it s cost us 1 trillion dollars and resulted in incarcerating millions over nonviolent offenses. i a new book argues that the money the government can make legalizely this sticky icky could help us out of our economic troubles. doug, welcome to the show. thanks so much. what s your dream scenario here? is weed going to be treated like alcohol and almost anyone can buy and sell it anywhere and it s taxed? how would do you it? something like that. cannabis needs to get out of the controlled substances acwhere it currently resides as a schedule 1 felony whereas cocaine and methare in schedule 2. i d like to see cannabis out of there as a father and patriot to get $30 billion a year into the legitimate economy instead of going to the cartels. one of the interesting things you do in your book is you say follow the money. when you follow the money, you see that the war for the war on drugs against cannabis is the pharmaceuticals industry, the private prisons, law enforcement
industrial product. in the heartland in north dakota, you have the agricultural commissioner pleading for the hemp side to be legal which is now just as much of a schedule one felony. it s really time to let all parts of the country benefit from whatever side of this plant might have the most value locally. doug makes the economic point and the moral point in his book but se, talk about the political side of it. it is politically dangerous especially for a national candidate to try to make this point. who is the sort of politician? because i think most of us here think eventually this will happen maybe in 20 or 30 years. who is the sort of person who could lead this cause toward legalization? people on the edges have stood up and tried to make that case. people like gary johnson, ron paul occasionally makes it indirectly. but i think it s going to take someone who does not play into the stereotypes of what you would expect, someone who was promoting pot legalization to look like. s
the hard part. it s going to take americans deciding it s an important economic issue. doug, i wonder if you could take us through what you see as your road map to legalization. we just had a map that showed states that the has legalized medical marijuana. is this something we re going to see sort of at a local or regional level and it s going to spread and become a national thing? when do you think it might happen? what is the timeline that you see and where will it happen? good question. so, most recent poll had he 56% of americans fully ready to end the drug war and regulate cannabis like alcohol. so just as utah and nevada s alcohol laws are different, different communities around the nation would have different laws once the federal government got out of it and let states regulate. and also, at had point, we ve only been talking about the psychoactive social/medicinal cannabis. but industrial cannabis has huge potential as a biofuel and
before he became elected, president barack obama was vocal, i mean vocal about it. he said the drug war is an utter failure and cannabis laws need to be decriminalizes. what i research in my book is one county in california that made the decision to just you know recognize the dinosaur in the room and save their economy by taxing the simple plant. crime went down locally. it worked for everyone. his most recent comments on the matter have been decriminalization is not on the table. that is that is what he said at a town hall meeting i think summer of 2011. we ll see what would happen in a second term, but maybe it s part of his secret agenda. thanks, krystal. doug fien, thanks so much for that. having the murnlgis is about to get pricier because america s drought will hit your wallet no matter where you are in the country. a live report up next. that s part of why i say peter tosh was right. [ male announcer ] when a major hospital