What commercialization is doing to cannabis Ben Cort

Hey look if you guys are anything like

me you have found it harder and harder

to turn around recently without seeing

words like free-range farm-to-table

organically produced especially here in

Colorado now is we’ve become more

conscientious of the way that we eat in

recent years these once unfamiliar words

have worked their way into our daily

lexicon when we started to pay more

attention to the way that the food we

were eating interacted with our bodies

and with the earth the food industry had

to listen and the results have been

really powerful now those of you out

there from states like Washington and

Oregon and of course my fellow

Coloradans y’all know what I’m talking

about because this is not words like all

natural and homegrown are not just being

used in our diets there’s this whole new

industry using this language now you

guys know it’s weed an industry the

taxes sale of about six billion dollars

worth of product in 2016 so what if I

would have proposed to you that some of

what you think you know about this

legalized marijuana thing could be wrong

listen I get it

talking about issues with legal weed is

a pretty quick way to get uninvited from

the cool kids table I I I know that

better than most but I intend to do it

anyway first before I get started let me

be perfectly clear about one thing my

fight is not against the casual adult

use of marijuana I don’t care about that

what I care deeply about is this new

industry that is working to convince us

that we are consuming something natural

while fixing social ills when we aren’t

so let’s start with a little bit of weed

101 cannabis is a plant that grows

naturally

and has been used within textiles and

even traditional Chinese medicine for

thousands of years Genesis 1:12 even

tells us that I have given to you all of

the seed bearing plants and herbs to use

as such that is the microphone it’s got

a TV preacher sort of thing

now cannabis is made up of hundreds of

different chemicals but what two of

those chemicals are by far the most

interesting that CBD and THC so CBD is

where almost all of the medicinal

properties lie

it’s an incredibly fascinating part of

the plant with real potential to help

people it also is totally non

intoxicating you could take a bath in

the stuff while vaping pure CBD and

drinking a CBD smoothie and you still

couldn’t get high I’ve tried I haven’t I

haven’t that cost a lot of money not now

fur is interesting and remarkable a part

of the plan is CBD is it actually makes

up a really tiny portion of the

commercial market the real money is

being made in that other chemical in THC

so THC is the natural part of the plant

that gets you high and before the 1970s

cannabis contained less than half of a

percent of THC that’s was naturally

occurring over the last 40 years as we

became better gardeners that that

percentage of THC started to slowly but

steadily rise until recently when the

chemists started to get involved so

these guys moved grow cycles I’m sorry

these guys move cultivation exclusively

indoors and they may grow cycles

extremely and unnaturally short they

also started to use pesticides and

fertilizers in some ways that we should

be concerned with in fact I was recently

talking to a buddy who had just left a

job at a commercial grow operation

because he was so concerned with the

chemicals that he was being asked to

interact with some of his fellow

employees were actually encouraged to

wear hazmat suits while they were

spraying their chemical cocktails on the

plants

with that kind of manipulation the

products that are being sold today can

contain above 30% THC and our

concentrates our concentrates can

actually contain above 95% THC a far cry

from the natural plant listen this isn’t

your Grandpa’s weed

this isn’t your dad’s weed like like

this isn’t even my weed

if you’ve ever set foot inside one of

the thousands of dispensaries that have

sprung up in recent years you know that

what we’re really selling in them is THC

all of the weed that you buy

commercially lists exactly how much THC

it contains as do our other much more

popular products like vape pens coffee

ice cream condiments granola gum candy

baked goods suppositories and of course

Lube pretty much no for real pretty much

anything that you can imagine

introducing into the human body the vast

majority of cannabis that’s being sold

today it isn’t really cannabis its THC

in either a pure form or in an extremely

high in unnatural concentration to say

that we have legalized weed is subtly

misleading we have commercialized THC

and it’s happened really quickly now the

reason why the commercial market is so

rapidly exploded is because there is a

hell of a lot of money to be made in

satisfying and increasing our desire to

get high and that money is no longer

really being made by the mom-and-pop

shops so industry groups and

corporations groups like the drug policy

Alliance the Marijuana Policy Project

ArcView investment the cannabis Industry

Association they’ve chased out and

helped to chase out a lot of the

small-time growers so these cats know

that the best way to get us to continue

to or to continue to profit off of us

if they follow the alcohol industry’s

8020 rule as simple as where 80% of the

product is consumed by 20% of the

consumers the problem users the wealthy

white weed lobbyists and seriously they

are almost all rich white men they know

that we will consume more what they’re

selling if they jack up the potency they

also know that we are more than twice as

likely to consume THC regularly if we

earn under twenty thousand dollars a

year then those who are in over fifty

thousand dollars a year in other words

the poorer you are the more likely you

are to spend your money on their

products and in this country income and

race are highly correlated one of the

reasons that we often hear cited for the

legalization of marijuana is that it

will help to stop the disproportionate

incarceration rates among minorities

which is something everybody in this

room should be extremely concerned with

unfortunately we don’t have to look any

further than arrest rates for juveniles

here in Colorado to counter that

argument according to the Colorado

Department of Public Safety since we

opened retail in 2014 almost all of

which are in poor minority neighborhoods

we saw an 8% reduction in the arrests of

white kids for all weed related activity

good on them

during that same time period there’s a

29 percent increase in the arrests of

Hispanic kids for weed related activity

and a 58 percent increase in the arrests

of black kids for weed related crimes

you guys heard that right we are

actually arresting more people of color

and Colorado than we were prior to

commercialization and you’re not reading

that in the post Colorado Department of

Safety legal marijuana coming into focus

another big issue that we have is in

school suspension rates so schools that

are predominantly white

that is they have a minority population

of 25% or fewer in the first full year

of data collection following

commercialization these schools had a

grand total of a hundred and ninety

drug-related suspensions almost all of

which are for THC at the same time

schools with a minority population of

seventy-five to a hundred percent had

801 drug-related suspensions almost all

of which were for THC when discussing

minority populations one that

unfortunately often gets left out of the

conversation is the LGTBQ community now

members of this community are more than

twice as likely to consume THC than

those who identify as heterosexual or

cisgender they also unfortunately have

higher rates of mental illness and

suicide according to a study published

in 2014 called going to pot we see that

the unnaturally high levels of THC found

in today’s products they actually

compound those issues and make them

worse unfortunately that seems to matter

very little to the folks who are selling

these products because as you just saw

clearly this is a good consumer base

listen man I get it and in many circles

legalized marijuana is too much of a

sacred cow to question but we need to

start this conversation because what’s

being sold today is not natural and

lobbyists and industry are using social

justice as a smokescreen so that they

can get richer it’s my own journey to

sobriety that led me to begin

questioning a lot of what I was seeing

that’s kind of one of the things that

were taught to do when I left Boulder

for the Washington DC area at 12 years

old May I was transported into a world

where the kind of shoes that you wore

mattered more than just about anything

else and my family was just too poor to

help me play that game so I was faced

with a pretty real crisis of identity

in this new scene where there’s more

blacktop than treetops man I just didn’t

know who I was so I smoked weed for the

first time when I was 13 and I loved it

I instantly found this social group and

and I also just really liked being high

like I finally found a way to shut this

up I quickly turned to other drugs and

alcohol and something just woke up

inside of my brain I was a daily user

within a couple of months

so my addictive use it mirrors many of

the stories that I’m sure you’ve heard

before it started out as fun it got

scary and then it was just necessary

enough said I got wasted for the last

time on June 15th of 1996 an iron

thank you and I’ve spent the last 21

years trying to both put my life back in

order as well as trying to find some

peace in this world and one of the ways

that I’ve done that is by working inside

of nonprofit drug and alcohol treatment

for the last 10 years with groups like

Phoenix multi-sport the University of

Colorado Hospital and now gap the

National Association for lesbian gay

transgender bisexual treatment providers

and their allies even after all of my

work on the frontlines and is a former

consumer myself I was shocked and pissed

when I started to see what

commercialization was doing to cannabis

because you see our hope for something

pure and natural is making it hard for

us to see what’s really going on and

that is that the rich are getting richer

on the backs of the poor and lying to

our faces the entire time thank you my

friends once again I fear that we are

allowing industry to take advantage of

the most challenged among us in order to

turn a profit much like we saw with

tobacco and food in years past so when

we told the food industry that we

understood the impact our choices were

having and that we demanded better for

ourselves and our families that industry

got in the line so is there any reason

why we couldn’t demand the same thing

from this and from future industries who

are trying to get a piece of our

paychecks what if we made these guys

answer some hard questions

what if we held them to a higher

standard than we are right now because

as it stands for many in our community

the grass isn’t greener on this side of

commercialization

they’ve just been sold a bag of goods

thank you

I know it’s this is a sensitive topic

but a very important one so thank you

for for bringing this up and helping us

explore it you know a lot of folks are

gonna are experiencing health benefits

from marijuana and cannabis what would

you say to that part of the community

I’m actually really glad you brought

that up I think one of the most

important things that we can do right

now is to separate out medicinal and

especially what’s what’s happening in

some of the advances that are being made

using parts of this plant and even some

whole plant medicines from the

commercial market for THC and that’s I

think like crucial we got to stop

putting them together and we got to say

okay here’s the part about getting high

and here’s the part about the medicine

so it sounds like your talks less about

being anti cannabis and more about

raising awareness about aspects of

commercialization is that a fair way to

put it yes so I am NOT the anti weed guy

I’m the pro logic guy for me to cast

stones and listen I’m a drug addict I

don’t get to do that and I don’t want to

do that but what’s bothering me it was

so hard for me

it is to see the way that we are like

we’re just embracing without asking the

hard questions when if this was another

industry we’d be holding their feet to

the fire on some stuff and no I’m not

the anti weed guy I’m the pro thought

guy so think I don’t even care if you’re

smoking when you do it just as long as

you’re an adult so long as you’re an

adult just stink

[Applause]