Full Transcript for A medical cannabis and activism legacy: cannabis history & breeding with Todd McCormick

Yeah, guys. 04:48.546 --> 04:48.646 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. 04:48.727 --> 04:51.707 [SPEAKER_00]: A little bit about five seconds of silence. 04:51.968 --> 04:53.508 [SPEAKER_00]: Go over for your start up. 04:58.269 --> 05:22.338 [SPEAKER_01]: wait a minute i'm not going to be able to do this i get the fucking gardener here one second it's just not going to stop one second hey man could you please let the gardener in he just called in the middle of this interview and fuck the whole thing up period the fucking guy doesn't have a schedule which is really annoying period 05:31.732 --> 05:32.553 [SPEAKER_02]: god damn it. 05:36.095 --> 05:37.696 [SPEAKER_01]: Now he's calling the other fucking line. 05:37.877 --> 05:39.678 [SPEAKER_01]: God damn this fucking dude. 05:43.461 --> 05:48.084 [SPEAKER_01]: Ah, sorry, Viv fucking is the the gardener at this place is such a pain in the ass. 05:48.104 --> 05:49.545 [SPEAKER_01]: He doesn't come at normal times. 05:50.566 --> 05:56.210 [SPEAKER_01]: So now he's just ringing, ringing, ringing the gate because he wants to come in right now and it's like fucking people man. 05:56.750 --> 05:58.111 [SPEAKER_01]: Trying to get people to work a regular 06:03.491 --> 06:05.813 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, well, the phone in here is turned off now. 06:05.893 --> 06:08.815 [SPEAKER_01]: Sir, I have a system tandling with that. 06:09.135 --> 06:09.915 [SPEAKER_01]: Sorry about that. 06:11.036 --> 06:14.579 [SPEAKER_00]: You told about 993 and you want to give it like counts. 06:15.019 --> 06:17.541 [SPEAKER_00]: Finally, I need to five seconds in your head and start up again. 06:21.003 --> 06:22.684 [SPEAKER_01]: Sure, would you like me to start where I met Jack? 06:23.885 --> 06:24.045 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. 06:26.767 --> 06:26.967 [UNKNOWN]: Okay. 06:32.073 --> 06:49.369 [SPEAKER_01]: As for it's in 1993 I was living in Pacific Beach and I read the Emperor where there's no clothes by Jack Harer and I was so moved by his book that I called the number in the back of the book just to say thank you to him because as a younger kid I always felt like a near-do-well because I was using cannabis and 06:50.447 --> 06:51.588 [SPEAKER_01]: making a bad decision. 06:51.668 --> 07:02.398 [SPEAKER_01]: I guess as society always cast over me, but when I read his book and learned about the history and the medical uses and the nutrition and the hemp seed and the politics around it, it really changed my view of it. 07:02.678 --> 07:13.087 [SPEAKER_01]: And when I drove up the meat hen, I found out he was trying to legalize cannabis by collecting a half a million signatures in California to pull it, put it on the ballot. 07:13.868 --> 07:14.529 [SPEAKER_01]: And, um, 07:16.313 --> 07:23.200 [SPEAKER_01]: That really made a difference to me and I became an activist and really did everything I could to help him and join him in his mission. 07:26.935 --> 07:31.717 [SPEAKER_00]: Because as long as I've known you, you've been a driven industrious force to

be reckoned with. 07:31.777 --> 07:33.097 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you kind of never stop. 07:33.697 --> 07:37.278 [SPEAKER_00]: I was just going through my boxes of archives that I struggled to maintain. 07:37.358 --> 07:41.380 [SPEAKER_00]: And I recently came across your empire, expo paperwork from 2010. 07:42.300 --> 07:45.041 [SPEAKER_00]: And, but you got stuff going on now. 07:45.101 --> 07:46.902 [SPEAKER_00]: Tell us all about your current work and project. 07:46.922 --> 07:47.882 [SPEAKER_00]: What are you got going on today? 07:48.628 --> 08:09.808 [SPEAKER_01]: I knew activism has been authentic genetics, I've been disseminating selling cannabis seeds for over, well since 2018 when the farm build changed and it made all parts of the plant with less than 3% percent THC legal, I saw an opportunity, so I pivoted from having a nursery which I've had in California since. 08:10.688 --> 08:17.470 [SPEAKER_01]: 2004 on to having a seed business and now I have over 17,000 growers behind me. 08:17.490 --> 08:21.651 [SPEAKER_01]: I have growers in all 50 states, 23 countries growing the genetics by Ab. 08:22.311 --> 08:32.554 [SPEAKER_01]: And what makes them interesting is that I was good friends with a lot of the older breeders such as Skunkman Sam, Melcrank, Seattle Greg, who were responsible for things like 08:35.055 --> 08:44.657 [SPEAKER_01]: bringing original haze into the community again, northern lights, and because they like me, because my activism gave me their genetics to disseminate. 08:45.317 --> 09:01.281 [SPEAKER_01]: So I have what I call the primary colors of cannabis, the original haze, and the original skunk ones that still smell skunky, and I have the original purest indica that circulated as hash plant, because smells like hash when you break up and you smell your fingers. 09:02.301 --> 09:29.732 [SPEAKER_01]: It's really quite incredible actually and they're like time capsules in the seed and I get a lot of great feedback coming every day because a lot of people just it's very nostalgic to go back to what they remember 30 years ago and I still have it How I how is genetic diversity of cannabis change since the days of underground growing to the days more regulated market are are losing something important or regaining something powerful or is it both 09:31.425 --> 09:33.487 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, there's a combination of things happening. 09:33.547 --> 09:49.039 [SPEAKER_01]: Unfortunately, you know, the modern push for cultivations, pushing us all towards plants that flour in less than nine weeks, most of the legal cannabis producers do not touch plants that flour between 10 and 16 weeks. 09:49.479 --> 09:59.067 [SPEAKER_01]: So we're really lacking the diversity that we had 30 years ago because going back 30 years, we had people or 40 years ago, you had import cannabis. 09:59.527 --> 10:07.934 [SPEAKER_01]: So there was an evolution in the understanding of cannabis, I would say, because in the early 60s, late 50s, everything that was coming into America was tropical. 10:08.234 --> 10:19.603 [SPEAKER_01]: Things like Cambodian, Vietnam, Thailand, Mexican, Acropoco Gold, Michoacan, Panama Red, Acropoco Gold, Jamaican, Salt Tropical. 10:20.043 --> 10:40.307 [SPEAKER_01]: And then when the hippies went across Afghanistan before the Russian invasion, they started collecting genetics and Afghan variety started making their way to America in the mid-70s and it changed the face of cannabis because these boardleaf fast, flowering plants were able to be cultivated and more northern areas. 10:40.947 --> 10:44.933 [SPEAKER_01]: And that really started the growing boom in America. 10:45.533 --> 10:56.948 [SPEAKER_01]: And a lot of what we have now are combinations of varieties from afghanistan, Pakistan, the Hindu-Kish mountains that flour easily, that are what we call broad leaf varieties. 10:57.449 --> 11:12.062 [SPEAKER_01]: And they're combined with narrow leaf varieties, a lot of people call them sativa, but it's really wrong sativa technically when it was going to cannabis meant most useful or too so meaning put it in your garden. 11:12.122 --> 11:19.108 [SPEAKER_01]: For instance, there's a lettuce sativa, but it doesn't mean that it's a long flowering psychedelic head of lettuce. 11:19.168 --> 11:21.811 [SPEAKER_01]: It just means that you should grow it in your garden because it's useful. 11:22.611 --> 11:27.513 [SPEAKER_01]: And then years later, when Indica was attached to it, it literally meant of our like India. 11:27.934 --> 11:34.616 [SPEAKER_01]: And there are a lot of items that are called Indica that have nothing to do with cannabis, and it's only because they derived from India. 11:35.277 --> 11:38.778 [SPEAKER_01]: And India was like the first original culture of cannabis. 11:39.558 --> 11:39.699 [SPEAKER_01]: And 11:40.879 --> 11:54.781 [SPEAKER_01]: There was a lot of good varieties there and everyone around the world understood that, which is why Indico was related to the drug varieties and Sativa was related to the industrial varieties, because I'm prior to us really enjoying cannabis medicinally. 11:55.001 --> 12:08.184 [SPEAKER_01]: I should say, we were using an industrial, all of our fabrics, all of our ropes, all of our fabrics, I mean all of our oils and the furnishes, I mean when you think of something like Columbus's ship, it wasn't just the ropes and the leggings, 12:10.444 --> 12:11.204 [SPEAKER_01]: the lamp oil. 12:11.784 --> 12:16.866 [SPEAKER_01]: It was also the sealant, the paint varnish they used was from hemp seed oil. 12:17.126 --> 12:29.130 [SPEAKER_01]: The oakum that they would use, which was our mixed with hemp fibers, and they would mat and mat it together and put it into the planks of the board, so the boat would be buoyant. 12:29.590 --> 12:31.130 [SPEAKER_01]: It was all pretty important things. 12:31.190 --> 12:32.991 [SPEAKER_01]: I believe that without the 12:33.631 --> 12:50.877 [SPEAKER_01]: Canada's plan, Eurasia would not

have been able to evolve the way that it did because things like paper were important and cooking oils and lamp oils and even the great art in Europe is painted on canvas, which is a cardinal of cannabis because all canvas came from cannabis 12:51.297 --> 12:59.993 [SPEAKER_01]: So the art depicting our history is literally painted on cannabis fibers using cannabis hemp seed oil as paints mixed with pigments. 13:00.394 --> 13:03.600 [SPEAKER_01]: So it's connection to humanity to me is pretty profound. 13:05.626 --> 13:08.349 [SPEAKER_00]: And of course, literature wouldn't exist, right? 13:08.369 --> 13:15.135 [SPEAKER_00]: And modern, and it's modern form of books and publications, because it was him parchment. 13:16.056 --> 13:21.201 [SPEAKER_00]: And there's no aspect of our life, really, that you can't grace back to this plan. 13:23.665 --> 13:37.827 [SPEAKER_00]: You mentioned Sativa and Indica, there's this idea that's very common that Sativa is Heady and energetic and Indica is kind of couchlock, what do you think of that? 13:38.610 --> 13:40.011 [SPEAKER_01]: The terms are just misnomer. 13:40.091 --> 13:43.635 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, they're used by people that don't understand what they're saying most of the time. 13:44.295 --> 13:54.144 [SPEAKER_01]: When they're saying Cetiva, what they're trying to say is tropical equatorio, because to a grower as Cetiva means a long flowering low yielding loose spindley buds. 13:55.625 --> 14:05.691 [SPEAKER_01]: and an indica means a quick flowering heavy-yielding dense buds to a smoker indica means sedative and ceteva means energetic. 14:06.512 --> 14:14.417 [SPEAKER_01]: But really what both groups miss is the fact that the plants evolved very differently between the equator and more northern areas. 14:14.697 --> 14:25.124 [SPEAKER_01]: They had to acclimate in the equate area to be able to grow and flower simultaneously because when they're born down by the equator, they're born into basically a flowering room. 14:25.505 --> 14:34.070 [SPEAKER_01]: So they had to adjust, which is why what we call sativa grows in flowers simultaneously were as what we call indica stops. 14:34.471 --> 14:41.916 [SPEAKER_01]: It's springtime growth and starts to flower once it realizes the summer solstice is there and that flowering time has started. 14:42.336 --> 14:55.871 [SPEAKER_01]: So they react differently and it's because in the northern areas, the plants are anticipating a cold winter and they have to make their seeds quickly and the buds are dense because that way they can protect the seeds from the cold weather. 14:56.351 --> 14:58.934 [SPEAKER_01]: The opposite would be what we call sativa because 14:59.394 --> 15:11.360 [SPEAKER_01]: Those buds are loose and spindly because down by the equator, it's very humid and they had to adapt to making loose and spindly buds that could rapidly dissipate the humidity rather than rot and die. 15:11.740 --> 15:20.105 [SPEAKER_01]: So, it's characteristics of not just

how it grows, it's because of where it was growing, and when we grow it in our closet and we grow it in our greenhouses, 15:20.885 --> 15:27.278 [SPEAKER_01]: It's changing again because you're getting environmental adaptations and it's a fascinating study. 15:27.299 --> 15:31.828 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I've been growing now over 40 years and I feel like I learned a little bit more every day. 15:32.553 --> 15:47.204 [SPEAKER_01]: The latest thing that we've been learning about is what causes cannabis to smell skunky, which is a compound called a buy-all for people listening that spelled T-h-i-o-l, and it's also the compound on a skunked butt that causes the skunked smell bad. 15:47.544 --> 15:58.652 [SPEAKER_01]: It's also the compound on hops that causes bearded smell skunky, and it's also a compound that develops on food that we can detect in parts per trillion that basically tells us, hey, 15:59.212 --> 16:06.616 [SPEAKER_01]: foods going bad, you should avoid it, which is pretty fascinating because a lot of the older cannabis made thighalls. 16:07.237 --> 16:16.162 [SPEAKER_01]: And we as a collective community kind of bread away from it because I tell people when they go hiking, they don't stop and stick their notes in some, you know, pilot. 16:16.522 --> 16:19.003 [SPEAKER_01]: who they stop in a smell of flowers. 16:19.423 --> 16:31.208 [SPEAKER_01]: So, collectively as breeders and selectors of cannabis, we moved away from the stinky smell and we moved more towards the cell smells that were foods and fruits and flowers which we liked. 16:31.348 --> 16:34.810 [SPEAKER_01]: So cannabis kind of evolved over the last 30 years. 16:35.430 --> 16:42.433 [SPEAKER_01]: And when I started my seed company a lot of people believed that the stinky smell of cannabis was completely lost. 16:43.273 --> 16:49.755 [SPEAKER_01]: And I got some seeds from Mel Frank that had been sitting in his refrigerator for I'm not exaggerating 23 years. 16:50.295 --> 16:51.836 [SPEAKER_01]: I got them in 2019. 16:52.256 --> 16:54.377 [SPEAKER_01]: He had harvested them in the summer of 96. 16:55.757 --> 16:58.378 [SPEAKER_01]: He had gotten them from Skulltman Sam in 88. 16:58.418 --> 17:01.759 [SPEAKER_01]: What a minute is refrigerator for eight years in the father growl them. 17:02.759 --> 17:06.081 [SPEAKER_01]: And when I grew them out in 2020, they still smelled horrible. 17:06.121 --> 17:06.961 [SPEAKER_01]: They smell the accurate. 17:07.322 --> 17:18.127 [SPEAKER_01]: So I reproduced the most accurate of those replants, and they've been my best seller for the last five years, because people have an nostalgic desire for that old kind of cannabis they grew up with. 17:18.567 --> 17:23.013 [SPEAKER_01]: So we still have that, and I still have original Hayes, I got it from Skull Command Sam. 17:23.353 --> 17:26.056 [SPEAKER_01]: He had saved that variety since the early 70s. 17:26.517 --> 17:34.006 [SPEAKER_01]: It is absolutely unique and Seattle Greg popped into my

life and provided me with pureest Indica. 17:34.726 --> 17:54.362 [SPEAKER_01]: Which I call the steep Murphy afghan because steep Murphy was a prominent figure in the 70s that owned a A shop called the indoor sun shop up in Seattle, and he wrote Cannabis cultivation book in the early to mid 70s called how to grow marijuana indoors underlights Which was absolutely phenomenal. 17:54.422 --> 17:58.445 [SPEAKER_01]: He wrote a very up-to-date It's what we use now. 17:58.526 --> 18:01.348 [SPEAKER_01]: It had 10 by 20 trays at CO2 enrichment. 18:01.388 --> 18:02.729 [SPEAKER_01]: It had cloning techniques 18:03.169 --> 18:29.732 [SPEAKER_01]: on he really wrote a modern girl book at the same time he was selling the girl equipment from a shop and now to track in growers and him in Seattle Gregg and became friends and that's how Seattle Gregg ended up getting pureest endocrine got a few seeds or more from Steve in 1979 and then he basically reproduced them past them out to his friends and then they started crossing them with what they were already growing and giving them back to Gregg. 18:30.172 --> 18:49.058 [SPEAKER_01]: And that became what we know as northern lights that was born in the Seattle area in the early 80s, late 70s, and then those seeds very famously, some of them went to the Netherlands to start, you know, what ended up starting the first really large international seed distribution company called the the Holland seed bank. 18:50.198 --> 18:54.639 [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, basically northern lights made a huge impact in 18:59.201 --> 19:06.929 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, all my first growth equipment came from the indoor sun shop and I talked to Steve Secker times, you know, many times. 19:07.830 --> 19:20.522 [SPEAKER_00]: And you know, just like a forced movement, you know, a forced to be reckoned with how do you view the current kind of iteration of cannabis legalization, commercialization, commoditization. 19:21.903 --> 19:29.991 [SPEAKER_00]: And how does it align with the goals that early medical marijuana movement and, you know, if you couldn't wave a magic cam stock, how would you make it better? 19:30.872 --> 19:34.175 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, you know, um, that's and that's a very how we blushed in. 19:35.935 --> 19:37.496 [SPEAKER_01]: from state to state, it's different. 19:37.596 --> 19:47.120 [SPEAKER_01]: So in states like California, where we have the right to grow our own, and it's only a misdemeanor to grow any amount, it's working out really well for the medical patient. 19:47.240 --> 20:00.426 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, here in California, for instance, it was a felony to cultivate medical cannabis between the years of 1996 and 2016, when we had something called 2015, which was a horrible, horrible law, didn't legalize anything. 20:00.486 --> 20:02.747 [SPEAKER_01]: It put us all in legal jeopardy is what it really did. 20:03.707 --> 20:08.329 [SPEAKER_01]: And for those 20 years that we had a medical cannabis law, it was a felon.

20:08.729 --> 20:12.230 [SPEAKER_01]: I went to prison for five out of those 20 years for cultivating my own medicine. 20:12.270 --> 20:29.835 [SPEAKER_01]: It was a horrible law, but when we passed actual legalization proposition 64 and 2016, it reduced all felony cultivation charges down to misdemeanors and it created a legal system for the distribution, the testing, the regulation of cannabis, which I think 20:30.655 --> 20:31.456 [SPEAKER_01]: people deserve. 20:31.536 --> 20:38.762 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, just like they deserve to go into a supermarket and get clean food, I think they should be able to go into a store and get clean cannabis. 20:39.362 --> 20:41.044 [SPEAKER_01]: And I think it's a good thing. 20:41.084 --> 20:45.348 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I wanted always to see the cost of cannabis drop. 20:45.588 --> 20:53.755 [SPEAKER_01]: I always hope that when realization would happen, you know, the producers would just charge a reasonable amount above cost of production, and we'd all be able to go. 20:54.255 --> 20:56.356 [SPEAKER_01]: you know, access to high quality cannabis. 20:56.657 --> 20:57.797 [SPEAKER_01]: That's not what's happened. 20:57.857 --> 21:16.870 [SPEAKER_01]: Unfortunately, a lot of the people that have been getting into this industry, they see prohibition error profits and they want, you know, they want to make the kind of money people made 30 years ago while they were, you know, growing under the threat of police raids and their dogs being shot and their cars being seized and their homes being seized. 21:16.930 --> 21:20.512 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, at one point I was held on a million dollar bond. 21:20.892 --> 21:35.756 [SPEAKER_01]: simply because I grew my own cannabis in my backyard, I didn't have guns, I didn't have drugs, I didn't have anything other than flowers in my backyard and they held me on a million dollar bond who was reduced to half a million dollars and posted by the actor Woody Harrelson. 21:36.016 --> 21:38.957 [SPEAKER_01]: time, but still, I'll ridiculous as that. 21:39.137 --> 21:51.840 [SPEAKER_01]: And now with legalization, you don't see people being held on a million dollar bond or a half million dollar bond because they grew some flowers and medical patients like, for instance, here in California, have easier access to the plant. 21:52.280 --> 22:00.122 [SPEAKER_01]: In other states, unfortunately, like Washington, where the law was in is good and then there wasn't really any follow up after the law passed. 22:00.662 --> 22:01.863 [SPEAKER_01]: on you have last rights. 22:02.643 --> 22:08.866 [SPEAKER_01]: And then we could go state by state to state to break down Florida and Massachusetts, Oklahoma, which was wild, wild west. 22:10.146 --> 22:11.987 [SPEAKER_01]: So it's very different, very different states. 22:12.187 --> 22:14.648 [SPEAKER_01]: What we don't have is federal legalization yet. 22:15.189 --> 22:17.390 [SPEAKER_01]: And I don't even know how that's going to feel because 22:18.515 --> 22:22.316 [SPEAKER_01]: The federal government has been very unfavorable towards cannabis for a long time. 22:22.476 --> 22:30.238 [SPEAKER_01]: They're the ones that made it, you know, that marijuana tax act, they're the ones that prohibited farmers from being able to use it to compete with things like cotton and synthetic. 22:30.938 --> 22:33.519 [SPEAKER_01]: So the federal government has been a tool of big business. 22:33.559 --> 22:38.280 [SPEAKER_01]: They have not been on the side of personal and civil liberties of its citizens. 22:38.640 --> 22:42.361 [SPEAKER_01]: So I don't have a lot of faith in the federal government coming along and making this better. 22:43.782 --> 22:54.571 [SPEAKER_01]: But with the move to schedule three, I do support it, getting the federal government to admit that cannabis has medical use has been something we've been trying to do for a very long time. 22:54.591 --> 23:00.956 [SPEAKER_01]: 31 years ago, I drove all the way across the country to go to what we call the National Medical Marijuana Day in November of 1994. 23:02.297 --> 23:15.880 [SPEAKER_01]: And we had a rally and a protest across the street from the White House and peace part because the Federation of American scientists had created a position paper saying that whole war cannabis was medically useful. 23:16.240 --> 23:24.042 [SPEAKER_01]: And we in the industry, I'm sure you remember that they've been borrowed very excited thinking this is going to change the world because everybody listens to scientists, right? 23:25.102 --> 23:32.227 [SPEAKER_01]: It turns out nobody listens to scientists, and 31 years later, there has been absolutely no change in the federal law at all. 23:32.547 --> 23:34.028 [SPEAKER_01]: If anything, it's gotten worse. 23:34.688 --> 23:36.169 [SPEAKER_01]: And they've ignored states, right? 23:36.209 --> 23:40.532 [SPEAKER_01]: They've ignored the temperament, they've ignored the will of the people for the most part. 23:42.473 --> 23:42.994 [SPEAKER_01]: It sucks. 23:43.354 --> 23:47.036 [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that moving to schedule three is a step in the right direction. 23:47.677 --> 23:50.899 [SPEAKER_01]: At the same time, there's a lot of people calling for complete deschedaling. 23:51.420 --> 23:54.562 [SPEAKER_01]: And I've always argued that it should never have been put in the schedule. 23:54.842 --> 23:57.944 [SPEAKER_01]: But right now, we have states policing the 23:59.445 --> 24:03.646 [SPEAKER_01]: Press stay activities, meaning if it's grown in Humboldt and it's sold in L.A. 24:03.747 --> 24:06.327 [SPEAKER_01]: has nothing to do with the Fed's under state rights laws. 24:06.988 --> 24:09.288 [SPEAKER_01]: Same with Washington, Oklahoma, etc. 24:10.149 --> 24:17.911 [SPEAKER_01]: Once we have removed cannabis from the CSA entirely, it's going to fall under the jurisdiction of probably the ATF. 24:18.251 --> 24:20.812 [SPEAKER_01]: It will become the cannabis alcohol to back on firearms.

24:21.232 --> 24:37.280 [SPEAKER_01]: And I don't know how people are going to like that, because that'll create the feds to come and knock onto your cannabis door and regulate you rather than the state, which in some ways, the states have been a lot more liberal state to state varying than I think the federal government will ever be. 24:37.420 --> 24:43.363 [SPEAKER_01]: So I tell my friends, be careful what you wish for, you may just get it, and it may not feel as good as you think it does. 24:46.053 --> 24:52.565 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it feels like if the federal government does change the paradigm, it won't be for the right reasons. 24:54.466 --> 24:58.650 [SPEAKER_00]: Speaking of schedule 3, how do you see pharmaceutical interest in fluency in the future of cannabis excess? 24:59.411 --> 25:03.495 [SPEAKER_01]: Sorry, you've been there, Roxanne Labs has patented what is synthetic T.V.C. 25:03.515 --> 25:04.917 [SPEAKER_01]: Dr. Nobanol going back to the 70s. 25:04.977 --> 25:07.379 [SPEAKER_01]: It's been released on the market since the mid-80s. 25:07.439 --> 25:13.425 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, a lot of people don't seem to really understand that we've had synthetic cannabinoids floating around quite a while. 25:14.006 --> 25:14.887 [SPEAKER_01]: They don't sell well. 25:15.187 --> 25:15.928 [SPEAKER_01]: They don't do well. 25:16.548 --> 25:32.371 [SPEAKER_01]: Merinol has absolutely no street value as the DEA said in 1999 when they moved it from Skettel to Skettel 3, synthetic THC has been Skettel 3 since really July of 1999 and it's because nobody wants it, nobody cared for it. 25:32.512 --> 25:37.273 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean it just doesn't work as a single molecule the same way the complexity of cannabis works. 25:38.193 --> 25:42.194 [SPEAKER_01]: Minor cannabinoids, the regulation or the of the terpenes, 25:44.014 --> 25:45.535 [SPEAKER_01]: regulate the cannabinoids. 25:46.215 --> 25:47.395 [SPEAKER_01]: It makes a big difference. 25:47.475 --> 26:06.923 [SPEAKER_01]: So in some ways, I have no fear of, you know, Dr. Lester Grinspoon, Resta Sol used to dream of the day where we would be able to go to the doctors and they would be able to test our endocannabinoid system, tell us which areas we were deficient in, and then he and us the basically fight-o cannabinoids cannabinoids derived from a plant. 26:07.963 --> 26:29.993 [SPEAKER_01]: that we needed to balance our system because our system makes endocannabinoids which are neurotransmitters similar to the THC for instance in cannabis and it goes into the same receptor and it makes us feel happy, corny, hungry, reduces our pain, same thing and I'm aren't making the argument in my new book from cancer to cannabis, the essential guide to the endocannabinoid system. 26:30.433 --> 26:41.623 [SPEAKER_01]: that cannabinoids should be more considered like vitamins and minerals rather than drugs, because our body makes similar neurotransmitters, and instance, anandemide, or AEA. 26:41.683 --> 26:46.567 [SPEAKER_01]: It's called, is the chemical equivalent to THC, tetra-truck, hydro cannabinoil. 26:46.967 --> 26:50.830 [SPEAKER_01]: When the plant makes THC, it's a phyto cannabinoid from the plant. 26:51.111 --> 27:00.558 [SPEAKER_01]: When our body makes it, it's a neurotransmitter in our body, but at the same time it's the same chemical goes into the same receptor and causes us to feel the same way. 27:00.918 --> 27:08.825 [SPEAKER_01]: So I'm making the argument in my book that just like vitamin D for instance, your body can make it naturally in the sunlight or you can use it through a supplement. 27:09.525 --> 27:10.626 [SPEAKER_01]: or get it in your food. 27:11.286 --> 27:12.586 [SPEAKER_01]: We need cannabinoids. 27:12.726 --> 27:16.247 [SPEAKER_01]: We need it for what's called homeostasis, which is the balance of our body. 27:16.848 --> 27:21.309 [SPEAKER_01]: And it is a crime to prohibit nutrients from our body. 27:21.549 --> 27:32.733 [SPEAKER_01]: And the reason I believe that we're all getting so sick and we're getting cancer at the rates we're getting is because by taking away all of these fight of cannabinoids, they have disrupted our body's ability to maintain its own health. 27:35.660 --> 27:38.061 [SPEAKER_00]: We only have about four minutes left. 27:39.142 --> 27:47.467 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, you mentioned your mom and who passed away recently, sadly, in my condolences on Ann, who's at a friend of mine as well. 27:49.888 --> 27:56.552 [SPEAKER_00]: She knew to give you medical cannabis when you were young with dealing with cancer. 27:57.452 --> 27:59.473 [SPEAKER_00]: Was she from the cannabis culture? 28:01.975 --> 28:04.617 [SPEAKER_01]: You talked about that, and you're talking with the young hippie. 28:04.698 --> 28:10.503 [SPEAKER_01]: I was in 19 when I was born, and she was, you know, hippie a lot of hippies enjoyed and embraced the cannabis. 28:10.923 --> 28:13.766 [SPEAKER_01]: I grew up with my mom being what I would call a polar dealer. 28:14.427 --> 28:15.988 [SPEAKER_01]: She's still a cannabis to her friend. 28:16.048 --> 28:16.849 [SPEAKER_01]: She used to pick it up. 28:17.389 --> 28:25.537 [SPEAKER_01]: And she wasn't a very big dealer, um, and but she'd get quarter pound soft pounds and then just break it in the bags and then sell it to her friends. 28:26.197 --> 28:34.788 [SPEAKER_01]: And I grew up around that, you know, I grew up around our friends sitting in the living room, smoking joints, talking with me and to Bob Dylan, you know, growing stones in the grateful dead. 28:34.848 --> 28:37.391 [SPEAKER_01]: And this is what my childhood. 28:37.572 --> 28:42.217 [SPEAKER_01]: And on a lot of levels, I feel like cannabis was something that they rebelled with. 28:42.458 --> 28:42.518 [SPEAKER_01]: And 28:42.938 --> 28:54.082 [SPEAKER_01]: my mom had her own personal experiences so she was willing to give it to me and see how I liked it and see how it fell and it helped me a profound amount.

28:54.263 --> 28:59.885 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean it gave me the ability to to feel better again while it's going through key more radiation. 28:59.905 --> 29:06.127 [SPEAKER_01]: It reduced my nausea, it reduced my pain, it kind of gave me some optimism back because at the time I was really 29:08.588 --> 29:15.872 [SPEAKER_01]: I was facing death, and that's why now I'm such an activist because I kind of feel like I owe cannabis. 29:16.152 --> 29:25.536 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, she saves my butt and I'm trying to tell the world that it'd be a better place if they'd understand it better, because that's been my goal for a long time. 29:25.576 --> 29:28.538 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, we've made the movies, the union, the business, beyond getting high. 29:29.118 --> 29:36.445 [SPEAKER_01]: with Joe Rogan, Dr. Lester Grinspoon, Dr. Todd McCurrier, Tommy Chang-Linit, then my second documentary we make was called The Culture High. 29:36.906 --> 29:44.413 [SPEAKER_01]: We got Snoop Dogg, Wiz Khalifa, Joe Rogan, Richard Branson, launched it for us on his own regard. 29:45.053 --> 29:47.455 [SPEAKER_01]: on the whole goal for a long time has been education. 29:47.835 --> 29:49.396 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, that was our goal with Seattle hemp. 29:49.416 --> 29:51.878 [SPEAKER_01]: That's what was trying to get people to understand what we knew. 29:51.898 --> 29:56.881 [SPEAKER_01]: And it's a try to make it palatable, so they would come down and they would celebrate freedom. 29:57.341 --> 30:05.947 [SPEAKER_01]: And hopefully walk away with the better understanding of what Betsy Ross made the first flag out of, or what Ben Franklin created his first hemp paper mill with. 30:09.098 --> 30:17.961 [SPEAKER_00]: We got about a minute and a half what final thought first of all how can people cover follow you work and and your seeds and stuff and what final thought you'd like to leave us with tone. 30:18.782 --> 30:32.187 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh anybody can find me at authentic genetics just type my name Todd McCormick in a Google little pop right up and I website is AGC code.com AGSEEDC O.com and seeds are available 30:36.748 --> 31:01.778 [SPEAKER_01]: Any questions people have, they can hit me up, there's a chat, there's a phone number on the website, there's an email, it's just taught at agcco.com and I'm happy to help people, I feel honored to be the person in between the old breeders with all the old genetics that we all heard about and were moved by and to be able to provide them to the new community or not the new community but the younger community. 31:03.239 --> 31:13.906 [SPEAKER_01]: the newly legal cannabis communities, what I want to say, and a lot of why I'm doing this is because I don't think that legal cannabis is going to share the genetics with people. 31:13.946 --> 31:19.570 [SPEAKER_01]: I think a lot of these producers are going to see our work as IP and try to... 31:20.090 --> 31:30.476 [SPEAKER_01]: grab our clones and put it in a jar and we're never going to get the seeds, we're never going to get the cuttings, we're just going to get sold over price cannabis, you know, buy the eighth and that's what I'm trying to avoid. 31:30.556 --> 31:43.723 [SPEAKER_01]: And by me being able to get the genetics into the hand of the people, hopefully we can circumvent the production, the the big producers coming in and trying to say, you know, you got to get it from us now and we're going to over charge you. 31:44.323 --> 31:58.578 [SPEAKER_01]: So, my argument to anybody, listen, this is quite for home grow, fight for your rights to grow your own, say not a corporate cannabis in the sense that they're just charging us over the price to pot and make it yourself. 32:01.253 --> 32:03.215 [SPEAKER_00]: I know you're really busy if someone's going on. 32:03.255 --> 32:05.497 [SPEAKER_00]: It was a challenge even to get this scheduled. 32:05.537 --> 32:08.219 [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much Todd, my and my old friend for taking time out. 32:08.699 --> 32:10.481 [SPEAKER_00]: Who are my are you very much, Vivian? 32:10.501 --> 32:13.243 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, you've been one of the voices of reason for decades. 32:13.724 --> 32:15.105 [SPEAKER_01]: And I thank you for having me on. 32:15.165 --> 32:17.607 [SPEAKER_01]: And I thank you for everything you did with Seattle Infos. 32:17.647 --> 32:22.331 [SPEAKER_01]: I thank you made a huge difference in the 30 years that you were going to have. 32:22.351 --> 32:22.851 [SPEAKER_01]: Thanks, Todd. 32:23.632 --> 32:27.375 [SPEAKER_00]: My favorite from music is 7 Mile Beach by Johan Rand, the Alchemist. 32:27.415 --> 32:29.437 [SPEAKER_00]: Take back the camera, let's get this to the next time. 32:30.658 --> 32:33.628 [SPEAKER_00]: Every one of us