Substance Abuse in Idaho with Monte Stiles

I

Money styles my god, we made it sir. How are you great? How are you? I'm good man

I'm good. I've been really looking forward to this for a long time you and I know a lot of a lot of people in comment

I have a lot of friends that are in law enforcement

You've been in law enforcement for a long time you agreed to come on to talk about you know essentially the medical or excuse me not medical

But the recreational marijuana initiatives and movement kind of to across the country sure you have

Very specialized knowledge in this

So do me saw just tell everybody your background, you know how you kind of arrived here

So I born and raised in Idaho

I've lived in different places in the world, but this is home

Raised all their kids here all my families here. My mom still lives in the house. I grew up in and

I went to law school got out can't became a county prosecutors Ada County prosecutor handled everything from started with Jay walking things at petty theft

work my way up DUI's burglaries robberies homicides and

Every day saw all of these people going through the system

I mean just tons of people going through the system and after a while I realized watching these people with serious crimes

Get before a court and be sentenced or plead guilty or whatever and I realized that

Most of those people were there because of an underlying substance abuse problem

They either did something stupid while they were using a drug could be legal could be illegal

It did something stupid or their lives had just

gone out of control and they're doing things that are destructive to themselves their families the community and I started to think about

If to make a real difference is it is it a good idea to be out here at the edge of the tree clip off a few leaves or go after the roots

Right, and I thought the roots is that's where I want to go and so I got involved really early in drug cases and

After a little while five years the US attorney's office hired me that's the federal prosecutors office

They hired me to run the organized crime drug enforcement task force which just is a fancy name for a group of agents

Analysts prosecutors and our job as federal prosecutors was to be in a room with

cops from all over and

Think about and discuss

Who the biggest baddest meanest nastiest drug traffickers were in the area

kind of instead of being reactive and you know catching somebody on a traffic stop to actually think about organizations and

proactively go out start investigations surveillance buys

Wiretaps whatever and so with that task force we did a lot of very interesting cases did everything from

All kinds of cartels international drug smugglers tie time marijuana smugglers all over the world they had property did LA Street

Gangs one of them moved into polka tello Idaho with a limousine

About 20 of them it names like grizzly spanky junior and they took over the

Crack cocaine market they made a crack cocaine market in polka tello Idaho

And if they they were all tatted up and they all had guns and it was wild. I did a some biker gang stuff, but

bottom line is I spent

30 years

Seeing the darkest side of society seeing the worst

Possible things the degradation of human beings that the damage to children damage to families that chaos that these people created

Along the way, and I just the more I saw it the more I felt like

This is a good thing to do, but and long the way I thought

You know, I know a lot of things that could help people so I started doing a lot of talks

I mean everything from a scout troop to a high school assembly to a state conference of some organization

But in 19 how long ago it was I don't know

Before I was ready to I couldn't retire because I needed more years. I had this

very strong feeling that I needed to leave a job that I loved and

Do

Prevention education full-time. So I

Walked away from a job week before it could be tired and everybody thought it was nuts

Because they said well, what's your job going to be and I said I don't know and and I just I know how that goes man

Holy cow, so

I went out

To the drug prevention world

Thinking I make a big difference and I spoke to a lot of people

My my approach I think is different than a lot of drug educators because even though I can talk about drugs all day

I think when you're talking about those things you got to provide a solution and so even though I gave talks all the time

Drugs this and that from every imaginable angle

I'd end to talk and think you know what I told them a lot of things that they need to know

But I didn't feel satisfied that it actually helps them and then I realized that because I love nature and I love the outdoors

I love photography I love wildlife photography in particular that if I

Put that part of my life into the end of a talk I could go from the the point of view where I'm talking about people who

They live in this awesome world and they start to use drugs with you know legal or illegal and their world starts to collapse

It gets smaller and smaller and smaller until this is it. This is their life. This is their religion

This is their friend. This is their social life. This is everything people will

give up everything for this and

So when I start talking about the world we live in whether it's kids or a bunch of business men in corporate meeting

I flipped that and I said now we're gonna talk about something that's more important than that is

The awesome world do them and I start showing them pictures

Start with macro pictures and then something else and then wildlife and it got go everything from

grizzly bears to

mountain lions in the hills of Idaho and

It goes more and more until you get into people and landscapes and ultimately

I love to end with pictures of the earth and the sun and Pluto and

Nebula and to get out to that very far

Hubble deep field South kind of stuff where it's just boom there's so many stars out there

Thousands of stars and the end of it the best ending I could give is

This is the university living. This is the world we live in and

When you think about these people that are their world is collapsing like this

There it's about to or it's starting to or it's like this. I think the best gift we gift we can give them is to

Open it up again

Help them see that and especially helpful with kids

I think and the idea of giving them ideas for natural highs things that

Can bring them joy

Excitement adrenaline all of those things you get them interested in those kind of things

They offer them something that's infinitely better than anything the drug culture offers

When society understands the importance of that we're gonna do a lot more to promote that kind of thing

Instead the other thing we're gonna talk about which is governments

joining drug traffickers to share in the proceeds

Which is the other part of the problem so bottom line to all that given going out into the world to teach

Tealing with all of these kids

It very quickly came to my

Knowledge that kids don't believe us anymore. They don't believe anything we say

You try to talk to them about drugs

They live in a world map where they're political leaders

People tell them you know drugs are okay. That's a good thing. It's to make this money

It can do great things. We're gonna. We're gonna do this. We're gonna make it legal

We're gonna make lots of money. We're gonna give it to schools and not only is it not bad

It's medicine. It helps you and so when we go in now

To try to talk to kids and tell them oh drugs are bad

What is they supposed to think when they're state?

The government are on down is cheering the fact that they're making X billions of dollars so we'd

They don't believe this and that's one of the main reasons I pay a lot of attention to

Every movement to legalize drugs from pot to

Every drug in some states have been that so I've spent a lot of time talking

Dealing with all of that. Yeah, that makes it that's a long story. Listen. I appreciate it

I

I had a rowing coach in college and I he was this

Ravaness athlete even it and funny enough and I'm like his age

When I was like 23 he was in his early 40s and he was this monster athlete. I mean just

Like as a 23-year-old you look at guy like dude. You're like a viking

63 just on tank and

He I asked him when I was like hey Jeff

What would you do like if you didn't have athletics like what would you do with yourself if you couldn't work out and he?

You know as a younger person I was engaged in these in these pursuits where you know as part of the pursuit

You had to blow the doors off you had to give everything you had in some and but it wasn't really

That I understood it the it was time. It was like no, I'm on this team

This is what we're doing as a team, but Jeff did it because that's what Jeff did and I asked him

I was like why do you do like what would happen if you stopped?

He's like I would absolutely be medicated and likely fall into some level of of mass depression

Oh, and I was like well, that's a little weird

She was like what do I know right?

but later in life

You know I left college and I started working really really hard my wife and I did she was a college athlete as well and we both

We'll kind of lost our way, you know, and we didn't we didn't you know start using drugs or anything like that

But we lost our way and we came kind of became removed from ourselves right here

We were these D1 athletes and we understood

Feeling the world and feeling our bodies and and the whole thing we came back to it later though

You know when I was 27 I really got and got into Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and that kind of let the fire again and now in my life

I understand so much of like okay, if you don't have this thing that helps you this thing

Yeah, if you don't have this thing that helps you

Appreciate your fellow man if you don't have this thing that helps you appreciate a

Cold glass of water if you don't have this thing that that brings you back out of your head and all of your worries and all of your concerns

and all of the complexities and brings you back to the world

Then you lost man, yeah, and I've gone through phases of my life where I have been away from that moving here

In fact the first year was extremely dark

I didn't have you know my Jiu-Jitsu community and I didn't I didn't have you know this out for that and I ended up

I was living on a street with a bunch of guys that had just moved here too

So they didn't we all just kind of became friends and man we all ended up drinking like three four nights a week

Now I'm not even a drinker all of a sudden it was like oh my god

What are we doing the thing to do? It was this thing to do and what it replaced?

Was this hole in me that connected me to the world it connected me to who I really was so when we when you talk about people that

Get obsessed or addicted to or the whole world view reduces down to just them and their feelings and their need for this little thing

I get that I get that because I've gone through phases where I was just thinking about myself and I wasn't you know

Again, it's just such a dark thing and to find

To find a way out of that is very hard if people don't have a path forward

So what brought you out of that then you know what you know what happened

Christmas Eve of 20 or excuse me New Year's Eve 2022

You know obviously hanging out with a bunch of people to like to drink and party and I left that night and I was like you know, man

I don't have an alternative. I don't know anyone else here. I don't have any other friends

But I know

I'm never hanging out with them again. Whoa and I just knew it was like this is not this is not it and what I did immediately

It was like okay. I spent all of January 1st of 2023

With my boys sitting on the couch just thinking like okay

You're gonna walk back every single decision you've made this entire year and you're gonna walk back and you're gonna figure out

Why those decisions were made and how you can make sure that that doesn't happen again?

Because you've you've landed in a place you don't want to be and you're it. You're the only reason you're here ain't nobody else to blame

You're in and what I realized very clearly that day is I had lost

Community and I hadn't replaced it. I had lost something. I was engaging in mastery. I hadn't replaced it

I had lost something where I had something to contribute not just friends in a community

But I had something valuable to contribute and I had lost that so I

I took a and they were small humble steps, but they were important and they seemed very dumb looking back on it, but

mastery I I started playing chess like six to eight hours a day and I was like

I'm gonna play as much chess as I possibly can and get as good at this as fast as I can and it became this brawner

Like okay, you're developing mastery. If you're seeing progress. Yeah, I started training Jiu-Jitsu again

Twice a day every day, so I'd go at 6 a.m. And then I go at noon. So I had a community

And I had something I could contribute to my fellow man because I happened to be very good at Jiu-Jitsu

I hadn't been focusing on it

I'd been focusing on my dumb self this little tiny world, right?

So I started engaging in these things all the sudden my sleep my diet my mental state all regulated

Instantaneously I was up early looking forward to you know these pursuits. I

Found friends that I had been waiting to find but I wasn't finding them in the bottle

I was finding them through common struggles, right?

These were all things and again when when we talk about drug addiction

I

Feel that not that I've had I have members of my family that have had real struggles with drug addiction

I very luckily have avoided it

But I think it's not because I'm a better person

I think I avoided it's a younger person because I had these pursuits

I think I avoided it through the bulk of my adult life because I had these pursuits and I'll tell you what the time I didn't

I fell in to a horrible rhythm and and situation in life. So like I get when you're talking about

Getting young people to understand how much broad of the world is that they might have something to

Looking at themselves will likely make them less happy with themselves. Yeah, all of those things man

They they resonate deeply

So one of the many interesting things I found about you

Is your what did you made your in something called red or

In college at Berkeley about places when I read those words. I thought oh my goodness. Who am I going to be talking to rhetoric of Berkeley

But that was fascinating to me because it relates to

The other stuff we're going to talk about how people co-op words how they ask change the meaning of words

How they pretend that this word that we know what that word means forever is now redefine to fit our needs and it's

It is very prevalent in the in this world of

changing society through

Deception you know your

Your pinning that is so accurate the the director or the head of the partner this guy Michael Machute back when I was

Wasn't I was graduate. I was 22. He gave obviously a speech at that the commencement ceremony and

He at the graduation he was like listen most of you and because all the parents are there. Yeah, we're like

The hell did we just get our kid a degree and like what is this like nobody even knows and

His point at the end which I thought was so beautiful and so on on target was he's like listen

rhetoric is just the creation and destruction of a world view

That's all you're doing it's developing the capacity to create a world view using language interesting

And if you think about it's like just like you're saying we have these words that have meaning and then we attribute that meaning to

Things going on in the world right if you change the words you change the meaning you change the order and the articulation all of a sudden

The things you think are

Your world view right, you know like that's it. That's all social media is it's just mass ingestion of people's world views

They just use video for it. So I thought

Thinking about what a master at what a degree in rhetoric would do it

It would probably give you a foundation for changing things

But it seems like it also would allow you to deconstruct yes, or

Break apart take apart break apart. Yes. What's happening and it's bizarre the

A crude street drug becomes medicine a pot dispensary becomes a pharmacist's pharmacy. It's all very bizarre

You they call medicine

Something that's in a

Mason jar and it's labeled green crack or Armageddon or ak 47 or bludering

That's medicine. That's and they have spent 30 years

brainwashing people

For this idea and for the most part they've convinced

A lot of the people that it is medicine, but they don't know why and they don't know how they're being deceived

And all of that's going on in Idaho. It's been going on forever and I've watched it happen

Idaho Idaho is known as and this is the pot world

designation as the most hostile state in America for drug legalization

Most hostile state in America and we're one of the few that still haven't succumbed any of that. There's reasons for that

um in my opinion if every state had followed the things that Idaho did we wouldn't have this mess going on

All over me. May I ask you a question? Okay, so we have I know has an enormous amount of federal land, right?

Our open space. Yeah, huge just like 65% of the state right there is

There are very notable examples throughout for instance my former state in California of game wardens and you know

Essentially forest rangers and whatnot coming upon

Mass grow operations in

You know federal lands or shite lands are or you know just open lands because essentially what the

The legalization has done within that state is

Yeah, you have the pharmacy right and have the armageddon and jar whatever

But you also have the liberalization of law enforcement against people with illegal grow operations

Yeah, so like look this is this is something you could buy at the pharmacy or all right

They're grown it illegally, but like because you can buy it at quote the pharmacy

It's like we're not really going to treat this as like a mass felony. Yeah, I like it just

It's it's not that big of it. It's more of a misdemeanor to be growing it illegally, right

But that law was thinking about like you and me like you and I really want to grow it

And we're like grown in our backyard and then the cops show up and they're like you shouldn't be doing this

You should be buying whatever right it wasn't designed to be for the cartel members

That went out into federal lands and grew you know 100 acres or whatever the acreages of illegal marijuana

Using you know illegal or highly dangerous pesticides and herbicides

There's no regulation of this stuff and then they funnel it through legal quote legal up

They get the same thing with avocados actually

I don't know yeah, I don't know if you know that yeah, so like the Mexican

cartels actually make more the Mexican not Colombian

But the Mexican martels make more money off illegal avocados than they do off cocaine

Because they have like one legal avocado farm and then they have the illegal avocado farms

And then they funnel all of the product through the legal farm and it comes up

But again, you're taking this stuff you have no idea where it's come from

You have no idea what and then they obviously that's highly dangerous

And then obviously you have these law enforcement agencies that are supposed to be regulating like poaching

And like don't hunt the white tell deer out of season right

And then you have the cartels defending their grow up

So in the middle of these federal lands you have like booby traps and pungy pits and people with

Automatic you know salt rifles defending these and it's like oh my god, man like I'm not designed for this

I

Think about what if you applied that to Idaho and like how just horrifically dangerous that would be especially considering

Are incredibly robust outdoor system right like our recreation since good you imagine everybody trying to go

Elk hunting and being worried they were gonna stumble on a cartel grow operation

That used to happen here

Years ago we spend a lot of time doing outdoor grows on BLM for service land

We'd go in and hit a hit a grow way up and up above Grimes Creek

And there would be a whole mountain side that's cut down and plants everywhere and pesticides everywhere

And people with in camels in tree stands with their rifles and the whole thing and you were you personally are there going through

I've been plant I was in Temecula National Forest in

California a couple years ago and we went into five grows that day, but but here's the deal

these guys

They are there

We sometimes people blame drug dealers for problems, but

We create the demand I tell people if you don't want drug dealers in Idaho quit using tell your neighbors the quit using

There's no reason to be here for them to be here unless there's stupid people will buy their stuff

But as but the drug traffickers that went in the mountains

We have

Amazing law enforcement agencies in Idaho and year after year after year

We hit those guys so hard hit every one of them had helicopters all of this stuff

And it got to the point they started talking don't come to Idaho because once they got caught

We didn't let them go they went to prison for a long time

Boom boom boom pretty soon. We're not having growth and pretty soon

Places like Oregon and elsewhere just making it all legal. So guess where it's easy here easier to go

We don't have that problem because of strong law enforcement good policies

We've had great leaders from clear back to governor otter first governor in america. I think that vetoed a pot bill

And it's just gotten better and better and better we have the strongest legislature

So we've had a lot of things we've done in Idaho that's kept us from making those decisions and

Matt for the best part about this

I've said this for years every year we can delay

Making a stupid choice like joining everybody else is to our benefit because the evidence piles up

It's piling up up up up up every year. We have more evidence that this is a terrible

social experiment that is ruining people

It's corrupting governments in an incredible way because the pot industry is like tobacco

On steroids they learned all the plays from the tobacco company and they're going and there

It's like the board. It's there going out and they're taking or and with all of this evidence about the harms

States are still clamoring to do it because of

money that money goes in the government goes into politicians and people get used to the money and it's basically

They're joining the drug cartels in a share of the money and that's

So basically happens for two reasons stupidity

greed is the two main reasons in Idaho. We have very

Have awesome leaders and good people and we knew a long time ago had to stop

So that brings us to maybe main reason we're here today is what's going on now and how did that happen?

And the dangers Idaho faces because of what's happening today

We've kind of gone to the history a little bit where Idaho's bought the good fight

But now we're faced with an incredibly different set of circumstances

That people really need to know about because it's as potential to change everything

Help me understand this because again, I've had some I've had some people reach out and want to you know

Like people reach out to me all the time

It's like and then they get mad because I don't get back to everyone. It's like dude. I'm one dude

Like the number of emails I get and topics that people bring up and want

But so I've had some people reach out interested in talking about this topic

And it's like, you know, I don't know enough and

In in general the people that reach out are not people that are really you know like

Idaho people that are just trying to

Communicate they're like shade people these are these people running campaigns and I'm like I don't that I'm not interested in that right

Like if you have somebody who's genuinely

You know

An Idaho citizen who's like hey look man like I just we don't want to talk about topic fine

But my point is people have reached out and so I have this problem with who would I interview and then I also have the problem

Like I don't really understand all the landscape. I do know obviously there's mounting pressure

Coming against Idaho to engage in this thing and it's largely from out of state

At least that's what it seems and I don't understand that because it's like listen

If you like new Mexico the way new Mexico is you do you man? Yeah, like if you like Oregon the way Oregon is yeah, you do you

Totally fine for me. That's a beauty of the 50 states. We get to do whatever and largely Idaho is said

Hey, man, we're not really interested in this and that's that's great now again if Idaho was it's none of my affair

Like I'm but one person people get to make their decisions, right?

But I don't understand why there's all this out of state pressure coming to Idaho

It's like we're barely two million people man. Go sell all of your product elsewhere engage in these behaviors elsewhere

What why why does anybody want to change Idaho?

because

We we're not legalizing pot those states they're commercializing THC that's the product

THC gram for gram is

equivalent in value to a

Spot price of gold today. It has been back and forth

The glut in the market right now has changed that a little bit

But if you look at a what's a gram of THC almost pure THC is going for there have been times when those prices are almost identical

That's why it is green gold

They every customer it's green green gold if a hemp farmer in Idaho that gets

25% 25 cents a pound for

Like industrial hemp or something yeah, we even worse because Idaho doesn't allow any THC right at all

So 25 cents a pound versus

900 a pound

There's an incentive to do that and people from outside of the state that have an interest in providing equipment and experts and

Testing material and all that those people are all just waiting for Idaho to join the crowd every little bit helps

Because it's green gold so that gives you the reason this part of it the other part is

Lots of people in America just want to smoke weed. They just want to get high

So they have an incentive to legalize it so they can do whatever they want

So that's that's what's happening and so in Idaho

For years and years and years we've we've had two things going on we've had bills

And some of those bills got very close to passing. We had to fight fight fight

It wasn't easy

And then we have voter initiatives and boom boom boom long the way the voter initiatives have always been

Run by some kind of true believer types. You kind of like dude dude. We need this for medicine and that's that's their pitch

When in fact behind the scenes they're going

Yeah, we just like to smoke weed

But there is that component of people that really feel like it helps them their problem is

When those people complain and say hey, why do you guys fight this stuff?

I say, you know what if you want to blame anybody for this not passing go blame your

Pot smoking buddies that don't care about medicine because there's the one that screw it up

There's a blame the cartel that's going to take a cartel

When we're trying to hunt exactly like though one of the biggest things okay first off

Again in my former state

I did not like what was going on in my former state

And I left and I left the only job I'd ever had

I left my family my wife left her family like we picked up our boys like backpacks and we took off man

So that is like I understand the difficulty of leaving

The place that you know because people like well, this is my home like I want these things

I'm like I don't know anything about it, but don't like first off let's establish

I did make a move when I felt that I needed a different place in America to live and raise my family okay

So that's first and second I

I have I think most people have personal experiences with people who have not been helped by by pot right like yeah

Okay, totally fine

But let's not focus on that even if we want to say hey man some people are not helped by alcohol. That's true too

Okay fine

But the all of the parallel problems that I'm along with this every law enforcement officer that I've spoken with that

That is like listen man. There's not a good idea. I'm like okay

Why what was your experience like help me understand there was like everything else that comes along with it

If you if you used to be able to if somebody used to be you know

Salon pot on the corner in Oakland you could stop them you could yeah give them a ticket you could engage in these things like once

It became oh

Once it became legal and I knew a lot of law enforcement agents in in Oakland like once it became legal

It wasn't just somebody still selling pot. Yeah, now they escalated a bunch of these other things

And it was a train wreck to try to balance these things out plus you didn't stop the illegal operations

You you turbocharged them because you essentially decriminalize

So it was it was it's almost like look this is Brian Brian really like smoking pot. I know Brian

I trained with Jiu-Jitsu with Brian

You know and like Brian's not really that he's not a poster child for like some sea sweet awesome guy who just get stolen the weekends

He's more just a dude. Yeah, you know, menial jobs whatever we can say pots not really helping Brian

Okay, that's not gonna rouse anybody's movement either way the real problem is

Brian likes to go elk hunting and he stumbles upon in a grow operation. Yeah, and they kill him

there's because

Idaho's a gigantic state of open land and we have great fertile earth here and all these it was like

That's what that's what almost everybody says comes as the cost absolutely. So you're what you're talking about right now

Are the grim realities of legalization itself? It's not somebody just getting stolen on the weekend. It's not that guy

It's everything else

So I think I think something to be really helpful is if I can explain what's happening right now

Because the threat to Idaho is greater than it ever has been we've had these kind of

People trying to do this for years. They can't get their acts together to get 70,000 signatures to get on ballot

And I've always told people the other states that lose are the states where money comes in

it buys

Accountants it buys lawyers it buys communication experts it buys people who know how to get signatures

And when that money comes in from out of state or sometimes it comes from in state

But a lot of times out that money comes in it changes everything because now you have a group that has money

and they

Organize

Campaigns where they get signatures they pay people to go out and get signatures and you have army of people

Standing in front of the BSU stadium wave in the sign going gummies for grandma

And it's really their pitch and they people come over and go oh, yeah. Oh, it's a 24 page thing. Oh

Gummies for grandma. Let me let me sign that they have no idea what's going on and I'm

This this initiative this time

It's totally different the group that started this initiative back last fall it's called natural

medicine alliance of Idaho

It is funded so far

1.2 something

million dollars

Never seen any money like that here from an unknown group and then known LLC also called natural medicine alliance for Idaho

First of all, they're pitching something that's not natural because 30% THC weed is not the natural kind of weed

It's a medicine, which is one of those words we talked about where you've got

The word changing its meaning alliance. How does it alliance with people that are unknown?

Unseen how does that and Idaho and we don't even know who those people are

1.2 plus million

Almost 900,000 of that Matt has been funneled to a political

Consulting group in another state

bear

orchestrating a statewide Idaho signature campaign paying people

Hiring them recruiting them some of them even coming from elsewhere and they're out getting signatures

Get five bucks a piece and it's changed everything. It's what what do you think about the bill

That would require people that are signature

signature

Farmers essentially to identify themselves of like who's paying them where if they're from out of state

I think it was Bruce Cog, but I'm like that's great. Yeah, I'm not representative scog

Yeah, he's and it's like that's I think that's so fair like you oh

And there was also one that if you're a door knocker you're gonna have to identify yourself like there we go man

Like people have such an interesting coming into Idaho and messing around with our politics

So there's rules about that and

The rules are you got to have a thing and you got you got to do all of that

But the real danger I mean the rules are something we have to pay attention to but the real danger is a monetary incentive to get signatures

So somebody comes up to me and I'm getting signatures at BSU Stadium

I show them this they go yeah, you want to help sick people

Do you want to help granny get some gummies and people don't know are they gonna read a 24 page document and know what's in it?

No, but here's here's some of the things in this so this particular one

Is this the actual 24 page that they're okay?

This is the natural medicine alliance of Idaho. Okay, the thing they're pitching is one of the worst

I've seen initiatives all over the country. I've analyzed them

But helped people this is one of the worst I've seen

Because it isn't even the pretence of medicine

In this case unlike most states

You do not have to have a recommendation

Advice from a doctor to get a medical marijuana card in if this passes

You don't have to get any doctor to say

You need this so it's full recreation. Oh well, it's a little more complicated, but here's what they're doing

They're claiming it's all about medicine, but you don't need a doctor involved. You need a doctor

So this is the this is the weirdest thing that people need to know

In under this thing this thing this is the one they want people to

Sign for and vote for if it makes the ballot this thing

gives a person the right to take in a not not a recommendation a diagnosis

There's 18 things on this list of things

Some of them serious cancer, whatever sure goes down to 18 things anxiety

You have for anxious buddy all the time on to all the time trouble sleeping in somnia

It's the worst. Hey, do you know anybody that does not have one of those in some of their life

If you go to a doctor and the doctor says in a in a report that you got you have anxiety or you suffer from insomnia

You get a card because under this thing

You take this doctor report doctor doesn't have to even know that you're gonna use this diagnosis

You take it to the department of health and welfare like they don't have anything better to do

You show them this they give you a card

And when you get a card

This thing

allows you to go to any dispensary in the state

but worse

It allows online ordering and in-person delivery

Not a dispensary

And you can order it online and have it sent brought to your home the uber driver the

Whatever it gets delivered to your home. It's the most out of control

First of all the list of medical conditions

Is wide open. There's virtually no one in Idaho that could not get a card

That's where it becomes

De facto recreational use because

Everybody you know can can get a card if they want you don't have to convince a doctor to do it

You go in your doctor and you go my elbow hurts. It hurts all the time. I can't stand

I don't know to who diagnosis your pain in that situation

Who who decides that you have pain that you can't stand anymore? You do you do it's a self-diagnosis

There's no way to verify it. So unless there's a bone hanging out or unless you've got a identifiable disease

Pain is self-diagnosed in a lot of instances. There's ways to tell if people have pain

But if I want to say I have migraines all the time

Who's what doctor is going to say like or anxiety anxiety my insomnia so

There you go. You've got a wide open list

You've got

No medical recommendations necessary. You take in your anxiety or my elbow hurts and the state has to give you a card

And you get to buy a quarter pound weed a month or 20 grams of pure THC if you can get it and

Medicaid all day long every day

And that's anybody you know basically and so the whole thing is

The pretense of medicine we talked a little bit about how people chairs words

They in this bill they talk about patients and medicine and all they say it's highly regulated

It is not it's one of the worst I've seen and so for for listeners

need to understand that

The I you might think the idea of

helping people that are sick with

We that you don't know really anything about the what it does to people the harms that's caused in society

but

You have to know what's in this because this is what

Idahoans are gonna vote for they have to know what's in this before they go signing their signature because once

Enough people sign their signatures. They get enough. It goes on the ballot. That would start May 1st

If it goes on the ballot, I promise there will be a six month campaign

Millions invested in Idaho all for the purpose of convincing everybody in Idaho that pot is good for you

That it's not only not harmless. It's medicine that message will be on every TV station every radio station

And guess what how much money do you think

People that care about this and want to preserve Idaho have in budget

You think they they have a million to right now have none until week or two ago

There was zero and that's usually the case because we don't have any

Nobody has any money to fight this government doesn't

drug prevention groups don't so

it's a

David and Glyah thing

Who's gonna win if somebody's got a million two and the other group has none

If it gets on the ballot, I promise you more money's coming in because

groups that are national pro pot lobbying organizations

They put money in the pot industry puts money in all kinds of people put money in because it's

It's this

And it's all under the pretense of medicine and again, I'm not I don't want to

Not not think about that as serious if people are serious

Our world has taught people that

That saves them that it cures things that it's

It's it's the best thing and you know what

It's

It's not what people think and that like you said the consequences the grim realities of

legalization itself the motives of the people behind it

Idahoans need to know there's an unknown group pushing this there spend a lots of money

They're asking companies outside of the state to

convince Idahoans to sign it if it gets signed enough. It's gonna go six months of

millions more

and

brainwashing Idahoans in the thinking this

is a good candidate for Idaho law

And it's not it's really bad. It's so poorly drafted. It's kind of embarrassing to me as a lawyer

That somebody put this out and wants this to be Idaho law

It's so full of

loopholes and inaccuracies and lack of definitions

It's one of the most ridiculous thing and then when you get down to it man

You even you interview a lot of politicians right you hear about the legislative battles and budgets and all that

Can you imagine

What we're gonna do if the state of Idaho is put in charge of the statewide pot program

Where the department of health and welfare is in charge of everything from growing to processing to distribution to retail sales

Online sales and keep in track of all that

That's a that's a man the amount the amount of money that would be required to keep

With all that

The need for additional law enforcement agents that in higher things. So here's an interesting thing

Don't need the additional law enforcement agents if you can't if the bill itself says law enforcement can't do anything about it

Need this

Well sure that but again

The elk grow operation

No, you got a middle of nowhere

And you stumble upon this thing and you're like okay

Shoot now what are we doing like if you don't like the department of fishing game or the department of lands already

Yeah, you want them to be like militarized because now they have to go after like they are in other coastal

Other states, but in most states they quit they quit enforcing it

And so it's just got too crazy. It's too crazy because the black market thrives in an atmosphere of legalization because

Here you've got this one group

Sell and pot but they're subject to regulation and taxes and different things

I got to follow all these rules the cartels don't have to do that

They're not taxed. They're not regulated and they can undercut this price of anything and so the end end to

Result is you got more black market sales sales more black market

Dope that's cheaper and that's

Where most of the sales go and and the number of young people

And you know adults that get

Pot laced with something like fentanyl. That's a that's a kind of a growing problem

So I was like listen if you legalize it

You're not stopping the illegal operations

No, and then if people are buying things just you know

I bought this from the dispenser or bought this from the pharmacy and they're just handing it to somebody and that person buys it

And it's you know just like a random you know like a 18-year-old selling it to a 17-year-old

But the 18-year-old actually bought it cheap because he bought it from you know the grower

Who's up on the mountainside and it's laced with something and then people start dying

It's like dude. This is even if it's not laced or it's another drug

I think we were talking about this before we went on on air

I've been in grows

It all over but here's something people do not know

Is the pesticides that cartels using grows

Things like carbifurin and they're illegal in the United States

They have to be smuggled into the United States to put on these plants

That stuff pesticides themselves are illegal so

Poisonous and you go under grow guess what they got canisters a little spray canisters

And they spend all day spraying this stuff because they don't want the bugs to eat it

They protect it. So they got millions of dollars of plants and they're spraying this with carbifurin

It goes into the plants it gets absorbed into the plants. It goes down through the roots

It goes into the soil. It goes into the water. It goes downstream

Animals die around there, but the end result

Besides environmental damage like crazy is

This poison that there's in this pot they're smoking

Pesticides

The pot alone is one thing

But if you are smoking an illegal pesticide

Don't you think people need to know that?

Who's telling them that?

Who's telling them that?

Not very many people live anybody. They're smoking pesticides

So it's so dang complicated and I just wish

I just wish people had an opportunity

The pot industry has lots of money to educate people

Brainwash them get them to think that a pot dispensaries of pharmacy

Like government doesn't spend a lot of money on that nobody's telling people different

So what are we supposed to expect if they don't know any different if they don't know this thing is a piece of junk

So badly drafted. It's kind of embarrassing and it's full of all kinds of problems

They don't know that what business do they have

Signing a petition. Sorry about that. You were just saying when people sign the

The petition. I mean obviously. No. I would imagine very few people are reading all 24 pages

Nobody does that nobody and so they rely on what the people that are trying people getting money for every signature

Right are saying and it's gummies for grandma. It's helping sick people

But really it's the details that matter

The

You know what i said 24 pages oh well listen

We don't have to go into i'm just saying like that seems wild that it's like you would have a 24 page document that's

You know part of a legal process to engage

You know what are considered hard drugs right now and like people like oh yeah gummies

But they have to set up

They have to set up the system where there's here's how it works

Here's gonna who's gonna administrative who's gonna how's the this gonna happen this can and they've got everything from seeds

To sale to online sales and delivery at home all to put in this thing

If it if it was well done

And all of the stuff that is important to be in laws it'd be a lot longer

It's full it's so many loopholes and lack of definitions you really don't know

The people that wrote it. I don't know what's wrong with them

But it's embarrassing from a legal point of view

But from a practical point of view Matt there's really only a few things that I think people need to know about this

Number one

There's an unknown group with the weird name

Let's put a million two plus and gonna put more

We don't know who they are they've hired people

They've hired a firm out of another state that

Put people all over the state to get signatures. That's important

They're they're saying things about this that are not true

They're saying this is a tightly regulated regulated program and it's about medicine and all of that

That's not true

It get back to your education of rhetoric and what is it

Ethos pathos and logos those things that they're using

The power persuasion of words they've switched the meaning up and they're feeding this to people

And so you've got that going on so you've got the people behind it

Whatever that is and then you've got the thing itself. I like to think about this is this is the candidate

This is the person we're going to vote for what what do we know about this person is this a good person?

What are they've done in the past what's their secrets

This is the candidate and the candidate is

no medicine

You get in some near anxiety you get your card

You get to go to a dispensary and buy a quarter pound of weed and smoke weed every day or get high

THC content other stuff

Those kind of things people need to know

It's wide open

They like to say it's really restrictive and no there's just 18 things

But it's rare and you see you see bills around the country where chronic pain is kind of like the bottom threshold

Where you get yeah chronic pain they get a card but anxiety and insomnia

You could have anxiety anxiety about not getting a core pot card

It's just

I couldn't sleep last night. I was so anxious that you might reject my I couldn't get a card dude

Yeah, I need to get a card

It's just a very poorly drafted thing and I've people knew those things

Most sane people would not say I'm signing up for this even if they think they've been convinced brainwashed that it's okay generally

They would never support this idea and that's I hope I don't want to get that message

Because if they don't run for six month campaign, it's going to be ugly

And Idaho's even if they lost it the ballot box

six months of brainwashing and millions of dollars will change Idaho children's view of pot forever

That's a consequence

That's a consequence of putting this on the ballot

It gives the pot people an opportunity to don't to put money in to make Idaho

To get their prize to get the most the most

The state that's the most antagonistic towards legalization because we're

We've tried to do it right

We tried to protect Idaho and people like you Matt. Thank you for helping

Get the word out and and I love everything on your website. Oh, I love love love because it's all

Dude I came here and it's it's a great place and

Gotta educate people. We got to tell them about this and this and this and they need to know

These things and if we tell them these things and we educate people we help preserve what's so valuable here

You know, I appreciate that I

I didn't episode recently. I don't know if you've seen it, but it's with this guy Casey Stevenson. Okay. What do you talk about sugarbeats?

Oh, no, I didn't see that one dude. I wouldn't have picked that one. I know

Because why would you pick that one? But Casey I'm telling you right now go home and listen to it

Because what he does is he explains the regulations and the international manipulations on the sugarbeats sugarbeats are huge in Idaho

So when you talk about things that are affecting actual Idahoans and the federal government like

Like the whole thing it was like 45 minutes and my job was just like oh my god

Because I know but these problems in Idaho are real problems and they're significant and people

Even you know again a lot of Idahoans don't know about these different economic drivers that are saying depends on

And dude, I'm telling you right now

That's like every day with me where I hear people I'm like I would never ever think that this would have been like a crazy

Awesome episode

But you know, I let go that years ago something like dude just get ready for the ride whatever happens

Yeah, someday I like to come and talk to you about that flip side of things. Yeah, my favorite talk is called rediscovering joy

Which is a fun topic. Well, Monty let's do this man. Okay

The session's almost over sure. All right. I've been burning through like you know again always I always have limited time in the session

Come back in April. Okay, please come back in April. Let's let's sit down. Let's take as much time as we want

You can come to the actual studio and set it down on studio and let's talk about that. Okay

As far as this topic today's we've talked about a lot of things

Is there anything right now that you want to you want to add at the end best thing I could tell you is um

You don't have to take my word for it. I mean, I would hope

Your listeners would feel like I established some credibility in knowing this stuff and it's not just knowing it's caring about it. It's

I

Wish I could talk to kids about

life when without the competing

Messages they get from a toxic popular culture or politicians that think it's okay to

Share the drug proceeds or people that want to lie about things that hurt them

But say they help them. I wish we could talk more about positive things

But right now we're at a crisis

We're at a time where people need to be educated and there's one place

A resource it's called decline design Idaho. It's a Facebook resource. I can give give you that

But that is filled with information about all the things we're talking about this thing

And so they don't believe me or they need more information

That declined to sign Facebook page gives them a ton and it also has other resources

It'll direct into so

That's where they go if they need more information

Don't you that's it

Monet I really appreciate you. No, I think it's uh, this is really complex

And I think as you've articulated several times. It's like it gets boiled down to a don't you have compassion for grandma?

Sure, like let's get her some gummies. She's got pain. And yeah, like 100% but man

This is a complex problem. It is not just a matter of

Of getting an elderly lady something to ease her you know physical suffering her joints. It's our wildlands

It's our law enforcement. It's that like it's it's the industry

That's from out of state that's trying to manipulate Idaho politics and nothing gets my cackles up more than out of state people trying to mess with Idaho

So I really appreciate you coming in um listen April we're gonna talk about happier things. Hey, it's great. Thank you

I appreciate you. Thanks Matt