Cannabis Legalization News with Kyle Kushman as Guest Co-host

Exploring Cannabis Rescheduling and Regulation with Kyle Cushman | Cannabis Legalization News

Join the hosts of Cannabis Legalization News as they welcome renowned horticulturist and educator Kyle Cushman from Homegrown Cannabis Co. Dive deep into the recent news and impacts of cannabis rescheduling, state legalizations, and Schedule 3 reclassification. Kyle shares insights on the hurdles within the cannabis industry including regulation, taxation, and consumer protection. The discussion also covers the evolving culture of cannabis use, personal growing experiences, and the ongoing legal challenges affecting users and businesses. Tune in for a comprehensive and enlightening conversation on the future of cannabis.

00:00 Introduction and Guest Host Announcement
00:37 Cannabis Legalization and Political Landscape
01:39 Kyle Cushman's Journey in the Cannabis Industry
02:19 State-by-State Cannabis Legalization
03:28 Challenges of Cannabis Rescheduling
07:12 Consumer Experience and Market Dynamics
08:41 Historical Perspective on Cannabis Legalization
09:55 Debate on Limited vs. Unlimited Markets
12:03 Federal and State Legal Conflicts
12:32 Impact of International Law on U.S. Cannabis Policy
15:52 Social and Cultural Implications of Cannabis
17:30 Cannabis Industry Challenges and Solutions
18:15 Break and Lighthearted Discussion
20:16 Trump's Stance on Cannabis Legalization
23:26 Cannabis Rescheduling and Future Outlook
24:13 Religious and Cultural Opposition to Cannabis
29:36 Cannabis Industry and Community Support
39:38 Cannabis Strains and Naming Conventions
43:23 Cultivation Techniques and Best Practices
44:18 The Evolution of Agricultural Inputs
45:12 Personal Experiences with Cannabis
46:01 The Importance of Low Heavy Metal Levels
48:33 Growing Your Own Cannabis
53:08 Legal and Regulatory Challenges
58:39 Cannabis Culture and Industry
01:13:20 Consumer Protection and Regulation
01:22:06 Final Thoughts and Farewell

Transcript

  What's up, legalizers? You're tuned in to Cannabis Legalization News, your number one source for cannabis news on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Today, we actually have a guest host that will be joining us. He is an educator and a horticulturalist and a leading expert over at Homegrown Cannabis Co.

His name, maybe you've heard of him, is Kyle Cushman, and I could go on like that, but instead of that, let's go to the main story that we're going to be discussing. I, they've taken cannabis off of the agenda for the presidential election with both president Trump, former president Trump, and then also the DEA head and Milgram kicking their hearing on rescheduling until after the election, but then president Trump saying that he supports the legalization of cannabis in the state of Florida.

If done correctly, let's bring on Miggy, our co host for this trending story, and also our guest host, Kyle Cushman. 

Good time, everybody. Good time. 

Oh, everybody.  

You please maybe 

Give them the intro. Yeah, you did a little semi, right? The guy's old G high times original home grower. There's many hats you wear, man. And can you break it down for yourself?  

Breakdown what exactly what? 

Oh, what? Oh who I am is I am now a legalizer I never quite heard that term before but I guess i've been a legalizer for  30 years now and i'm just some guy that Walked into a head shop one day, smoked a joint with the proprietor who said,  you ever wanted to meet somebody at high times?

And then I became the high times pot dealer and a staff journalist position opened up some years later. And I took that job and  here we are 25, almost 30 years later. And my life simply revolves around cannabis.  

Yeah. And it's somebody who's I can't get out of the industry. Kentucky closed yesterday and Kentucky is going to be a very interesting welcome to the industry, Kentucky.

We're really looking forward to helping great, companies start up in Kentucky and provide cannabis to patients because they're that early. Isn't that interesting, Kyle? Like you've been in Miggy too. Cause like Miggy goes back to Prop 215 back in California, like almost 30 years ago now.

It's now just getting to Kentucky.  Like 28 years later. And then I think with schedule three, you're going to see it getting to Indiana, Idaho, even you I guess Utah has already got it, but there's some holdouts Wyoming. Oh my goodness. Wyoming.  

But only three people live there. So when they decide they want to smoke pot, then they'll smoke pot. 

That's right. Or there'll be guilted out of the state to be like, you used to be about the conservative principles. You mean a freedom? No, I mean of judgment, Jesus,  cornerstone of conservatives judging people. Yeah, 

Kyle, you've been doing this for so long, right? With legalization crying and create that path of tell all this time, de schedule versus reschedule, right?

What do you think about this new rescheduling as actually? perhaps might be happening when it comes to progress for the plan.  

Oh, geez. I just might say something that won't age well, but that's me. Look, I've learned a lot over the last 20 years living in California and helping forward the legal the passing of, a lot of bills that  some will say  didn't help us as much as we would have liked to. 

And it sounds rescheduling is another one of those things.  But then  the angel on my shoulder says yeah, but it's progress, you know It's you're moving forward. You're here. It's further De stigmatizing your you know, so I don't know the answer. I don't know how to tell you about 

this Think about this guy. 

How far did hemp go after being let out of the barn in the past five years? 

What do you mean by that  They went from CBD to Delta A to hemp, like clones on direct, just, we're going to airmail you clones. We're going to sell seeds. You guys got to have a seed  company as well. And then just THCA flour. So like over the course of five years, it was like, Oh, this is about hemp too. 

We're just straight selling weed. And so with schedule three, now imagine you don't have to do any of those loophole things. It is medical cannabis nationwide  and the industry that we're in 

sounds good, just 

be like any other industry. Like you don't have IRC 280. You don't want to believe the the overlay that I have for our dispensary, where it's no, this is the thousand square feet out of the 3000 square feet of the whole rented space where the trafficking happens because you want to segment it because you can't deduct that shit, currently, but with schedule three, then it's just your seed shop. 

Look, I think that all sounds really good and it should work, but there, but for some reason, it doesn't work. And it has something to do with what you said,  any other business,  for some reason, the cannabis business may never, ever be treated like any other business.  

And I hope that's true  for FDA compliance purposes.

Because the FDA sends these dunning letters to like the DEA, the Delta 8 people saying you're not allowed to do that. And so they move it to Schedule 3, and it's still illegal because there's this other law called the FDCA,  like the Food Drug Cosmetic Act. And so  marijuana, now a Schedule 3 drug, has medical purposes. 

But it's never been approved, so you still can't transport it in an interstate. And you'll still have all these little fiefdoms all across welcome, Kentucky, your new fiefdom,  and it won't be able to have interstate commerce until you fix that problem. And then maybe. It'll be the only schedule three drug that has its own pipeline, similar to what we do with alcohol with the distribution systems.

So like it's the three tier regulation. There's the producers, there's the retailers, and there's the distributors. And so that distributor for beer that you buy I'm in the Midwest, and so Budweiser is in St. Louis, and Miller Brewing is in Milwaukee, and they like supply beer nationwide. But then there's a syndicate of license holders in different states that are able to facilitate interstate traffic.

So that's where I hope we're finally getting to,  but it takes forever. 

So unsexy. This is Kyle. It's the most unsexy 

cannabis channel 

on YouTube. 

Maybe there's a good acronym in there. Oh yeah, 

but like for me, cause as an advocate, when it comes to the plant and the law, right? I'm a consumer type person, right?

In the end, it's consumer protections, consumer just ability to get what they want when they want, like walking the store here in Washington state where I live. I just walk into a store. I show my ID. There's not a system. I give them whatever, how much for what a quality I can afford at that time, but it's a store.

It's nothing else. But like  back in the day, dude, like first off  I smoke a lot of weed. That's why I put the thing in there, but I don't grow, but I don't also I'm not like Tom's a gun gear, right? He's done the whole program. Terpene is all that shit. But there's probably several strains I can call cultivars that I can name and be like, yeah, that's what it was so strawberry coffee one of them and then I love the story behind it where  You know, you don't say that you grew it.

You just say hey, I helped champion this thing, but in a night blue dream, right? There's just certain ones I could go. Yeah, that's what that is and that's the point of, I think, and legalization rescheduling. It is going to enable this nuance where people can, cause like before that, to get that, to, to achieve the shit that I know, there's a lot of backyard shaking hands and illegal, like hope.

I hope it is, but it's, everything was fire when I was growing up in Jersey, dude, like as a kid, like if it was good weed, it was fire. If it was shitty weed, it came from Mexico. That was it. Did you ever think about the proper, like, how Tom speaks about the business and how shit's gonna be layered out with markets and shit?

Was this anything you even thought about, right? When you just wanted to grow weed and sell it?  

I spent only five years as a actual staff journalist for High Times. I couldn't do more than five years actually living in New York.  And so this was 1999 to 04  and legalization had not happened anywhere.

It was still only California and I think California and Colorado.  And obviously we sat around and talked a lot about it. Legalization and how we were going to get there and how we wanted to look and everything. But the funny thing was, and I've got, I've gotten this admission from several of my old staff friends, over the years, we all keep in touch. 

It's just funny that we never not only talked about it, but we never really bothered to try to picture what it would be like after legalization. Like  we couldn't picture the debacle.  We couldn't picture that  25 years of a drug war of trying to stamp out an industry didn't work But then after two years of legalization the  industry was decimated It makes no sense, 

yeah That's one of the reasons why there's this debate about limited markets, unlimited markets, and then markets that have like gaps in the markets.

And so like gaps in the markets can be like with California. And also New York. There's a lot of licenses and then there's a lot of illicit sales  and there's a lot of illicit business that's going on. And then there's Arizona where there's not that many licenses and the illicit businesses are crimes that they enforce.

And Arizona's industry has weathered this storm. Of the recession that's been in the cannabis industry much better because they've been insulated because they have this limited market where they'll shut down, Delta or THC, a flower Missouri is the Midwest example of Arizona somewhat, but a little bit more open.

And then you have a Michigan, which has made, California look bad a certain amount, but there you have no excuse, but to go legit. And so like in California, you still have an excuse to not go legit because you want to go put it on a truck to sell it out East or somewhere else in the world because it's Napa Valley.

Like it's premium stuff. It's Cal it's the California exotics.  It commands a better price somewhere else. What do you want me to do? It's a dumb truck of money to my door. Come on. 

This  is what I meant by they're never going to treat it like a normal industry. And what I mean is  a normal industry.

You sit back and you make a value, make insane evaluations about both the regulation and the taxation so that the industry can both thrive and survive. None of that is going on. Nor will it ever go up and that's the conversation. I want to have Why? How do we develop a complete i'm talking about the overarching that we're trying to fit in?

We're trying to fit into some kind of system some kind of framework of laws and licenses and all this stuff  Why is it only effective? affecting the cannabis industry so negatively when we're supposedly working within the same framework, but we can't make it 

work. It's  the scheduling. And so like we've taken international law and we  foolishly placed it into our own controlled substances act.

So we are be governed to international law because it is our law. As they've done it. And so that's why Biden had to issue the order to reschedule because he's working within the parameters of the 

law. 

What 

did you explain what you mean by we've taken in international law? 

We've taken the schedule, the single convention of narcotics from 1961  and engrafted it, Harvard engrafted it into, our controlled substances act.

So that you cannot reschedule, Mr. Biden or any president or anybody, the DEA can't reschedule something or drop it off the schedules. If it takes us out of compliance with that convention, which treated marijuana like opium. 

So all of that makes sense. And I'm glad that I helped clarify that a little bit, but that still  has nothing to do why in a state that is so pro marijuana, like California And so we decided to go forward with creating mechanisms to legalize it and capitalize you know make it into an actual business Yeah, but we've we've x'd ourselves out of being an actual business through some insight through some  Capitulation. 

Yeah, I don't understand what and that doesn't have anything to do with the federales Wanting to do it legal or I mean it may be okay. So it has something but you think 

But you can't and so like we live in an interstate it's the United States. And so it's like Europe where it's the European Union So we live in a United States And so individual states are not allowed to like just create their own thing that goes on and I sue over this, because it's called the dormant commerce clause.

When a state's we're only gonna help this state. It's fuck you, you're not. And then we file lawsuits and we typically win unless they say it doesn't count, because it's a schedule one substance. And so when they change it from schedule one to schedule three. Then this issue, this quagmire that why hasn't this happened starts to become a reality and it may actually start to become a thing because now the rules in Tennessee are the rules in Texas and they're the rules in Colorado.

And so when those rules start to become standardized, you can start to enforce laws much better.  

I was almost, I was, look, I wanted to point out that I'm being like devil's advocate here for all you people who think that I'm just rushing to be for all the new laws and new scheduling.

And  I think I generally am, like I said, I'm with.  Progress and progress  very rarely happens in big leaps. It happens in little steps. That's how progress happens. That's how evolution happens and takes millions of years. Progress for us humans take happens in little tiny steps. But  everything that you're pointing out to me from a legal perspective is still leaving me with lots of doubt  that anything is going to address the problem that  Somehow, the cannabis business as an industry  is allowed to be treated more harshly and maligned to the point where it cannot physically exist.

And no other, it's like,  the right, I used to say,  Recreational drug users are the last segment of society that it's perfectly okay to prejudice against.  And that has bled over into, oh, yeah, we're gonna legalize it, but we're gonna bleed you to death   and so Regardless of how fast or forward it moves on federal, the discussion on look I'm not a lawyer, Tom, and I'm not arguing with anything you say, I think I'm just  deepening the conversation in that, California's latest proposition, was it 65, the one that made commerce legal?

Do I have the number right? I don't get the propositions always right. Oh 

Yeah, 64. 

64, thank you. And basically all that was about was  all these people that are trucking in backpacks of weed into the dispensaries and making transactions and that's illegal obviously, but we're allowing that because that's the only way we can fulfill the prophecy of Prop 215  which was to allow sick people to have medicine.

So we went ahead and we wrote a law that says that involves all this metrics and  all you have to keep tabs of every plant you have to weigh every plant that you chop down and throw away and all of these things that don't happen on beer farms and don't happen and on other crops that they grow for medicines and  maybe it does, but I just there's there is a  backdraft, there's some sort of jealousy. 

You know it used to be oh you guys ain't gonna you guys are gonna make a million dollars overnight Now we're not gonna let that happen You know, we're in industries take decades to build up and blah blah blah blah So we're gonna make it's it's I don't have my finger on it. Do you taxes man?

No, people don't care about us. Like 80 percent of people don't care about us. And they look down on like 50 percent of people look down on us. And then taxes. Yes, there's also that. But if I was opening a strip club, I would have been able to renovate that old steak and shake,  but I'm not, like we have a cannabis license.

And so we didn't, we weren't able to get the steak and shake. Because a Hindu church,  whose Vishnu is a god,  and whose users worship the cannabis plant, How many times have we moved three? Was too close to the locations that we wanted to renovate and turn into a dispensary. And so there's no way we could have gotten it zoned because they don't care about us.

But it's 20 past the hour in New York, or actually in any of the time zones throughout the world. So that means it's 4 20 somewhere. We're going to take a quick break, and I hope you do too. And we'll be back with Kyle Cushman in just a second. Oh yeah. 

Do you want to share your QR code?  

No, we don't 

have that sucker. You know what coffee and weed is called?  

No. 

Hippie speedball.  Yeah! Hippie speedball.  You know what a, you know what a, you know what a drug user speedball is?  

Heroin and cocaine.  

Exactly.  This is the heroin, and this is the cocaine.

It 

is, 

but there's 

drugs. 

It's 

all drugs, though. Coffee is a drug.  Let's not put everything into the same tent, everybody. We're trying to educate the rubes who already don't like us. And so  

you can help me come up with we need a new name, see, because as you might have guessed, I'm smoking a an equatorial variety strawberry cough.

So this is not heroin. This is actually crack. So what are we going to call this is crack and cocaine.  So  we need a new name because there's no up and down. It's 

just, it's like a hyperbole.  Yeah. It's a super saying that's, and we'll try to appeal to younger people because you should always make drugs.

Don't. Okay. I'm not even going to say that it's 20 minutes past the hour. So like YouTube's no longer reading this unless they've upped their algorithm, but still, we are trying to not get turned off everybody because thank you for tuning in. We got a great guest. We're talking about some news that happened this past week.

And we got some Illinois news. Oh, that's just, it's a yeah, go ahead. I want to talk about the gun one after that. Not yeah, it's not out of Rockford. Yeah. But it's just more like how their social equity programs work. 

I got to bring up this top topic just for the clicks and the likes and the hates.

And I'm gonna do my best impression, right? As everyone knows, I was, and will be again, the most respected law and order president in the U S history 

period. 

We will take that. You are not good 

at doing Donald Trump. For example, I, anyway I want you to be very upset with imagine you're the worst participant of a restaurant ever.

And you are just trying to take your waiter down a peg, and sound like you're full of it. Like you being full of it and then go,  that's your motivation. You're stuck up. We will 

take our streets back by being tough and smart on violence and  I'm giving him more of a fucking narrator's voice now.

I don't know. But anyways,  that's 

Donald Trump yesterday. Donald Trump yesterday. He birthed a tweet baby on truth social, which again, is not also a tweet. And it was, he, it's not word salad anymore. It's just, here's a word dump. And so it was a word dump about him and he even put fentanyl in there.

And that's one of the things where. Whatever reason people will talk about like our industry and how we're trying to legalize cannabis. So it's safe and pure. And everybody can have access to it. And they're like fentanyl. And you're like, what the fuck? What does fentanyl have to do with cannabis legalization?

What the heck? And so it's, he's worried that people are going to, if you buy it on the street, get weed laced with fentanyl.

We take advice from Donald Trump on everything. Everything else in the world. So of course, we should take advice on, how our drugs should be monitored and used and legalized. Of course,  

I find it funny though. 

I don't use drugs. Let 

me tell 

you how to regulate them.  

That's the thing, dude.

So I watched, I'm a, what do you call it? When you like pain misogynist. Yeah. Like I, I'll watch these fucking speeches sometimes. And just two days ago, he was talking about I, there's no drugs in Philippines. Because they kill him. It's all bullshit, but 

this is the 

worst  

Here's a quote  two or three days ago.

He was standing with a microphone in his mouth, and he said, in some states,  they let you execute a baby after birth, and that's just unacceptable. When somebody says something like that, to obviously try to scare people into voting for them,  they're not worth any further discussion in my mind. 

No, I agree with you, but if you listen to Donald Trump, he's never had, how are you doing? How was your day? It was all right. No, it was the worst day. It was a travesty of a day. This day has jeopardized. It's the safety of any, if you have this day, you will never have a day again. And it is just like borderline personality disorder as a candidate folks.

That is Donald Trump. Look at his smile. Look 

at his 

smile. It's like he was coached into that smile. That's not a real smile. They're all 

Sir. No one fucking says this to you, my man. But this is back to the rescheduling thing the federal like this is what he said was so fecal cuz it was just about  Florida right and it wasn't even yes on Florida It was like some bullshit statement of gaslighting you first telling you has to be the right way what's the fucking right way motherfucker?

Cuz there is no to get to where we want right rescheduling has to happen, right? I firmly believe that we are further ever Then we ever work is eventually right. Kyle, hemp and weed are going to make a baby. The marijuana cannabis law and the hemp law, they're going to come out and make champ and then it's gonna be like, it's a fucking plant.

It's all it is. You can either use it for a fuel, t shirts paper, or have a good Friday night, just depends on how it's grown, what the purpose is, eventually we're going to get there, but it's still going to be 15, 20 years,  

Listen, listening to you, Meg, it's it just, it really dawned on me and all of this shit, all of this fighting, all of this it's all, we used to believe we, we were taught to believe all of us that the wars were fought over oil.

None of these wars are fought over oil. None of them. They're all fought over religion. They're all fought over boundaries because people have different gods,  and There's shit that we're talking about now.  It's the only reason people hate cannabis is because religion says you're not allowed to have so much fun. 

It's the only reason allowed. Nobody is afraid. Why do you think all the Baptists are against 

it? 

It's all the religious people that are like, think about the children. 

You're right.  

And it bleeds out into all the other political subjects that we can unfortunately get into, whether it's book banning, whether it's fucking gerrymandering, whether it's all of that shit is run and motivated underneath. 

by religious people who think that they're more right than all the other people around them.  

That's why I can't vote Republican because they always say it's about like conservative principles and free markets and like capitalism and patriotism and shit and then at the end It's all about church.

And I'm like, what the fuck is that guys? But this is the word it's a word dumped more than a word salad. And so we shared it. And so did he just birth this out on August 31st 5 AM, which I'm assuming is East coast time. And it's as everyone knows I was and will be again the most respected law and order president in U.

S. history I can't believe you didn't do an exclamation point on that We will take to our streets by being tough and smart on violence and all other types And then he has a comma splice. This is wrong. He should not have, it should not be types, comma, of crime. That's, and then why is crime a defined term?

He capitalized crime. What the fuck are you doing there, Donald? But in Florida, like so many other states that have already given their approval, personal goods and marijuana will be legalized for adults with Amendment 3. He's just proclaiming this he's not saying I support legalizing it. He's just saying it will be legalized.

Whether people like it or not, this will happen through the approval of voters. Again, he's not saying that he approves of it. He's just saying,  Duh! Thank you, Captain Obvious. I see you're wearing shoes.  Gaslight! And yeah, but then it's so it should be done correctly. We need the state legislature to responsibly create laws and prohibit the use of it in public spaces.

He's still not saying that he supports it. So we do not smell marijuana wherever we go, because that's what the biggest problem is with marijuana. Some people don't like the way it smells. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Like we do in many Democrat run cities. And so if it, if a city smells like it's weed, it's, Democrat run, according to this tweet, look at all 

those words, look at all those words.

He doesn't solve anything. He's supposed to be, he's supposed to be a leader and he's supposed to be tweeting out things that are going to change people's lives for the better. And he doesn't ever fix anything. And you know what guys. I'm a bit, I'm a bit of a soothsayer  and I'm telling you, Trump  is toast and we're going to witness his implosion over the next 30 to 40 to 60 days.

Oh, no, I just, yeah. I just let it sink in because it's a wonderful thought. And he's made his own bed.  He's completely made of, he has nowhere to retreat to. He doesn't have a,  he has nobody to rely on his family, except for the two boys who are like, please don't ruin everything we have for the next 40.

We're going to be on this earth for another 40, 50 years. Please don't ruin everything, dad. Leave something unexploded.  It's really a calmness has come over me recently. And 

If you want SRO fruiting, Kyle, if you want that. What's that? If you want SRO of fruiting, you know that's a German word for someone's else's misery is your pleasure.

I follow, I watch the stocks like, and every day it's just that's not a, you're not a real businessman, right? It's just everything's bad. That's like this whole bad, if you're into money, you would see this as a bad ideal coming up. But also if you're into. We with that recent, like, when Tom, in the beginning, where we talked about the rescheduling being postponed, the hearing, F ing stocks dropped!

F ing cannabis stocks! Why would they pivot? Why would they drop? This is the first time I saw them ever drop! I, Oh my god! 

You know what? Seriously. Somebody give me an answer to this. If you or say, I don't know, like me, I own a couple of stocks and I play with the stock market only because I have an IRA that I started way back in high times days when they would contribute 2 for every 1 that you took out of your paycheck 

and 

put into an IRA, which is money that you can't touch until you retire.

Your employer would donate 2 every once that's free money on top of it, not being taxed. If you keep it there until you're 65, so this is the terrible, this is the terrible, regulated days of when, but anyway, we want to do something 

like that because there's set virus for owners of these things, but you're right.

 I, you need an industry so they can provide these benefits for their employees. And the way that they've got it set up, it makes it really difficult to provide these types of benefits when you're in a market state, like a California or a new Mexico, or even a Michigan or Oklahoma. 

So that's what needs to be, that's what needs to be on the top of the agenda of both lawmakers.

And even businessmen as they make agreements with local towns and local and whatever, however that works, that, it needs to be pointed out that there needs to be room. Every business says, Oh, everybody's going to wet their beak, blah, blah, fucking the cannabis industry, like you just said, Not, we're used to an industry where everybody was just naturally taken care of, from the people who cut the weed down, to the people who watered it, to the people who trimmed it, to the people who sold it.

Everybody was taken care of, and it's a community. And now, we're the almost the antithesis of that because  It's just not being dealt with properly.  

I saw you today on the James Laud podcast and you guys talked about culture, which, I think  the weird thing about what legalization that's enrolling and how business rolls out, like Tom and I are friends because of Facebook because we both believe in the plant, but Tom's obviously, you must be surprised though, he's a fucking fish lover.

He's a fish head, but he's not this like flower wielding, Hey man, it's a Dick Sunday set.  People in Colorado aren't turning that down. Why would I 

be surprised? 

I was. At least I was, right? I just saw this straight white guy, laced white guy, and I made my assumptions, but we've been friends for such a long time.

He looks like Jim 

Carrey. 

Oh, yeah, but longer hair now. When I, when we first started service, straight lace, he was the epitome, because that's where we met when he was still involved in the, a real regulated, and I hate to say real, because It's just recognized, right?

Something that, cause cannabis industry is real, but it's one of those things that like, dude, when you don't, Kyle Cushman's, isn't your name, Miggy 420 is not my name. These are not 

You know what it is.  You're just some Dawn.  Business has existed since the dawn of man whether they exchange money for it, or I just didn't kill you for whatever  You know Cannabis  is the first  socially acceptable recreational drug  Now you can classify alcohol as a drug chemically, but it's not a drug In my mind, because it doesn't have medicinal uses.

A drug has medicinal uses, first and foremost. That's where we get the, that's what a drug is.  Cannabis is the first one  that is accepted both  as a medicine in one society, and then there is another complete  society that accepts it  as recreation. And it's that nexus, okay, that is the confusement  All the people that are,  that have a a place in not just going along with it.

There's something different about this. They can't put their head on it. They can't put their finger on it, but that's what it is. That's the only major difference.  

You ever see that meme where it's like, the true element is crime. Like the, that's the best part of whatever secret ingredient. 

But that's true. But I think, see, for me as a, as an activist person, trying to like, like  I've been, just doing this, speaking about it for a long time and have met some legends. A lot of people who have passed, this unfortunate thing about this plant is. A lot of the people, the reason why you're fucking here is because a lot of sick, older people, or sick, just wiser people that understand.

People that have brass balls and we're in the 70s and 80s and doing shit, it's if you get caught with this, that's heavy time. And they're okay with that. Yeah. 

Did you guys take note of the movie that Homegrown is producing now? No, not what he got us doing. So they got the rights to, Richard Deisi, who is the longest serving cannabis prisoner.

He just got released after 32 years, serving 32 years of a 94 year sentence. 

Jesus. 

And so they're doing a story about his life. It's called Santa Marta Gold. The Rick, Rich Delisi story. And to just think that, families just again and again, lives just ripped apart, because of a plant, and not a cocaine plant that doesn't become dangerous until you refine it with harsh chemicals, he wasn't moving.

Coca leaves. 

But then he was basically moving. He's just moving up. He's moving a flower. He's moving. He got the same crop. 

He got the same and even a harsher penalty than many who were pushing cocaine and or heroin. And, Again, there you have it, cannabis people being treated in a way that just is not, it's just not congruent, congruous?

It 

doesn't, it makes no factual sense, it's incongruent with reality. And so you understand how it is to live and be alive and the cannabis plant, and then you understand with the laws and evidently we're ignatian of laws and not objective facts, which kind of is scary by the way. And then you get people getting thrown into jail for all those times.

But that sounds like a pretty wicked movie about DE's life. When is that coming out?  

Nate Hammer. He's the guy that does all the production for me on homegrown. He's a fabulous videographer. He's making there. I'm not sure if they fully decided if it's going to be a full on documentary or a biopic or a combination of both.

But they're just there's a big gala happening. Last prisoner project in New York on the. 23rd and they're going to be running a sizzle reel of it there. And I think they're actually looking for investors to like, they really want to make this into a, a biopic.  

Yes. That's another reason why schedule three is so important.

We don't have marketing money when you have to pay your taxes on gross income, as opposed to what, I'm sorry, gross profits as opposed to net income. And so you switch with the schedule three and suddenly.  It's tax avoidance to be an executive producer on that movie.  It's a great advertisement for your brand and for what you could do.

Product placement of your look, I don't think anybody from GTI is watching, but if you're watching your bullshit products, that you try to keep. Other stores from selling, they could be product placement in there. And you just can't, they aren't allowed to do the tax right now. And so everybody just gets screwed in the industry.

They like, we look at hemp and we're like. Man,  you guys get taxed on net revenue.  

There's a complete juxtaposition that is just fucking hilarious. It's that before legalization  guys like me  that were getting righteous dollars for the pounds that we grew, in NorCal neighborhoods all up and down California, they were giving 500 for a pie at the bake sale  so that they knew that their kids were going to have new uniforms to play for the basketball team, so we would, we're the only community that's willing to self tax ourselves.

We're so willing that's how we got rounded into, oh yeah, we'll give you 25 percent on top of 10 percent on top of 10%, and you end up paying 50 percent in taxes for your product, cause we're so used to giving. Because 

back when it was off the books, it was cash off the books prices were up here because it was not yet what it is now.

And so I, I'm sure Al Capone made a lot of money when he was dealing alcohol illegally. It was probably worth a lot more money, but they put them down after they legalized it, that and syphilis, but still it's one of those things where you create a set of rules. And there's a game, the, that aspect of it can go away.

Not just a game, but a equal game. This is why rescheduling is so important because it creates a pla, it's an equal game where like Tom is saying, everybody's looking at temp right now. 

There is no other game in,  there's no other game. Like  start. We have to play within the framework. That creates loss and 

that, we got to create a limited market at the state and the interstate level, because then what that will do is just like OPEC, we will control the supply.

We will control the price.  And isn't it like we can  

Isn't it like it's always happened with cannabis just overnight. It's like almost bewitched You know, you're gonna wiggle your nose and go like this and all of a sudden we're gonna be like, oh It's all you know, like people are buying licenses for international shipments of cannabis and it happened overnight Because it really is no big deal.

There it really is. There are No unassociated hazards with this product more so than there are with the other Fucking bananas or tomatoes.  

And all those people are dying of boar's head meat right now from Listeria or something. Ain't nobody dying from what we're going to play right now. We're going to look at some weed.

This is what we're fighting for. It's safe by the way. 

We  

play a little game. Name that strain. One is frosty.  

It's a hybrid  made from a genetic cross of the fire OG and the white taking you guys back. The white.  Where did you guys first see that coming up? Unfortunately, smell o vision has not yet been invented, but I was still giving it a shot. I got the honker 

for it.

So I figured I'd give you the imagery. I was gonna say, I can see college would be like, yeah, I know that guy. They said you 

can taste weed and smell weed better because of the honker. I always wondered those types of things. If everybody's got their own like random skill sets, you don't even know them sometimes, 

know thyself. That is the key to life.  

That is a good one. That is a good 

one. Who said 

that?  

And  high is life.  

That's true.  Oh, that's close. Yeah, that's it. That's the closest. We're missing the OG part.

 Also known as Wi Fi OG, this is like apples these days, if you want to start an apple orchard, good luck.  But if you want to like really start an apple orchard, you got to get into plant patents. So you have your apple orchard and shit. And then you make honey crisp apples and you patent that noise.

That's what Minnesota did 30 years ago. That's what you have to do. Like you would have to,  the brand is in the name. And so have you seen, cause strawberry cough, Kyle, if you would've called that something else,  what would that have done to sales or like, how did that name come about and then did that name help the Delta on the sales?

Quotient? 

I didn't name it cause I didn't create it. 



So I didn't name it. I, I. I just the way it's portrayed in Children of Men. If you haven't seen Children of Men with Clive Owen and, Michael Caine. Michael Caine. Yeah. And it's a, like a post apocalyptic thriller.

About when, humans suddenly become sterile and they can't have babies anymore. 

That's right. 

And Michael Caine, in the first 10 minutes of the movie, Clive goes to visit Michael Caine. He's living out in the woods and he sits down after a meal and everything. And he gives them a joint and they light it up and Clive Owen hits it.

And Michael Caine says to him,  cough. And he  looks at him and goes, what? He goes,  it's strawberry cough, cough. And he goes,  and then the camera looks at Michael Caine and hands back behind him.  It's a field of cannabis in his greenhouse. And he goes, it's all strawberry cough. Name is oddly I don't know.

It's just normally when I pick a name, I pick a name. That's a little bit more.  Positive. It makes you laugh,  but that's a good one. That's a really good one. Don't you think? 

Yeah. Oh, I think it is. And then that's one of the things where I'm not in the production side of the game. I'm barely in retail.

I'm still not in retail. According to my license, I'm not allowed to do retail until I'm operational. But I would AB test every strain that I put out my, if I was making this stuff, AB test, the name of every strain I'm putting out and just be like that one sold this one sold that.

So you were wrong,  but you're calling it this 

strawberry cough though has strawberry notes. Like things come down to what the actual terpene. Like how we're talking about, there's, you give me these 50 fight them's of cannabis while you're going to have 50 tours, right? 50 ways of growing it.

Kyle's talked about how he's given a strawberry cough to other people and it comes back weird, right? Like it's not the same that, you know,  but it still is. Yeah. So 

morphine, think of it like STDs. So every time you pass around plants, I'm not talking nowadays. Back in the days, nobody had ideal conditions.

Okay. Everybody's Schmeckel was dirty. We were growing in dirty basements and dirty attics. And, so you pass it around and everybody clones, not this really super healthy. Schmeckel 

remains once. 

Kel, I'm assuming is Schwans.  Schwan. 

Yes. 

There you go. But thank you Kyle for incorporating Yiddish  into the conversation. 

So morphing is so it's like passing it around, passing around you. You, if you do it too much, you end up with an SPD and that's what happened with cannabis. It's so adaptive that it, if you continue to clone a mother under.

Certain conditions where it's being attacked by a virus or or a mold or a fungus, it, You know you lose things and people at some point started calling that genetic drift But it was really just the passing around of genetics between people who had far less than optimal conditions They were so far away from putting it in a tissue culture and making everything realign and grow really fast or That it really was just like passing around stds.

That's what 

That's pretty cool. But you know with the plant it's like the whole you are what you eat thing like it's not just the microbials, it's the shit from the dirt, the soil, it's everything that is, you are eating whatever this thing has eaten or smoking rather. And then even like for you, I've heard people say flush don't flush.

Is that a thing for you? Cause I, I believe in flushing. Oh, absolutely.  

Even regardless of whether you think that you're flushing anything out the simple fact is that the last week. Of the plant are or more could be two weeks depending on how fat you know Whether you're indoors or outdoors how fast the rate of photosynthesis has been all along the plants are not in need of any nutrients during the final phases of ripening and because they have nutrients within so why continue to feed them when they have The food that they need within And that's what helps, draw out the food and you get really good, fade and striations and fall colors as bright as anything I've ever seen outdoors.

But I will preface that I say, Having said that, today's synthetic nutrients are nothing like synthetic nutrients from even just 10 years ago. And it all comes down to the inputs, which are much cleaner now, and they've been specialized, since the turn of the century and the industrial revolution, when people just figured out how to feed large crops and create these these synthetic salts, they have.

Far lower levels of heavy metals, like far low. And that's what it's all about. It comes down to heavy metals in your food and in your produce and in anything, once you get past all of the other three and four syllable ship that you eliminate, it comes down to nickel, cadmium, mercury, and 

lead tiny, little versions of like little nickels and little like that's actual metal, right?

I think people don't forget that like in these plants, that's organic, right? And then you've got this thing called veganic, which is like the super organic, correct? Like microbial, like you can take this thing because When you inhale this plant, see, I'm an asthmatic. And, as I said, I smoked a lot of weed and then some weed can give me a bad experience, a sense of create an asthma attack where I'm like, I fucking wasn't weed.

Somebody did something right. Maybe there was Eagle 22. I don't know. There's, but I'm not dead, so my wife, 

I think I did with my wife for going on, I think. almost 12 years now, 11 or 12 years. We've been married for eight going on nine. And not only that she has a, an adult autistic son that lives with us at home, Alex.

He's almost 40 now. He's like 39.  And when I first met them Alex didn't smoke weed and he had a couple of different medications that he took. Yeah. And Susie didn't smoke weed because she got migraines.  And then she tried my weed that had really super low levels of heavy metals, like parts per billion, rather than parts per million. 

And she was able to smoke my weed and not get migraines off of it.  And so she's the. The total barometer now, like  she can take one hit of  it can be organic and it doesn't matter if it's grown with some fucking dirty guano You know from an island That's an e waste island where they bury all the electronic waste from boatloads of stuff and there's all kinds of mercury in it now  And the shit coming out the ends of the animals.

I used to say this all the time Isn't as clean as it used to be, and you know So, organics is something that has to be sourced really carefully. And, veganics was even something that had to be sourced really carefully. And so that's what it all comes down to. Now It's aggregate it's the total aggregate consumption of all of the negative things in your environment,  whether it's eating a little bit of fast food, or just even French fries, making French fries at home.

They've done studies on that with the heavy metals that are in fast food. So my girl's on all that stuff. stuff. She sent me a terrible article about you said it comes out of the rear ends. That's typically how like animals poop, by the way. And and a lot of the stuff that they have in there is, bad.

And then they recycle that into other fertilizers. And so they concentrate the problem that's there. So if there is some negative input that's there, like a heavy metal or some other poison you're just exacerbating. And then plastics now are just pretty much everywhere.  

Did your brain. Which is  

we, yo.

Yeah. It's blowing around in our brain. It's in our testicles.  We're making ba we're making babies with it.  

It's, we're staying resistant. They just wipe off. They're cleaner. I'm kidding. Yeah. 

No, but this plant is symbiotic when it comes to what getting good plan.

And this is the problem with the legislation sometimes is,  illinois, we got a store coming up. There are not patient prices, right? This plant is medicine can help a lot of people, but it has. And it'd be like, I think federal, if a federal thing were to happen, it gives everybody a fucking, an even playing field.

It'll shake up the markets in each state. Tom's a big fan of limited licenses. I'm all like. Let everybody have a chance. Just give me a hundred dollars and then 

again schedule three. You cannot Hey, if congress wants to get off their duffels and do their job, then you're right.  Here's the thing They do not they want to collect the paycheck.

They want to tell the other guy is an evil crazy man or person, you know Whoever is so guess what? And then I want to win again. Yeah, 

I have the answer.  I have the answer for all of you  Is it grow your own 

ideally? That's also very good growing your own. Very important. Control your inputs. But 

it doesn't take  It doesn't take devoting your life to it.

Some of us do It's so funny because like  I have so much trouble pleasing everybody online now with my little home garden, you know The little experiments that I do and These new kids, after their first grow, they're growing these wonderful genetics. And somehow that means that I shouldn't continue to keep teaching people how to keep it simple and do it at home and all that.

It's the most important thing, if I could say anything after all of this, is that  anybody can grow their own. It's it,  you don't have to figure. It's like life. You don't have to figure anything out on all on one day. Just make good decisions. Make a decision to grow  and do it and grow one plant or two or four or five or six or whatever is comfortable and yield whatever you yield off of it.

And learn how to grow a healthy plant, same as you would with your ficus or my money tree back here behind us. Just grow a healthy plant and harvest it for yourself. And whatever that is, whether it's two joints or whether it's two ounces, you're going to be so appreciative of it. You're going to want to do it again. 

That's right. That's the, and then you're gonna wanna grow something else. 'cause you're gonna have plenty of weed and you're gonna be like, Hey, you know what, I don't have tomatoes, , we had a 23.6 ounce, and so 23 pound like 23.6 pound, black diamond watermelon that I didn't grow. My fiance grew from cheated.

And and, but we had it. And perfect. Great. And then all the tomatoes that come out and all the other stuff that you can grow, you can then avoid all these problems that are out there. All these contaminants that are compounding that you read about every day in the news and you are avoiding them because you're controlling the inputs of your body.

When 

you have an answer. And you can't  I understand we all gotta vent sometime. Here's another word. We all kibitz sometimes, you know that's just venting. It doesn't mean we're really upset but When you have an answer like, I just grew a wall of lettuce I got this machine called a vertifarm  and I plugged it in and it sent they sent me some lettuce plugs And I poured some nutrients in it and they were synthetic by the way, I don't care And I pH it once and then I topped it off with water.

And the next thing, me and my family are eaten a wall to table lettuce, three different types of lettuce for two months.  It was fantastic. I just had to grow some weed in it. So that's what I'm doing now. I'm growing weed in it. 

I would have to say that. And so we have a trellis. And so and then it was like.

The pots, and then I use Athena, I'm hoping they have clean newts, I'm assuming Athena has clean newts, Athena, if you have dirty newts, please tell me, but and so they will just become beasts, and then you get about three months out of a lettuce seed and they'll get about this tall, they'll bolt over the time, but, yeah, you're able to, your 5x5 tent doesn't just have to grow weed, you could be growing one. 

Seriously, it's, and the great thing, these LEDs, these don't, you don't know what a gem that is these days. You can set that up pretty much anywhere and you can use a little standup air conditioner. You don't have to throw things in the window, 16, 000 BTU air conditioners. Cause you're trying to fight bulbs that put off 1500 degrees each.

And if you touch it, you end up with a tattoo on your back. I got one right there. I'm not going  

Ball back in a day  

Yeah, those vertical parabolics, 

yeah, we like in the closet or some shit like or like a small tent type thing Is that what you had it in  

dude? I've grown. I've done what I'm saying It is now you can have a small space and just have room for a four by four By six foot tall tent.

And you can hang a little 250 watt hydro farm light in that. And you can put one plant below it and train it and play with it and get two ounces of weed in 75 days with one plant. 

I a hundred percent agree that everybody should have a right to grow. There should be this entitlement. Like it is entitlement, right?

The fucking plant, it should be a thing, but 

fortunately it's a privilege.  

But not just, but people should be allowed to in their apartments, in their backyard. But there are things called like shitty landlords and bad like contracts with say military getting services or something like, or social services type things.

These things can all be fucked. By you just having one little plant, which is unfortunate, right? Cause you're just trying to grow medicine, understand it better. But I think rescheduling it will help lead to those protections where people who have seeds and buy them, can just do it freely and talk about, cause there's kind of networks and. 

I am totally, you have to take this, the incremental steps to legalize it and rescheduling. It seems where are we, what else are they going to do? You expect and regulations to just go, We'll just let it go for a year or two and see what actually needs to be regulated.

Maybe it's this ubiquitous product that we never could have imagined that people just grow in their backyards. It just springs up, they call it ditch weed, and it just springs up by itself and it grows by itself and nobody's ever died from it. And when people grow it, they like to give it away and traded at, local, farmer's markets maybe, it could be like tomatoes and apples and people could just grow their own and we really don't have to mess with it.

Who knows? 

Ideally, but yeah, but it's unfortunately you're talking about, you're talking about alcohol. And so speaking of there was just a case that came out this past week about how, and then you were talking Kyle about how we're treated differently here in this industry. And this is a prime example.

And it came out of the court of appeals. Marijuana users cannot be banned from gun ownership. That's out of the fifth circuit, which is  based, but does include Texas.  And I did a video on it. It'll be posted to the channel later next week. Tune in for that. But it was a Connolly Paula Connolly her husband, John was shooting at the neighbors when a disturbance ensued and the cops showed up. 

And then, so they did a sweep of the property because he was shooting a shotgun at his neighbors. John. But Paula had a stash and then she mentioned that she uses it for sleep and anxiety. She is married to the guy who's shooting at his neighbor, may explain why. And so he said that she had a second amendment right to that gun.

And it turns out she has, she does. Yes, she does. And the reason is because she wasn't intoxicated at the time.  And we have a long tradition  of saying, okay, you can't have your guns in the bar.  But once you leave the bar, you can have your guns again. And so if she had, she'd been smoking weed at the time that her husband was firing his gun at the neighbor's house.

may not have ended the same way, but she challenged these statutes. And these are the same statutes that when you try to buy a gun to defend your home grow or whatever your family, for example, your stuff, as is your right as an American, a, you have to check a box saying, you're not a current drug user.

And it was that same statute that they were examining in this. And so that statutes being found to be invalid, mostly. Unless you are actively involved in the smoke. So you can't smoke a joint and shoot a guy But you were not allowed to shoot a guy to begin with So that's the thing like there's a difference between being intoxicated and having your right to bear arms curtailed  Versus having your right to bear.

Yeah It's the principle. 

It's precedent. It's precedent, right? Someone sets a precedent. It's precedent Sometimes precedent  is set Like for different reasons, right? Sometimes it's to keep people from going to, to defend yourself. And that's the problem is that precedent in law never comes about unless something bad happens. 

It's almost medical things moving forward because of war, we learn how to put people back together because they get blown apart.  And yeah, the only way we get, like in California, there's still this law in the books that says you're allowed to grow, let me put my hand up, six plants.

 Six plants, right? But so many precedents have been set to say that  obviously everybody can't grow six plants and grow enough weed for themselves.  But even way past that,  so many people have been arrested in California. There have been precedents set that said, I can grow 20 pounds of weed.  And I still don't have enough because I don't smoke it.

I can't inhale the weed. I have to refine it down to just the key, the trichomes, and I can only use the trichomes. So if I grow 25 pounds of weed and I get five pounds of key for two, three, that might be enough for me for a year. And doctors have come in and set precedents to the fact that, so pretty much net what I'm getting at in a long now in California. 

If you have a smart lawyer, and you, and anybody is stupid enough to fuck with you,  you are allowed to do whatever is medically necessity for you, period. As long as you're not selling it. 

California requires you to take the bar exam. 

So  

this is why I guess like I, I'm licensed to practice in several states and there's only several states out of the 50 that require you to take their bar exam.

And they're usually the ones you're like and California, Florida, Louisiana, because it's our only state that's a civil law and not a common law state because of its French ancestry. And I may be New York, but I think New York in the most few past years has actually opened up to MBE qualifications.

So Florida and California, those ones you have to take the bar. And of course, Louisiana, maybe Texas, I'd have to check on Texas. 

The the whole thing goes back to Kyle's point though about how is this plant being always treated differently. The industry, right? Why are we creating a fucking law where you can have the fucking gun but you can't shoot while you're smoking at the same time?

That's just  why? Do you have the same law for alcohol out there? We don't. Again, 

because we haven't swaddled the concept that we're dealing with the first socially acceptable recreational medicinal substance in all of humankind. There's never been another substance that had that resume ever.  

I think alcohol is the closest to it.

And so it's a corollary that we can use. Thank you.  They are regulating it. But alcohol doesn't cure, 

alcohol doesn't cure lists of diseases and lists of ailments. Correct. They like, they used to say and get away with saying it did, but it doesn't. Close, but no.  

If you imagine it's 150 years ago.  And your wounds are problems.

Back then, right? They didn't understand how to even wash their hands and shit. Alcohol is a disinfectant. 

So 

it has a medicinal purpose. Your vodka has a medicinal purpose. It's disinfectant. And, but, the poison is in the quantity of the dose. The poison's in the dose of the drug.

And that is true for any drug that you really use. The poison's in the dose. The dose for cannabis, you're not gonna you're going to put the joint down before you get anywhere close. Yeah. 

Another difference. You can't kill yourself with him.  No, 

it's not toxic, right? And I thought that with but I think they want that.

And by they, the Republicans, the judgmental religious types want the, you were damned. You knew you saw you fucked around and found out you  because you were drinking. Yeah, exactly. It's all I hate that shit. They believe  

it's not based in reality And like I said, you know my look so so you ask how what would you do kyle if you could pass the law?

I would literally my advice to the lawmakers would be to literally just  Real just be real for with me for a second  cannabis has been around forever. It's been in every high school That has ever existed. It's on every college campus that has ever existed.  And  also there's not an actuarial rate in any country anywhere around the world that lists that they can't find one that lists cannabis as a death.

So let's just, let's just, let's say, let's not, I'm not saying let's not regulate it. What I'm saying is what I think you might want to do though is Just stop arresting people for give it a time period 12 months 24 months 18 months Whatever you feel comfortable with and just study what happens how the culture emerges Like I said, and then send agents out and have them take notes on what's going on And then use history and use facts.

There's a long history of cannabis use. All law goes. I think it's back in ancient Chinese medicine. Oh yeah. Good. So just use some of the history to form an opinion on how you should go forward on regulating it. But I think you need to do some observation first. 

I got one for you guys.

So it. This is a magic wand tomorrow. They legalize it. Everything's  celebration for 20 everywhere. Oh my God. What do you think will happen to the hemp industry? Like we are making progress slowly, right? With the whole,  right again,  it's like right now, like home depot just made it, so they're not going to piss test people.

So the war on drugs, billions of dollars spent plant still winning. Kyle, you said earlier, it took all this money, law enforcement, and still there was like, always been this traditional market and then you fucking legalize it. Now people are getting bombed out. But there are,  how would you look at it?

That's cause we're 

too nice. We entered the world of sharks being. Nice hippies and we  Felt like we were getting our way honestly, it felt like we were actually finally getting our way  But we weren't and I don't really think  That the maliciousness goes so far as that.

It was thought out as to how they could Kill the industry. I might be naive in that thought. I think it was just symptomatic in the pushback of not wanting to Be nice or capitulate. I don't think that it was that diabolical. That would be way too smart for those people  Way too smart, 





Okay 

I think it was just devil.

It's an unfortunate evolution that we didn't foresee.  

Like with this happening right now. So for the industry to exist, you've got to have consumers. I was trying to spit out the words in my brain before it came out or before I forgot them. But so they're recognizing like, like again, protections, workers, protections, consumer protections, these guys are just workers that want to go to a job and the attitudes changing toward what you pointed out earlier, Kyle, as far as why is it this one industry, and again,  Being an advocate for so long the reason why I use a fake name We all use fake names because like fucking other job opportunities and business opportunities, right?

like oh, I don't want to be totally associated with this thing because I 

can't always also prognosticate that the way that I you know feel right now is actually going to come out the right way I my heart is in the right place and I want for the right things, But some it doesn't you know I can't always be right in the things that I stand behind, just like anybody else. 

But you have the ability to understand, recognize that, and change, which puts you in the insular minority. And a lot of people just seem like they don't want to change.  Your facts are not gonna get in the way of what I know to be true. They come from that ethos which  Yeah, you know what? 

I'm talking to a brick wall. I'm talking to somebody who's not a person. I'm talking to a wall Yeah, 

Tom, you're giving me this platform. I'm gonna you know what it starts out with the goddamn participation trophies, you know  You didn't get participation trophies. You went home and you cried because you didn't feel like you performed as well as everybody else, and you learned the harsh reality that's the way life is and that just because you have an opinion, it doesn't make it as, it doesn't automatically validate it.

Maybe you should think about it a little bit more. Maybe you should listen to valid opinions. And if you reason it, you'll realize that your opinion is actually invalid. There's none of that introspection. Everybody has a right to the game because they appeared. It's the participation trophy. I'm here.

I have the same rights as everybody else. And you do motherfucker, but we expect you. We expect you to bring what they come correct. That's how we used to, come correct. Don't come with your bull bullshit walks, money talks and bullshit walks, and I'm sorry to harsh y'all's buzz you're not y'all are not coming correct  

with the traditional market.

They don't want it. 

Like They can that's right  They can fucking, they can beat you and we'll go back to, we'll go back to, there'll be local dealers that will start becoming elevated and become celebrities because they're not worried about the fines that they're going to get if they get busted.

So local dealers will go on fucking television. It'll take them three years or four years to ever find, the culture. Will evolve. I don't know how it will, but I just said it's absolute nonsense. No, I think you're right. But the culture will evolve and so will the business, so will the business.

And I don't know how that will happen either. This is what we're talking about, right? But, what we would like. Is to see the culture and the industry merge, that's what the root of why would we have a show talking about this because it's not happening if that was happening organically and naturally and the people that spent the people that whose hearts are still in it, regardless if you like them or you don't, I don't know whose farm, which starts with an H that you don't like, there's several of them, people that have put in the decades, and even come from generational, generational, like I said, that, those are all 

corporate.

I was, are all corporate out here, like east of the Mississippi. No, there was no three generations in Humboldt and Peoria, Illinois. Come on, get the fuck out. Don't try. If you don't 

bring somebody in, if you don't bring somebody in that you've just identified because  Corporate, it competes with corporate everywhere.

Soon as it pops up somewhere, it's competing with everybody everywhere. And that's it because there's so much corporate interest involved that are not going to bring in a Kyle Cushman to be your Tony Robbins when you're setting up your business so that you can be in insightful and empathetic.

To the decades and generations that have come before you when you name strains. And when you call, it's just, that is like not even Pollyannish. That's just fucking, that's just  stupid. So  it's 

good business for  

strains. So that they can like, Oh my gosh, but it's so funny.

So like they try to brand their strains, like at a corporate level. And so it's great. And so they'll have strains that are named and then they're all basically a ripoff of some strain from California,  but then they've created their own because it's their branded. And there's only 10 publicly traded stocks, which is cute.

And so you could look at them and you can see what they're doing and it's adorable. It's how corporations are run, but it's not necessarily how the industry is, 

I'm sorry. 

Good. Again, there's just so many there's 50 different systems, right? Each state has its own policy.

And then when we talk about culture, as someone who's been trying to advocate and based off of just like the writing part of it that's why there's online trolling writing. And when we talk about culture, it's just other Americans, right? It's there's like this middle ground of America.

Yeah. There's people who don't smoke or who are assholes and are people who are, do smoke and are assholes. And then there's just fucking people who don't care, whatever. But the point being is it's just. Your neighbor, right? That's there's nothing really special besides a secret handshake I mean because back in the day that was a thing you had to do that But now you don't I want to walk into a store and be like, yeah, can I get a quarter pound?

of  fucking a strawberry cough, like that's all I gotta get like I Boom, no conversation because that was the other thing about traditional market you walk in you got first You got to find a good grower You gotta find somebody you trust right because this guy's gonna come pick up all the pounds whatever So there's a trust factor right there You And then, prices, a lot of times we're like a set list.

Like as I've gotten old and work in manufacturing, and I talked to my family who are in other roles in the industries there's a priceless, like we are going to have a store. So there's gonna be a price list that we're working with to grow. And no matter what kind of relationship I have with a dude, there's never going to be like a extra better deal.

It's going to be like, Hey man, this is it pays for the bills. And then I'll be like, sweet. I got paid up. I got to mark it up. So I pay my bills. It's all fucking understood. You don't go on a goddamn liquor store and try to negotiate a fifth of the alcohol.  

Man, I wouldn't trade, I wouldn't trade all them backstreet car shifty, scary deals that I went through, for fucking vape cartridges back in my day  for anything,  The adversity that came every year with a drought  just made me stronger.

Just made me, when I figured out I could grow weed, it just made me more determined cause I was never going to have a drought again. And I was going to see that other people that were close to me, they never had a drought either. See it just.  It is not the same and it never will be like that. So  we have to, we all have to be smart and just simply realize we have to create a paradigm that is workable.

It isn't  dreamlike and isn't how we would have it if it was just kept in the public sphere. We have to create a paradigm that is sympathetic to some of the legacy. Yeah. Yeah. It's not that hard, I think we have to present that paradigm to the lawmakers going forward.

Who fought for alcohol, right? Matter of fact, it's another 420 again, time. Want to take a break?

Really, who fought for alcohol? There's no other industry thing out there, right? Alcohol was just money, people, at the 

time. No, alcohol, it's a very interesting 18th, 19th, 20th Amendment.  About a hundred years ago, we said it would be a great idea to get rid of drinking. And then we said, you know what else?

We need to give women the right to vote. And then women had the right to vote and men wanted to go out for a drink, but they weren't allowed to. And so they went out to a speakeasy and there was a lot of murders. And after that, there was a discussion and then they said, you know what With this depression and my wife telling me who to vote for, I really need a beer.

And so they, they re legalized alcohol with the 20th Amendment. And so that gets to the real core of the problems. A hundred years ago you couldn't just say that I'm making a commercial regulation for interstate commerce and I'm banning wheat. They had to make an amendment to the Constitution to ban alcohol, that Congress wasn't just able to say you know what?

We should do that. This is great. Seriously.  

I never  quite thought of it that way,  , 

but  

just saying, 

How were people on the same page at one time? Like we're such a divisive nation all time. I don't think there's ever been like a  kumbaya. We all fucking get along moment, right? There's always been somebody with a stupid opinion that is in charge.

Unfortunately, it's a lot without, 

I'll tell you what, I have a nature that could tend to be a fatalist. I don't think that I am. I think that I am an optimistic realist.  And I think that things can still get better  or worse. Like we're not, we haven't gone over a precipice. I think that things can still get better and that's what I'm hoping for. 

Oh, absolutely. And I think they're actually getting better. It's just that they're changing. They would change more if everybody wanted to say. I just want to smoke a joint man. I just want, just like how 30 years ago when they were like saying,  I just want to, I just want to have a beer.

Look, my wife's telling me to vote for, and she's out, she's canceling my vote. And and evidently I've been fired from every job we're going to be able to get. And it looks like I have to go back to war. So can I get a beer please? And that boom, they made a whole constitute, they made three constitutional amendments.

In the course of 10 years, we have not done that. What was the last constitutional amendment? 25th amendment. Oh my God. Yeah. 

I'm pretty sure more bridges have fallen down than we've built recently. 

Oh my God. That's so deep. That cuts deep, dude.  

It does almost as deep as the lack of free speech that  you have when you are a cannabis license holder, trying to advertise. 

Evidently, this Ohio company spent some money on free ice cream, which got them a 200, 000 fine from their regulators because they were not allowed to advertise ice cream  for weed.  

I do this segment that we started that Nate Hammer started called Highlights at Home, and it's all filled with all of these.

Products being pulled from the shelves all across the country from, it was tested in one lab and then, people took it home and they had it retested or the state had, I don't know how, and it turns out that it has bucket heavy metals in it, or it's supposed to be a THCA product and it has, Delta nine in it.

And, these companies are just they're the majority of them. They just don't, they're just like every other company in America. The majority of them are only there for one thing. Where's my camera? They're on the dollar. They're there for the almighty dollar. And look, I like to make dollars too, but you know what?

My grandfather, I think I remember through, I was a little kid when he passed, I've got two or three things that I remember him saying to me. One was, Adam, it's not so hard to make money in this world. It's harder to make money and feel good about it. 

I did a video about a THCA flower and why I'm like, don't just don't do that. And it has so much hate  out of all the videos that I've done. Like that one has got a lot of hate at it because like I'm telling people to not do the THCA flower or hemp or like that gets you high. Because you are eviscerating our advancement toward regulating the plant and getting it out of this and you're just pissing off the regulators because they feel like you lied to them, which you're lumping into back to us and we have to follow all these rules and get all these licenses 

you 

don't have to do. 

That makes, for all the time that you and I. Ever bought weed from somebody, there was a trust there,  right? I understand. There was a trust in that purchase. There was a trust,  and  to give that trust to somebody, to a corporation, to a coill dollar, multimillion dollar  company that you don't know  that you're using his medication. 

Whether you realize it or not you're using it as medication, right? We come on. We all know that it's medicating That's it. That's why we learn so much  and to just throw that money down on the table to brand a b c or z xerox is just  

You're you're and that's part of the problem with the fight of legalization, right?

Everybody gets confused especially non consumers cause of the hemp and the marijuana conversation. And it's the same fucking plant that looks alike. If I see another fucking hemp Vonna commercial on regular TV and it uses a pot leaf as a it's on regular TV, but it's fucking CBD.

So it's okay. Which it shouldn't be. But it's dumb because it dilutes the whole prohibition argument, which kind of helps write Hey, average people, these are the people we're trying to reach out to who don't consume. Look at this same fucking plant leaf thingy. Why, what, why what,  

you brought another thought to mind is it's this evolution thing, right?

We all want to hear new music and we all want to taste a new flavor. We all, and cannabis, the way it is, it's just so old. It's so old school. It's just so just every, just roll it up in a piece of paper. It's so old. It's been done for thousands of, it's just so old.

And the new generation just has to find new ways. And it's, as the new isn't necessarily better. And it's generally version two is not better. The original version is usually the best. And  

yeah, but that's what I think is happening. 

It's then it's the old, it's the natural.

And so this natural marijuana is what's being rescheduled to schedule three. So it's all the old. And all this new stuff like Delta 8, HHP, C, T8, like anything that they're using hemp extracts to chemistry into something and then spray it on CBD flour they couldn't sell. That I think is going to get, thrown to the curb and say, no, that's not hemp.

That is synthetic weed. This is natural 

weed. That's just the infiltration. So before they infiltrated the cannabis industry, these chemists were producing designer drugs.  that you could sell at the gas station, even if it was only for six months or 12 months until they made it illegal. And they were selling all these salts and selling all these terrible, dangerous things that got people high,  all kinds of stuff.

And so now they're finding ways to take Substances that are 50 state legal, like hemp, CBD, things like that, and they can coat it with molecules that they have just created that are unregulated and get people all zooted out on it, and it's just an evolution of human instinct to punish your fellow man. 

I'll get straight to the gross, but fire beware. This should be a thing that consumer protection.  

Wow, that should exist. That's the thing about regulation. Consumer protection. If you're selling an adulterated cannabinoid, that should be a crime.  Because that I'm with you, my friend.  

Sensible regulation is important in every aspect of life. 

We need just as we need leaders. We can't all be our own leader. We need, we can't all be our own regulator. 

Like I'm sure that I would be a lot more fit if I had remember how Rocky didn't train himself? He had that old man. I was telling him he's a bum and go into the gym and I can't remember his name, Nick or something like that.

You need that kind of accountability. Yeah. You need that regulator. That's there. That's telling you what the rules are holding you to account. But why does it seem like no other industry really has a regulator? They're like, we will self regulate.  

And he had Boeing, doors fall off shit when you self regulate.

So there's a reason why there is like the EPA and stuff like this, that when cannabis becomes illegal, 

But there is a model. If you look, cannabis has been a self regulating industry for all of recorded time. And so if they just take a period of time and go back for 50 years and just look at the cannabis industry has always been there and that the only suffering that has ever been caused from it, at least in a a public health hazard type of way.

Other than the it's all right there. You just have to analyze the data, right? You're talking about the culture, like the past  

thing that 

you see. No other substance, but regardless of trying to be hippie, dippy and crunchy and say, that's not a culture. There's no other substance on earth that has that resume, that has that history that you can bring into court as evidence, as actual evidence.

Yeah. Again and again. In every aspect. There's no other substance. So it's, why are we here?  

Prejudice. Prejudice. That's the only answer. Like when it's that bad and there's all the evidence on other sides. It's only. The dogma and the prejudice of the lawmakers and the people that are putting up with it.

We gotta start calling it out. Just their prejudice. Yeah. And we gotta start calling it out for what 

it's, 

yeah. Like concentrates are, no concentrates are not new. Like concentrates are old as shit. They're like, we've had, guests on from, the honey, the  HBO Honey, honey oil. What's the stuff that they were making from like Afghanistan putting on surfboards and importing it back in the seventies?

Oh, yeah. Forever. Forever. 

Hatch. Thousands of years.  It's an extract. Hatch is an extract, right? They just use water, soluble. 

Nobody's ever ingested a balloon full of it and accidentally died or, smuggled it. And taken too much done too much of their it's just so  look you just can't come  that  it's its own category  of a substance that exists. 

It truly should be ubiquitous. It should be as ubiquitous as milk and bread and cheese and butter and eggs and roses and tulips  and tomatoes.  It's ubiquitous because every human being on the planet can in some way benefit from it, whether they're smoking it or whether they're ingesting it or whether they're rubbing it on their hands or or making us living from it because it's such an easy to grow plant so that they can take care of their family.

  We could go round and round, gentlemen. It's, we're,  

we've already gone around so much. And we wanted to thank 

you, 

For joining us and doing this was a kibitz. 

Yeah. 

And like we pitched a lot of bitch and had a great time, but thank you for spending the time with us and we could continue to go on can you tell the good people what you're up to these days and how they can get in touch with you so that they can interact with you?

I'm not too busy, but mostly I actually interact on Instagram. Kyle Cushman, four 20. Other than that, I have an email Kyle Cushman at MSN. That's how old school I am. Kyle Cushman at msn. com and and excuse me. You have a seed company too, right? I was going to mention, it's not my company, but I've been representing homegrown cannabis formerly homegrown cannabis co.

com for it seems like forever it's, I was talking with Dickie Patterson, the owner of the other day, I said it was nine years and it hasn't been that long. I'm like, yeah, it's, we're going on nine years that I've been representing. And We're still making lots of edutational, edutainment content, that's on  homegrowncannabis.

com and they keep me busy with that and I do lots of these podcasts whenever I can and I hope I'm not forgetting it. Oh yeah. I'm growing in the Virta farm. That's my latest experiment. We'll see what happens with that. And I just got back from the Emerald cup. Unfortunately, that's not something I'm doing, but that was fantastic.

And I am so behind the vibes and the feeling people like to say, there's no good weed there. Just because there's 300 entries, right?  Does it mean that the top 10 or 20 aren't just fucking sticky? Icky fire.  And so that was great. And we did the grow, I'm doing the grow show weekly and we did a dozen episodes while we were at the Emerald cup.

So make sure you check out it's not the grow show it's hope grow weed at home with Kyle Cushman  and that's on YouTube and Spotify and all that shit.  

Oh, yeah.  Sweet.  Thanks, dude. 

Awesome.  

Miggy, any parting thoughts before we wrap it up for the week? 

We got a Reddit, and I just posted a link, so hey,  there we go.

We got a Reddit, and so 

go to our Reddit. That's exactly right. And so we're going to try to like, interact with our 260 people that are watching right now. And so if you have any tips, go to this Reddit that Miggy just shared on the the channel. And then tune in next week. We'll have a better links for that because it'll just be a, an average show.

We won't have Kyle joining us, but Kyle, thank you so much for spending some time and for doing what you've done for the plant, man.  

Thanks you guys. Thank Tom and Maggie. I'm going to, I'll go back and look at those comments in a few days and see if there's any questions for me.  

Cool.