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Here we have Idaho is sponsored by First Class Cleaning, Tom Luna and Victor Miller.
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Welcome to Here We Have Idaho. A local show focused on celebrating Idaho and all it makes Idaho
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great. Here we have Idaho will highlight important issues and events that impact Idaho's
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citizens and families. Each week we will visit with those people who are writing Idaho's
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story and keeping the spirit of Idaho alive and well. Just like our state song says,
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there's truly one state in this great land of ours where ideals can be realized.
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The pioneers made it so for you and me, the legacy will always provide. Here are your hosts,
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Victor Miller and Tom Luna. Good afternoon and welcome to another episode of Here We Have Idaho.
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I'm Victor Miller, one of the co-hosts and my other co-host Tom Luna is out on vacation and he
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sends his warm hello to everyone and today we have a real special guest, good friend of mine and
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former prosecutor, federal prosecutor, big deal, especially took on some hard things in the drug
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drug work and it's my good friend, Monty Styles. Welcome to Here We Have Idaho Monty Style.
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I am thrilled to be here, Victor Miller, the man, the legend. Thank you for having me on the show
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today. So let's start. Today we want to talk a little bit about the marijuana initiative that is
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being brought by the natural medicine alliance of Idaho. But before we get into that,
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Monty, tell people a little bit about your background. Real quick, I born and raised in Idaho
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after law school. I came to Ada County to be a deputy prosecutor five years later. I was hired
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at the U.S. Attorney's Office to be a federal drug prosecutor. I ran the federal drug task force
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for 25 years and I did a lot of drug cases and I learned a lot of things and I had some very
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interesting experiences and that's my background. Now I'm involved in drug education and training
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and I worry about a lot of things including the things you're going to ask me about today.
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Well, Monty, as you know, in 2019, 2021, 23, 25, the legislature actually had medical cannabis
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act bills in front of it. It didn't even get out of committee on any one of those. It actually
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stiffened our laws with a law against possession of fentanyl and also a possession of under three
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ounces of marijuana. And so we've actually stiffened our drug laws, said no to marijuana. But yet
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here we are with an end-around, end-around the representative system that we call our statehouse.
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And we have the thing called the Idaho Medical Cannabis Act, which is being brought to us by the
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natural medicine alliance of Idaho. So tell us a little bit about what your impressions are of
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the natural medicine alliance of Idaho. Okay, so over the years in addition to legislation
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that never passed, we've had initiatives one after another and they're all designed to get
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a drug legalization bill on the ballot for voters to vote for. They have never been successful.
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Idaho is one of the few states that has pushed back on this so that they've never qualified for
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the ballot. All of that changed, at least the danger to Idaho changed last fall when the natural
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medicine alliance of Idaho came on the scene and they filed an initiative, another medical,
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so-called medical marijuana initiative. And they started collecting signatures. The difference
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this time is that the amount of money that they poured into this and the secret of nature of the
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groups behind it, it makes it an entirely different thing, Victor, because they went from zero
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money in the past or very little money to over 1.2 million that they put into it so far. 900,000
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of that is gone to a out-of-state political consulting firm that is orchestrating a statewide
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signature gathering campaign and paying people to get signatures, about $5 a signature.
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They're going around the state getting paid to get signatures and this puts us in real danger
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of getting an initiative on the ballot because people don't know what they're signing. They have no
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no idea of what they're signing. And can you tell us a little bit, do we know where the funding
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is coming from for the Idaho Medicine Alliance of Idaho? Sorry, the natural medicine alliance of Idaho?
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We don't know. One group in LLC, natural medicine alliance, LLC, has donated all the money
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to natural medicine alliance pack. We don't know who that is, don't know where the money came from,
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but 1.2 million for Idaho is a huge amount. I studied these things all over the country and it's
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for a state like Idaho, it's very, very unusual. So the money is unknown and it's attempting to
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change Idaho laws and what they're proposing is a very bizarre, poorly written, almost embarrassing
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from a legal point of view. 24-page document that they want to become Idaho law and they're spending a
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lot of money to do it. And just for context, the last time the kind Idaho people ran a medical
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medical marijuana cannabis act, I think they got 400 signatures total. And now they are alleging
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that they've got 60,000 signatures, but they've only turned in 10,242 signatures to the Secretary of
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State. That hasn't changed much in nine weeks. There's only about 4700 that are considered valid
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signatures out of those. Again, that number hasn't changed in nine weeks. So we have a secretive
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group that is using an out-of-state company basically to run the initiative process that's in
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Utah, I believe, and we have no idea how many signatures they have. Other than that, it's crystal clear.
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So let's talk about the initiative itself and what it does, okay? So first of all,
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the medical cannabis act, the medical cannabis act deals with what's called, quote-unquote,
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serious medical conditions. Talk about those serious medical conditions and how theoretically
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restrictive they are. The proponents of this talk about it as a tightly controlled, highly medical
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plan for Idaho. And in order to get so-called medical marijuana, you have to have a card.
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And to get a card, they have decided in this bill that there are 18 conditions, they call them
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serious medical conditions. And some of them are, but the serious medical conditions also include
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things that are not something that you would think people would need. And that includes anxiety,
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anxiety, and insomnia, and acute pain. And Victor, do you know anybody that couldn't,
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at some point, go into their doctor and say, I am very anxious or I can't sleep,
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that list is so broad, it would virtually allow virtually any Idahoan they wanted to to get a
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card and to buy and use quite a bit of marijuana. So it's a list itself, it includes things that
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are so broad most people could get one. And just everybody knows those three that you talked about,
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which was insomnia, acute pain, and anxiety. Right now, the average, 20% of average Americans
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have anxiety, 30% to 40% are suffering from insomnia, and 77% of people are faced with some kind
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of acute pain that's lasting more than six months. So if you just run the numbers just on those three
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of the 18, it might lead you to conclude that this is not so tight in terms of its accessibility.
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Now let's talk about the doctor's role. What is the doctor's role in getting a medical cannabis
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card? So this is another place where this particular initiative is unusual and slopily written.
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Instead of, most states that go down this road, they get talked into this, they have a provision
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where a person has to go to a doctor and a doctor has to recommend that they use marijuana
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for any condition, basically, in most states. And so you go in and you explain to the doctor what's
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going on, and the doctor would decide, oh, you need to smoke weed, you need to get marijuana
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for your condition. And in that case, most states require the doctor to provide some kind of written
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recommendation, which then is used to get a medical marijuana card. This one, rather bizarrely,
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requires no doctor ever to recommend that somebody get a card, that somebody use marijuana.
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There is no requirement that a doctor recommend that that happen. And in that case,
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it's only the diagnosis itself. It's a medical chart that says you're anxious or you have insomnia
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or that you have knee pain or something. That's all someone needs. A doctor never has to know,
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never has to treat you, never has to do follow-up. It's not required. So there's no medicine
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in the part except a diagnosis, which the people that wrote the bill, the initiative,
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decided what should be on the list. That's who decides. Well, a crazy thing is in a letter to the
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honorary Secretary of State Phil McGrain from Givens Pursley. It actually says a prescription by
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licensed medical professional would not be necessary. There it is, straight out. So then,
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how would the process work of getting a medical marijuana card if it doesn't involve the doctor?
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How does that work? Okay, so voters need to know that under this initiative,
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past that the state agencies, including the Department of Health and Welfare and the Board of
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Pharmacy, would have to set up an entire state program for manufacturing, processing, distribution,
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retail sales, cards, all of that stuff. So a person that wanted to get a card would get a
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diagnosis of one of 18 things. Take that diagnosis to the Department of Health and Welfare,
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who would be required to give him a medical marijuana card authorizing that person to buy
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a quarter pound of marijuana a month and some other products. And that's it. You take your
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paper in. They have to give you a card and that gives you the right to go by pot for without
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any medical supervision, including not just the pot dispensaries that set up around the state,
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including online sales. This is another bizarre part of this is that you don't have to go to a
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pot shop and get and look at everything and decide. You can order from the online sales and have it
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delivered anywhere in Idaho. It gets provides for in-person delivery. I don't know if that's going to be
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Uber drivers for what it is, but anywhere you can get it. This is a very strange
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and far-reaching situation. It's not going to be Uber drivers. It's going to be
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Erbo driver, right? So anyway, talk about so what happens here is you get a diagnosis, you take
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your my chart, you go to the health health and welfare department, the issue of medical marijuana
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by the way, for up to a year. And it's renewable. And then after you get the marijuana, then you tell
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your doctor that you're actually on medical marijuana, even if they didn't think it was the best
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thing for you. And that's a crazy part of this initiative as I read it as well. Talk about
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the bill allows you to have a quarter pound of smokeable marijuana and 20 milligrams of
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ingestible marijuana, I mean a THC. Talk about how much is a quarter pound of marijuana? What
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does that mean in terms of joints or how would we qualify that? Well, the amount of marijuana people
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depends a lot on how heavy of user they are. But you could take a quarter pound and roll it into
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joints and probably result in like eight joints a day for the entire month, which is a lot. You
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basically be wasted every day. And of course, somebody might smoke a lot more than that and they say,
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oh, it won't last me that long. But the 20 grams of THC is very interesting because
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in the old days, marijuana, natural marijuana was 1 to 3% THC. And what they're making now through
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crossbreeding and genetic manipulation can be 25, 30% THC. It's different. It's a completely
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different kind of plant. It's been genetically modified. But the real product of marijuana is not
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plant material. It is THC. That is the active ingredient that makes you high. THC is the valuable
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product. And you can buy that in dispensaries that is virtually pure THC. So if a person had
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the right to buy 20 grams of THC, that is a lot of dope. And it can come in a variety of forms.
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And it's very intoxicating and it's very expensive. A gram of pure THC can reach almost the value of
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a gram of the spot price of gold depending on the market. It's very valuable. So people need to
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understand that these people are growing green gold. That's what they're growing. They're growing THC
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that sold to people under the guise of medicine. Now I don't want to discount the worries of
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people that are truly, truly sick. But Victor, as we've talked about before, it's not that. It's a sad
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thing. But the consequences of legalization are far reaching. There's a lot of grim realities
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of legalizing dope that go far beyond people being sick. Welcome back to, here we have Idaho. I'm
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Victor Miller, one of the co-hosts. The co-host Tom Loon is out on vacation. He sends his warm
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pillows. We're speaking with Monty styles and Monty styles of former federal prosecutor dealing
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with drug issues, very tough stuff. And we're talking about the Idaho Medical Cannabis Act, which
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is an initiative, Citizens Initiative that's being brought by the Natural Medicine Alliance of Idaho.
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And so thank you for joining us, Monty. Another question I have for you is how many pot factories
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or farms could we have in Idaho? I think it's 12 theoretically, six to start, but as our population
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grows it can go to 12. And then with dispensaries going from 18 initially to up to 36 as our population
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grows, what does that mean to have the marijuana being grown and sold like that in dispensaries?
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Well, one of many loopholes or inconsistencies or whatever about this law is that there's a lot
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of detail that's not in there. And so it provides for certain number of licenses, certain number of
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grow locations, certain number, you've already described the numbers, the retail operations that they
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call dispensaries. But there's no limits on how much they can grow. I mean, they could, there's no
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limits on how large these marijuana farms could grow, how much they could produce, how much they
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could sell. It's just no limits on that. But I think Victor, the thing that's probably the most
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troubling or a legal point of view, and that's a practical point of view, is online sales.
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So you're not restricted to people going to a place and buying it. Somehow people are going to be
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able to order whatever they have and get it delivered to their home, their neighborhood, their
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church wherever it is. It's wide open and it's just a wide open market for it. And how they think
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the state is ever going to monitor all of that. How in the world is the state of the state
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department of health and welfare has a lot of things going on. They are in charge of protecting
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kids, protecting communities, protecting health. And now they're going to be in charge of the state
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pot program from seed to sale, keeping track of cards and purchases and all of that and making
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sure it's a bizarre thing. And in a year where we're really fighting for budgets for state agencies to
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take on that additional burden, it's an unbelievable burden they're trying to place on.
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And the one thing you should know is that their own documents say the IDO medical
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cannabis equity increased the administrative budget of the IDO health and welfare department
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by an estimated 1.1 million annually and required 2.9 million dollars of startup costs.
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So as you said in the throes of cutting the state budget, that's kind of a bizarre move.
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Let's also talk about something else about the medical cannabis act, which is very subtle,
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but it's interesting. In 2021, House Bill 126 legalized the production processing research
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and transportation of industrial hemp in IDO. And what's interesting about that
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Monty is that the IDO medical cannabis act would allow five companies and there's been five
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companies that have been producing hemp since 2021 or 2022 when it was first allowed. It would
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actually give them kind of a front row seat on getting a medical marijuana production license. So
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it kind of subrogates the entire intent of the 2021 bill, which was to be about industrial hemp.
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Just some thoughts on that hemp versus marijuana. What does that mean for the grower?
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When the idea of hemp farming was sold to the legislature a number of years ago,
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the hemp industry made a lot of big promises. And there were promises that people promoted to
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legislators and thankfully legislators created a very limited, but now under this law,
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hemp farmers that are growing hemp for fiber or something else will go from 25 cents a pound
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to $900 a pound. And so there's a great incentive for hemp farmers to be in that list of people.
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And another weird thing about this law is it gives them the right to control everything from
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the growing processing, testing, transportation, and even retail sales. The tremendous amount of
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power put in the hands of three hemp farming operations in IDO. So you alluded to the grim
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realities of marijuana. So talk about some of the issues that you've seen as a prosecutor.
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I imagine you've seen some horrific things in illegal grows, illegal grow houses,
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human trafficking. Anyway, tell us a little bit about what you have seen on the ground as a
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federal drug prosecutor that when you look at this, that's why you're here fighting and telling people
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the truth about it. So number one, what you see is a tremendous amount of fraud people getting
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cards that they shouldn't get. And it basically turns into a de facto recreational because of the breadth
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of the bill. But I think a couple of things that strike me as being the most important is people
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need to understand that when government accepts the idea that marijuana is medicine, a crude street
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drug is now medicine without any supervision over that. They get into the mode of communicating
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that not only is not harmful, it is helpful. And that message to our children and to society in
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general is so damaging. It's so damaging because our kids are then said, no, it's okay. The government
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accepts it, the government sells it. It's all okay. So why should we not be able to use this
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wonderful drug that doesn't hurt us and actually could be medicines? That's a huge thing to teach kids
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that. Second thing is people need to understand is the black market flourishes in states where
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marijuana is legalized. And there's a couple of reasons for that. Number one, the man for marijuana
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goes up. Number two, because the so-called legal marijuana dispensaries are taxed and regulated.
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And that gives cartels the opportunity to come in untaxed, unregulated, and undercut the price.
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And so much of the market for marijuana, I think you and I talked about 70% of the marijuana sold
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in these legalized states is coming from cartels. And the cartels are producing it without regulation.
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And so you've got marijuana being grown in the hills, foothills and mountains of Idaho or
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wherever that's being sprayed with dangerous pesticides that make it their way into the environment.
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And into the lungs of users who are absolutely clueless that pesticides that are so dangerous,
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they're illegal in United States being sprayed all over the stuff they're smoking.
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The crazy part, too, is you're alluded to the black market. So it's estimated that the entire
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market is about a hundred billion dollars for marijuana. And then only about 25 billion of that is
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legit, 25 to billion, 25 to 30 billion of that is legit, which means the black market accounts for
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70 to 75% of the market, which is just mind blowing. Hey, I want to, so I watched a video that
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Charlie Kirk did, which I thought was amazing. And he basically said, here are the four big
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marijuana industry lies. So I want to just name them off and see what you think actually happens.
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The first one is legalizing marijuana leads to a decrease in crime. The second one, legalizing
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marijuana, that usage with children will go down. Legalizing marijuana cartels will be weakened.
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Legalizing marijuana will make folks not revere it as much. Your thoughts on those big industry lies.
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None of those are true. That story was told to Californians in 1996 when the first state
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legalization thing happened. It is over the years, it has been so found to be so untrue. And yet
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they continue without those things. Even a state after state has shown that it's not true,
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but they continue. And there's a lot of others that they use. But yeah, that's a sad thing.
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When you think about it here in Idaho, who's fighting, who's opposing this? It's mainly just
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volunteers of people that care. There's no state agency fighting it. There's no group that has
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hundreds of thousands of dollars to fight it. It's just a few people that are trying to educate
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people. When they're facing a group that has a million two, how is that David and Goliath
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thing work? It requires good people to learn facts and share with neighbors and get the information
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out. Because otherwise people will believe this is all about just about gummies for grandma.
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And it's a benign thing when in fact it's a way to change Idaho laws forever and have Idaho
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join other states and foolish laws and policies have led to very serious consequences.
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When if you look at an increase in crime rates, increase cartel activity, you talk about
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increase in pair driving, right? You talk about the economic impact of having a workforce that
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is not marijuana free. You talk about the impact to emergency rooms, to people's health,
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kids psychosis. They're talking about impacts to kids in the womb. They're talking about
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scrummeting, which is this new screaming vomiting from continual use of cannabis. It's just
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the evidence is starting to pile up. What's your thoughts about that?
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For many years, we have excellent leaders in Idaho, legislators, governor,
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others that have kept us free from this. We've been free from large amounts of money because of
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Idaho's reputation for being anti-legalization. But now we have money that's come in and from
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people that we don't know who they are. So, do you think about the consequences?
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Idahoans, even if you don't know about the consequences of marijuana use itself, which you should,
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if you look at the initiative and see all of the problems there and you will know by reading
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their own words that their campaign is not telling the truth.
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What I like is, say, if the medical cannabis act, Idaho medical cannabis act was a candidate,
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you would not vote for the candidate because it's such a flawed candidate. I'd like how you
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said that. By the way, Charlie Kirk to end his video where he talks about the industry lies,
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he poses three questions. As New York, LA, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Denver,
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gotten better since marijuana legalization, two, does marijuana legalization increase national
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unity and improve our strength versus other countries? And three, if more people smoked,
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consumed marijuana, would America be a better place? And his answer was reject the siren song
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of new drugs. And with that, thank you, Monty Styles, for coming on here. We have Idaho.
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And as we always say, before we sign off, God bless the great state of Idaho. And thank you again,
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Monty Styles. God bless America and God bless Idaho. Thanks, Victor, appreciate it.
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Thank you for joining us today on Here We Have Idaho. We hope you enjoyed today's show and we
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look forward to visiting with you for a half hour each Wednesday and Friday at 4 p.m. on Kspd 790
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a.m. and 94.5 FM. Till next time, God bless the great state of Idaho.