In this episode, I speak to a drug-war veteran, my friend: “Buds”. During this episode, we speak about Hash Wednesday.
From what I’ve been able to tell, Hash Wednesday started sometime in the 70s.
What is Hash Wednesday? According to the NewsGazette: “With the click of a lighter, Hash Wednesday was born on the University of Illinois Quad in 1977. It was modeled after other “hash bashes,” particularly the one in Ann Arbor, Mich., which supported reform of marijuana laws, according to co-founder Mitch Altman.”
Soon I will share all of the photos featured in this episode. In the meantime, enjoy this captivating episode!
Watch the first episode in our series on Hash Wednesday here
Watch the second episode in our series on Hash Wednesday here
Watch the third episode in our series on Hash Wednesday here
Watch the fourth episode in our series on Hash Wednesday here
- Watch the full episode on Patreon here
- Watch the episode on Youtube here
- Stream the episode on Soundcloud here
- Stream the episode on Spotify here
- Stream the episode on Apple Podcast here
Read the auto-generated transcript below
today is November 10th 2023 you’re listening to the Cole memo I’m your host Cole Preston in this episode we’re going to be hearkening back to the good old days when hash Wednesday was a thing if you don’t know what hash Wednesday is we just sit tight we’ll tell you about it every episode is released an audio video and transcript format to find the transcript audio or video version of any episode please refer to the description of the episode that you’re listening to within that description you can find a link that you will take you to our website which will display the transcript for this episode and the platforms where you can find this episode in audio or video formats this episode will have some visuals today so you might want to tune in to the video version of this podcast if you’re unable to locate the episode description on whichever platform you’re listening from Simply note the episode number and visit the memo.com from there there you can find the corresponding episodes and then you’ll be able to find the audio video or transcript version you might also find any links that we reference during the episodes so that you might be able to do your own research super important if you’re not listening to this episode of the co memo on patreon then you’re listening to this episode a little bit later than our patrons to become a patron go to the memo.com patreon once again that’s the co memo.com Pat o n it’s a great way to to support our show but one of the best ways to support our show is absolutely free subscribe to or follow our show leave a positive review tell your friends and family about it your engagement and support is appreciated today I’m join joined by an old friend who uh joined me several times on my old show the CH Illinois podcast buds why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself or maybe even reintroduce yourself uh to longtime fans of my work well I’ve like you said I’ve been here before I’m trying to control a cat here it’s jumping around front me so anyway he’s he’s down the floor a little disappointed I I gave him a little love so that hopefully that holds him for now any case yeah I’m um well let’s put it this way I’m an older fella I’ve been around for a long time including for relatively early editions of hash Wednesday I started smoking cannabis in Germany because I was a military dependent and that’s all we had over there was hash and uh so took a bit of getting used to coming back to the to the world as we used to say from over there I came back right about the time that Colombian was getting to be a big deal here in this country sort of superseding Mexican to a certain extent uh but both of them were kind of disappointed after the hashy into things I uh made my first attempt at growing in 1975 it was unsuccessful but then a few years later uh Jimmy Carter started poisoning trying to poison people by spraying weed with paraquat and uh that’s what got me into growing uh and I’ve been pretty much a grower ever since with a few interruptions and uh but uh I guess that’s sort of the base introduction um I’ve uh been a been a longtime uh sort of political activist too and I think that’s an important part of this story so we’ll we’ll talk about that a bit here in a little while yeah and I just have to say you know thank you not only for your service to this country but for your service to uh the the Cannabis movement so um you been in for a while it’s been important to me to do that because uh I’ve always seen cannabis as a human rights issue uh not all of my associates have always been so clear-cut about that but I think we’ve moved in that direction in general yeah well said well said well buds when did you first H yeah when did you first hear about hash Wednesday before you say what it is from your perspective can I just you know when did you first hear about it and how did you first hear about it well uh probably read about it in the News Gazette because I’ve always been a a newspaper reader and that would have been 1980s or thereabouts um because they obviously reported on it in a very disapproving manner for a long time if if not always but uh uh that’s how I found out about it and uh in being a political activist I decided to get involved early on yeah and I know that you saw you you I shared with you this this archive that I’ve gotten my hands on uh from a really awesome Source um I just want to share some images like you say the News Gazette has been covering hash Wednesday since uh well 1981 at least in this in this uh section here Jim day is still around and still minating from the right wing okay Jim day I didn’t even realize so yes yes yes very interesting stuff yeah here’s uh some more here from the 80s that just to prove your point uh there was you know some reporting on hash Wednesday back in the day yes um so yeah what you think maybe you probably heard about it from this coverage um what uh when you finally went to it the first time do um I’m going to throw two questions your way um what was hash Wednesday and I’m just curious how you felt at your first hash Wednesday but first what was hash Wednesday from your perspective well hash Wednesday obviously was a bit of a party I students letting go uh it’s sort of been a long tradition I’m trying to remember what the ex term is sociologically but sort of uh where people let their hair down for one day a year or whatever uh you know where chaos rules to a certain extent many cultures have this sort of event uh so in in that sense it’s that but it was all a political thing uh although that wasn’t always as clear as it probably became clear later on uh I think in part because some of us pushed it in that direction certainly uh because people were protesting an unjust situation unjust laws unjust actions by the State against its citizens yeah and uh when you went when did you go to your first hash Wednesday do you remember your first hash Wednesday I am pretty sure it was 1982 very cool very cool and yes do you remember how you felt at that hash Wednesday what was it like it was uh pretty crowded it was uh A bit chaotic um I know I went there with a clear-cut agenda to to push the Pol political side of things um one of the things that helped with that is I was working full-time uh but I was working on the night shift so that left the days open uh uh to to show up at hash Wednesday without you know even taking time off from work and so that was a good thing it also allowed me to sort of uh organize people from where I work too so uh that drugg along some other people all of us of course were not students uh just working folks in the community who all were cannabis users and had an obvious interest in advancing this cause yeah and uh now this footage I’m about to share is from 1978 but I’m just curious did it look like did it look like this um generally speaking yeah it did except maybe a little bit more crowded uh maybe a little less obvious relaxing smoking weed and stuff okay so they were kind of keeping it on the down low well it kind of varied basically there was a large crowd and uh people were by then you know the the police had sort of started applying pressure I mean there wasn’t a number of arrests or anything I don’t recall specifically 82 unless we have a a site here from uh the archives so to speak but uh it was M much more crowded the one I remember than this one and more of a demonstration sort of thing with people Milling around and there were even counter demonstrators there which I’ve got a story or two about that interesting I have a story about a counter demonstrator as well um did it look like you see how this crowd was so you’re saying you think it was bigger than this um I think so I mean the the camera angle is low here it looks like the quad is full but I’m sure it’s probably not more than about a third of the way down yeah uh but but basically it assembled uh on the south side of the Eli Union the steps there a sort of you know a stage so to speak it’s not really tall or anything but it certainly helped get you up to where you can uh speak out and be heard clearly yeah yeah cool well yeah let’s check if I’ve got any um citations from the 82 I’ve only got a letter to the editor um which is about a squad that champagne was gonna roll out I don’t know if you wna if you know anything about that and I’ve got um a big article um from I believe oh no it’s from the News Gazette but I believe it’s about something that Rand tul was doing um with regard to making paraphernalia illegal well one of the things and I’m not sure about the exact timing on this uh this is a little bit after what I’m going to recall here um in I believe it was 1978 uh basically uh there was a head shop that was right outside the gates of sheno Air Force Base up there I mean right outside in the sense of about 10 steps outside the base gate and uh at that time the Air Force decided to crack down on uh things and basically made it off limits uh this is a thing that commanders can do they can uh say that a certain location is detrimental to the welfare of the service and uh make it off limits for anybody to um uh go there or to be present there and at the time I just happened my roommate happened to be the manager of this head shop so so he basically lost his job uh and uh you know as a paraphernalia thing basically where they followed up the ranol cops did because somehow they felt that uh uh that hadn’t gone far enough there was another shop or two in town that had kind of taken up uh the slack that were a little bit farther away from the base gate where you know they couldn’t directly observe people going in and out from uh the guard shack there at the base so uh yeah uh they basically were trying to push things uh further inspired and Heart by of course the Reagan administration’s very uh pro- Drug War uh positions on cannabis yeah and I think that’s that was basically what they were doing was sort of the local angle on that whole Reagan Era opposition to people using cannabis yeah yeah and uh you know not to to hop too many years ahead but another thing I have from the archive that I feel like you might be able to recall is uh this drug testing phenomena yes yes well this was one reason that motivated my fellow workers to join me in going to Hash Wednesday was because we were sort of the objects of such policies you know they wanted to to scare people on the job uh to use employers as agents in their drug war to enlist them in uh pursuing people um one thing that be understood about drug testing as it basically existed then and pretty much exist now as far as canis goes it does not indicate a current state of intoxication it indicates that you might have used a drug or cannabis anyway in the past in fact it might have been a month ago and as far as an employer goes you really you know unless you know it’s on the job and somebody’s intoxicated what business of it is yours I mean this was the case really when it was in illegal everywhere for all reasons but it’s even more the case now when it is a legal substance and yet here in Illinois employees really don’t have any protection under the law from what the employer decides to do about that so it’s an ongoing issue it’s not gone away it’s just sort of been sub assume because people assume that things are okay and in fact many employers now no longer bother testing for cannabis they exclude cannabis as a reporting factor in their drug testing but it’s a little hard to get employers to say that yeah that’s what we’re doing uh but many of them basically have sort of faced reality they don’t want to know don’t you know don’t ask don’t tell basically is the policy now any of them right to your point let me rotate this photo off to zoom in just a bit here um but uh let’s see let’s make sure I’m showing the right thing um to your point here’s an old article of a employee oh gosh it it blurred up a bit here but um an employee winning a drug case from back in the back in 82 yes well the thing is is that the state of the law was a little bit uncertain and some people overstepped what they could actually get away with in terms of Oppression against their employees so it was heartening to hear this and I believe it was somebody who was employed in the software industry uh which has sort of been a Leading Edge in terms of people you know opposing uh drug testing it’s not really relevant for the most part to writing software um you know you’re not operating any dangerous Machinery or anything like that although AI now maybe that goes the other way but quite frankly you know it it is a bit ridiculous they basically did this because they could and it was the only leverage they could get against individuals at the personal level in many cases because the fact of the matter was that people had easy access to cannabis and um they took advantage of that yeah and another to your point once again uh an article from 87 where uh it the idea is rejected of worker drug testing because uh you know such testing provides no as you said no information about mental or physical impairments that may result from drug use nor does it indicate patterns of use that’s right so it’s been known is the American Medical Association I believe right yeah yeah I was AMA but but it doesn’t really I guess assum you you know know what AMA is I’m pretty sure that’s who they’re referring to here because they’re talking about doctors and stuff so yeah yeah so yeah kind of interesting to see that history and I I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to find it right now I’m taking a look I thought it was interesting and then we can get back to the subject of hash Wednesday to read about some things that had happened at the um U ofi uh really quick though just because this is good history to share uh for the podcast you know it’s good to put this stuff out there I plan to release this entire archive in the future folks so that you can kind of pick through it um but just for the video here’s some more stuff about looks like maybe Champagne County uh slow to adopt drug testing programs well the thing is is this stuff costs money and early on it was rather expensive of course it got cheaper on a per test basis as it went on as things got to be sort of mass produced so to speak um so you know adopting one of these programs came at a cost and you know the real question that some employers had was well is it worth the cost and course people were inherently uh drawn in or attracted by the idea that they could do something about those terrible terrible drugs but many people already understood that it wasn’t that big a deal you know why should they worry about what their workers were doing off the job with something that was sort of an inherently safe substance relatively speaking compared to alcohol for instance yeah yeah and the question I was working up to and then like I say we can jump back to Hash Wednesday uh there was a story and I’m looking for it right now try to share it so that people can can you know maybe dig into it but I thought it was interesting that a University of Illinois athlete was told they couldn’t participate in some events because some schools had clearly like identified that cannabis use apparently they did Define it as a performance enhancing drug but for other schools that didn’t have it in that definition which is just funny by the way I don’t mean to take too much time to laugh about that but um the schools that didn’t have it in that definition he was still allowed to participate in do you remember what I’m talking about yeah yeah uh it was interesting because you know this didn’t only affect people who were employees but it affected students and uh I mean the University was just one one place where this happened at it also included high school students in in a number of cases which of course was problematic at several levels um but you know it discourages people from going to school first of all uh depending upon what their personal situation is but uh you know it it was just a sign of how personally the term rabid I think applies here the drug war had become already uh under the Reagan Administration I mean it you know it it went from uh the Carter Administration trying to poison people to the Reagan Administration trying to be as intrusive as possible with big government which is of course totally ironic because supposedly Ragan was for smaller government was sort of the exact opposite of that uh but you know they were willing to betray their principles I guess they thought this was a higher purpose so to speak yeah no straight up good pun but also very good point um yeah just displaying some more here before we uh jump back to Hash Wednesday yeah it’s just fascinating to hear about that it’s also fascinating to see Radio Shack ads yeah oh I miss Radio Shack yeah yeah so um lots of interesting stuff here I won’t I’m trying to think of what I would just came to mind I think I lost it um yeah I think I lost it oh but here’s uh interesting you were mentioned paraquat earlier uh yes there’s a mention here of it’s just a cut of a headline but you can see DEA paraquat temporarily suspended yeah they agreed to stop spraying their herbicide paraquat well increasingly environmental concerns were coming up uh which is a little bit ironic because I think obviously human rights concerns would be taking precedent but uh fortunately there was pressure from other areas about paraquat spraying that it was of course a environmental hazard uh that that caused people who were concerned about the environment to get involved and it’s an example of how the drug war inspired resistance not just from people who were cannabis users but from other people who saw it as really a vast overreach of government power yeah of obesity of government power yeah like you say it’s funny that it had to be taken to that level it’s like well yeah these are humans but this also harms the environment pretty bad so that’s that’s another reason besides the fact these are humans you know what I mean yeah yeah yeah exactly because in their eyes we were we weren’t humans or we weren’t worthy humans well I think it it here is where the drug war sort of started breaking down too is because it expanded the concern Beyond people who were most immediately concerned which was Cannabis users to people from a number of other walks of life who saw the program as problematic from their point of view it had nothing to do with cannabis per se being used but who saw this as a a as an abusive form of policy yeah and then you had people like this that says uh let’s flog dealers let’s take it up a notch yeah this is in Delaware this is just bizarre you know I mean come on folks uh you know I mean these are regimes overseas that we should be embarrassed about but of course we were supporting many of them sending them money uh and of course over sees you know you don’t have quite the protection that the constitution gave and the the rights of free speech gave for people to speak out against such things yeah this 1989 article super interesting to see somebody the former Secretary of State suggesting that cocaine and Other Drugs should be legalized yeah George Schultz interesting character there for former uh Secretary of State uh came out with this but I I think this is an example of how people who were sort of ordinary folks that had nothing to do directly with cannabis saw the harm being done by the drug war itself about you know it undermining our institutions our principles our beliefs that they had gone too far uh with the drug war in many aspects of Life yeah and just to get back to Hash Wednesday what do you remember about uh counter protesters well it’s interesting because I believe it was 82 the first one we went to and one of the other benefits of the job I had at the time was that we had access to a lot of cardboard big pieces of cardboard about 4×4 because uh what we used on the job there were something called slip sheets and slip sheets are used it’s a little hard to explain but it’s a special kind of forklift that has a thing that grabs one edge of this 4X by4 uh piece of cardboard and your product comes in stacked and wrapped on that cardboard and it picks it up and then it can put it on a pallet this what this is is they don’t have to ship the pallets they save you know all the hassle involved with exchanging pallets and things like that well slip sheets being 4×4 makes a good size sign let’s put it this way uh and uh I remember having one the one that I made and was using said Legalize It basically and it had a gigantic cannabis leaf you know so 4×4 imagine this Legalize It big canabus leaf well there was a a local preacher uh well he a son of he was a preacher himself but he was a son of uh a guy who organized sort of a a right-wing church here uh they’ve since sort of mellowed out changed their name and their approach to things I don’t know if they change their theology or anything like that but at the time they were pretty Infamous for being actively involved in sort of the Reagan Era uh Evangelical support team so to speak so um he was on campus uh not just for hash Wednesday but preaching on the quad uh I don’t know if people have been to the quad if you haven’t been there it’s sort of a free speech Zone and there’s people that come in that just kind of rant and Ray sometimes and uh but he was here for hash wednesy that day and he was a golden opportunity thought to be preaching and he was just preaching the heck about it and stuff and I kind of debated him a little bit in front of uh he was up on the the the Union uh patio that raised area I was talking about uh before and he was just going on and on about it and I had my say with him to his face and stuff and then uh kind of backed off and took my sign and kind of work my way behind him and um anyway I hold up this sign and I think the cameras were on too from TV or something as I recall but I I get behind him and he’s just ranting and raving about how evil cannabis is and all this stuff and I hold up this sign right behind him it says Legalize It with the big old weed leaf on it and the crowd just sort of russing Applause and stuff and at first he thought wow getting through these people and then he looks around and sees me and sees what they’re really applaud that was such a golden moment let’s put it this way uh it it kind of undercut the whole the whole preachy thing for him and I I think he kind of backed off after that as I recall because he realized he really wasn’t getting through to this crowd so yeah but it was just so classic because he really I mean you could tell he was thinking wow these people are finally getting you know what I’m saying and stuff and then they realized who they were really applauding for so but that that was a a classic situation there I I I have just such a distinct memory of that happening and uh but it just shows how politicizing the the the whole thing with cannabis led to this politicizing of resistance to cannabis and uh I I think that became a general Trend I mean the party was still there no doubt but people increasingly saw it as a political issue as something that could be done about uh you know I mean it took a while it took many years uh but well something was done about it let’s put it that way yeah well it makes sense why that person didn’t want to talk to me Mike geez I met that person I met him oh yeah yeah yeah interesting I recognize his name I won’t get into the details of it but I approached him and uh I said hi um I have this letter to the editor that you wrote Because and I’m looking at it right now um he says as many of you already as many of you already know hash Wednesday on the University of Illinois has once again occurred despite the efforts of many to see it ended as chairman of students and citizens against marijuana I would like to thank over 1500 people who wrote to University Vice Chancellor Stan Levy sent petitions to Champagne County State’s Attorneys Tom deonas and who made phone calls to both as well as to University Police expressing their desire that authorities step in and enforce the laws of the land yeah there you go so again students and citizens against marijuana I asked him did you write this letter that to the editor he said oh yeah yeah I I wrote this and he did make it clear that he’d prefer not to be quoted in this so I’m not quoting him I’m I’m not quoting him I’m just kind of loosely recalling our conversation right yeah and uh he he’s a history teacher now he knows that’s not how history Works uh if he didn’t want me to know these things he shouldn’t have talked to me so uh he confirmed to me that he did write this letter and but what he said to me was a little confusing he said uh you know I don’t have a dog in this fight anymore so I don’t really want to participate um but he’s like my protest was not about marijuana it was about the fact that universities the university wasn’t enforcing the rules equally and I said but your letter says the issue of marijuana is not only a moral and ethical one do you still believe that and he said look my ideas may have changed since I wrote that letter and I said perfect let’s you know let’s let’s talk about this and he said I’d rather not I he said here’s the thing I don’t care about this anymore and I said what do you mean he just said I I just don’t care about this anymore um but I’ll be honest with you buds the way he was saying I don’t care about this anymore made me feel like he still kind of cares about it but um he cares that he lost that’s what it right so just I found it interesting uh you know that not only that he didn’t want to parti ipate but that he seems to like I don’t know he seemed to not remember exactly what he was fighting for because what I’m reading him saying his statement is that he thought it was not only a moral and ethical issue but a matter of Health uh but when I spoke to him he said it’s not so much about the marijuana itself it’s the fact that the university had rules and they weren’t enforcing them and I think the rules should be enforced I’m just like okay rules can be changed let’s put it that way aspect of things I think he just did not consider that possibility right uh so loosely quote dirty herit what if the law is wrong there you go you know there you go so and when you have thousands of people saying the law is wrong then their views need to be considered yeah so well thank you for telling us about counter-protesters that’s the first time we were able to you know really talk about that um because it sounds like maybe they were so did you think did you say maybe he kind of gave up after that did you not see much of them the the counter protesters after that whole incident I I think they faded away let’s put it this way uh in part because the well in a few years the university did kind of crack down so I I guess he got his wish temporarily uh certainly to a certain degree uh but I think think um people realized that it was going to happen regardless at at all levels even people who weren’t supporters of the idea so they need just needed to accept that fact that there were these people out there which is an advance because at first they kind of like pretended like well these people are very marginal there’s very few of them uh we can oppress them suppress them whatever without consequences to society and that turned out not to be the case yeah what do you you just referenced the crackdowns of uh let’s call them the crackdowns of 1988 what do you remember about this well uh by that time I was working days and uh so I I I I don’t recall being there certainly for this one I do recall reading in the paper I go oh no this is bad uh but it was also a very marginal activity in terms of the police actually doing anything about the average student out there participating I mean they certainly kind of swept in and uh you know tried to tried to disperse things and stuff like that but well it did just didn’t work let’s put it this way I mean it made martyrs out of people uh if you want to if you want to consider that and anytime you’re making Martyrs for the other side you’re really not advancing your own interests let’s put it this way in a in a free and Democratic Society uh because you create resistance more resistance more open resistance that is attuned to um being tough and and holding your ground and being stubborn and and I think the organizing that followed uh this is a good example of how this stuff backfires uh yeah there yeah okay so that that that that makes some people happy who are calling for that sort of thing to happen but uh it also breeds resistance let’s put it this way oppression always breeds resistance yeah it’s just crazy to look at this image like I wonder what this guy’s thinking right now like yeah we got him yeah yeah uh let’s put it this way uh this was very token because they could do no more than arrest a few people while hundreds if not thousands of people right there were doing the same thing you know yeah uh I mean it was very much uh the sort of thing where people who were there who witnessed this thought well this is pretty ineffectual I mean maybe they’re trying to scare us but uh I’ll just be a little bit more careful and uh yeah well that’s what people did and the party and the hash windsday organizing went on and it went on that’s right you can see here this woman was hurt in the pushing that occurred you can see the police going through the crowd here and I’ll bet you yeah they weren’t just oh excuse me oh EXC I’m sure they were chevin people yeah yeah undoubtedly that was the way it operated in those days and certainly against people who were considered Outlaws right right so um yeah now we kind of Step into the days of Joshua Salone who I actually uh had on the podcast folks if you’d like to listen to it definitely check out my episode with Joshua Salone he’ll be pictured in some of the things we uh talk about and I’ll tell you the episode number here in just a moment um it is episode number 12 with Joshua saloan it’s our hash Wednesday episode and uh yeah it’s good stuff so speaking of Mr Joshua Salone I’ll show a picture of Joshua and actually it was funny when I showed this picture on the podcast with him he said it brought back a lot of memories because he remembers this shirt that he had this uh Ron sells crack that’s right um I think that’s what it says Ron sells crack somebody sells crack yeah yeah um so and he he actually told us a very interesting story based that he recalled by seeing this shirt uh folks yeah I’m not going to get into it check it out um it’s funny how seeing things like this you know a shirt you used to wear will bring back memories what what do you remember about these years what do you remember about the days of uh organizer Joshua Salone um and uh people that as I mentioned I I was no longer generally I mean I had to take time off work to go to Hash wednesy which I which I did sometimes I I don’t recall exactly but increasingly uh you know I had work to do and stuff but the thing about Joshua is he started organizing things see not only had hash Wednesday but you had some program in the evening and that I was up for because I had long been not just the hash Wednesday but uh with a whole slew of other things focusing largely on Central America solidarity work at the time because of the wars that once again ra sponsored in Central America and expanded uh this was something that I was very much involved in uh as an outside agitator so to speak that’s sort of that old condemnatory term uh but it was something that I did because I believed in it um and this sort of rubbed off I mean he he recalled a a demonstration that occurred during uh Bush’s campaign for president in 1988 and uh by that time I’d kind of gotten to know Josh pretty well um and basically in addition of course to all this protesting and stuff I was also um well I’ve been growing for a long time and I decided that that was one contribution I could make was other than cardboard like we see here I’m pretty sure I got this piece of card this is a bit of packing uh that’s sort of corrugated and thick not a slip sheet but I’m pretty sure I got that piece of cardboard for him and they did wonderful things with it art artistically so because I was just thinking well it’s a good stiff thing in case it rains you know hold up better but uh him and his friends man you should turn it into this wonderful cannabis leaf but but but going back to the situation of how politics came into this I mean he showed up for this uh Bush it was some sort of fundraising event at the hotel that was there at uh uh that corner and uh you know there was secret service around because Bush was vice president and stuff but he had made up these little packets as he recalled that look like bags of coke basically and it was throwing them out there but a bunch of my friends my associates and I were all o there and I was kind of going back and forth between the two things because I mean on the one hand my my my my my companions were all out there protesting because of Bush’s involvement in the Central America uh deal you know and Iran Contra was still fresh in people’s minds and this was before people had discovered that that basically some of the people that uh the CIA was assisting also people that were involved in bringing crack to the streets of LA uh to to just sum it up in case people have not heard that story uh because the contras in addition taking money from Uncle Sam also helped finance their operations by smuggling Coke so you know not all of them were but some of them were apparently and in any case uh this was something that where the two areas of protest over laugh let’s put it this way uh because we were certainly uh most people at that time I mean weren’t really so much cannabis specific but they were certainly seeing the drug war as an extension of this General trend of you know making war on everything that the Reagan Administration uh was known for and uh so so that was very entertaining because there was a good overlap between uh the two uh the two uh interests in Pro protesting and uh I think it worked well and I think I mean certainly it was something that I was supportive of with Josh’s work because Josh made a point of expanding hash wednesy Beyond just the event itself and using it as a political tool to advance a cause and and I really can’t say enough good things about him as a person for doing that because that was something I I kind of knew from uh the folks I associated with about Central America solidary work on campus because most of them were well there was faculty and there were students and people had various connections uh to Central America whether it was a place that they had gone to teach where they were from there as faculty and to a lesser degree at that time there were Central America students here but there were certainly a lot of students who did research in Central America America who had uh great concerns and then of course there were just people that were concerned about uh the war that was being conducted there that that you know opposed it because it was a war that the US was sponsoring peace peace protesters I guess you could say so there was a lot of interest there uh that was involved in that and that was the Malo that I came out of in fact just just to backtrack a bit here there was a decision at one time in around 1980 and the uh Ali Union basically had started a policy from what I understand of that only students could book things at the union because after all it is a student union but they use this as a way to exclude quote unquote outside interest from using the facility but then there was a ruling that said hey you know uh it’s a public space and being a public space is well if you’re citizen Illinois you should have some access to it so basically there was some sort of ruling I don’t recall the exact circumstances but my this was sort of almost before I’d really got involved with the Central America stuff is I’d been a supporter just to go further back of the Weather Underground basically and their opposition to the war in Vietnam that’s that’s where it goes back to but the thing is is I kind of came along at the tail end of that where the FBI crushing them down and and just not to find a point on it these folks did set off some bombs but they were very careful never to kill anyone with the exception of the a few of themselves when a bomb unfortunately went off that some people were building uh but you know in a sense it’s what people call terrorism today but on the other hand it was also very much founded in in in in a culture of protest you know they weren’t trying to terrorize anybody they were trying to change policy now of course the government now defines terrorism as any action designed to coers the government about policy well elections do that all the time and well we don’t go after those folks right some people do nowadays the way the Republicans are trending but but let’s put it this way in general we don’t see it that way and uh perhaps you know I mean perhaps these people overdid things I’m not sure I would be in quite the same space now as I was then but I was a supporter but one of the things that they basically said was hey you can’t count on our Network or whatever you have to go out and do your own thing to build little nodes of resistance I forget what the exact terms were involved but that’s what I was trying to do and uh one of the things that I did was when this policy changed at the Ali Union I decided Well why don’t we bring somebody down from Chicago these folks have been reading their their their stuff you know and everything and I brought down some representatives of the new African Freedom front I believe was the name it’s new African something but their thing was that uh they wanted to establish a black Le nation in the Old South arguing basically that hey we were enslaved there we were what built this thing up we should have like seven or eight states Where We Rule and and you know the idea is a little bit problematic in the sense that well should anybody you know dominate you know uh no matter what color they are but but in any case it was an argument they were making to help Advance a cause of you know trying to look at racial inequities a little bit more closely so I brought them down and uh that was one of the first things at the union there were a lot of there’s several people there that looked like police types that were just checking it out but in any case that’s where I started getting involved but pretty soon the whole Central America thing came along because that all intensified once Reagan got elected and uh but these people in Chicago I kind of stayed in touch with them for a while and uh really it kind of lasted till about 1983 when I I went to Washington as one of the organizers of several busloads of people here that went to a big National rally there in I believe it was November 80s to3 and uh these people from Chicago were basically what it is we’re sitting out in the crowd there around the capital and people are going through the uh crowd to Spring leaflets which was a Manifesto about what had happened the evening before which was somebody blew up a bathroom in the Capitol and uh which as it turned out if you believe what the government says and convicted these people of there were several of the people that I was working with in Chicago that I was doing media work with and which basically involved writing some stories doing some recordings for WFT local community radio station uh but several of these people were accused of participating in this bombing and eventually convicted and uh but but these are the kind of people I was hanging out with with and in a sense to me the whole Central America work and then when it came along hash Wednesday were all extensions of that now the hash Wednesday thing wasn’t a typical thing in fact some of these people were very anti-drug themselves oddly enough uh because they saw it as weakening you know the focus on political revolution or something to that effect in fact they they tried to recruit me and it was like well I kind of knew that that side of things so and it was like my folks are a little bit different okay and what I believe is is a little bit different so uh and that was one thing also with people here locally people saw cannabis as an issue as being problematic because it was that sort of thing that cointelpro which that term I don’t think has come up yet but Josh was talking about it to a certain extent and maybe some other people I think had touched on how drugs were used by the police to help depress political protests of various kinds so uh a lot of people were very leery of that including one very good friend who’s a on the faculty here and uh at that time you know they kind of looked down at that whole idea of what I was doing there on the side as being we’re not interested in that you know that’s just a problem and stuff interestingly and I’m made a comment on the Danielle schacher episode of this which I believe was the first one yeah but in any case uh on this hash Wednesday history because she eventually had classes with this professor who was an authority on human rights and between what Josh had done and what she and shelene were doing Debbie goldsbury all those people that had kind of come along that I had been working with kind of influencing you know supporting the politization of cash wednesy um apparently he had come around to the idea that the whole war on cannabis was a human rights issue so to me this was very significant thing and in fact I later I I like I said I I’d worked for a number of years and well there was a union busting deal went on and I ended up going to school at the UI so I was no longer an outside agitator but anyway I took this class on human rights because I just wanted to see how he was teaching and stuff I mean it’s not that I needed the class because I had gone through a lot of the experiences that he had in forming his opinions on a lot of this stuff in fact the second time I went to Nicaragua we were going to meet up uh my significant other at the time was a Guatemalan woman who had her own connections to Revolution there and I won’t discuss that any further but uh this professor was down there with his significant other and we were going to meet in a certain town in Nicaragua at a certain time because we knew our our tours overlapped and uh like we’re in this hotel that we’re supposed to meet at and there’s a power outage but I could hear his voice you know that’s where I found him you know here miles from home anyway wow so we we had a good relationship you know and it was something that it took him a while to come around to and it was very satisfying to take that class and have him say some positive things about the resistance to the drug War uh you know finally because that convinced me that he had really kind of changed his thinking on that and accepted that you know it wasn’t just a threat to the movement that you know people were getting involved in this you know uh that that could be used against us and but it was also because I think Society had changed too that Society had begun accepting that resistance to the drug war was legitimate and uh I I think that you know those twin things I think probably brought him around not having directly discussed this because of well several reasons I I mean I just didn’t want to push the you know hey we changed your mind sort of seem too much but I think we did and and I think it was due to the politicization of uh the efforts made by Josh and the folks that followed on after him that made a difference uh in the world and it just shows you how history is made by people people oftentimes think of history as sort of a dead subject you know but we were clearly making history there and and I think the archive that you’re pulling stuff out of is sort of a record of that I mean in a certain sense you had to been there but in a certain sense remembering it has a power that uh I I think is not to be underestimated well said yeah here here’s uh Joshua Salone here I believe he said this is Debbie goldsbury who I’ve gotten in contact with we’ll be having her on the show oh excellent excellent uh to talk about what you know what she recalls and everything I wanted to share that I also wanted to share you mentioned um shelene and Danielle um I actually just recently sat down with Dan Danielle so she’ll be sharing or sorry I meant to say shelene I’ve already sat down with Danielle um but for folks here’s a picture of shelene and Danielle uh at a hash Wednesday of the past um so yeah we’re really trying to to gather all these perspectives and like you say um even if you weren’t there the fact that I think we’re we’re bringing this back is makes it more powerful um you know I look back at it and this is I’m be Loosely quoting Josh from a a conversation that we had I don’t believe I invoked this I may have invoked this on the podcast he had said to me in the past I want to believe that the activists of the late 80s and early 90s kept the flame Li alive long enough for a new generation to kind of dilute the old guards mentality I believe that’s what you what you all did and that’s why I’m so thankful for everything you all all of you did because yeah I I think that if you wouldn’t have stepped up and risked your freedom by making these statements because frankly that’s what you were doing you were risking your freedom yeah um it’s possible that that line of reasoning could have died and the old guard’s mentality could have taken over you know completely well it’s certainly the case that I mean we see it today uh you I mean not to put too fine a point on it I mean abortion as an issue we’ve got these folks that have worked very diligently at something that the public itself does not support and they managed to somehow get themselves in a position that they quote unquote changed the law so to speak and but when it you know in in in denying women the right to an abortion and as we found out even in in relatively conservative States people just as a whole they may be sort of conservative on a lot of issues but on certain civil rights issues and it turns out in Ohio at least this was paired up with similar support for legalization of cannabis for recreational cannabis in fact much a considerably better uh law in several respects than we have here in Illinois without going into all that detail but this is one of the things where people are still trying to shove the past down our throat to take us back to the past because there’s some glorious idea of the past that omits things like coverage of hash Wednesday I’m sure and things like that because it’s very selective about well who who owns the past well we own it because we’re conservatives and it’s like well uh um people weren’t always that conservative to tell you the truth I mean in a sense they had the upper hand when it came to direct political power but when it comes to the power from below that depends on people getting out and exercising it and unfortunately a lot of people think well what I might do doesn’t matter and well it’s hard to say exactly how much it matters but it does matter and when you get the opportunity to go out and protest against something that regard as an injustice take it because you will be a part of History one way or the other I mean you’ll either succeed or you’ll fail but in a in in a very real sense it’s important to to do that because we should never let people say well this is just the way things are because that’s the way it was in the past because they had a lot of bad Notions in the past let’s put it this way I mean there’s all kinds of bad stuff from the past that we’re still living down and it’s not just slavery because you could talk about slavery yeah per se that is gone but the effects of slavery oh still with us still with us including in the drug war itself I mean you know that’s why there’s all this talk about social Equity I’m not so sure about effective policy in Illinois but there is a lot of talk about it and people do understand those justices and that there needs to be something done to make things up as best we can we can’t fix the past but we can fix the present for a better future that’s the one thing about resistance and protest is the the future is ours not the past well said that’s inspiring and if I could put a fine point on some of the things you said to kind of to wrap up or not wrap up our conversation but to wrap like that into a tight tight bow using some things that Josh said and using some things you just said I like that you brought up the issue of abortion because the way I like to say it and I didn’t make this up I’m actually reading it off the guardian right now I don’t know that they made it up either because I’ve heard other people say this but I think it’s a really eloquent short way of saying what you just said no one can prevent all abortions you can only eliminate safe abortions um and I would say that extends to elicit substances you’re not going to prevent usage of substances you can only eliminate safe usage of substances in other words you’re not helping the problem by making these drugs illegal you’re not helping the problem by demonizing users you don’t make the substances less dangerous you’re driving people to invent designer drugs to get around loopholes you’re inflating the price um and in the case of abortion you’re forcing women to go into you know to use a grotesque grotesque example a back alley uh instead of Consulting with a health care professional to get a you know a procedure that they should have the right to get so thank you for bringing that up and do you agree with everything I just said like I feel like prohibition you can’t you can’t regulate Behavior like that I would only add that the intent of the right when they do these things is to create a self-fulfilling prophecy that somehow or another drugs are bad for you and here’s how we’re going to prove it we’re going to make any sort of safe use difficult or impossible same thing with abortion that’s what they hope to do you know you’re a bad person you know you should suffer for your evil or whatever I mean I I that is what lurks in the back of their minds and it’s like hey you know if you really believe in God and whatever why you leave that up to God who are you to decide what God thinks about right certainly people in individual level uh so you know it’s it’s the kind of implicit hypocrisy in the positions of many conservatives not all because there’s there’s folks I respect on the right but uh they’re kind of few and far between because of how crazy it’s all gotten there yeah seriously though seriously and um you know just back to uh hash Wednesday well first of all let’s we got to share this one this is a gold one from our archive it doesn’t necessarily have to do with hash Wednesday but cannabis is growing in has been growing in Illinois for a long time folks just here it is you know um and and they acknowledge you were talking about R you were talking about ranul the other day too yes Josh I believe and uh I can tell you that uh you can have like a Subaru or two full of that stuff and you still won’t hard get high because I’ve done that in fact I tried to cook it into oil even the oil wasn’t that good quite frankly I was gonna ask how’d you know that but you gave me the answer you tried that’s right you tried that’s funny well um you know just just uh with regard to Hash Wednesday um you know and I’m not trying to skip over any um years you know some things that happened that I thought were interesting I don’t know if you recall or maybe like you said your schedule had changed to this point um but uh Josh mentioned you know that one of the ladies that was original participant of the federal yes cannabis program was there yes selie musika yeah and she she noted that my weed was much better than the government weed at the Afterparty that’s oh probably a really good compliment to get huh yeah I mean well I I had heard that the government weed wasn’t very good but to hear it from a somebody who actually had access to it and had mine to compare it with it was it was sort of an upper but you know it was one of the cool things and why I like working with Josh too was to party with these people I mean I partied with all the normal National leadership when they showed up I parted with Dennis Peron when he showed up uh I mean I mean the folks that were involved on campus were poor college students okay these these aren’t folks who are fat boys you know with a credit card from home and you know a car too and all that stuff so somebody it helped to have somebody bring the party goods and since I was growing that was not a problem for me and uh I had Fairly fairly good weed at least better than this stuff right oh much better much better uh I was growing big bud at that time by the late 80s so for folks that are watching or even listening I can describe what we’re seeing right now this is uh cannabis from the University of Mississippi which was due to Federal prohibition and regulations all of the Cannabis used for us research is provided by one facility at the University of Mississippi through the National Institute on drug abuse researchers have complained for years that the quality of the marijuana is terrible typically far below what you get from state legal medical or recreational markets or even on the black market the photo they could really stand to read ed rosenthal’s books they really could yeah they really could or just watch a few YouTube videos gez it’s not that hard um that was one of the the more fulfilling events I went to too that uh was from the ERA with uh with Danielle and shelene was that they brought Ed rosenal to campus and he was on a book tour at the time and signed signed a copy of his book for me and I had a little interaction with him and he’s a great guy I mean he’s very genuine and real people have always curious about well he had a column for a long time in High Times and he’s gone down to other things now and stuff but uh you know I can highly recommend his guidance if if you’re growing whether it’s small or large I learned a lot from him over the years and in fact I got some seed right now I’m growing it’s called Ed Rosenthal super OG and that stuff is looking really good let’s put it this way so that’s awesome yeah yeah yeah I’m just showing Danielle and chelen right now because that’s cool to hear that they were bringing in big time people like that I think they even mentioned like people like Keith stro stro however you say his last name yes um would come through town well this was something that started under Josh and uh he he not only brought people here but helped leverage their presence here in the Midwest by hooking them up with folks through the whole sort of network of uh people in Wisconsin and elsewhere in Illinois and I think Michigan too uh there’s not really much going on in Indiana speaking of the Native hooer but uh um yeah uh bringing these people into the Midwest also help sort of raise the profile because uh people always sort of assume it’s those crazy people on the coast you know that do this sort of thing and uh no uh we’re here too throughout the Midwest and and bringing those sort of people out helped raise the profile of the Cannabis movement yeah yeah well said and you know um there’s so so many other memories I can touch on but I want to ask you know coming into today um were there any memories or significant moments or incidents that stand out from your experiences that that you really wanted to maybe share that you’ve seen some of the episodes maybe that hasn’t been shared yet yeah well I one of the things I think we covered a lot of them but one of the ones that at least for me was kind of transformational was when Dennis Peron came because he had kind of helped medicalize cannabis in California in fact it was an ongoing project at the time that he showed up here and just discussing that really kind of changed my thinking to a certain degree about cannabis you know because you know it is medicine and uh one of the things was is along the late 8s I got hurt on the job and uh I eventually discovered that cannabis worked quite well at treating my condition let’s put this way without going into the whole medical history of everything and this was something that was just starting to form in my mind at the time and that but speaking the Dennis Peron really firmed up that whole thing that yeah this is something that’s important to emphasize in our movement is the medical aspect ects of this and of course folks that opposed cannabis sort of just said ah this is just a you know performative sort of people waving their hands around the air trying to impress people there’s nothing to it but as many many people know I mean there is a significant function for cannabis as as medicine and in for fact that’s how we ended up having recreational cannabis in Illinois is because well we had medical cannabis first and unfortunately that project kind of got hijacked by big weed into uh hey this is this is our little baileywick here and we don’t want to let anybody else in on it uh so we’re still trying to get over that here in Illinois somewhat unsuccessfully so far but you know we can always hope for the future um and this is another reason why it’s important for people to stay interested in involved in cannabis policy because what we have now is not what we have to put up with we can change this we manage to make it legal we can make it legal right in the end but it’s something that people have to have to do something about you can’t just assume that somebody’s out there working to fix things you know if you’re not out there working to fix things and you care about it then well something’s not getting done you know it could get done that might Advance things so people should keep that in mind is is that’s important so the medical aspect of things things was something that was transformational for me amongst the people that were coming and speaking here um but another aspect of it was the networking too because um I went to several different things where I helped work security uh along with Josh some of the time some of the times not but uh that was very satisfying too because it let me help you know the politization of things because these festivals as they were I mean they were sort of like sort of like a weekend long uh hash Wednesday you know but conducted under other pretenses or whatever uh but uh I they always had a political aspect to them I mean they were sort of like hash wday in a sense of well people are going to be out there doing it obviously but uh it was also something that kind of forced people to to resist because I mean what you had was State Police and all kinds of other police and they would like sort of surround the roads leading into one of these festivals yeah there we go yeah this one’s in Ohio and um um I think Josh was a little bit confused about we we met when I was up at um one of the weed stocks I believe it was in Wisconsin we ran into the the the woman of the couple who was organizing this thing here but this was in Ohio and uh I think they saved the farm eventually in fact it may have I know Wavy Gravy I think has a a farm somewhere around Athens and this may be what this property ended up as I’m not sure I I started looking into it one time and wasn’t able to resolve that but it was a it was an interesting property I went there and worked security and then worked I got appointed director of security for one of the ones that I was there for anyway but uh yeah it was a couple that got busted by Customs once again going back to paraphernalia interestingly enough and this was after you know it’s part of Reagan’s drug war and stuff they passed a a paraphernalia ban from being imported so all of a sudden various pipes and other things that you know could be quote unquote defined as paraphernalia became ille they didn’t have any drugs on them there was no drugs in them nice clean stuff they got a bunch of stuff that they had bought in Afghanistan and were importing it and basically they got busted and this new law this was along about the time that was it Tommy Chong got busted or something for they got busted for selling pipes uh domestically and uh this was about the same time anyway these folks got busted uh so what they were doing was raising money for their defense and to save the farm because they were trying to say that the farm because the pipes were being shipped there was the Nexus of distribution and they were going to seize it you know and stuff but it was a really nice property and I had a good time there and stuff in fact that was one where um uh Chef raw we went along over there and uh he was uh um basically he cook out and he cook the stuff that he would cook for the Grateful Dead uh tour following that that he did and of course this was a long about the time right after Jerry had passed away and to a certain extent people were trying to reinvent you know what that whole scene was going to do so some of these efforts were designed to tap into that whole um sort of sociological movement around the Dead uh but uh yeah very interesting stuff and U but they had this really strong political component about ending the the war on cannabis and uh it was good it was good to help with that it was very satisfying work another thing is I’m kind of into radios and uh I was able to bring along basically radios to help work security and stuff like that listening to the local PD make sure they’re not calling in there was that too I mean that was an aspect of like for instance the demonstration that we were talking about earlier uh on the Bush campaign where Josh was sewn those baggies I mean I was basically monitoring the whole thing from where the plane touched down at Willard to them coming up to the hotel so basically I could cue people well here they come you wow and and to monitor well you got to remember this was back in the day before everything went digital and got encrypted uhhuh and if you knew the right channels you could oftentimes learn a heck of a lot let’s put it this way uh cell phones were just then coming into use and the the two people that tended to have cell phones a lot were Nars and drug dealers right so and at the time you can still listen to phone calls in the clear and uh yeah uh that that was something that was helpful around any that had to do with the police and stuff up until I was in the late 90s mid to late 90s when digital and encryption and stuff all started coming down but like the local task force 10 folks going after all them big drug dealers and stuff well well uh let’s put it this way I I basically listened to pretty much everything that they did because uh I had the one it was in Illinois State Police there was a certain channel 15495 that was sort of like the main the main thing for doing surveillance on and uh you learned a lot about what was going on locally that’s put this way and you learned a lot and this was one of the things too that once again reemphasized how the war on drugs was Just Another War amongst many that the establishment was fighting because when I first started listening to to this the thing that struck me was how much it the whole process of surveillance and tailing people was something that the CIA had worked out years ago and used extensively and that’s what they train people on and where I found this out was U oh what was his name it was was one of the people that was a CIA agent in Latin America but then left the agency and wrote a book about it and uh in any case he described the whole process of how they track down these communist organizers by tailing them you know by cars and stuff and how they would drive parallel roads and use radio coordinate when people went one way or the other when you’d have you to have somebody on the tail that you would switch on and off to keep them from observing the fact that somebody was following them all the time but then you would have cars on the parallel roads to wherever they were that way if they turn right or left you could pick them up and not lose them so this whole thing was just exactly how they operated here they were using the same tactics that they used overseas against what the people they oppos politically I mean because not these folks weren’t always Communists so often times they were just labor organizers or students their faculty and stuff and uh I mean it’s one of those things that the political repression abroad recirculates back home and uh people should not underestimate how much the government does basically the same thing here as it does overseas to other people where they’re not so restricted by the Constitution here theoretically the Constitution restricts them but that isn’t always the case I can tell you based on that of course now they’re all encrypted and you can’t follow anything but hey that’s why they’re the secret police is they need to have their secrets because otherwise people might oppose what they’re doing and do something about it because theoretically the police are under civilian leadership but all too often as we’ve seen in the case of legalization of cannabis in Illinois what the state police wants done is taken into a great deal consideration whereas what the people want done what the Constitution would seem to dictate is often given very short hearings let’s put it that way that’s why you have things like the the five plant limit and it’s for Med only when it comes to growing in Illinois the state police oppose that not just big weed big weed of course joined in with the state police going yeah that’s a good idea we don’t want people growing dope willy-nilly I mean we won’t have customers well that’s not really the case I mean there’ll always be far more people that want to go to the the dispensary than bother with growing their own but you know it’s interesting how these interests overlap and people should really really question that sort of thing there really is no good excuse for why we all every one of us doesn’t have the right to grow you don’t necessarily need to grow but just having that right to grow would have a huge impact oh yeah on the whole perception of pricing and stuff like that here in Illinois uh those high prices would soften suddenly I can guarantee you yeah like folks again I want to reiterate something you said even if you don’t want to grow if you never intend to grow please fight for hom grow because it will benefit you inadvertently that’s right that’s right because it is the complete legalization earlier you said you know let’s legalize it the right way I say that the way we’ve done it is legalization I my definition and your definition of legalization is much different from what what we’ve said do you I would quote you now I I reference this quote all the time buds do you want to say what I reference all the time because sometimes I butcher it I feel like do you know what I’m talking about cannabis is not legal until let let let me go to my profile so that I get the exact words right no problem no problem yeah go ahead and pull that up I’ve also got something pulled up that I would like to I think this is going to be a good way now that we’ve segwayed into this subject I’ve been trying to close each hash Wednesday with a discussion exactly around this topic because frankly I feel like not everything that people were talking about at hash Wednesday has been fully realized and that’s kind of what we’re discussing right now you know like yes we’ve made progress but we’ve not made complete progress that’s right well my profile I think sums it up pretty well it says an old weed activist retired commercial grower and longtime Med patient cannabis isn’t really free until you can grow all you want and need hell yeah hell yeah and you know I having grown cannabis to make money I I I was also you know I’m not going to insist that I should have some sort of exclusive right to that that’s just so freaking bogus there is no good reason other than the commercial interest of those who support such a thing there is no good public policy reason for that in fact it’s positively negative public policy to have that in place you have a much better relationship to this plant first of all as a cannabis user if you grow your own uh you know it’s something that you grow it’s something that doesn’t it demonetizes cannabis for you because if you grow and you can grow all you need money goes out of the equation pretty much I mean you got what fertilizer stuff like that maybe some electric power or whatever but but but the whole thing as far as what that huge value is of course the state has an interest in it having value because that’s how you get taxes from it well you’re going to be able to tax it I mean most people are not going to grow their own most people just prefer the convenience and go into the dispensary but they shouldn’t have to pay out the nose for it right and that’s what Puttin growing in there does is it sort of opens the question well how much is this really worth MoneyWise versus what is its real worth as a substance in and of itself and they’ve somehow hyped the value up in order to make business successful whatever well we have a way of making business successful in this country it’s called competition yeah okay and I speak as a leftist okay as somebody who’s not a real friend of the market but on the other hand why the hell are we doing what we’re doing with cannabis in this state by somehow you know make let’s think about it this way we have something called Public Utilities public utilities are closely regulated which is what they argue they’re doing with the Cannabis industry but they are closely regulated in the public interest not in the interest of the public utility and its shareholders but in the public interest and we have exactly the opposite in the case of the Cannabis industry in Illinois it is managed in the interest of the industry and that is ridiculous I’m sorry there is no excuse including the social Equity excuse because this undermines social Equity social Equity would value not capital and capital Investments because you don’t have that as a social Equity licy what you have is Sweat Equity why don’t we have a system that values Sweat Equity you get a license you go out there you plant it you harvest it you sell it you’re allowed to do that as an entrepreneur as a small businessman or woman and that’s what we really need if you really want social Equity you don’t make a few people rich just because of the color of their skin you give that whole group of people the ability the same ability that everybody else does and that is what real social Equity would do and uh we don’t have a public policy that actually supports social equity in this state we have a lot of talk from politicians about it but we don’t have a policy that actually supports social equity for everyone well said well said and uh I want to get back to that subject but first let’s talk let’s let’s put some proof into the pudding behind what you said let’s listen to our governor describe what other states did wrong what we did right from his perspective in hindsight a lot of States got it wrong on licensing because their programs ended up with the unintended consequence of a Consolidated marketplace where only a few profit and those communities that have been hurt or on the outside looking in to start for those who want to get a license we’re creating a designation for social Equity applicants but remember um one of the reasons that uh that we have had some challenges has been because we’ve been so focused on Equity now what I mean to say is I know that there are people who write about this that there are other states that have opened up the number of licenses to hundreds and hundreds of lenses uh and they have more dispensaries open than we do but the reality is that we’ve limited the number of lenses in part because we wanted to make sure that the social Equity licenses had a fair shot in the industry and they weren’t just edged out to the very end uh and by you know having too many dispensaries in the market so that people can’t make money uh entrepreneurs who open places like uh Ivy Hall so uh so I’m I’m you know in many ways I I think that the what you all uh view as a you know as a slow plotting process is also one that uh ends up with um you know the the right uh um regulation and the right laws in place and the industry growing at a pace that will allow social Equity to take place within the entire cannabis industry which is one of the purposes of it well whatever uh all I can note is that what he describes as being problematic is exactly what is problematic with the Cannabis industry in Illinois they are using social Equity to disguise the fact that they basically allowed what he says they oppose to happen in the beginning and they are unwilling to challenge that directly they’re willing to say well we’ll try to make up for it with social Equity but you know they’ve gave they basically gave it away to a bunch of white folks right at the beginning and what they need to do is to go back and reexamine that original decision reexamine the whole decision to have a limited licensing process because that’s what they’re trying to do is they’re trying to sort of carve off a little bit of those limited licenses for social Equity applicants but that’s not what’s going to help ensure Equity what’s going to ensure Equity is allowing people to to make it on their own and to not depend on the government you know running a lottery for a very few people relatively speaking to have access to this industry they need to throw it open so that people who want to go out and work for it to create wealth not to use Capital to create wealth but to work for it on their own and and that’s what we need we need an open system of Licensing like a driver’s license you meet certain basic qualifications that are relatively straightforward and accessible and you get the license and then you go out and you grow dope and sell it you know yeah and and the mechanism taxes yeah the mechanism of enforcement cannot be the criminal law which is like the biggest thing that under rdes limitations on licenses when you look at this system here I’ll display some of the penalties the laws and penalties which by the way for the most part were established in 1973 all of these laws and penalties we’re looking at were established in 78 thank you uh the Cannabis Control Act um basically the only thing that changed from the crta is is this here and then of course medical patients can cultivate and I want to take on a common misconception some people will read this and say oh if I grow five plants or less for personal use I’ll just get a $200 citation well folks if you’re work I just have to say if you’re worth a lick of salt and you grow one plant you’re probably going to fall in this range when it comes to your possession and if you look at what the penalty and I would even maybe go here depending on how they weigh it and when how early they weigh it when you get in trouble you could fall into this range and you’re not talking just a $200 citation you might get the $200 citation but when you’re talking possession you’re looking at this and this is what defense attorneys tell me you need to be wary of this is where you’re going to get in a lot of trouble um they might even hit you with sailor trafficking because it looks like they think you know they can that’s the thing it all comes down to um uh hit you with a sailor trafficking charge to get you to plead guilty to possession charge it would still be a felony yeah it all comes down to discretion is my point though you know an officer could Ju Just Just say well this guy’s obviously trafficking why would he need 2,000 to 5,000 grams right yeah um so folks the here’s my thing Governor pritsker tweeted this yesterday and I’m not going to get in too much to what he’s talking about but he says that Illinois is the home of an equitable legal cannabis system that does not disregard the injustices of the past I think that’s precisely what this system does it does disregard the injustices of the past because of the fact yeah all of these oh sorry did you want to see that picture again no no I just I was just saying if you leave all this in place you’re not getting beyond the past you were thank you preserving it this is from the past so yeah exactly exactly so until we take all of this away and here’s the thing I think like for sale and trafficking these are all criminal offenses okay I think buds maybe we can agree maybe we can agree that if you’re doing this without a license and you are possibly operating unsafely or whatever maybe you do get a business offense but it should never be something that ends up with you in a cage yeah well let’s put it this way if the same offense basically with alcohol is going to get you a fine a business offense something like that then there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be the same or less for cannabis because alcohol is a far more dangerous substance quite frankly and uh you know this whole criminalization that continues is a sign that we haven’t gotten beyond the past that we are preserving the past that somehow we believe in the past even though our words tell us I mean as he’s trying to say that we know better why are we continuing on that path and the reason is is because we give undue influence to the police they somehow still think that the police have something to do with this or should have something to do with this and that’s just nonsense you know uh people can get written up get a ticket whatever you know have to pay a fine but it it is not something that is worthy of criminal charges in the the manner that is still entirely possible yeah and and in fact what what happens with our legal Market particularly one where it’s the highest prices in the country is it makes Illinois the most attractive black market in the country right and and that’s why I think in part that the state police want this is because they just see this as an opportunity for them to continue making uh statistics that point out how badly you need us to continue fighting this drug war well I think we need to tell them to sit down shut up and just accept the fact that Society has moved on and let’s have the rules reflect that not the past right yeah and to your point the reason a lot of these rules still exist and some rules were created like the odor-proof container rule which was mysteriously created during when legalization happened as attorneys have pointed out to me often times those exact laws are what is used to violate your rights and ultimately seize your property or as I like to say steal your property I think Joshua Sloan says that too um yeah that’s how so that continues to this day so they very much have an incentive to be able to continue doing this it’s literally how they get a lot of money for the Department it’s you know they steal really nice cars and they can sell them at an auction um I have heard them discussing who’s G to get which car back in the old this is one reason why it’s encrypted because they don’t want you to hear them talking about that not only extended the cars but the girlfriends which is just kind of disgusting but yeah whatever but yeah that’s that’s what they don’t want you hear when they like scramble stuff yeah so I’ve been asking the people and I just came up with this question with shellene so I’ve been asking did people forget about hash Wednesday and I want to give you the opportunity to respond to that because I still think it’s a valid question do you think in light of everything that still exists maybe people forgot about Ash Wednesday I don’t think it’s so much forgetting as people think that we’re past that yeah and amen I I I think that’s wrong but I’m not sure that hash wednesy would be the right method now to approach what we need to change things we we we we have the right to basically consume to be consumers is basically all that they legalize you got legalized as consumer but not anything else yeah because big weed needs customers and the state needs its taxes so we need consumers so that’s why we have the very limited legalization that we have uh but I think we need to to to take on this whole notion that government Governor is promoting that somehow we’re getting past the past here we need to pressure our Representatives because this is something we can do openly now you know we don’t have to be ashamed of being cannabis users and one thing to keep in mind too about this whole tax situation because they take in more in taxes now on cannabis than they do with alcohol but paying taxes gives you credibility gives you an interest in how the system is operated gives you the right to complain and to say hey things should be different it legitimizes what is already legitimate which is you know pressure to change bad laws but this really is something that we should keep in mind is that we do have the power to change this and we shouldn’t tolerate it we should resist it one way to do this is to start you know putting candidates I mean mostly it’s Democrats you know and because it’s it’s a Democrat majority that’s how things are the way they are there are Republicans out there who support this although I don’t know they’ve kind of moved on to other crazy stuff a lot of them but but I I can remember interestingly enough back back in the day Tim Johnson I wrote several letters back and forth to him and he was a supporter of doing something about changing the law so there are people out there there’s Libertarians out there there’s people in the green party out there but primarily Democrats is where we should think about applying pressure and that is to ask candidates to ask office holders what their position is on things like Universal homegrown about opening up the license system all these things are things that can be changed and if they don’t give you the right answers and this keeps up then we need to start running candidates against them in primaries because making this an issue is a winning issue I mean look at what happened in Ohio and here in Illinois it’s certainly even more strong support so why are we have keep electing people who want to keep so much of the past alive or at least aren’t doing anything about that when they claim to be putting the past Beyond us there is room there for people to run on this as an issue I mean it won’t be your only issue you got to have more than than one issue to to get public office basically I think but I mean it’s something that people can use in you know primary these folks is what it’s called and that’s to take this issue and bring it up and to make it potent to make them answer for that maybe to change their position even if you don’t win you may end up changing their position because they’ll realize that the public supports something else other than just giving big weed the keys to the the treasury and walking away from it and nibbling around the edges of social Equity we need real social Equity so that everybody who has an interest no matter what you know ethnicity they are what their skin color is or whatever but to make it possible because there’s a lot of African-American people I know that would love to start their own business but do they have access no and they won’t have access because because the government is concentrating on making a few people Rich by giving them a license by making the license itself something of value that is wrong that is not the way to go we should make what people produce to be what creates wealth around cannabis not having some piece of paper from the government I mean that’s just so wrongheaded uh it’s it’s anti-American first of all I mean speaking as leftist is not how we do things in this country yeah and and that in itself makes it insupportable but it’s also the other thing too think about it the Family Farm is an institution in this country if we want to talk about things that appeal to conservatives and the conservative approach to thinking about things what about the Family Farm why is the Family Farm banned for most practical purposes with a med card you get a little token allotment for your Family Farm but it’s very restricted why are family Farmers boxed out of this because I I think Josh was talking about this the other day uh about how there was a lot of support in the a community for hey let’s legalize this because hey that’s going to make we’re Farmers we we’ll be able to grow this stuff right you know and then guess what no you can’t and all of a sudden those folks have no real interest in you know in what goes on why don’t we put it back on the table that right there would get people on your side and I think candidates stand a chance of winning you know whether in the Democratic primary or in the general election if they play this card right and I think that’s what we need to start doing because if the legislator legislators won’t change their position won’t do anything about it want to keep the status quo even if they claim they’re changing it then we need people in there that can describe how it’s not being changed and how we will change the status quo to a better system and I think that will get people’s votes yeah well said and uh my last question if I brought back hash Wednesday would you come oh heck yeah I’d come and just just for for rtime purposes uh just just to support the the youth who will hopefully carry it on yeah and the reason I would like to uh do that is because I I get what you say on your fa on its face that we’ve gotten the right to consume taxable cannabis basically but but I I think it would be an interesting protest to openly consume cannabis because nowadays it’s just a citation so it’s not completely legal we would still be risking citation but it would get people’s attention first of all to the fact that hey this protest is legal let’s call it but then second of all that’s kind of the point you get their attention by saying like not only is this not legal but growing it is not legal you know uh possessing certain amounts of it is not legal and then you start to ask is it really legal if all of these arbitrary you know lines exist and I think that could be I think that could be effective and if you noticed I didn’t even bring up licensing I think actually licensing gets it gets to the point where there are too many interests involved yeah and and then you know people big money interests start to then they would start to argue against us and we don’t need that we want this to just be a conversation about consumers and let’s actually make it legal so yeah yeah I’m I’m chewing that idea around and it’s cool to know that that you might support me if I brought it back well I I think bringing it back I think it needs a location change yeah because of the Smoke free campus right well smoke free campus yeah but it’s not just a campus issue anymore it clearly is not and it’s clearly not the case where only people on campus have an interest in doing something about it maybe at the capital that’s what I was thinking honestly yeah the capital maybe you know some other places it could migrate around you know depending upon there could be like Regional sites for it and stuff uh I can imagine a number of different places where a cash one Affair could could be effective in bringing focus on different things prisons for instance would be one place jail local cour houses true I mean you know there’s just these Nexus all over the place of where the drug war continues and you know calling attention to those would call attention to why are we spending money on this I mean it just does not make sense I mean what are you preventing you know uh it’s a taxable thing if you are somehow breaking the law but in terms of it being a criminal the justification for it being a criminal Affair is pretty weak at this point I mean when you can go down to the store and buy it what have you when we’re granting big corporations the right to do what it says as individuals would be illegal to do is questionable anything in defense of that is just something that it just it can’t be packaged correctly to be convincing as a reason for the continuation of the criminalization of cannabis it it’s just un unlikely to be successful in the long run but we need to start putting pressure on it repeatedly continuously to call attention to the fact that this is something that is intolerable in a society when we claim to have legalized it okay I mean most people are not out there thinking about splitting hairs over this they’re like well how many plants can I grow and blah blah blah and you know that’s what they think of as legalization you know and you know people people when they really think about it will don’t support this policy the thing is is that the government so far is counting on people not thinking too much about it by giving them oh you can go down to dispencery and get your weed you know what have you well you know the the pricing thing I think is the thing that really has the most possibilities in terms of leveraging the average person into action because it is something that they’re going to be reminded every time they go down to the dispensary until something changes and and it’s ridiculous it really is ridiculous there is no reason that is a good public policy reason for it being expensive as it is and I can kind of see a little tiny SL of the argument where like oh well there’s just too many around and people are going broke right and left well that’s what we have in business anyway I think you’ve raised the issue restaurants before yeah go out and get a license many of them don’t last five years people move on you know there is you know this style public taste you know what people want changes the same thing with cannabis you know and if that happens well fine I mean that’s not anything that the government should too concerned about uh other than the fact that the system we have now is aggressively bad public policy yeah it is it undermines what it claims to achieve and that’s just bad public policy very well said I could not have said it better myself well buds I’ve had a blast today revisiting the subject of hash Wednesday um anything that we didn’t cover today that that you wanted to mention before we go well I think we’ve we’ve talked about everything that I can think of right offand I I I just want to say that you know I I played a relatively small role in this but I I also played something that supported basically where we ended up being which was it it was more politization than party and I think that’s where it ended up and and that’s a good thing because in our society we all too often just sort of go along with things we think democracy is something that happens when you step into the polling booth and that’s it you know and then the next 364 days you don’t need to worry about anything and and and that’s just not so if you want things to get better in our society and I think uh the folks that worked on hash Wednesday the folks that just showed up thank thanks to all of them because it did make a difference it showed that we weren’t going away that you can’t impose this on on us and and that’s important that really is uh oppression breeds resistance and this was clearly oppression we still have oppression so resistance will still be bred we just have to focus on where that resistance will take us you know because sometimes it can get a bit nealis I mean I I read comments all the time on hillo trees that yeah well this is just the way things are whatever and it’s like no it’s not but coming out and saying that it is kind of contributes to that I guess right why why think that way let’s think about things changing it can be changed it’s not straightforward it’s not we’re going to get there tomorrow but it is important to work for better well said well folks I hope you found as much value in this episode of the coal memo as I did uh buds similarly to the others I just wanted to thank you for your service so thanks it’s uh good to be appreciated we get comments from time to time like that and they’re always heartwarming uh it uh because there’s no there’s no retirement no pension for being an activist or whatever I know I could have been probably financially better off in a lot of ways if I hadn’t spent so much time being an activist so things like that are the great reward that we get and they are much appreciated yeah again thank you so folks we will see you on the next episode take care buds thank you so much for your time today I look forward to the next time with chat have a good one yep
The Cole Memo 
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