In this episode, Cole Preston sits down with veteran John Grady to discuss a raid by Missouri’s Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) on a VFW post that offered hemp-infused beverages (exclusively) to its adult members.
The conversation dives into the influence of money in Missouri’s cannabis policy, how it’s targeting the hemp industry, and the questionable timing of the raid, which occurred immediately after a 9/11 remembrance ceremony. John sheds light on the deeper implications of the state’s actions, including political favors, veteran rights, and the ongoing battle for fair access to hemp-derived products
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The auto-generated transcript is available below.
John I just wanted to thank you so much for sitting down with me today you know uh we’ll get back to this here in a moment because I’d like to have you introduce yourself but the reason we’re gathered here today is because I recently read that in a at a VFW immediately after loow their flag in to half staff in remembrance of 9/11 Missouri dhss raided that VFW uh over hemp derived drinks did I at least tease that story right before I have you introduce yourself that is exactly right I mean uh it’s crazy but yeah they they rated a VFW yeah Bad actors at that BFW I tell you yeah let’s get back to that John do you mind giving yourself a brief introduction for my listening audience sure my name’s John Grady I work for my wife at our farm slap Happy beverage company and we run slap Happy hemp company where we make hemp products from our from uh what we grow we are a disabled veteran own farm and we are actually certified by the Homegrown by Heroes labor label by the farmer Veterans Coalition and we go to the farmers markets on Saturdays we are your normal agriculture uh farmers and we just have a little bit different product we make all kinds of different products one of them is a beverage an adult beverage it’s used socially and sometimes uh people don’t like the fact that we have a beverage that has intoxicating properties and so they try and skate around the law to ban Us in multiple different ways and they really do have really crazy efforts they go to and links that they go to like what’s going on in Missouri yeah and I thought maybe you know of course if you want to Dive Right In with the VFW story we can but I thought maybe you know you were giving me a good background uh that kind of led up you were describing how you know some of this big marijuana money has been Paving the way towards what has essentially happened so maybe that’s a good background before we get to the VFW what do you think sure yeah I I’ve been working to try and pass cannaboid therapy laws in Missouri since 2013 or so and over the years I’ve seen how Multistate operator big marijuana Farms come in and basically Challenge and and and almost by politicians and by uh laws in fact the big marijuana industry bought 39 pages in the Missouri Constitution in 2022 when they passed recreational marijuana and that’s where we see a lot of big issues happening uh and they had legislation going forward in the general assembly in Missouri for medical they got killed by the marijuana industry they actually had recreational that was uh recreational bill was great if you get a chance look it up HB 2704 by Ron Hicks it was a cannabis Freedom Act it said if you can get a business license you could have a cannabis license it had great testing protocols and it really demonstra cannabis and hemp as a whole but uh the marijuana industry defeated that and like I said they bought 39 pages in the Missouri Constitution that still did not actually legalize marijuana because marijuana is still a controlled substance in the state of Missouri that’s why people can get felony charges so they skipped that through then in 20222 they decided uh the hemp industry now is our biggest competitor so we need to go after them so they started filing uh legislation to ban the hemp industry to reduce any THC in any products to tell us that we can’t even grow to the federal guidelines and standards we have a three% THC or below they were trying to do all kinds of stuff and they’ve been doing that the last two sessions that we defeated them in 23 and then we defeated them again in 24 however the marijuana industry has its hands really tied into Missouri politics really entrenched into there and uh they gave the governor and Forbes Magazine covered this they gave the governor $556,000 into his pack Mo canet trade did right before they came out with the executive order and the month before uh the Attorney General Andrew Bailey got one point like 1.5 a little bit over maybe 1.6 million from can moan trade and various cannabis uh Personnel in the industry gave them that kind of money before these executive orders came out and these executive orders that Parson said it was because the legislator wasn’t able to control hemp no what it was is the legislator rejected the efforts by the marijuana uh conglomerates cartels whatever you want to call them and said no we need to have Fair practical and reasonable regulations on hemp we don’t need to ban this industry it’s a federally elicit industry there’s no way of banning this industry Parsons didn’t like that so he made his executive order Secretary of State J ashro rejected his executive order not once but twice and said it’s unconstitutionally can’t enforce it because of the laws that are currently on the books that didn’t stop DHS from starting raids so far they’ve admittedly to their own response they have raided 74 facilities found for found products and 42 facilities that they have either embargoed or destroyed which means they took people’s money without having permission so they stole from people they committed felonies in doing this to enforce order it’s not effective and has been rejected by the Secretary of State as unconstitutional element then you take it further the next press conference when they said they were going to talk about the Bad actors last Tuesday they came out and said Hey We’re Not Gon to go after the good guys the good guys in the hemp industry they doing the things right we’re going after the Bad actors the ones that are targeting children so we all kind of had a little breathe of a sigh of a relief and we thought we were good and then that very next day my VFW Post was rid by DHS agents looking for hemp beverages our post is a very forward thinking post where we provide non-alcoholic Alternatives from just complete regular non-alcoholic to non-alcoholic hemp infused Beverages and I think we’re talking about doing mushroom beverages as well so we want to provide for our demographic the oif o f veterans that are looking at these and they may not do the alcohol anymore but they might do hemp Beverages and things like that so that’s what we’re having out there for our our members and DHS thought that that was a a threat to children I guess so they raided us then after the outrage when everybody was like why are you rating a VFW came on then they said well we gotta complain an anonymous tip came in September 5th and everybody goes okay so we had to investigate because of anous tips comes in we have to investigate so we all said okay that’s fine but we understand the investigation and nobody would be outraged had you come September 6th September 7th 8th 9th 10th 11th or not 11th but 10th or the 12th and after right but to come on the 11th when you had that much time six days to prepare for it just shows an obtuseness that this isn’t about kids this is about paying back favors and debts owed to the marijuana industry and the governor and DHS are definitely complicit in that they’re pushing this stuff forward in a way that just shows true Reco viations of racketeering of just pushing the industry out because they got campaign contributions right I mean I there’s no other way to say it you can you can candy code it and kind of say stuff DHS says it wasn’t a raay but if you go into Webster’s Dictionary definition of array and here I’ll pull it because I have it right here stored because I was I was mad when they said it wasn’t a raid it says under number two under Miriam Webster AR raid is a or well number one is a hostile or predatory incursion that would be a predatory incursion uh by a small force uh It also says sudden Invasion by officers of the law and that’s what they were they are officers of the law even though they’re enforcing civil law law if we wouldn’t allowed them in they were threatening to get a prosecutors involved and all kinds of stuff so they were using those tactics so that is a RAID when when government law enforcement entities and like I said civil or Criminal come in to your facility and if you don’t get them maxess they’re going to go a step further that is what constitutes a raid and for them to come out and say we mislabeled it or miscategorized it is a RAID is just obtuse and asinine one and two the fact that they actually planned this for September 11th because there’s no other way to saying it other than they planned it it’s just didn’t come in they were investigating a tip this came in September 5th and they had to plan okay we need to go out to these stores and these places on September 11th and somebody wrote down September 11th we need you guys to go visit the VFW and it shows that there’s no common sense involved because it was just we’re going to go after the VFW after they did their ceremony honoring 911 we’re going to demand that they let us in inspect the facility and we’re going to tell them how we know the law even though we’re wrong because that’s what prevented a lot of stuff from happening at the BFW members know the law we have educated them we had to do a vote before we had the hemp beverages in so we got everybody well versed on the laws and what it was about and we even educated them when this ban came out we said right now they don’t have the ability to do it this is what it says and we ran through the whole process and even told them about the hemp trade Association having a lawsuit against the government and we were protecting their rights as they protected our rights before on the battlefield and everybody was on board and they were educated and knew and they actually knew more than DHS agents and that’s what the sad thing is these DHS agents are going out harassing thinking thinking they’re being the good guys and they’re actually being criminals when they’re doing this they’re they’re they’re committing criminal Vandal vandalization of products and destruction of products yeah and so they said they were you know the the impetus behind this was to protect children do you have many children that are members well you know that’s one thing it really made the VFW State Commander mad he said in our canteens our canteens are open to members only and they’re signed in guest they are only allowed to be served at the canteen if you’re 21 years of age so there might be like a grandkid or something like that comes in and some of our younger vet they might bring their kid into the canteen but they’re not going to be getting drinks or anything like that their parents have to be there there is nobody that’s under 21 in there without their parent being present right and and and and especially too when I questioned the press conference the the the poison control and I said based on your own findings in 2022 of the 150 cases that came through 125 were the highly regulated marijuana Market and only 25 were hemp derived and of those cases all of them but two were from kids getting into parents medicine recreational whatever you want to call it getting into their parents containers and eating this candy this wasn’t people going and buying it from the stores or anything like that so the governor’s executive order does nothing to actually combat their actual problem that’s out there that it’s the marijuana industry that is the most responsible for this up tick and the 600% that he keeps touting and the fact that he did this at the at their behest because he got money from them and it’s not actually addressing the true issue that parents aren’t being held accountable for what they’re doing with their kids and leaving stuff out if they were leave out thankfully the parents are leaving out cannabis because if kid eats a whole bunch of cannabis he’s not going to die right but now think about this if you got a fifth of Jack Doo sitting there the kid drinks that the kid’s dead and we’ve had when you look at the top 10 list of cannabis or poisonings at the co Poison Control Center cannabis doesn’t fall on the top 10 of the list and in fact by their statistics and numbers it is0 z00 Zer one% of all poisoning control calls and ER visit calls wow so why are we putting that much effort in that and especially when in Missouri we have opiate crisis 38 people a week die due to opiates and the governor hasn’t done a damn thing on that one and I’m sorry about the language but it’s the truth he hasn’t done a darn thing about that and he’s coming after hemp and and saying we’re bad actors and everything when we found that the states where they have good hemp policies and regulations and good cannabis policies and regulations those opiate numbers drop by over 25 to 35% wow once you have one that’s not m marred in the subterfuge that the Missouri markets are where they price fix and they gouge their consumers but if you look at wellestablished markets like Washington and Colorado even Oklahoma they show better response in lowering their opiate overdoses than what Missouri has been able to do and that’s because of the greedy nature of what’s going on in Missouri’s cannabis industry yeah when when you fact end that these Beverages and a lot of these products are sold in southern states you have to wonder what effect it’s happening on the opioid crisis down there I’m guessing it’s similarly positive you know giving people an alternative well miss Mississippi one of the I used to live in one of the most conservative states in the union they approved uh uh Mar Medical Marijuana they’ve also got a good thriving hemp program that people are in I got some friends of mine that are veterans down there getting into hemp down there we we can see hemp as a really good thing not only on the social market for uh Beverages and or medicinal Market but also when you put in you got the fiber that can be used for paper you got the fiber that can be used for making clothes I’m in fact wearing a pair of hemp overalls from Patagonia right now I mean there’s a lot of things we can do with the plant and if you look at the marijuana industry with all their money because they are federally legal they can’t do anything with the with the fiber stalks or anything like that so for every gram of product they have they make seven grams of waste so we’re going to talk about environmently friendly they are not I mean the hemp industry really has that over the marijuana industry not to mention that we get to have our taxes written off we get to write off our business expenses and everything like that where marijuana is paying that 39% that’s why you pay such a high price for marijuana versus hemp where a lader of distillate of marijuana derived Delta 9 is running about $155,000 on the on the wholesale Market where a leader of Hump dve Delta 9 THC same product just different places where they come from and that’s running about 1500 so you can see the difference in cost why they are defending they’re defending the market because they’re defending the prices they can gouge the public with I was going to ask is it sunk cost fallacy like why are they defending that market when they rightfully point out all of those punitive you pointed out 28 all the taxes that you don’t have to pay they have to pay and it’s like why are they standing up for that a system that’s in many ways like I think they would even agree it’s [ __ ] them you know well what’s crazy is if you actually look at the big marijuana people like till Ray right madman stuff like that they’re all in hemp now right they’re duel they got hemp sides they got a separate you know separate entity that’s the hemp side from their marijuana side because USDA is cracked on down on anybody that has hemp licenses or manufacturing hemp products but also is manufacturing marijuana products they’ve cut they’ve they kind of they’re trying to cut that out so you can’t double dip and do both but if you have two separate companies like tillay has established then they can be in the hemp world and the marijuana world and those companies are really thriving and we’re finding they’re starting to come in to support a hemp but at the same time there’s these State multi-state operators that just have their talents into so many states they’re trying to reach into Florida now I mean you talk about a battle a civil war between hemp and marijuana look at Florida there was a lot of fighting to ban hemp outright in Florida that just won now those same people won to ban hemp want you to approve recreational marijuana in Florida while they try and go after hemp at the same time right yeah so it’s just a crazy time we live in well I feel like you touched on this but I wanted to just make sure that that we did I’m sharing uh the article which I’ll have Linked In the show notes it’s from Herman ad Advertiser courier.com and uh you said the truth is the governor’s roric about protecting children as a smoke screen this wasn’t about the kids it was about using State resources to uphold Promises to the marijuana industry while harassing veterans and small businesses while the opioid epidemic rages unchecked my question is what are you when you’re talking about the state using State resources to uphold Promises to the marijuana industry are you saying that because they like donated so much money that there was like because they donated so much money to Governor Parsons he is using the dhss agents is his personal gapo to root out hemp in Missouri for marijuana because that’s what they asked him to do when they gave them those that money it wasn’t here we’re being nice and giving you $556,000 no we’re paying you $56,000 and we want this done now and they they must have something on Governor Parsons because I can’t believe how much he’s gone on the attack on him since August 1 when all the statistics that they keep on touting have been proved to be wrong and really focus on the marijuana industry not the hemp industry why are we still attacking the hemp industry and not actually addressing where he has purview the marijuana industry and and one thing I do want to point out the state Commander for the VFW Missouri said as Commander I will work to ensure that every VFW Post in Missouri upholds the right of its members to access legal products we will not allow our government overreach to strip our veterans of freedoms they fought to protect and remember hemp all its derivatives salts isomers and everything is federally IL legal so any attempt that they are having to ban hemp is basically going after a federally legal product and I hate saying federally legal because it’s legal if it’s legal it’s legal we shouldn’t have to say state legal or federally legal legal is legal marijuana is not legal it’s illegal right no matter what they say we have a tolerance in Missouri but like I said it’s still on the controlled schedule and that’s why I said the marijuana industry bought 39 pages in the Missouri Constitution because everybody thought they were legalizing marijuana and because of the ballot language but the reality is they did not legalize marijuana they put a tolerance on toleration of mar marijuana yeah I like to say that it sounds like you’ve done what we did in Illinois we didn’t legalize marijuana we created a system to tax and regulate limited amounts of marijuana like in other words we did we decriminalize small amounts you can purchase small amounts but only from a small number of State ordained operators right so not completely legal as I like to say yep so yep it’s it’s it’s crazy it really is well and if I could just add another fold to this I feel like I’ll be speaking to the to the VFW members before we close you know look as somebody who defended this country if you try to participate in one of these state-based cannabis programs especially if you get a medical card it’s you your second amendment I was about to say it’s interesting how the state gives you freedom in one way but that freedom takes away one of your rights in another way and I don’t get the sense that that would be the case with this because it’s a federally legal descheduled commodity hemp right right so uh hemp protects your second amendment rights marijuana while the courts have ruled now that just having possession and all that doesn’t doesn’t preclude you from having the right to Firearms own firearms however if you are a marijuana user and you go to purchase a new firearm and you do your background check there is a specific question to ask if you are a marijuana user and if you say no you just committed a hunter Biden felony right if you say yes they’ll deny your background for a weapons purchase so you’re kind of you’re kind of set at either in are you either commit a felony if you use marijuana if you buy a new gun or you hope and pray they don’t have a breach of data and all oh because in Missouri there’s a database of who all’s in the medical program they keep they say they’re not going to ever share with the feds but they have a database so we hope they don’t have a data breach and it leeches out because if it gets out to the feds they can pull a hunter Biden on you real easy right right and uh so that’s the the biggest thing for concerned because hemp doesn’t have that thing because it is a federally legal commodity right well John uh was there any bases we didn’t cover today I wanted to thank you for coming on to talk about this and I am sorry about what you and your membership went through with regard to this I I appreciate it but you know what we we kind of we’re veterans so we like to fight sometimes and we took this as you know what the governor just showed their hand they’re not really doing the right thing and we’re going to protect our veterans right so where the state BFW might not have been involved before and stuff like that now they saw how their veterans were treated and they’re mad we’ve talked to our legislative rep for the state of Missouri and he had already talked to the guys up in DC when he was he was in DC when this happened the BFW National is mad so they you know while it kind of sucks that it happened I think this is the right Catalyst we need to get veterans to actually get some good cannaboid therapy research and access to these hemp base camp anoid therapies yeah well on that note John I want to thank you for fighting the good fight I truly believe that history will reflect kindly on these efforts I think you’re on the right side of History uh with regard to this topic at least you know like again here’s the answer I always say like if you would have been presented this option even like five years ago hemp even though it’s sometimes it’s silly you look at it and you’re like the point three well you know sometimes it seems silly even if even with that in mind I feel like if anybody would have been presented this option like 5 years ago like I said everybody would have taken it and it’s funny how you know some of these big lobbying dollars have really change the spirit of of what this should be right this should be like a Rejoice a national Rejoice instead we’re talking we’re saying oh the children so because the children always you know that helps with everything right look at gun violence in Missouri right it’s a devious way to gain um to try and seek public traction you know it’s just s it’s in such bad faith and you know sorry just really quick but I wouldn’t be surprised in those poison control numbers if for example energy drinks send more children to the emergency room right that’s oh Caff caffeine’s in the top 10 so you know poison and and these things you want to talk about marketed to children look first of all I think that whole idea is [ __ ] I don’t think that just cuz something’s colorful or has something on it I you know again we if you look at alcohol beverages there’s Sunny D vodka growing up as a kid Sunny D was orange juice like a an orange juice for kids now there’s Sunny D vodka sour patch have you ever heard of the Sour Patch candy now there’s Sour Patch alcoholic beverages oh they have all kinds of The Malt Beverages now that are out there that are the flavored seltzers that you see and all of them if you look I mean come on Bomb Pop you’re you’re a Gen X kid if you know what a Bomb Pop is because that’s what we all have when we’re go when we’re growing up so if you sit there and have it Bomb Pop you know that’s a icicle cone and you kids are going to associate that because our their parents gave them Bomb Pops so they think it’s okay or they see it when they’re at a a picnic somewhere and they’re going to drink that and I guarantee you if you drink that alcohol as a child you’re gonna have more detrimental effect on your body than if you take any type of hemp or cannaboid product absolutely yeah absolutely so I just wanted to bring that up as kind of a closing thought just to give a little bit of context maybe for people that aren’t totally tuned into this issue wanted to throw out some other numbers so that people realize like this truly is um a misnomer for lack of better words you know it it’s miseducation and misdirection to actually not actually address the real issues that are out there right well John um on that note uh any bases we didn’t cover today before you uh before we go I think we hit them all because I tend to talk a lot so I apologize for that but there should be some nuggets in there for you your listen this is perfect this is how the podcast goes I think everybody appreciates the long form conversation we just had so um thank you again for what you do keep me posted um you know I I truly do hope that we’ll see him for victory right exactly that’s what we that’s what we’re shooting for that’s right cool well I’ll see you in the future like I said keep in touch I’ll definitely save your number and I’ll be watching what’s going on in Missouri and I’ll be rooting for you outstanding we appreciate it much y take care bye take care
The Cole Memo 
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