. people make the same decisions when it comes to cannabis, as well. guest: paul, that is not true. host: we are going to take a

call. guest: i wish they were making those same decisions. the average marijuana user today is consuming different levels of thc than they did 20 years ago. you can look at research. there is a really good analogy, like looking at caffeine. the average user with 20 years ago, drinking a 20 ounce bottle of coke with caffeine and then you think about thc, the average user, and then today, it is 33 star but cappuccino's. that is the analogy forguest: tt sold on the market is cannabis a, not concentrate. guest: in raw numbers, then non-smoked products is having companies want to hook people with non-smoking products and doing a very good job at it. host: to guest -- two

guests joining us. on our support line. go ahead. caller: businesses have struggled for years in the market with prohibition and outright dangerous laws. we have been the proprietor of marijuana sales for years. we sell it and grow it and are the ones affected the most to unfair laws. because of that, the anti-marijuana angle confuses me because cough medicine can kill

you, tylenol will give you liver and kidney disease and viagra will give you a heart attack. all of those are regulated but the only reason they are is they were allowed in the open market in the first place to be regulated. guest: they are regulated because they have an accepted medical use. they have a widely understood safety protocol that has gone through decades and billions of dollars of research. no one is against marijuana products that go to the fda process. what puzzles me and i would like to know, were you surprised about this like i was? when the government did the scheduling review they changed the game in the way they had looked at, they had judged

whether something should be rescheduled. they looked at accepted medical use and parsed the word excepted from approved. it doesn't have approved uses but marijuana is not an approved product but they say it has accepted medical use and they found three studies and because a lot of people essentially use it so that means it has accepted medical use and that was their justification for rescheduling. that tells me if you can get any drug through sort of a popularity contest you will have a rescheduled drug because it has accepted medical use. there is a reason for that. in the terms of the war on drugs, people shouldn't be arrested and giving records. you will not be the one making

money from the illegal marijuana industry, fortunately. you will not be the one. it will be guys that look like me with context in silicon valley and wall street that are turning this into a profit based enterprise. with the capitalistic principles and products highly addictive and dangerous and you put those two together and you have history repeating like we did with big tobacco. guest: i am not quite sure where to begin. kevin raises a lot of points. in an ideal world, we would actually be working together on things like rating in the level of corporatism and advertising that likely is going to be associated with the legal market. i do think as a society we have learned a lot of lessons.

over commercialization of products like alcohol in the past tobacco and opioids. i hope we don't follow those same lessons and pathways when it comes to cannabis. what motivated me to do this work wasn't so some grade b celebrity could open up their own cannabis business in a cell a gummy product, it was about justice and fairness and intellectual honesty is not just to be targeting and arresting and targeting individuals for the responsible use of cannabis. it is intellectually dishonest to claim that cannabis poses harm similar to those of heroin. we are finally seeing a change in these narratives taking place now and we are seeing states leading the way. one thing i want to emphasize,

although kevin wants to portray this narrative, the reality is, we have had 24 states in the last decade legalize and regulate the adult use of marijuana. not a single one of those states have ever repealed or rolled back those policies and in concert with those changes and laws, we have seen record support among the public for legalization. now 70% of the american public say it marijuana should be legal. that represents the fact that these policies aren't working largely as intended by voters and politicians and that the public prefers a policy of legalization, regulation and education over a policy of criminalization, incarceration and stigmatization. guest 1: a quick response.

that represents the fact that millions of dollars were spent to change public opinion and to repealed something you would need more money because the industry that is gaining money from enterprises is pouring tens of millions of dollars. that represents we don't have deep pockets. in on polling, emerson, one of the best -- guest 2: you pay for that. guest 1: of course we did because they weren't doing polling to ask whether legalization, decriminalization, medical marijuana and what we found with the poll that we got together it was the fact that people actually had differentiations between decriminalization and legalization when they were asked that question. when you ask yes or no should be

able to legalize marijuana for personal use, then you get the majority saying yes. but a lot of those people want decriminalization which is about personal possession not the corporate stuff going on. it is versus the commercialization. there are different differentiations. gallup doesn't do it because they don't want to change the question and there are reasons why questions are asked and you better believe we asked the best poster to look into it and they found legalization split. guest 2: record numbers of people said marijuana said it should be criminalized. guest 1: congratulations, you have moved the goalpost on that. host: gentlemen, if both of you

could hold those thoughts. edward, go ahead. caller: i know that we don't want to criminalize the use of marijuana for the user, but i think we should consider criminalizing the companies that designed and make it this way because it is so much stronger and they should be held accountable for that. i feel we are turning the country into a bunch of potheads. i'm sorry. that is my opinion. guest 2: the caller is asking for regulation. in an unregulated market you have a variety of potencies and user doesn't have to know the potency of the product they are

getting. in a regulated market, they are tested for purity and potency and is on the label and the consumer can make an educated choice. if lawmakers believe or don't want high potency products in their legal market they can set potency caps. i don't have to tell kevin that some states like vermont and montana have already done that. they have capped potency of certain products guest 1: guest 1:. -- certain products. guest 1: if you go to a pot shop, buyer beware. the labels are regularly misrepresented. it is pesticides, bacteria. states are not able to regulate this and they are not. they do a horrible job of regulating it. you don't know what you're getting in the legal market. going to colorado and other states that have massive

deep-pocketed interest in doing eight potency cap, the fact that it is legal in colorado, i get it. i would love to partner with you. let's go there. we tried to pass a band of kid friendly products and it was vetoed by the governor. we tried to get a potency cap in colorado which had support from the governor and it has gone nowhere. guest 2: give got a potency report from the legislature in task force as a result. guest 1: we did. guest 2: it did not recommend a potency cap. guest 1: because it was rigged by the industry. even though norma was -- normal was not about it. i get that you want to smoke your dope in private but the

hippies have turned into the wall street profiteers and the irony is that they unknowingly opened this up to this corporate free-for-all which is resulting in no real regulation. tell me one business that said i want to be regulated. you want it to be but the businesses do not. host: lets hear from tyler in brooklyn, new york, support line. caller: on kids products, we could go into vapes but i will start with that. think about gummy's and stuff but the most classic form of edibles is cookies and brownies. how is that not kid friendly? on the stories either of them accidentally eating their own cookies or brownies? cannabis is ultimately pretty much legally federally under a

loophole of cannabinoids that you can market -- walk into a smoke shop in get a variety of cannabinoids that auntie is specific to nine. -- cannabinoids that are not specific. if you want to modify cannabis, that is true a modification and not making stronger thc. that is what we should be focusing on. i purchased from shops that either grow themselves or farmers or growers that i know myself because i want to be safe with it. personally, i have used cannabis for some time. i have adhd and some post-traumatic stress and it helps with both of those. i will lay in bed for hours in

morning before i smoke and then i will get up in smoke and do a bunch of things. it works differently for different people. the way you are talking about it, you are saying basically that you want everyone to use it a specific way like it works for you. different people operate differently. host: we got the point. thank you for the call. guest 1: people do operate differently. some people regularly drive over the speed limit and haven't gotten into a car crash. it doesn't mean that speeding doesn't lead to car crashes. the largest study of ptsd at yale university and others looked at this and found it exacerbated long-term ptsd even though it they thought it was helping in the short term. the caller mentioned the issue of he only likes to buy it from

people he knows. if it is federally legalized, good luck with that. this is a product like bottled water that is free to get and it is cheap. you are paying for labeling and a marketing and the bottle. if marijuana is legalized, it will be grown in a few massive facilities, whether outdoor or indoor in one or two states. it will beat mail order exported. i think the pot shops will close down because it will be mail order and you wouldn't need to pay for the overhead. the economics on a large scale is so different than it is now. the other caller mentioned delta eight which is synthetic. we are trying to get does eight band because where it has been legalized through a loophole we have seen enormous problems in these states, the sort of guest efficient marijuana that is extremely dangerous.

it actually shows that when something is just out there and self regulated by businesses, you have all these problems as a result. we are trying to remove delta eight. they are very dangerous cannabinoids on the market that should not have been legalized and was basically done so almost inadvertently through a loophole when we were trying to legalize help -- hemp. guest 2: kevin and i are largely in agreement when it comes to the hemp loophole. it was not the intent of congress to bring these unregulated synthesized products to market. it is the market itself that is

totally unregulated. we don't know who is producing the products in the potency and how they are being manufactured. when third-party labs tested they find heavy metals and all sorts of things that consumers would not want to be ingesting and can cause harm. this points to normal and should principal and that is that an unregulated market mitigates potential risks -- exacerbates potential risks while a regulated controlled market mitigates those risks. host: dunn is in maryland is in maryland -- don is in maryland on our opposed line. one more time for don. let's go to marcus.

caller: yesterday i just celebrated nine months free from marijuana. millions of americans are going through marijuana addiction. and look what happened recently with rescheduling and my fear is that there will be thousands to millions of americans that will go through what i went through. my question to both of you is, how can we help save human lives and ensure that they don't get addicted to this kind of substance? host: that is marcus in maryland. guest 2: i think it is really important that we have evidenced-based messaging and public education when it comes to informing the public that they can make responsible choices. i would dare to say we have an

obligation as an organization that advocated for the change in policy. this is not as simple as flipping a switch and expecting the public to then have all the information they need at their fingertips to make smart choices. we have to give them that information. i think the industry, commercial industry have moved forward with bringing products to market and are not educating consumers about the pros and cons of those . i think public health is an issue where they have largely been either silent on the issue or have failed to keep up with the changing culture and policy. so i agree that the best way to do this is to a policy of regulation and education and that education needs to be evidence-based. guest 1: changing culture and policy does not change science and does not change the fact that almost every single

large-scale review from the who down to the nih and national academy of medicine have been unequivocal about the dangers of marijuana. i hope that means we are not going to see that thc doesn't impair more than caffeine which i have heard. guest 2: you have not heard that from me. guest 1: we will try to dig it out and i am glad we agree that it impairs more than caffeine, much more. the big tobacco analogy is a very good because tobacco was used for thousands of years without deaths in what we're seeing today i'm almost 450,000 deaths a year still from tobacco. what happened 100 years ago that tobacco which had been used forever became deadly? it became commercialized, promoted and normalized. industry invented the cigarette

which was not a part of what tobacco was. nicotine had all kinds of stuff in it to get you addictive. this was purposeful and to make money. why you have a business is to make money. they are not nonprofit entities. some people said we should but that is not realistic. they had marketing and this is what i am worried about. what the industry is producing the commercial industry is producing is much more harmful products than we have ever had and is addictive in nature. that is why marijuana anonymous has unfortunately rapidly expanded in the last 10 or 20 years, because marijuana we are seeing addictive rates for young people higher than for alcohol and to.

they compared alcohol, tobacco, prescription drugs and thc, they found thc among various groups was the number one drug addiction. the average american, thanks to propaganda, thinks that marijuana is not addictive. we have a long way to go. host: park in florida, support line. -- mark in florida, support line. caller: i am glad we have this subject and i was getting sick of listening to the protests because they were really getting me down. i am a medical marijuana user. if it was not for medical marijuana i don't know where i would be. i had a terrible back and i could get all of the pills i want probably but i don't want to take notes because we have seen how bad those things are over the past 20 years.

when they started medical marijuana, it enables me to get through the day and reduces my pain dramatically. and as such i am very thankful for it. i am con from florida and there is a bill on the ballot this time around for recreational marijuana and i will vote in favor of it because we have seen here. i want to thank mr. armentano and the information he has been given. the fact of the matter is, he has displayed no intellectual honesty when he talks to you. at the beginning of the show he had a chronic call in shows that

he is not honest. whenever it is time for him to ask a question or respond, he starts his fire hose spew of information, changing the subject from subject to the subject and adding and subtracting. that is not an intellectually honest person making their point. i hate to use the term lies because it is not a good term but call it gas lighting, talking about under the new regime. it is scheduled he will have tons of unregulated products. host: you put a lot out there. guest 1: i don't know what to say. anybody can call in. we are big fans of the show. so that was out of bounds. and you can read or not read and it doesn't matter.

people can have different opinions on this. the facts and the signs are clear. i don't think people should take my word for it but take every major medical association and look into what the journals are saying and not not want her cherry picked studies. it should be left up to them. this industry is duping our people into thinking their product is safe and effective. this gentleman wants to use it for medical purposes and that is great but the whole medical thing was a way to legitimize and normalize and legalize marijuana. in fact we were told that medical marijuana will be a red herring to give marijuana a good name. that was literally at the quote in 1979 and has been a very effective strategy from a pr point of view. i worry about the human suffering this is going to cause and i worry about how we are

going to be paying for these decisions. it is one thing to allow people to use it in the privacy of their home and not make it a huge commercialized industry. but it is so different when we start finding politicians and brainwashing the american people and doing so at the end of the day for benefit. host: if this does go to reclassification and continues on, what do you think the legal challenges are and will you be part of those legal affairs? it guest 2: the biggest --guest 2: the biggest change is it will change the conversation going forward and it will become increasingly difficult for people to deny the legitimacy of patient's experiences with medical cannabis when the fda has said cannabis is in fact a medicine. it is going to be very difficult

for folks to argue in favor of continuing to keep cannabis criminalized and therefore targeting, prosecuting and arresting and incarcerating people use it. in a reality work cannabis is no longer a schedule one. i am hopeful that the nation will go forward and this will ultimately change how we talk about in think about cannabis and ultimately how we legislate cannabis. those number stations are going to get more sophisticated and better at today. guest 1: number one, if it doesn't go through, we are looking at all of the options and have been assessing them since the fda put out this ruling was an incredible game of international gymnastics to get where they needed to get to. there is a huge issue with the international conventions. the human international convention which said marijuana

has to stay in schedule one or two. all kinds of issues we are looking at. i will say the fda did not say this was a medicine. they said it has accepted medical use which they define it because people like to use it. they were clear in saying it is not an approved medication. it doesn't make sense but that is an important distinction. in terms of what results it could have, politicians sort of checked the box, did the marijuana reform think and are moving on. this is not a top issue for a lot of politicians. when you survey even young people, not doesn't register as a salient issue. marijuana legalization support is said to be a mile wide and not very deep and i agree. the politicians say we did this

and we will take a victory lap and checked the box and are moving on. maybe this could participate what paul is saying and be a slippery slope and that is the worry of mine. you could find this coming out a different way in the near future. we were told that we would have legalization five years ago federally. and we don't. i think this is still a long and winding road. this is a detour to legalization and maybe it takes us down a different path than the one a lot of people thought. kevin sabet is the president and ceo to smart approaches to marijuana. paul armentano the deputy director of the national organization for the reform of marijuana laws. >> earlier today, the interi

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