Headlines the news continues here on aljazeera after the stream statement thats watching i think. Facing reality your president said that there would be a complete audit a hundred percent audit that audit hasnt happened getting to the heart of the matter so are you saying then that the future of the g. C. C. Will be down. Here their stories. On talk to aljazeera at this time. Hi anthony ok you in the stream the u. S. Attorney general has made an ecstasy of change that goes off the Legal Marijuana jeffrey sessions move is actually includes addiction to general us Public Opinion about cannabis use so now what effect with this legislative change have today would get into the debate about the impact that legalizing marijuana has and here to experts with differing opinions this is. Problematic for the. Court. But its also problematic he said undermine. Or most will say. That legalize marijuana. Not only that. The crew. But theyve also got a. Rat or marijuana and it reduces. A major concern for how marijuana and particularly the t. H. C. The psycho active ingredient is marketed and saw it in states where has become legal we market and sell this product to kids its done with hard hand and all Different Things there are no guidelines around it and its marketed in a way that we would not allow for example after a heart attack or the market is congress at all theres ten servings of. The active ingredient and said hi how marijuana it was governor one of the last time you tried cutting one of these or ten pieces. Now we asked our community about the legal status of marijuana in their country and we heard results from all over in ghana hussain tells us most people smoke marijuana average uses are always arrested and prosecuted yet the narcotic control board have done their best to curb the situation meanwhile in nigeria bello says i feel shipped legalized we are currently spending millions on Law Enforcement think about the economic and Health Benefit of legalizing it tobacco kills more alcohol destroys more yet legal in zimbabwe says it is not legalized and i dont think that will change anytime soon the use of it is a serious offense meanwhile down in new zealand and the shares his thoughts does not make things safer having a heavy handed war or no harm drugs but of course right here in the us now on a remains illegal at the federal level and is considered to be on par with heroin but eight states have legalized it to varying degrees often even confusion of the gap between state and federal law in texas it is illegal a legislature did not pass to change that status illinois will vote or measures this spring may see a change and here in the district of columbia it is legal to have and use marijuana for Recreational Use most recently on january the first california became the latest state to legalize Recreational Marijuana but just a few days later the attorney general sessions announced a change in policy here with us today to discuss the issue we have penny president of the minority cannabis a Business Association and founder of Budding Solutions dr carhart is chair the department of psychology at Columbia University and author of high price dr kevin sabet is founder and president of smart approaches to marwan a and ben court is author of weed and a consultant in the Addiction Treatment industry hello guess really good to see you this. Start on twitter both them address says thank you attorney general Jeff Sessions for your courageous decision to rescind the previous administrations guidance on enforcing federal. Laws so bertha is saying thank you co youre saying what. Both of them address who listens to her. And to what i think about this decision by the attorney general its really not the attorney general we really need the congress to act and legalize marijuana no wonder there are number of reasons why i think that marijuana should be legal. Chief among them i think about how we use how we enforce drug laws in the United States. In the United States for example black people are four times more likely to be arrested for marijuana and we can go down the law and we use our drug policy in part to. Basically be carry out race still discrimination thats one and then two when i think about some of the arguments again its legalization they deal with it by areas science and when i look at the scientific Information Knowledge of the science even the scientific knowledge suggests that marijuana should be illegal and so i mean we think we should have a great conversation because i like to hear the arguments and id like to hear what the other panelists say as well a lot of problems with that yeah im going to hear a lot of problems with that i do think theres some agreement but whats the first things first i dont think its fair to a pack a former Deputy Director of the Bush Administration who has a ph d. And works at Harvard University and pro cycle pharmacology so thats what im sorry i did i just gotta trust her i did not attack me because transmits last stay on topic and not. Have a lot of people she was on the question of and so if you want commission so look at this little important thing lets get to the crux of the argument i agree is that we do not need to have a false. I mean between criminalize ation and legalization were acting as if there are two choices we either have to lock people up or to do what were doing in america which is basically start big tobacco all over again and thats why actually every Major Medical organization in the United States and around the world actually dont want to legalize marijuana they dont agree with dr r. They dont agree that we should legalize at all they dont think the science leaves us there because todays marijuana is much more harmful than it used to be because its a schedule one that does not mean its on par with heroin it means its classified in the same way because it has a high predict addictive potential and no raw medical use but there are components that the two have medical use and we should recognize that i think c. B. D. Is an important issue to research but were conflating so many things here were conflating decriminalization with legalization those are two very Different Things were also conflating c. B. Doing in the non so i dont were not components with t. H. C. Well a lot of people are and i think this is something that im just taking certain dont know about Jeremy Thomas they said here lets have a conversation here and Kevin Sessums that were just. Number one what we think about big tobacco one of the reasons that were concerned about big tobacco is because tobacco lie to the people of the United States and its like marijuana its doing please let me finish and you please let me finish were upset with big tobacco because they lie they lie and said that their product was not addictive not harmful and they even set up a research arm a that they were going to try to have independent research which was a lot would not upset with tobacco because they are making money there in a Capitalistic Society like they should set a colony and having us take a course in my mind because we havent i dont have to healing the conversation we have to guess and the Online Community as well trying to get some. Community in hand as well let me just say this and this is calico ultimately i. I dont see this is a big policy shift the best way industry can respond by doing what weve always done operate transparency so were talking about the cannabis industry the growing kind of this industry i know that you have a part in that what impact is this going to have absolutely this wasnt a shock to anyone in the industry we have been operating in a place of you know leaning on the coal mimo and other protections that we have in place and we havent done the leg work of ending prohibition which is what we need to do its not enough to him prohibition without having a loons on racial equality and equity in this space so we have to look at the social justice perspective in that lens and so when we start to talk about what happened last week with Jeff Sessions for sending the call memo essentially what it does is light a fire under this industry and what we should be doing is uniting and ending probation really changing policies so that were operating in a place where were not in a silo in a state weve had eight states now that have great programs that have been successful the heads of those states at least to colorado and washington oregon and washington excuse me that are coming out and saying hey we will stand tall we will support our industry and what we should be focused on again is being unify and republicans democrats live in prohibition that was different now from six months ago what difference does it make to the marana business the growing business medical uses. Banks. Im not sure. If im the right one but its a question you know im not in the business and i dont. Or a lot to do with the industry im just a colorado who kind of has to Pay Attention to what happened in my own state i think that the biggest thing that its going to do is make a lot of the folks who have large scale operations nervous about it this this shift theres nothing to do with users it has nothing to do with people who choose to consume this substance on their own it really has everything to do with the people who are setting up shop in these states and they were in all they can to get as much money out of us it is possible you know that my home state has shipped bought who really embraced this industry in many ways and i think there were a lot of us who werent expecting it to be as hard hitting and going to use it as quickly as it is that this is about it industry this isnt about somebody choosing to use a substance or not this is about what theyre not we want to allow people to. Prop it with with weed operators in this industry are not comfortable operating patients will suffer consumers will suffer if they have to go out of business if they have to shut their doors in anticipation of you know a rate now patients will ultimately suffer the employee of the issue is you know ultimately suffer whats whats so amazing also is that there actually there are a lot is a lot of evidence saying that it has not been going well in the states in fact there are more black and his band of kids being arrested in ca denver now for Marijuana Possession than there was before legalization and is that in d. C. Actually your guest there is agreeing with me actually in a second thing is let me finish weve seen more arrests in washington d. C. And they are almost all africanamericans for pop. Accused as well as distributions so you know if you want to right the wrongs of the war on drugs and i think we would have a lot of agreement that weve been racist policies that we want to reverse you dont do it with creating another massive industry who we know will be led by rich white guys from Silicon Valley going to paul street and that by the way is who is making money from this business that by the way is who is leading this and the issue is we wouldnt need to embrace that we could simply change our criminal laws we dont want to go after users and by the way this memo simply goes back to create two thousand and thirteen days its not a change in policy its there is a the federal law has been there for a while and we would all agree if you are going to legalize marijuana which i dont think we should let me just one who want to be agreement and here we would agree that you should do it through congress right. Now to go ahead tom catting that yes kevin just said something thats just so mis informed but the fact is when you look at states like colorado and washington and you look at the numbers of people who are being arrested for marijuana that number is dramatic plea down it is true that we still have Racial Disparities in a rest but the number of black people who are being the rest in those places is dramatically decreased so i dont understand what youre even talking about let me bring in another place now this is definitely simple jones who was part of the organization having small approaches to maulana he talks about the black community saying this is his perspective have a listen koll. The reason im working on this issue is because i received Marijuana Policy new form in a way this positive impact in my community and right now as i walk out the door of my home number any direction the first or the need to see to be a Liquor Service cigarette advertising plastered all of that is because from day out on Tobacco Industry and disproportionate targeted my marine disenfranchise communities fortunately if you look at places like Denver Colorado racine the new one industries denise zach same thing where some minority communities have one caution before each year and says im see people clearly for profit legalization doesnt do that published work about ok so again this is misleading when we look at cancer we look at illnesses we look at anything in American Society we can see that a disproportionately negatively impact black people but when you were a the totality of this thing for example like prisons and those sorts of things changing drug laws would decrease the number of black people caught up in the criminal Justice System here i dont want that sort of comment that i want to make a there can you please that comment that was made of it was just. Simplistic and misinformed or i dont think the caller had a question i just genuine question but i think we need to have dialogue in this day and age where dialogue was is really just not we dont have it and thats why im proud to work on both republicans and democrats call it a great question. Dont you think that there we could have a compromise where we can go a long way in reducing incarceration brain as well as righting the wrongs of the past by not by simply removing criminal penalties from marijuana and not actually having a system like alcohol or tobacco where we actually enter into that capitalist system with selling and we simply focus on saying you know what you know if you if you possess an amount or whatever there isnt going to be jail time and we actually and you would agree we want to discourage use among young people because todays t. H. C. Is so much powerful than it used to be but wouldnt that be a compromise where you could assemble essentially remove the criminal penalties as opposed to saying we want to let this out into our capitalist society and kind of hope for the best and i hear washington telling us that we have the answer here that i can see i know you want you want to weigh in on this is well i had intentionally thank you thank you so much thank you so much for that question. Yeah i really like the idea of making sure that we remove the criminal penalties the problem is when you just remove the criminal penalties particularly when it relates to a psychoactive substance without making it legal you dont have the Quality Control thats necessary to make sure that whatever people were getting is something that has high quality thats one and two this notion that you keep referring to is that the marijuana today is more dangerous than a marijuana that people had previously thats just simply is not true throughout the history of humankind and we have known how to increase the t. H. C. Levels in marijuana its true the average concentration of t. H. C. On the street today is higher than that in one thousand and seventy about people who have it is i say that coming out i want to make some Space Missions and see me time a concise when you go ahead i absolutely think theres a place for regulation especially as you look at the. Medicine as medicine if i am growing this for my personal use im not concerned i know where i planted it i know what i use to grow this cannabis and im ok with thats the same thing as growing tomatoes in my home but when i go into a pharmacy or a dispensary i want to know that this medicine has been tested i want to know what its been processed with if anything and ultimately i want to be able to look at a label and know that there are ten servings in that dummy or in that chocolate bar so that i can responsibly consume as a as a Recreational User or as a medical patient from what you want to act i think you might get by. Lets not move on the color red and then i go into dispensaries all the time and ive seen what the industrialization has done and in my state and first off because like just hop on weed maps for a minute its an app on the i store on the i phone store and you can see that all of the dispensary are concentrated in the lowest Income Neighborhood the denver post ran a wonderful piece called really simple titled remember most dispensaries located in poor minority neighborhoods and a result these communities have been inundated with to do the bishops so youve got all of these weed shops around theyre targeting their marketing to the folks who live in spite of those communities i dont have a shop for eight miles from my house but theyre all over the poor neighborhoods inside of denver and its for us this rave in the hope you can see in us keeping track on whats going on so this would be your Search Engine look at the recalls that have happened in colorado as a result of the pesticides the antifungal things that we found we are not regulating the way that its produced and youve gone from would naturally occurs inside a can of a system of. Myself like would naturally occurs inside a cannabis is less than