CANNABIS VILLAGE - The Federal Cannabis lawsuit and why the controlled Substances Act is going up in smoke
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Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:00
All right, everyone. Next speaker up is Michael Hiller. He's an attorney based in Manhattan. Is that accurate? And he does a lot of he does a lot of work in cannabis, but really, he does a lot of work in a lot of fields and a lot of his very interesting as I found out. But today, he's going to talk about the lawsuit regarding federal legalization.
00:22
That's right. So without further ado, thanks. We're good. Yeah. Hey, guys, how you doing? I'm Michael Hiller. And I'm here to talk about the lawsuit we brought against Jeff Sessions and the Justice Department to decriminalize cannabis across the United States. Thank you.
00:46
Just just a little bit of background about me. I was a constitutional law professor for eight years. And I'm now principal of Hiller PC. We represent the cannabis industry throughout the United States. And it's our it's our desire and goal to legalize cannabis, make it available to whoever wants it. In order to talk about the lawsuit, we have to go
01:04
back up a little bit in time to 1970. In 1970, the Nixon administration drafted and then pushed through Congress legislation, the Controlled Substances Act, which criminalized cannabis, which criminalized cannabis, and pushed it into Schedule 1 of a five-schedule
01:24
framework, which essentially made it illegal to possess, use, sell or distribute cannabis. And it renders possession, sale, distribution of cannabis a felony with a five-year minimum prison term. And that law still exists today. Not only does the law exist, but the
01:41
scheduling and classification of cannabis still exists today, notwithstanding everything you've heard or read about cannabis. So what are we talking about? How is it illegal and federally when, in fact, in state law, there are now 30 states that have some form of legalization program. Medical marijuana is available in 30 states throughout the
02:01
United States. And just to give you a sense of perspective here, over 200 million Americans today live in a state where there's some form of legalized cannabis. And of those 30 states, there are nine where cannabis is legal not only for medical use, but for any use, adult use, recreational use. And for those of you who are curious, Nevada
02:24
is one of them. So I know what we're all doing tonight. Party at my house. So what's interesting about this is how is it that cannabis is illegal on the federal level, but there are 30 states with over 200 million Americans living in states where cannabis
02:41
is legal for medical purposes. And over 90 million Americans, including the 40 million who live in California, which is the fifth largest economy in the world, how is it legal for recreational use there? It doesn't make any sense. And if you think about it, over the course of America's history, there's the federal government and then there's state governments, right? And the way it works under our Constitution is, if something
03:03
is illegal under federal law, state law can't make it legal. That's something called the supremacy clause. And the federal government has enforced the supremacy clause consistently for over 200 years. But clearly that's not what they're doing now. So why aren't they doing it now? Well, let's just back this up for a second and talk about what
03:23
the federal government is doing. Because it's illegal under federal law. It's legal under 30 state laws. How is that possible? Well, the federal government, the Congress specifically enacted legislation beginning in 2014, which are basically funding riders to every piece of appropriations legislation. What that is being done, what's being done
03:42
is Congress has defunded the Justice Department from prosecuting any claims against state legal medical marijuana use in states where it's legal. So that means that even though the Justice Department may want to enforce the Controlled Substances Act, it simply lacks the funds with which to do so. And so what that basically means is that even
04:01
though the federal government has made it illegal, they can't enforce the law. So what does that really mean in real life? You're thinking to yourself, well, if that's the case, I don't have to worry about cannabis because if I live in a state where it's legal, I don't have to worry about it. The problem you have is that it can change on a dime. Right now the Attorney General of the United States, Jeff Sessions, feel free to hiss
04:22
if you'd like. Jeff Sessions, thank you very much, Jeff Sessions has made it clear from the very moment he took his oath of office that it's his desire to ban cannabis across the United States. And why does he want to do that? Because he says that he used to like the KKK until he found out they smoked weed. That's a direct quote from
04:40
1986. He actually said that. In addition, Jeff Sessions has also said that good people don't smoke marijuana. From his perspective, everybody who smokes weed is a pothead, druggie, reefer madness is going to go out and kill the world. Clearly Jeff Sessions doesn't know what he's talking about, but what else is new? So the big problem is that they could switch this any time they want because these funding writers last only a year.
05:04
So 2014, 15, 16, and 17, it was renewed on time every year. In 2018, they waited two weeks, so for two weeks, believe it or not, every cannabis program in the United States was actually at risk. And think about this. What does that mean for people who have cannabis businesses? How many people have a cannabis business now? Just one. Guys, get out there.
05:25
So the thing about investing in cannabis businesses is if you've poured a lot of capital into a cannabis business and all of a sudden the United States government decides to revoke the funding writers, then the United States government can start prosecuting you for selling cannabis or distributing it. And not only just selling and distributing cannabis, but
05:42
think about the ancillary businesses, right? Security, lab testing, extraction, all of those businesses, you threw tons of money in, you'll lose it. So that's why it was really critical for us to go out and file a lawsuit against Jeff Sessions and the Justice Department and the DEA to stop them from prosecuting people from cannabis, to stop
06:03
them from changing their minds. And there's something else to consider. Let's go back to the map. Now just take a look for a second example at Colorado. Let's say you lived in Colorado and you wanted to go to the East Coast. How could you do it? Now your first thought is I jump on a plane, but you can't. Why? Because the rule about the federal government not
06:22
enforcing cannabis only applies in states where it's legal and you're acting in a conformity with state law. So if you get on an airplane, which is regulated by the FAA, the federal government, and they catch you with cannabis, you can be prosecuted under the CSA with a five-year minimum. It's for real. In addition, let's say, okay, I won't take a plane, I'll take a train.
06:43
Trains are federally regulated too. Okay, even federal roads are regulated. So you go on state roads. Okay, now we're going to take a state road, no problem. Try to make your way from Colorado to the East Coast, you can't do it. You're going to have to go through Missouri a little bit and you're really taking a risk there. In Missouri, they'll prosecute the heck out of you. So there really is no way to go. So I represent people all across the United States who can't
07:04
leave their home states because some of them need cannabis to live and they have to have it on them like an EpiPen. Like if you are allergic to peanuts and you need to have an EpiPen, I have clients who need cannabis on them at all times because they have epileptic conditions which require cannabis to relieve their symptoms. And if they don't, they could die. So
07:24
we needed to file a lawsuit against Jeff Sessions and the Justice Department to get them to change their minds because Lord knows that's the only way to do it. Why? Well, because in the United States government, they simply don't have it together. I'm looking at my next slide and it looks like it's incomplete. Okay, I'm sorry guys, there we go. All right, so let me back up
07:43
for just a second. So the United States government has the law about cannabis and we've got to do something about it. So what we did was we sued on five grounds. The first one was that the Controlled Substances Act and the designation of cannabis is so irrational that it violates the Constitution. Now you would think that the Constitution would prohibit
08:03
Congress from passing stupid laws, but it actually doesn't. Congress can pass ill-conceived laws, poorly drafted laws, laws that don't represent good public policy, but what they cannot do is they can't pass a law that simply makes no sense. And one of our arguments,
08:20
our principle argument is the laws governing cannabis make no sense, and I'll talk about that in a minute. The second claim we have is that cannabis, and you heard this from the prior presentation if you were here, the laws against cannabis are rooted in racism and discrimination and efforts to suppress people's political and civil rights. In addition, the laws against cannabis, believe it or not, deprive you of your free speech,
08:44
your right to travel, and your rights under the Commerce Clause. So let's unpack that first. How is it that cannabis, the laws governing cannabis, are so irrational that they violate the Constitution? Well, to be regulated the way cannabis is, it has to be regulated in what's
09:00
called Schedule I. The Controlled Substances Act has five schedules, and the first schedule is the one that's the most serious. It's the one where they have the drugs that are supposedly the most dangerous. Which drugs are on Schedule I? Ecstasy, heroin, cannabis. Now as you can imagine, you think of heroin, you think of cannabis, you think very different drugs, right? You take heroin, you're instantly addicted, it changes your life
09:25
forever the first time you take it. Cannabis? Of course not, it's ridiculous. But just think for a second what you need to have in order to be a Schedule I drug. When you see the three Schedule I requirements, you're going to think, oh, heroin, that makes sense. Cannabis? Not so much. So these are the three requirements. Number one, cannabis has to be subject to
09:45
high levels of abuse, which the government says is coextensive with addiction, physical addiction. Think heroin? Of course. Second, it has to have no medical benefits whatsoever. Cannabis has to have no medical benefits whatsoever. And lastly, it has to be so dangerous
10:02
that any use, even under strict medical supervision, causes extreme danger to the person using it. So you look at this and you think, how could cannabis be on that list? Because it has to be all three. How could Congress have placed this on the list? There's your answer. They're a bunch of clowns. I mean, the Congress should never have put this
10:24
on the list. It doesn't belong, cannabis doesn't belong on the list. And so we recognized very early on when we started studying the issue that the last thing we're going to do is try to go to Congress and try to get them to change it. So we went to court and we filed an action which is entitled Washington versus Sessions. Washington is Marvin Washington, former Super
10:41
Bowl champion of the Denver Broncos. He was also a player on the Jets and he made the wise decision to leave that team so he wanted to go to one that wins. And he, we all, I'm from New York, by the way, full disclosure. That's why I know. So we also represent a number of other people who desperately need cannabis to live. Alexis Bortel, who suffers from
11:02
intractable epilepsy, a little boy named Jagger Cott, who suffers from Lee's disease, the Cannabis Cultural Association, and Jose Bellin. And for those of you who were at the last presentation, the prior speakers held up a magazine that said Weed Newsweek. The story
11:20
is actually about Jose Bellin. He's an Iraq war veteran. All of his buddies were killed right in front of him. He developed post-traumatic stress disorder, wanted to kill himself, and amazingly, once he started cannabis, all of his symptoms went away. So we filed the lawsuit and we argued, as again, that cannabis makes no sense. The laws make no sense to criminalize cannabis. So let's go back to those three requirements and I'll show how it doesn't make
11:42
sense. I want, for today, just focus on number two and number three. It has to have no medical benefits whatsoever and it has to be so dangerous it can't be used even under strict medical supervision. Okay, so here's reveal number one. The United States government owns a patent on medical cannabis. Let me say that again. The United States government, since 2002,
12:05
has held a medical marijuana cannabis patent. Can you fucking believe that? It's mind-boggling. Now, to get a patent in the United States, you have to show that it has some utility, that it actually works. So the United States government did that. The United States government
12:23
represented to the United States Patent and Trademark Office that cannabis helps treat Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, HIV-induced dementia, autoimmune diseases, inflammatory diseases. And not only that, after that, the United States government went to the World Intellectual Properties Organization and got an international patent and then licensed medical
12:43
marijuana all over the world. That's right. You can actually get American-made marijuana overseas, but you can't get it here. Well, actually, you can a little bit. I'll talk to you about that in a second. But the point is, let's go back for a second to that number two, has no medical application whatsoever. You gotta be kidding me. They have one that says it does
13:05
have medical application, and it's the United States government. And if that's all I had, I think it'd be enough, but I have more. In addition, would you believe that beginning in 1976, the United States government started growing and distributing cannabis and distributing it to patients all over the country? Pursuant to the investigational new drug program, the
13:25
United States government actually distributes 30,000 to 40,000 joints worth of cannabis every year. And if you want to see where the United States government gets its grow, go to University of Mississippi. That is the federal government's stash at the University of Mississippi. You can actually look and see the government's grow there. And so you
13:43
think to yourself, wait a second, how can the government say it has no medical benefits whatsoever, but they are selling, they're distributing cannabis to patients through this investigational new drug program? You got me if you know the answer to that question, but I'll take you one step further. In order to be part of the investigational new drug program,
14:01
number one, the FDA has to believe that there is no reasonable base to conclude, in order for the FDA to include it, there must be some evidence, some reasonable base to conclude that the drug is effective, and also that including it in the drug program will not harm people. Well, if the government believes that cannabis is not going to harm people,
14:21
actually could have some medical benefit, well then why is it a schedule one drug, which is supposedly has no medical applications whatsoever, and is too dangerous in medical treatment, even under strict medical supervision. And by the way, so that you all know, there's no medical supervision in the investigational new drug program. They simply send out the
14:45
drug. In 1988, there was a huge dispute between advocates in support of medical cannabis and the federal government. They started a lawsuit, and a study was generated in 1988, 30 years ago, and at the end of that study, here's what the results were.
15:04
Marijuana has a currently accepted medical use and treatment in the United States, it would be unreasonable, arbitrary, and capricious to find otherwise. 1988, 30 years ago, they found this, that it's currently accepted in medical use. Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active
15:21
substances known to man. Now, you might say, well, who commissioned the study? Was it some pot lover? Was it some pot supportive scientist? The administrative law judge, Francis Young, the United States government has a judge who made this finding during a contested proceeding, and if that weren't enough, if it weren't enough that the United States government has
15:40
a federal patent, a medical marijuana patent, has its own stash, pursuant to which it distributes 30,000 to 40,000 joints worth of weed every year after growing it at its stash operation in the University of Mississippi, and if it weren't enough that there weren't this study, how about this? On June 26th of this year, the United States government approved the first
16:04
medical cannabis drug through the federal drug administration, the Food and Drug Administration. This is actually a press release from the U.S. FDA, and you know what it's for the treatment of? It's for epileptic seizures, children, so you think to yourself, oh my god, they're going to be saving kids. Well, in my lawsuit, when we brought this action,
16:25
you know what the defense was from the federal government? Marijuana should be classified as a schedule one substance because it might be abused by or cause harm to minors, so the first FDA drug, cannabis drug, was approved to help minors. Meanwhile,
16:41
they're saying that it could kill minors. Again, it simply makes no sense, and this is literally the tip of the iceberg. If I had two hours, I can give you a lot more, but there's a lot of other evidence here. There's the Shaffer Commission report. The Shaffer Commission report was commissioned by the Nixon administration, and Governor Shaffer was the law and order governor from Pennsylvania. He was going to come in. He was Nixon's buddy,
17:02
and he was going to find that cannabis was too dangerous to distribute. Unfortunately, for President Nixon, Shaffer came back and said, we think we should decriminalize cannabis. In addition, there's something called the Cole memorandum, where the United States government for five years specifically instructed U.S. attorneys not to prosecute cannabis users and
17:24
businesses because they felt that it was better to use their time and resources elsewhere. The Abda memorandum was an extension of the Cole memorandum. The United States Surgeon General in 2014 announced on national television that cannabis constitutes an effective drug for the treatment of disease. The DEA was forced to remove language from its website
17:44
that cannabis is a gateway drug. What happened was some really smart lawyer came up and said, and it wasn't me by the way, some really smart lawyer came up and said, you know what, this gateway drug thing, that violates the information quality act, which requires that all government websites include truthful information,
18:03
and it was not true that cannabis was a gateway drug. They sued, and they got everything removed. In addition, even though the investigation of new drug program is not supervised by the federal government, Missoula University came up with a study and confirmed that every single person
18:20
who took medical cannabis distributed by the federal government pursuant to the investigational new drug program started in 1976, everyone got better. Every single person got better. I talked to you about the funding riders, the United States government has defunded the justice department. Congress allowed the District of Columbia to legalize cannabis.
18:43
Now the thing about that is that Congress actually had the power to stop it from happening, but Congress specifically chose not to do so, and DC has a recreational cannabis program. So you might think to yourself, well, when did this happen? Is this all recent? Like, how did cannabis, how did people start using cannabis, and when did people start
19:01
thinking about it in the United States? You'll never believe who one of the most prominent hemp farmers in the history of the United States is. George Washington was a hemp farmer, and he talks in his diaries and correspondence about how much he enjoyed smoking his sweet hemp. Sweet hemp was what colonists and pre-constitutional Americans
19:21
used to call weed. Sweet hemp. And not just him, Thomas Jefferson was a very successful hemp farmer. James Madison actually said that sweet hemp was one of the things he used to inspire him to draft the Constitution. And it's not just those presidents, lots of presidents smoked pot.
19:42
And don't believe Bill Clinton, he inhaled. And Barack Obama said that he inhaled. Barack Obama said he inhaled. You know why? Because that was the point. Jimmy Carter smoked weed. George W. Bush smoked weed. And don't believe anything you hear. Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and the guy who's in the White House now, they've all smoked weed. And you know what?
20:01
They've all lived to tell about it. And I can tell you that when you look at a cannabis in the United States, I mean, we should go back a little bit further. In 1860, the United States actually published something called the pharmacopeia. For those of you who are old enough, there used to be something called the physician's desk reference. Basically, it was a list of all accepted medications that had been recognized by the medical establishment.
20:25
Would you believe that cannabis was in there? Cannabis was there, talked about for menstrual cramps, migraine headaches, insomnia, digestive disorders. And then in the 20th century, cannabis was expanded to be used, are you ready for this? For treatment of asthma.
20:41
Now, even today, if you speak to a pulmonologist and you ask a pulmonologist about whether or not cannabis can help with asthma, most of them will say it does work, but they don't know why. I'm convinced it's the anti-inflammatory qualities of cannabis because asthma is an inflammatory reaction in the pulmonary system. But regardless, the point is that
21:01
you actually used to use cannabis to treat asthma. In 1942, during World War II, the United States government started publishing handbooks which listed hemp for victory. It said hemp for victory. And they were encouraging farmers to grow hemp. In 1944, the LaGuardia
21:21
Commission actually was commissioned to, again, show that cannabis was really dangerous and that it was a gateway drug. This is the report that came out. And again, this is a consistent theme. Every time they try to commission a study to show that cannabis is dangerous, they come up with the opposite result. The practice of smoking marijuana does not lead
21:40
to addiction in the medical sense of the word. The use of marijuana does not lead to morphine or heroin or cocaine addiction. And no effort is made to create a market for these narcotics by stimulating the practice of marijuana smoking. Marijuana is not a determining factor in the commission of major crimes. The publicity concerning the catastrophic effects of marijuana smoking in New York City is unfounded. Every time they look at the issue,
22:03
they know it's a lie. So here's the question. How did they come up with the most recent version of their lie? Well, again, let's go back to 1970 and the Nixon administration. If you look back at your history, you'll remember that at the time, we were in a state of crisis, right?
22:20
The Vietnam War was raging. The 60s were still raging. Nixon was really an establishment politician facing a cultural transformative shift in American society. So he saw certain groups as enemies of his administration. And the thing, the common element between the two,
22:40
between those groups and between the groups that were against him was cannabis. So what do we know? John Ehrlichman was counsel and assistant to President Nixon, and this is what he said on the record. You want to know what this was really all about? Nixon had two enemies, the anti-war left and black people. We knew we couldn't make it illegal
23:06
to be either against the war or black. But by getting the public to associate the hippies and marijuana and blacks with heroin and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.
23:24
John Ehrlichman, the chief counsel to the President of the United States, acknowledged that the war on drugs was a lie. And it's not just John Ehrlichman. H.R. Haldeman contemporarily reported all that information in his diary. You guys probably know this guy.
23:42
He's on CNN from time to time. Roger Stone, he's a big friend of Donald Trump's. I actually met Roger Stone. He was a witness in our case. He provided us with an affidavit. Roger Stone was at ground zero for the war on drugs because he met with Miles Ambrose to discuss America's drug policy in 1971. Miles Ambrose disclosed to him that the entire
24:06
point of criminalizing cannabis was to suppress the rights of African Americans and those against the war. This is the fight. We are talking about a law that is purely rooted in racism and is having effects today. Because today, as I mentioned earlier, there are a lot of people,
24:26
tens of thousands of people who need an administration of cannabis to live. And they are fighting this war, which was started again out of racism. And unfortunately, the poster child for the current position on cannabis is this guy. First it starts with
24:42
marijuana. Next thing you know, they'll be listening to Lindy Hop and Dancing with the Folk. This is the face of the anti-cannabis movement. Now, under the Controlled Substances Act, the way it works is the Attorney General actually can de-schedule cannabis. There's
25:01
no way that he's going to do it, obviously. And so we actually thought, should we try to lobby the Attorney General, get him to change it? Well, of course not. Because I mean, he's so narrow-minded and bigoted, it's impossible to get him to agree to anything that would be in any way open-minded about cannabis. So we knew we couldn't go that route.
25:20
So what we did was we filed our lawsuit. And as I emphasized to you today, the principal claim in the lawsuit is that the laws governing cannabis simply make no sense. I'm going to go back to the beginning just briefly to show you those three requirements. Again, all three requirements must be met. Is it rational in any sense of the word
25:41
that there's no medical applications whatsoever in the United States for cannabis when the United States government has a patent on it? Of course not. Is it too dangerous for medical treatment, even under strict medical supervision, when the United States government is growing cannabis and distributing it to patients all over the country for the last 42 years? Of course not. We need a judicial solution because the legislative solution simply isn't possible.
26:04
And the fact of the matter is that the courts have to step in when Congress acts unconstitutionally, which is exactly what we have here today. The United States government is acting unconstitutionally. So in just wrapping up, what I would say to you guys, I get a lot of questions when I speak about the lawsuit. What can we do next? How can we
26:24
make it so that we can all make a difference? The first thing I would say is keep the pressure on. If you're on social media and you're comfortable talking about cannabis, talk about today's talk. And by the way, Google some of the things we talked about. If you're a little bit skeptical or you want to block and copy in a couple of those articles,
26:40
put them in. You can find that patent on the internet. You can find all the evidence of the government's GROW program in Mississippi, the Missoula study, the Schaefer Commission report. You can get all that information online. So first of all, I would say try to do it. And if you're not a Facebook person, Twitter, Instagram, however you can do it.
27:01
The second thing is we are going to be arguing this case sometime between September of this year and the end of the year, December 31st. If any of you are in New York, come to the argument. It's in the Second Circuit courthouse at 40 Center Street in Manhattan. Show up, because it's really important that the judiciary sees how important this is to all of
27:24
us. Because when it comes down to it, when people ask me if this is a lawsuit about weed, I always say the same thing. It's not a lawsuit about weed. It's a civil rights case. Because Congress shouldn't be imposing laws on us that are irrational, and they shouldn't be imposing laws on us that are rooted in racism and bigotry. The government shouldn't be enforcing
27:44
laws which prevent people from traveling. Because remember, if you were someone who relies on cannabis to live, and you live, let's say, in Colorado, you can't go to Washington, DC and advocate to your public officials and say, hey, listen, I'm living proof that cannabis works. And so as a result, believe it or not, the only voices that the people in
28:03
DC get to hear are those who are against cannabis. Because those who show up are concerned about being stigmatized, or some of them can't, as I said, can't go at all. So it encroaches on your rights to free speech, your rights to travel, and it violates the Commerce Clause. Because the last thing that anyone who was drafting the Constitution was thinking was that
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in some way, a bunch of bureaucrats in Washington, DC could control whether or not somebody wants to sit in their room and light up a joint. There's no way, no way that the Constitution was intended to have that reach from the federal government. Anyway, so I'm available to answer any questions you might have, but thank you very much for your attention, and I look forward to speaking with you. I'm glad to take questions if you have them, or otherwise we
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can just go to the panel. What's that? I wish. He's never going to show up.
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I've invited him several times. He never accepts the invitation. The lawyers we're arguing up against are lawyers from the Southern District US Attorney's Office. And the only way I get Jeff Sessions in a room, and I'll tell you there is one way, actually, and that is if he shows up for his deposition. Now, if he shows up for his deposition, leave me all
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your information. I'll invite all you guys to come. It's going to be a lot of fun because I can't wait to ask him questions about all this stuff. It'd be remarkable to hear him try to answer them. So when that day comes, I'll let you know, Bill, and distribute the list. Yes? That's a great question. And so really, it's a significant
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dispute in the cannabis industry because there are companies, green companies, that are actually patenting strains of cannabis. So the answer to your question is the way you extract the THC
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from the plant creates a particular strain. The terpenes you put in, put in a particular strain. There are different ways to harvest cannabis and to use and to develop it so that it adds a certain man-made component to it. So you cannot patent, you know, water, okay,
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that you find in, you know, in a spring. But if you do something to the water and you make it different, then you can patent it. And so the government has patented cannabis both at the federal level and also, as I said, internationally. And so, and there are other companies that have done the same. Or the process, right?
31:33
Well, as I said, I have to tell you, I have to tell you that what you're raising, the issue
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you're raising is something that's a hotbed legal issue in the cannabis world because there are companies right now, in California in particular, that are, that are patenting cannabis products. And it's a, it's a, it's a really, you know, contentious issue because some people take the
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position that you take, which is you can't patent, you can't patent something that, that's growing naturally. And their response has consistently been, we're doing something different to it. So what I would say to you is I would follow it on the internet, follow it because this is an issue that's going to develop over time. There's been no final determination on it by the Supreme Court, but I'm looking forward to hearing about it because it is an interesting issue.
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Yeah, I hear you. Yes.
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There is a treaty 2005 for a Supreme Court case, Gonzalez v. Ray.
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Yes. I'm sure you're familiar with that. For those of you who don't, that's where the Supreme Court decides that the Congress can prohibit you from growing something in your home for personal use in this case because it affects interstate commerce in theory. So do you think this would affect the outcome of your case and do you plan anything about it?
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So we have actually asked the courts to overrule Gonzalez v. Ray, but let's be clear about, about the scope of Gonzalez. The Gonzalez v. Ray case stands for the proposition that the United States Congress has the power to regulate the growth and harvesting of cannabis, even if it occurs entirely within a single state. Now, under our Constitution, Congress only has the
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power to regulate interstate commerce, commerce between the United States and other countries, and commerce between the United States and Native American tribes. They don't, Congress is not supposed to have the power to regulate commerce that occurs entirely within a single state. And in 1942, there was a case called Wickard v. Filburn, which involved the
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harvesting of wheat. Some guy was growing wheat on his own farm, and the federal government was saying, listen, we have a wheat program, and if everybody starts growing wheat on their own farm, it's going to depress the price of wheat, which is going to hurt our war effort. They convinced the United States Supreme Court to say, yep, that's true, you can actually, the Congress has the power to reach into a single farm and regulate it. And on the basis of
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that Wickard case, the court in Gonzalez v. Ray said, well, if Wickard says we can regulate a single farm, we can obviously regulate what goes on within a single state. I can tell you that right now the composition of the Supreme Court is likely not to support that decision anymore.
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There are four conservative justices on the Supreme Court, and there may very well be a fifth one soon. And I can tell you, those five Supreme Court justices are very unlikely to support Gonzalez v. Ray. So we have strategically decided to not only sue on the basis of the due process clause, equal protection, the racism and the irrationality issues, but also
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on the commerce issue, because we know that when we get to the Supreme Court, we will have at least four judges who are going to look at the Gonzalez v. Ray case and the commerce clause case and say, you know what, Congress didn't have the right in the first instance to regulate cannabis back in 1970, so therefore the whole statute is unconstitutional, and then we're done. Yes? Thank you. 100%. They will appeal. Absolutely. And what I can tell you
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about it is, I look forward to it. I really do. I want this case to go to the Supreme Court because I do want us to win it. Yes? Well, there are two things. Our goal is to have
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the Controlled Substances Act declared unconstitutional, and once that happens, well, we have limited as to the designation of cannabis. We're not looking to make heroin available to everybody. Sorry for those of you who are interested in that. But we are asking for the law governing
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cannabis to be declared unconstitutional, and once it's declared unconstitutional, that means that it's not like the court says, okay, we'll make it Schedule II or Schedule III. No, it's completely off the chart, which means it's completely decriminalized, and if Congress wants to change that, they have to go back and restart the process.
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I will say this, and I know I'm running long on time. I'll just say, you okay? I tell you this. We have the midterm elections coming up in November, and there have been more than a few whispers that the Republicans who are concerned about losing their majority in the House of Representatives are thinking of changing their perspective on cannabis. For those of you who
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will remember, John Boehner, former Speaker of the House, Republican, conservative Republican, is now a member of a green company, a cannabis company. He's a member of the board of directors, okay? His partner, William Weld, is a Republican from Massachusetts, former governor of Massachusetts, also joined the same company as a member of the board of directors.
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As soon as that happened, Chuck Schumer from New York, Senator from New York, says, oh, well, we're for it, too. You know, way to come to the party late. But the point is that I do see the real possibility of movement in the United States Congress or from the Justice Department. We could see Donald Trump overruling Jeff Sessions and saying,
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you know what? You need to decriminalize it. And then he could become the hero of the cannabis movement, and he will be looking for Republicans to be supported. I could urge you that once he makes that decision, don't vote for him. But that's a whole other story. Take our win, and let's keep it, right? Take our win, let's keep it.
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But the other thing I'll tell you is that New Jersey is about to become the 10th recreational cannabis state in the United States. And once that happens, I can tell you right now, New York is not going to be far behind. Because I'm a New Yorker, we lost the Giants, we lost the Jets to New Jersey. We're sure as hell not going to lose cannabis to New Jersey
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also. Keep an eye out for New York. It's going to be, I bet you it's on the ballot in 2020. And New York State, which has the eighth largest economy in the world, will become a recreational cannabis state, which means we'll have the fifth largest economy in the world in California, and the eighth largest economy in the world in New York,
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recreational cannabis states. At that point, it's over. The United States of America will be a decriminalized society. So one way or the other, look out for some exciting news in the next few weeks. Thank you.