The Cole Memo

In this episode, I sit down with Martha Bueno, an entrepreneur, former political candidate, and passionate advocate for freedom. Martha shares her unique journey from running for office in Miami and becoming the first political candidate to use OnlyFans as a platform to expose the dirty underbelly of politics. She dives deep into her involvement with the Free Ross Ulbricht movement, her battles with the restrictive cannabis laws in Florida, and the broader implications of government overreach in the cannabis industry.

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Links mentioned during show

• Follow Martha Bueno on Twitter here
• I recently hosted a conversation featuring Martha Bueno and TheDankInformer, that episode can be viewed here

The auto-generated transcript is available below.

I’m excited to announce that this episode of the coal memo is brought to you by the folks at River Bluff collective in case you didn’t know River Bluff is a licensed social Equity cannabis business in the state of Illinois owned by three siblings they invested their life savings to apply for a dispensary license and ultimately won a social Equity Lottery ball which allowed them to build up their business with the help of an investment team they’ve also leaned into hemp to finance their operation you can enjoy they’re amazing hemp derived products like Edibles tinctures and beverages which can be delivered straight to your door absolutely legally from riverbluff collective.com I’ve also thrown that link in the episode description for your convenience many of you might already know that the River Bluff punch pop is one of my absolute favorite cannabis products I have ever tried with a whopping 50 milligram of THC per can delivers great effect almost instantaneous instantaneously but I realize that this dosage is a little bit high for most people so for those looking for lower do beverages they also offer the bluff punch pops and 10 mgram form factors and they even have lower dose beverages that are suitable for all tolerances right so right now I got my hands on some of their lemon seltzers uh they’ve also got this strawberry lemonade Seltzer and there’s just 4 milligrams of THC per can for both of these drinks perfect for people that are cannabis curious so if you’re a cannabis veteran you might consider trying something like 50 milligrams but if you’re new to it or just have a lower lower tolerance you might consider trying some of the lower dose drinks and if you’re thinking of trying these drinks this is the month to do it for the entire month of August 2024 you can enjoy a 40% discount account on four packs of the 10 mgram or 50 MGR River Bluff sodas no need for a discount code the savings are automatically applied at checkout so don’t miss out explore their website at riverbluff collective.com to find those amazing deals on these amazing products folks you must be 21 plus to purchase and please consume responsibly I want to be very clear these have derived products are not sold in dispensaries if you’d like to find a place to purchase them once again the best place to go is riverbluff collective.com but if you’re really looking for it in store at the bottom of riverbluff collective.com you’ll find the store locator and that’s where you can find a River Bluff Collective store near you off the top of my head I know there’s one in East debuk Illinois so check that out have fun enjoy the products responsibly and enjoy this episode of The Cult [Music] memo hello Martha how’s it going this afternoon I had to think about that I’m like is it this afternoon for you yes it is it is afternoon for both of us hey Co thanks for having me on yeah and uh I just wanted to give you the space please uh introduce yourself uh and tell our audience where they might be able to connect with you online yeah so um I’m a little bit of everything kind of a jack of all trades I’ve been a long-term entrepreneur um started out on the online space and then um decided to do some politics and I ran for local office here in Miami actually was a community council member before trying to run for Comm hman second started a I I have the weird distinction of being the first political candidate to use only fans as a platform um and I did that to kind of showcase how dirty politics are and um showed how my opponent in the race was you know taking in donations from all sorts and actually giving donations as a republican to Democrats especially Democrats that were in favor of abortion and things that he purposefully was saying that he was against so you know just trying to point out all the dirty things in politics and then um really got involved um obviously I’ve been involved in communist um things uh in fighting anti- communism here in Miami where we have a lot of people who have had to defect my parents including and um then got involved in the free Ross movement as a longtime libertarian uh that’s just a subject that’s near and dear to my heart and then I um had the wonderful opportunity to meet his mom and become friends with her and um it the mom thing just clicked within me and I was like how is it possible that um Ross is in this cage and his mom can’t hug him and can’t have him um because he dared to start a website so a little bit of everything I’ve done a little bit of everything started my own brand of uh Delta 8 as well done a lot of stuff in a lot of different spaces so people can connect with me especially on X it’s my platform as Bueno for Miami that goes back to when I was running and um on also on IG and I will soon be launching a podcast called Dirty politics also very cool very cool looking forward to that I’ll definitely have to check that out and yeah once again as always folks we’ll have links in the show notes if you want to get connected with our guests that’s an easy way to do it check out the show notes um yeah we’ll be covering a few of those bases today hemp Delta 8 Ross um you know I personally was affected uh in a positive way by Ross um Orrick who will be speaking about that’s a name many people uh will be familiar with but I thought hey maybe we’ll start off the show with hemp does that sound good because I’ve been meaning to chat with you about hemp for a while but I was recently reminded we had been talking for a while and you and I were both busy people so kind of fell off of my radar and you recently tweeted about him and I was like I got to get I got to talk to Martha again and so or like I got to get get her on the show and I’m going to pull up the tweet that you made but let’s just and I think that’s actually a good starting point for this discussion um because it kind of lays out what’s going on in Florida right now a lot of similarities by the way to what’s going on in Illinois I feel like I get your perspective um and I feel like maybe some people don’t understand it so I’m displaying your Tweet right now which I feel like like I say is a good place to start off this topic the floor is yours um we’re talking about hemp and cannabis in Florida what’s your take on this so it’s a really like complicated subject and I think that that a lot of people get lost in how complicated the government is so right now cannabis is legal on a medical level only in Florida um in terms of a THC we also have a free market in terms of him and what a lot of people have recently discovered is that you can convert hemp to cannabis so you can take the hemp um plant and create things like Delta 9 which is legitimately THC um you can create Delta 8 which is also uh lives on the plant you can create things like hhc you can create all these different cannaboids and there’s over 120 different cannabinoids on the plant and um despite what the THC Bros want to tell us like oh the only one that matters is th see well that’s not necessarily true and a lot of the cannabinoids that are really helpful like CBG CBN um they they all can stand on their own and they don’t necessarily get you high but they all have you know little special something that um can help different people for different things and um you can use them for sleep you can use them for anxiety you can use them to help with all sorts of issues including inflammation including um well I mean it’s a long list people use cannabis for so much and we humans have been using it for so long so the issue in Florida is right now we have Amendment Three and what is amendment three it is um well let me just backtrack a little bit I think people need to understand the difference between a law and an amendment to the Constitution of the state when we say Amendment Three will change the constitution of Florida it means that it will will enshrine upon the Constitution these laws that is way worse than for example our legislature creating a law because that law can be amended what happens when you do an amendment and I mean the words are so similar and this is something that before I got started in in really doing the work of of trying to educate people and going and speaking before legislatures I was like so confused and I was like but what does this mean and it it was a lot of great people that taught me um a lot of this so I am hopeful that whoever is listening to this if you don’t already know these things if you do I’m sorry that I’m repeating it and if you don’t I hope that I’m educating you not only on this law but on how laws happen so the State of Florida has a constitution like the regular United States also has a constitution what they are proposing is like adding another Constitutional Amendment like the Second Amendment like the 16th Amendment like whatever it is an amendment that will permanently stay on our Constitution and the only way to change it is to get a large number of signatures something for this amendment that truly put in over $50 million to achieve now that means that if we want to change this law moving forward we too will have to come up with some absurd number of dollars probably more than 50 million and get a large amount of signatures to change it so this isn’t just oh well we can change it down the line that’s not how this works so what is in this Constitutional Amendment and I have it here um I can send it to you so you can put in the show notes but what is the major offense of this Constitutional Amendment and it is right at the beginning and it says number three of the the F very first part it says public policy and I’m just going to skip to number three and say actions and conduct by the medical marijuana Treatment Center which are the people that were registered by the state um the license is well over millions of dollars to get it and there’s only 22 at this moment so it’s not a whole lot of people in a state of over 20 million we only have 22 licenses um it says the treatment center registered with the department or its agents or employees and in compliance with the section and Department regulations shall not be subject to criminal or civil liability or sanctions under Florida law now just to say what that means is the state can basically make them never be like iable for anything and um one of the push backs I received when I posted that was somebody said well but you have to be compliant within the state and that right there is an issue um I have been attempting to do a foyer request of the state for quite some time I and many others there have been at least four to five different people that have been attempting this and they will not respond to us and the reason I wanted this foyer request is because the fex the department that controls this had a section early in in 2016 that said you know post your your comments or your concerns here and there were hundreds of people that posted about many of the mmtc’s having glass having bugs having mildew in their products that they were selling they were selling things that had pesticides they were selling terrible products and what did fdax do they removed that they didn’t go out and say hey true leave hey Cur hey so and so you need to solve this problem and you need to take back that crummy weed that you sold people because it’s hurting them we have people that have come out and stated that their conditions made so much worse by this they have not been able to get relief and they are going to enshrine that behavior into our Constitution and that right there is a no-o for me so everything else that’s in this document um whether you like it or not it’s going to create two different um two different Lanes it’s going to create a lane for them mmtc’s which is like the taxi Medallion back in the day when Uber came around that is the lane that they’re creating and then we have the free market which is the hemp Market which of course they’re also trying to eliminate because they’re like oh it’s untested and it’s all these terrible compounds well Delta 9 is THC what what terrible compound are they creating in the hemp Market um so there’s a lot of misom misinformation a lot of people just angry R and I don’t want this to be a monologue so I’ll I’ll I’ll let you come on in and and kind of help me out here but there’s definitely a lot to be said about this subject and it’s just crazy how much um you just have to be in the weeds to be able to really comprehend it I think and I I’d love to be able to find a way to make this easier for people you know yeah yeah well um yeah you made a few different points I’ll bounce uh between them you know one of the points I just wanted to make that there are a lot of similar similarities between Illinois and Florida uh right now we have more than 22 lenses but we started off with approximately 21 and and while we do have more than 22 I would still say those 21 are still supplying a majority of the market another similarity uh recall information is under lock and key in Illinois I can show this or I can put this in the show notes for people the headline is Illinois can regulation moldy weed but no consumer alert or recall secret investigations everything with regard to recalls actually well let’s just put it this way there’s been like one recall in the state of Illinois and that only happened because they what’s that there have been none in Florida and I was just about to say that only happened because these people chose to uh since then there have been none um and that’s because it’s all protected uh under state law so again we’ll have that in the show notes a very uh you know similarity between Florida and Illinois another thing that’s similar between Florida and Illinois is the fact that this this hemp uh the topic of hemp has become such a contentious issue um we have a lot of people saying you know the concerns about untested unsafe products quote unquote more specifically in Illinois uh there’s been like a PR push to claim that high schoolers are like all overdosing on these on these uh you know hemp derived products and then what the state of Illinois does and some of these new lenses what they do is they say hemp is a direct competitor to social Equity because you know in Illinois our new licenses are social Equity licenses well so it’s funny they say that because you know in this this episode is brought to you by this company but riverbluff Collective they a social Equity lense and this is a hemp beverage they make so is it a direct competitor to social Equity license if social Equity licenses can make them and do make these products the other point I just wanted to quickly bring up that you I know I’m kind of machine gunning through points here um but you just covered a lot of bases this is just gonna be yeah uh you brought up the point of H but I think it’s import important that we just like back up and Define it for a second and I like this graphic uh it’s made by Brian box Brown an a comic artist that people should check out uh he talks about a lot of of the subjects we’re actually going to be discussing today including like the idea of an open market versus this idea of you know keeping the licenses constricted the 2018 farm bill um created language that meant that any hemp product with less than 3% THC by weight is just legal hemp so the way I like to break that down is and I love this graphic because it’s just you know as long as you have a gummy or a drink um where most of it is you know the other ingredients and then just 3% of that is THC well then that’s a legal product and the way that the reason I’m so obsessed with this with this topic is because I feel like if we would have been presented with this option and like let’s just say like five years ago 10 years ago we would have been like this seems silly but I’ll take it you know what I mean my favorite part about this is how um Democrats are always and I’m nonpartisan I could care less about the duopoly but Democrats generally are like we’re in favor of legalizing cannabis well they’ve done nothing and then Trump who’s been like yeah I’m not really in favor of any of this legalized hemp in 2018 with that farm bill and I don’t even think he did it on purpose which is like the worst part because you know like I’ll say this and people are like oh don’t give Trump another point I’m not I don’t think he did it on purpose I think he signed the farm bill and nobody had any way of knowing that that you know chemistry is so wonderful that they could just convert hemp into a THC product um and now it’s legal so I think it’s one of those cases where um the market just beat government at their own game and it’s it’s kind of fun and I I really love when we the people win and in this is one of those cases where we won you know yeah we would have taken it and we would have been like well what are we going to do smoking some hemp it’s not going to get us anywhere and then really crazy intelligent entrepreneurs chemists were like you know this process we’ve been using to convert um and make something like um vanilla Le like usable for everyone because it’s literally the same product process that’s been used for hundreds of years it’s the same way they use it to make vitamins um so they use the same process on this plant and turned hemp into THC and I just I think top points for creativity and top points for solving a problem that we all had they provided us now with something that is legal and just as good as the other thing I mean of course listen I I’m always like in favor of smoking a clean bud you know it’s just that that chill factor I really do love you know the the fact that you can just zone out with your with your smoking and it’s like a whole it’s a whole ceremony the lighting of it the passing it around to your friends I mean it’s just like such a ceremonious thing but now you can do the same thing with a thca flower or a gummy or a chewable or an edible or whatever it is that you have and um yeah prop to Trump for that even though he didn’t probably intend to do it well and I mean so here’s that’s that’s like kind of the Crux of this debate right is like what was the intent and I you know I I my thing is like whatever the intent was and I’m not you know a lawyer but I’ve talked to different ones and it’s like whatever the intent was the language is clear and you know that’s that’s why these things are able to happen and you know you you make a lot of really good points about you know synthesized products I think that those are you know definitely an Avenue people can go down but like and just before we move on from that like Delta a uh was first identified and acknowledged shout out to my home state uh by researcher Ro Roger Adams in 1942 if you go to the University of Illinois today there’s building that bear his name um he discovered Delta 8 and THC and CBD back in the day and guess what he synthesized them and and uh it was fine um but and nobody died yeah so but to move to move on from that like my frankly I you know like the synthesized products are interesting the first place I ever tried Delta 8 was in an Illinois cannabis dispensary I’ve posted that you know so it’s been it’s been sold in dispensaries across uh in many States including Illinois um you know the synthesized cannabinoids are all good and well for me but you know honestly I think it is hilarious that yeah most of the Cannabis sold at least in Illinois and a lot of dispensaries could qualify as THC flow or the Edibles could be sold as hemp Edibles and in fact I’ve talked to a lot of the operators in the state they’re making them with hemp derived can canono anyways so they literally so they’re like you know let’s go for it because and you can ship it across state lines which is even more wonderful like these dispensaries have had these Draconian rules that they themselves in some cases in the case of Florida created for themselves and now they they see that their competition the free hemp Market has these don’t have to comply with those rules they don’t have to comply with the 28 they don’t have to comply with the state you know with keeping it within the state and they’re upset by it and rightfully so um you know the the the free market person me is like everybody should be able to have these wonderful rules and then they just kind of like stick it to the to the guys that have been screwing us for a long time it’s like no you built those rules keep them they’re yours we don’t want them so I I’m kind of torn between them I kind of want to be like I feel your pain but also well that’s just like this is the that’s kind of the point in me bringing this up earlier is these social Equity licenses will complain about these hemp businesses that can get just get started meanwhile this social Equity business used H to finance their operation instead of complaining about it they took advantage of it and it’s like my thing is my question to you actually is like it’s interesting I’m sure you’ve heard that talking point it’s like oh all we want is one set of rules I’m like okay but why are you supporting the one set of rules that keeps people out of the market cuz that’s really what this debate seems to come down to I’ve never heard anybody say that they want to sell the kids or that they want to sell untested unregulated products they say they want to they want an opportunity to participate and the response is no the response is if everyone participated they would have to compete based on actual products and not based on the Government monopoly of force so if you’re a true leave it’s easier to spend $50 million to keep the market closed than it is to take those same $50 million and improve your product your processes and your strains and actually get a product out there that people want instead of by force and I think that’s the bottom line of it I mean listen the social Equity thing is adorable and I love that we are now talking about it because as a female and as a Latina I’ve been screwed out of the market now multiple times in um 2018 I partnered with a group that was attempting to get the license here in Florida and we partnered because I have a farm my father’s been a lifelong farmer and um he could no longer um support his form and I took it over and I was like what am I going to do with this thing and I tried getting into the market they refused to open the licensing then even though they they had to by the number of patients in the State of Florida they did not open it they kept it closed and then they opened during covid the hemp uh license and I was like well I guess I’m not going to go into THC I’m going to go into the hemp field and I built green houses and I started with a thankfully started with a very small crop and realized early in that hemp does not like to stay at the 3% level actually there is no hemp on this planet that is 3% it is 1% and above and what did the State of Florida do they came out with a law that said that if your flower goes above the point 3% um that you have to burn all of your crops you cannot remedy it you can not take it to a lab and remedy it for example turn it into Delta 8 that is compliant you have to burn your crops so I spent probably half a million dollars building out the farm to only find out that this is not a business that I am going to go into because the moment that I started actually growing crops was the moment I was going to end up in jail because your only option here is to pick the crop well before it’s ready and or destroy it and or go to jail and um if any anybody’s ever grown large quantities of anything you’ll know that it is heart-wrenching to have to pull your plants up and kill them because the state has some stupid role so then I move on to this product with uh Delta hthc and immediately the State of Florida is like no they granted me a license I invested again a large amount of my money into it and the state of Florida’s like you know we’ve changed our mind and we aren’t going to let this be legal anymore so I spent all of the beginning of this year traveling to Tallahasse which um I don’t know how far you are from your legislatures in your state but Florida’s kind of a funny state if you look at us we’re very long and Miami’s all the way down at the bottom and tallahassee’s all the way at the top and there’s only one airline that flies from Miami to Tallahassee and the plane tickets are about 600 bucks and you have to stay the night because I mean it’s almost impossible to get in and get out if you have an really early um you know if if session is at 8: a.m. and so I spent thousands oh yep there you can see it Tallahasse is all the way at the end it’s over a 9h hour drive if you’re going to do it in cart without stopping that’s insane it is insane so the hour flight is way easier but it’s really expensive and then you got to stay there and you know you got to eat of course and you know there’s all these things that come with saying there so I flew there about six or seven times just this year to be able to speak out and say you guys what you’re doing is just wrong um they blame the children they’re like it’s for the children cuz children are overdosing mind you they didn’t have any actual evidence and um children overdose on Tylenol to the rate of over 40,000 children in America every single year overdose and over 300 children died and yet Tylenol you can find it at CVS at the bottom shelf they’re not kids absolutely I mean if it’s about the children and I’m a mother of four I am the first person to say let’s protect the kids you know what protects the kids the laws that say that you can’t sell it to anyone under 21 nobody wants their license revoked because they sold it to a kid they’re not going to do that so it’s just the whole thing was just ridiculous so when I hear people with this social Equity thing it’s like okay that’s fantastic but your social Equity is only for specific groups clearly not for all of us that are in that same social Equity category um Florida had a lawsuit the Pigford lawsuit which was for black farmers and they were entitled to one license um granted to Black Farmers to make up for the terrible laws that the State of Florida had in the 40s and 50s and the gentleman who won one of the licenses passed away before it was given to him and now his family has to sue because the State of Florida is like oh well I guess you’re not eligible anymore you couldn’t hold on until we gave it to you so no more for you I mean it’s just it’s such an embarrassment what the state has done it’s it’s so wrong I see you rolling that joint and I am I am jealous you had mentioned joints earlier you were talking about the whole ritual and stuff and I was like I gotta roll a [ __ ] joint I’m so jealous right now I actually packed them because I missed the early stages of cannabis smoking you know when you’re a teenager where you learn how to do these things so despite being Cuban I’m not good at rolling so I hey you want to know a secret we’re the same I use a little rolling machine [Laughter] I’m not packing the king poms have you tried those yes those are really cool I feel like a boss when I smoke those yeah I show up to to places with my king poms and I’m like who wants some of mine hell yeah I love them they’re I think they’re fantastic and they come with a nice little filter and um yeah why not yeah well I didn’t mean to cut off your you know your train of thought there I mean just back you know back kind of to it like I I am it’s interesting like I looked at the replies on your on your Tweet you know and uh they’re all about unregulated un what are the some of the things that they say um I’ll share my yeah for sure um but you know like for example it seems like the language is all consistent untested unregulated cannabis Market um you know untested unregulated you see a lot of that and I I just again I don’t know where this crowd is getting the sense that anybody is saying that it should be untested and that it should be unregulated um I think the biggest issue for for what happens online is that none of these people have to use their name their photos and so you have a lot of people listen $50 million for this to pass is a lot of money and clearly the people who have been putting money behind this want to make sure that it gets passed and I understand that you have an investment you want your investment to go through so this is exactly what they’re going to do they’re going to spread this fake fake news fake propaganda and make it seem like no no this amendment is the most important thing and you’ve got to vote for it like I said it’s going to enshrine on the Florida Constitution law a a law that is going to protect the mmtc’s now if you are somebody who um you know who who is in an mmtc this is a fantastic law for you no matter what you do and there have been cases where people who work at the mmtc’s have passed away I think was it in Illinois that uh somebody as um aspirated too much of the um of the fine dust of of the Keef or something I believe that was truly even Massachusetts yeah I’m not sure where Laura McMurray if people want to look up her name uh okay somebody has passed away from working in these things and listen I mean this could have happened anywhere I’m not saying that this is like true Le’s fault necessarily maybe they didn’t have good venting systems maybe they I don’t know what the issue was but now those employees well they can’t sue their employer when this happens to them um you know if Lura had children they can’t go back and sue uh truly for this they really can’t do anything about it because well now they’re IM they have this immunity and I think that that’s wrong and that’s just the employee side what about the millions of people who walk into a dispensary and now they are just whatever they sell you that’s what you’re going to get and it’s going to be expensive and it’s going to be you know um crappy because that’s how they roll and I just I mean the whole thing is just God awful why are we doing this greed yeah creating a monopoly and I love to equate it to the Uber taxi Medallion thing because once the um once Uber actually was out the gate and government stopped going after them those taxi medallions went from a million dollars a piece to worthless I remember there is video of AOC on the steps of the courts in New York City with like the taxi drivers I’m fighting for you no if you were really fighting for them you wouldn’t have had this taxi Medallion issue in anybody who wanted to operate a taxi as long as they were were vetted should have been able to but no you wanted people to be under this rule where people had to be um basically slaves to whoever owned that taxi Medallion working crazy hours you know and and for the people who were using the service I mean if you’ve ever taken a taxi versus an Uber you know the difference and for the people in the car it’s like I much rather have somebody that I can see has 5,000 10,000 reviews you know has has all of these things and I can tell him or I can complain about him and say hey guess what this guy drove crazy and I’m never gonna get in a car with him again zero stars for you as opposed to a taxi which I’ve never been in a taxi that wasn’t like fearing for my life at any point so I mean it’s just it’s crazy and and just because we don’t have the same licensing as as the mmtc’s or the M msos or whatever doesn’t mean our products aren’t tested um my own product gets tested consistently and often um both for quality and the Delta 8 in it I mean there’s no reason you couldn’t it’s not like Laboratories will only work with people with a certain license if you pay a lab to test your product they will test your product I mean it’s pretty simple and then you show this to the world so where we keep getting that messaging that like only these people can do this job and do it well as as we’ve proven or shown before you know like the the um the msos aren’t actually innocent little creatures they’re not like you know rainbows and butterflies and everything’s wonderful because they’re under the government no that’s not how this works and it’s just ridiculous and that that whole the whole talking point is just it’s so frustrating yeah you know and I got into a debate with somebody recently and they were I I I was just simply saying that first of all I’m not aware of anybody that doesn’t say that they’re willing to be tested or like you say test themselves like this product is tested uh all of the hemp products I’ve ever really tried uh are tested and frankly if you get one that isn’t I’m sorry but this isn’t like a new issue if you have you been smoking weed for like the past 10 years like if you find a a plug as we used to call them and they don’t have quality materials like find a new [ __ ] guy and my thing is somebody came at me when I said that and they’re like Are you seriously arguing that um you know like and I also pointed out that weed testing is flawed which is something I brought up a little bit earlier you know if you’re going to use that as your back stop for your argument you should realize that it’s a flawed back stop and so they they said to me like are you are you actually arguing that because dispensary testing is flawed um that you should grow you know get weed from somebody that God only knows who gws it and it’s untested but it’s better and I’m say I’m not arguing that untested weed is better rather that the current you know currently Cannabis Testing is flawed and needs significant Improvement you need to look no further than you know lab shopping uh inflation of THC percentage remediation um these are all things that aren’t you know talking about so like I’m all for improving testing standards and these practices they’re essential for making sure that cannabis on the market is safe and accurately labeled but seriously we’ve been buying untested cannabis for years knowing your grower and what they use is important and it’s nothing new to veteran smokers I mean the government the federal government sprayed paraquat on cannabis for years and do did that stop anybody from smoking no we found trusted sources Mexican brick that smelled like ammonia for crying out loud I mean you know like OG smokers at now we have like well at least there’s organic and you know you can find stuff that’s been cleaned and purified and I mean the right way to do it is to flush the plant two weeks before um you know before harvesting and you can find all of that you can also still find people that are covered in pesticides and they just get around it by not testing for heavy metals they don’t test for lots of these things and you’ll still buy it at the dispensaries because the dispensaries are not doing organic and that’s kind of the the Crux of what you I think you’re saying it’s listen it doesn’t matter where you buy it if they’re not growing it in the right way it doesn’t matter if Jesus Christ came down from the heavens himself and said buy this weed it’s still not being grown the way it’s supposed to be grown and you know there the only real way to figure that out is to check their testing and to check their practices and um you know at the very beginning in Florida I don’t know about now hopefully Tru Le and Cur leaf and all of them have improved their processes but at the very beginning in 2016 they were selling worse than what your plug was selling weed for sure and um a lot more expensive because in Florida to have that medical card at a minimum is $400 and I don’t know what that buy in Illinois but I can tell you that with $400 you can buy probably a year Supply depending on how much you need of Delta 8 Delta 9 Delta 10 so you know 400 bucks for a card because it’s 75 to the state plus two doctor visits that’s a lot of cheese that you’re putting out there for not a whole lot of bang for your book that’s 400 bucks four to 600 bucks without a single ounce of weed in your hand and um yeah that’s just not cool especially for people who are on fixed incomes as cannabis Now is really something for the elderly especially here in Florida it’s I I never thought that this would be a thing but the elderly are getting on board and I’m here for it I mean your last year should be painfree and fun why not we also have the villages so we do have a very crazy crowd of retirees in Florida um if anyone wants to look up The Villages let’s just say it’s a community that is really well known because STDs and stuff are rampant interesting yeah you know we’ve we’ve got some awesome people that come retire in Florida and why shouldn’t they be able to live out their best years yeah well I want to put a cap on this conversation we can close out with a little talk on Ross you know so that that stays on people’s radar but I guess just I want to give you the space before we close and I wanted to also put this idea out there I mean like look if your concern is untested unregulated cannabis I feel like the solution is that if somebody passes whatever tests you have and I argue those tests should be better by the way that your back stop is flawed if if that’s what you’re using but but let’s just say you know since testing is your back stop I argue that if somebody passes testing they should be able to put their stuff on the shelves absolutely they should be able to it should should be you know the best product should win it shouldn’t be who the government chooses and I’m watching you smoke and I am so jealous right now that um I I can’t smoke indoors um and I also don’t have any smoking materials with me to smoke on on screen so I’m just going to I’m going to I’m going to do that thing that you’re not supposed to do and take one of my own products actually I’m going to take half because you’re getting high on your own Supply hey hell yeah Cheers Cheers Martha cheers and you know one of the the things that I do like is it takes away anxiety so let’s go for it yeah yeah tends to be better for me for anxiety I take it when flying because I’m a nervous Nelly when I fly so yeah if people want that if they just look in your Twitter description or something they can find your products yes they can it’s our good I’m actually going to be closing out the website here soon uh like I said I went to Talon house and fought a whole bunch and that took a lot of time and energy from the business but I’m looking to wh label this for other people I’m going to just change the business model because I don’t really want to do the brand any so I’m just gonna I split it in half I’m just gonna take half cool well be before we move on like I said I wanted to give you the space was there you again this tweet went like I mean a lot of your tweets blow up but this one went especially viral I would say in the Cannabis investment Community you pissed a lot of people off Martha um before before we move on do you either want to address that or do you what I just want to give you the space anything else on this topic no I mean when people come after me for for speaking the truth I find it very telling especially if they’re in this community I mean go ahead hit me with the facts and I will respond um I just don’t like this attack it’s like if we’re not on the same exact page we’re obviously enemies and I think that that again comes from the fact that they have a lot to lose and so I’m sorry that that is the case I don’t mean to attack anyone but if you’re coming at my community um and that is the Cannabis Community people who are patients who you know this I I feel like like um this is probably a little too old for you but Hair Club for Men the the um the commercial on TV back 20 plus years ago was I’m not only the president I’m also a client so for me cannabis is that I am not only um in this for my own uh company but I started in cannabis I actually never smoked or consumed it until I was 35 um and I did because of um my doctor who um recommended I use it for a issue with my thyroid and it absolutely solved my thyroid issue I never had to have it removed which is what my medical doctor was saying for me to do um and in the process of taking care of my thyroid I took large doses of um RSO which I don’t recommend for newbies it is very difficult to manage your day while you are high as a kite at all times um but in the process of that I also discovered that issues that I had with my arthritis went away and issues that I had with you know just anxiety that I was suffering in my life went away and so I fell in love with this plant I fell in love what it could with what it can do for the human body I fell in love with the research that I did you know learning that your body goes into homostasis when it’s which is basically it balances you out it chills you out it does all these wonderful things um you know you can use topical creams and it’s fantastic I’ve used it for um psoriasis and dry skin I mean it’s just I hate to sound like like the crazy like you can use it on anything but you can pretty much use this plant for pretty much anything and and if you can then you desperately need a doctor in a hospital because that’s pretty much where you know you probably need something a lot stronger at that point but for your minor minor aches and pains for minor things up to um cancer prevention and and and issues with uh cancerous cells you can use this plant and I hate when people attack it and I will defend this plant with everything I have so um yeah to the msos keep coming at me um you just make me more popular so thanks well um I was going to pull up one last picture before I go um just because I you know it I honestly don’t know many people that use delta8 um but uh I do I recently met somebody um when they were trying to ban it and this woman I’m just showing an image of her people can do their own research uh her name’s Vicki and she was on a lot of as she told me a lot of different concoctions of like Pharmaceutical medications back in the day and she’s actually telling her story in this video here um and she found this Delta eight product and um among and other products as well but I believe specifically the Delta eight products she names as being helpful to her and so you know there there’s a place for everything and that’s that’s the way that I look at these you know canabo maybe maybe they’re not um for you if you’re looking for a recreational High you know this is adult use can often times medical cannabis and so you know it’s not always that you take these cannaboids and you feel like Whoa man it might be that you’re getting relief from some like you know something you’re suffering from so I think it’s important to remember folks that let’s not discriminate against these canabo uh I I love them all equally and I do too and they all have you know that you you would take a CBN for sleep you maybe like I said for me it’s traveling on an airplane first of all if you’re with a THC product I have to worry about the government coming after me and that gives me crazy anxiety I mean you can’t know what they do we’ll talk get into Ross in a minute and not be uh anxious over it so if you’re going to cross state lines I rather travel with something that’s legal and I rather travel with something that gives me less anxiety not more so um there’s a canono for pretty much everything and if you um need any help I’m sure there’s plenty of people that can help I help you identify those canids actually if you go into the smoke shops a lot of smoke shops the people that work there are incredibly knowledgeable on the different cannaboids and um you know there’s not a lot of testing so it’s kind of Hit or Miss and sometimes you’re just going to have to try them out for yourself but definitely it depends on the canabo and it depends on what you’re looking to achieve but I love that you pulled up Vicki um I’m I’m glad that it’s it’s helping her and um yeah this is a plant about love and loving one another and uh helping them live their best life and if it helps her live her best life that’s awesome yeah and uh yeah for our last uh subject you know um I just thought we could talk about Ross rri because uh you know I wanted to talk to you about Ross anyways but um his name was recently brought up at a Bitcoin conference which just a little bit of background before I pitch it over to you and we start to close the show like I used to buy Bitcoin coin but guess what I used to use it the way that it’s supposed to be used which is to buy drugs um now people buy Bitcoin and they hold on to them like it’s an investment dude I back in the day I had like five Bitcoin in my wallet and I spent them on the Silk Road and uh and I’m not I don’t regret it because it was the best experience ever um for those that don’t know Silk Road was like a a free market for um you know just about anything you could want um but specifically I used it to find Cannabis back in the day when I didn’t have um the options that have been bestowed to me because of the farm bill and because of our state legal system which doesn’t really do the job as we’ve kind of pointed out seems like the farm bill did more for cannabis than than any state legal cannabis system has done so far but anyways before that we had the Silk Road and um you know people can look into it if you’re not already aware of it but do you want to give any background before we uh talk about the most recent news uh with potential news with Ross and such sure so um just to back track and what you said Ross was a Libertarian through and through he was actually a one of the first cohorts of students for Liberty he was part of the Ron Paul revolution in 2012 um and before I think 2008 uh he was part of the Ron Paul Revolution so Ross is somebody who believes in Freedom through and through and this site was not about selling drugs and I know that that’s the big um misconception that people have about Ross Ross believed in creating a free market using a coin that was unable to be um you know confiscated by the government or whatever the case was Bitcoin was just getting started this is in the time where it was 10,000 Bitcoin for a pizza I think was the what somebody paid for so I mean we’re talking about a very obscure coin and to get to this website you had to download a tour browser you needed to send in a money order so talk about having to go to a store and get a money order this is like kids today have no idea the struggle um you had to go to you know pick up this this money order mail it into Mount gaau which was a baseball trading site on the internet and then they’d send you your Bitcoin and then you could purchase on um the Silk Road and like I said Ross wasn’t in it to sell drugs per se he was in it to create this free market and he believed in the non-aggression principle so the non-aggression principle applies to this website as well you could buy and exchange anything as long as it didn’t hurt a third party that included um children there’s no child pornography there was no stolen goods um there you know like you it wasn’t like a free-for-all like people said people were like oh well you could buy murder For Hire no you couldn’t you could not buy any of those things and they were removed from the site immediately um what could you buy you could buy the number one thing sold on the Silk Road was Cannabis the number two thing I think was small amounts of um of mushrooms there were other things this is before the fentanyl crisis but you could definitely buy cocaine and Other Drugs um and you could also buy art you could buy gold you could buy all sorts of things actually the gold is a real great point because one of the charges against Ross was that he laundered money or conspiracy to launder money and it had nothing to do with the Bitcoin it had everything to do with the fact that people could use Bitcoin to to buy gold and the United States government really does not like competition they don’t want competition uh to the dollar which is what Bitcoin is which is why they threw Ross in a cage so moving forward on the story Ross was caught um in 2013 I believe and he has been serving a 240e life sentence um since then he’s on his 11th year Ross is a young man he just turned 40 this year he served his entire 30s in a age and he’s in a Maximum Security Prison in Tucson Arizona and what does it mean to be in a Maximum Security Prison it means that you are it’s not the cushy jails that you think of it’s not the oh uh Gan Maxwell is at a country club um you know uh what was the Ponzi scheme guy uh Bernie maid off he’s in a cushy jail he gets to have visits from people you know Ross does not get to have visits he does not get to have conjugal visits Ross has not been able to even hug his mother in the past few years so this is like a sentence that is a death sentence it’s a slow and torturous death sentence um and they don’t treat him very well uh there so this is absolutely horrific um and just for a little additional context there was a Silk Road 2.0 um Blake uh I forgot his last name uh Blumenthal or something he created the Silk Road 2. .0 and he was just at the last um Bitcoin conference they sold double at least the amount of drugs that the Silk Road did also with Bitcoin but he only served 13 days in jail and one of the FBI agents that investigated Ross is an investor in his current business so I mean it’s it’s just like no matter how you want to cut this thing how you want to slice it it is a complete travesty and a miscarriage of Justice it is cruel and unusual punishment and what they are doing to Ross by by the way nobody who actually sold drugs Ross didn’t sell the drugs himself he created the website yep everybody who sold drugs is now free everybody who sold drugs on the Silk Road is currently free except for Ross Orrick and this is something that it’s just I can’t put I can’t wrap my head around it the reason Ross is in that jail is because he is America’s political prisoner they made an example out of him judge Katherine forest in her um deliberation when she was was giving him his sentence said that his ideology was dangerous an ideology that Ross had not left behind and that there were chat logs where um I guess Ross or who they presumed to have been Ross said that every transaction was a win against the State against these Draconian laws that prohibited people from being able to transact amongst themselves and she claimed that that was dangerous so people like myself Libertarians we are dangerous to the United States government and they will throw us in a cage in these horrible conditions for what we believe in so I feel like Ross is not only somebody that I look up to he’s very much who I consider my Neo if you’re familiar with the Matrix but he’s also um I am Ross that’s the bottom line it could be me if I was as brilliant as Ross maybe I’d be sitting behind a in a cage as well um maybe you know maybe one day I will be because I have a very big mouth and I don’t believe that the government is should be able to control me so maybe that’ll be me one day and um I believe it is all of our duty if you feel this way about Freedom if you feel that people should have the right to transact um to openly transact you know or build a website then you two might be Ross yeah and I love how this relates sort of to to this whole hemp thing because you know like that’s really what this is about it’s the freedom to transact and like you said it Ross really took kind of an agnostic view to it it’s like you know um he was just the host if you will everybody else was doing the you know yeah so thank you for running through that and um you know I know the latest news was that um I I believe President uh uh president Trump had said that if reelected he would what is it commute the sentence sentence on day one of his presidency for time served which is a really big deal um obviously a pardon would be better but I believe that in the history of the United States nobody’s I think there’s only been one case of somebody directly pardon out of prison so a commutation means that Ross would be free he’d still be a felon he still wouldn’t be able to H uh consume any drugs himself he wouldn’t be able to have a gun but in the grand scheme of things will take it um and so because president Trump he actually has said it now publicly twice he said it first at the libertarian National Convention to Libertarians I was in the third row I was I you know I I went in there thinking oh my God I can’t believe Trump is at our convention to oh boy I guess now I probably have to support him but also um after Trump said it he forced RFK to come out and say it because RFK had been saying in multiple occasions I will consider pardoning Ross alrick and you know after Trump came out and said no I’m going to do it RFK had to he actually tweeted about it almost immediately he’s like I too well pardon Ross o so and and Chase Oliver the libertarian candidate he’s been saying since day one actually he was the first person and he told it to me the moment he told me he was gonna you know he was he was going to to run for office he said I will pardon Ross elri this is part of my campaign so we now have the three uh you know most prominent uh people running for president saying we will pardon Ross oh they forced the issue and if you know people that know politics know that the only thing that matters is what is politically expedient and what is politically expedient right now is getting on this Ross train and saying hey we will pardon we will commute a sentence day one of course we have not heard the same from Camala Harris uh Cala Harris CA I I can never pronounce her name right I’m sorry please forgive me whoever you know because people they don’t come after me and like you mispronounced her name listen I’m Hispanic and um the way it’s pronounced would be Kamala and so I just I kind of go down that route so anyways whatever her name is um she has not said that she would pardon him and she could do it today and I think that that’s an important thing because Democrats are like we’re in favor of cannabis and we are the party that’s going to make cannabis legal really well why haven’t you you’re in power and two why don’t you go ahead and release Ross alrick today we don’t have to wait for Trump to come out and do it you can do it cricket they are not going to do anything because this is about pandering to us this is about telling us what we want to hear and I know that that’s going to be the criticism on the Republican side as well like oh well Trump is just telling you what you want to hear true so let’s make him a liar and let’s have Kamala Kam Kamala whatever do it now let’s go ahead let’s make him a liar let’s let you know let this woman go ahead and do it first and give her the win and if she does then I don’t have to vote for either of these two because honestly I don’t really trust any of these politicians anyways yeah excuse me do you think there’s any chance and I know that this is we kind of went back and forth on these topics but uh you know just because we were having this conversation now do you think there is any chance that like the Republicans will try to own the Cannabis issue and um be like you want to reschedule cannabis we started the process of descheduling cannabis with the farm bill like they should yeah I mean where’s the downside why wouldn’t they if I was running as a republican right now I’d be like Democrats talk we walk the walk you know like why wouldn’t you yeah and I will say Donald Trump I’d be like I made cannabis legal like take it own it go for it yeah if I were him me I’d be like I did it I was just trying not to be loud about it you know like just just get the job done and move on type of thing we just want to show that six years later cuz that was 2018 it’s been six years the world world hasn’t fallen apart you’re not seeing zombies in the street which is what they tell you it’s like oh my God if you legalize cannabis then everybody’s going to be high hey yes but also the world didn’t fall apart you know like yeah I do know that there’s a lot of people that are now High and um I think that that’s fine people are are drunk too and the world hasn’t ended I mean yeah and to your point though like the the experiment of descheduled cannabis has been going on since 2018 and I’m not aware of any deaths and even if there were I want to be clear safety isn’t really the point in legalizing cannabis it’s about preventing a case like Ross alrick which I know he wasn’t selling cannabis but I’m I’m talking about being jailed for a nonviolent offense right safety is not the point behind legalization Point like everybody always likes to couch and I’m kind of just talking to my audience right now I know you but you’re a Libertarian you agree with me on this one um my like a lot of the people that I see on social media and everything else will like couch um and I’m actually loose I’m quoting Hamilton Morris they’ll couch you know cannabis and it’s safe it’s therapeutic it’s spiritual when that’s not the point even if those things may be true you’re setting yourself up for failure because somebody will die from Cannabis something will you know something will go wrong does that mean we should start locking people up up in cages again no that means we learned something and because the point really was cognitive Liberty the ability to explore these different uh modes or or you know experiences of Consciousness um absolutely whether or not fathers grew hemp the founding fathers themselves grew hemp the Constitution was written on hemp as a matter of fact there was a law in this country when the founding fathers were around that if you had X number of hectors you had to grow hemp uh it was feed for our cows on My Father’s Farm my father was a is a still a um a cattle farmer and um when I first started growing the hemp the small quantity that I did um my dad’s cows were still on the farm and I had to put up barbed wire to keep them out because they absolutely love to eat cannabis or hemp the plant itself the stock the the leaves they love it and um there’s a theory I don’t know how accurate it is that our consumption our meat our Dairy had hemp um hemp you know you can eat hemp seeds you can every part of the plant is edible to humans it’s edible to Cows as well and um cows used to this is part of their feed back before prohibition and there’s a theory that I’ve heard that um a lot of over the last 100 plus years our diets have changed so much that people are getting sicker and are you know inflammation is up and it very well may be because well our our animals are no longer consuming it so um again not saying that you should go out and feed your cow’s hemp but certainly doesn’t hurt them and they do love it you know the Barb wires I had to put up are definitely proof um that that I had to these these cows were just like wild for it and U I think it’s you know I think that there’s something about the nature of of this plan I also had an experience where my plants there was really crazy wind one day and the plants fell down and would continue to grow even though they were broken you can stand them right back up and tape them and they’ll just boom like nothing they’ll repair themselves and keep going but if you don’t they’ll still grow on the ground I mean this plant is just I I think I have a love affair with it because it’s just so magical there’s there’s no part about this plant that isn’t amazing and so it’s just wild to me that humans can’t just freely use something that our founding fathers also grew and smoked and um enjoyed you know right and I just want to remind folks again that you know alcohol and tobacco are legal and are they safe I mean like ex ,000 Americans die every year from just alcohol poisoning 80,000 we’ve had over 8,000 years of recorded history on um cannabis or hemp whatever you want to call it it’s literally the same thing it’s just the amount of THC so we’ve had over 8,000 years of recorded history on uh cannabis and hemp and absolutely zero people have died from just consuming hemp you’re more likely to die if like a bail of hemp falls on your head than you are if you smoke the entire bail of a of cannabis so yeah hell yeah well that’s we’re GNA put it in those terms right well um that is a great note I think to cap off but I want to give you the space anything that we didn’t touch on with regard to hemp and Ross or anything else that that may have come up just giving you the space thank you um yeah so if you’re interested in in more finding out more about Ross you can visit the website that his family has up it’s called Freer ross.org and on that same uh website you can bring up the petition to Freer Ross um any petition it’s a change.org petition um but any petition that reaches a million signatures need needs to be addressed by the White House it’s one of their their points so it’s at Freer ross.org petition where you can see his his um petition you can sign it you can share it with people um we’re I think we’re just about 6 yep just just shy of 600k um and we’re hoping to get that to a million um of course our routes are hopefully the Biden Administration pardons him frees him but if not Trump says he’ll do it so hopefully he will be free within the next few months and um I can’t wait to meet him in person and I can’t wait to see what he does with his life because being in a cage um this man is a genius uh he did this website when he was in his early 20s and has suffered the consequences of it so I can’t wait to see what he does with the next uh half of his life and um even if he just does nothing with it I think having him in a cage is just it’s just so wrong yeah it’s crazy I just saw it said when he was 26 so that’s insane to think about um because I’m who hasn’t done something dumb in their early 20s I mean you know if if we were judged on the dumbest thing we ever did in our 20s and I’m not saying this was dumb I’m I’m of the I’m of the belief that Ross is literally a genius but I mean I get it it’s dumb he did something against the US government and he’s paid for it so if you’re judged on the worst day in your early 20s this there’s worse things to be judged on I just don’t think he should be in a cage for it totally agree totally agree well um Martha I uh appreciate your time um I think you know if we can I know we’re both really busy people so uh if we can ever make this happen again if I’m ever in Florida I’ll holler your way if you’re ever in Illinois for some strange reason holler at me and uh it’s like why would you I mean Chicago’s cool and everything but I can’t think of many good reasons to come to Illinois right now so um I mean come for good food no I mean Chicago like I said good food great culture all that stff Chicago yeah you guys have great restaurants absolutely and in Illinois clean downtown in general but I mean I’m just saying like a lot of people leave Illinois to go to Florida that’s I was just trying to make a joke that yeah your weather is a little bit of a problem I may go but it has to be in the summer I don’t know how you people survive You’re Made Of something totally other I’m island people come to Florida for our delicious winter absolutely all right well Martha we’ll see you in the next one everybody I hope you found value in this conversation take care we’ll see you in the next one thanks so much