Good evening, everybody and welcome. Before we jump into the event, i want to thank you all for coming. Events like this couldnt be possible if it were not for your generous support and showing up to them so thank you for your support we appreciate it. We have the honor of hosting them only here to talk about the book the rise and fall of marijuana in america. She received her phd from George Washington university and grassroots is based off of her dissertation. The inspiration for such a sure she will tell us more about it as she starts her talk. Emily has been featured on the history channel, npr and her book can be found in the washington post, the atlantic, History News Network and run washington. We are excited to have emily here today because here in colorado we had a very intriguing conversation going about marijuana even before it was officially legalized in 2014. Her book adds to the conversation with research and interviews which expand the conversation even more than we could hope to so without any furthedo so without anyfurther m welcome to emily. [applause] thank you for having me here. In a the establishment of on so many cultural events. I caught a cold from my toddler son. I havent been to colorado since 2010 and the city has not really changed. You are at the forefront of the movies we are discussing tonight. Legalizing is huge before people even used pot and beer even professionally you set the pace so i would like to set the pace by situating where we are in our current moment. We are not a month into the second year of the Trump Administration. It is. We would have elected but rather than the four states that legalize, all of them dot higher Approval Ratings in both the support is and was overwhelmingly bipartisan. Republicans and democrats support and a majority o the mas agree that it should be alcohol or tobacco. As the nation we have a difficult time agreeing on anything. A gallup poll suggested they now support the legalization. We dont agree on anything. In november of 2016 the dispensary in california opened their doors january 1 of this year. Not only does it make it a block of legalization but will expand northward but it also nearly doubles the market and basically overnight. The sales in 2017 total of about 20 billion before california hit the market. They are expected to generate about 5 billion of sales alone and 1 billion in taxes. This is huge but three days after it went into effect Jeff Sessions revoked the administration. Federal officials will allow them to stand but its more than anything since 90 occur on the state level and also because neither seemed to have the people or the resources to be old to go after that it is a symbolic shift in the social acceptance im going to focus on it. When the news about the sessions went by, people kind of lost their minds. Its already a very chaotic industry and anything that remains legal on the state or federal level of faces as an awful crime. They feared we hadnt learn from our past states but i wasnt really surprised. My book was released almost exactly a month to the day before they went live and i predicted they would revoke. I didnt expect it to happen this quickly but the reasons for doing so are more complex than your racism that benefits those that can afford even higher taxation rates. Theyve brought us to this point. The pendulums constant swaying between acceptance and criminality they shift to match the circumstances but the pattern remains fundamentally the same so that is wha what myk and my talk tonight are. Its to bring us to this point and perhaps we will see the same pattern or perhaps you wont. There is history before 1964 of course. I can give you a bibliography if you are interested. By the time 1964 rolls around, the federal government views hadnt evolved much since the view from the us if you are familiar with that. A Government Official stance that its pretty much led to a number of affordable things including heroi heroine addicti, suicide, murder etc. Instead i start in 1964 when a young man walks into the San Francisco apologist is, lights up a joint, declares hes starting a campaign to legalize marijuana and asks to be arrested, which he immediately is. Action is the first shot in what will become a 50 year battle over marijuana in which tens of thousands of average ordinary americans essentially went to war would be supported or opposed it, the two factions went on to change the law three times, first in the 1970s when it sprinted to a dozen states then when it was re criminalize and defender in the social acceptance of medical marijuana in the 1990s which paved the way for the growing acceptance today. Todays growing social acceptance has a counterrevolution which we can sesee in the actions of Jeff Sessions and the prominence of the activists and other pharmaceutical manufacturers are lobbying against the legalization law because essentially they cut to the bottom line and it all starts with this guy. Hes particularly interesting because hes 28yearsold and isnt lucky hippy as we come to know them today. 64 is about a year. Hes a pretty easygoing normal guy, short hair, likes to spend time with his dog he launches a revolution with the help of his attorney james white who is also interesting historical figure in the conservative media like a libertarian who wants to describe himself to the right of kerry goldwater which is extreme. To tell an individual what to do if they are not hurting anyone else, hes also a researcher and takes up schoo old government rs including the commission of the team 94 and the panama city now commission of 1925. They do not deserve to be jailed for its use. They were incarcerated for about a year and immediately upon release, he advances the movement but he stayed with it. He calls it marijuana puffing and distributes it to the San Francisco bay area and also forms a new organization that is essentially a legalized marijuana that also quickly spreads to the San Francisco area and teams up with things like that and becomes very popular. Shes also in the San Francisco at the time and is quite prominent. He is so moved by it but when he returns to new york for the first chapter with the support he quickly goes national. They also get wrapped up in Something Else which is the burgeoning Youth Movement at the time. They backpedaled in a growing number of people saw a familiar story that the government can lie. It was currently playing about winning the war in vietnam and about the necessity of segregation and now people are finding it was about the effect of marijuana as well. Before we go any further i need to retract a little bit on where they come from. Its on this high trajectory and there was no distinct federal law which is kind of incredible. There are state laws of course. They recognize this threat thats posed in the administration. So that is what he does. He may recognize that the schedules come schedule one is drugs that are considered incredibly prone to abuse. It also sets up and this is essentially called the National Commission on marijuana and drug abuse. They would do incredibl find afe things to benefit the criminalization of it and it helped the harder drug use to the generally planning nation and things like that and there was a strong arm bringing in the office and promising him a federal judgeship if the results match with nixon is looking for. But things dont work out that way. Which is rather extraordinary. The Commission Finds no connection whatsoever that they tried to blame them. 12 million were regular users. They also found they are basically no different from the average american citizen. They were no more lazy or violent or whatever. They decided that they were essentially unfair. They have watergate, vietnam and the International Scale that make them fairly minimal in comparison. They completely ignored the report. But other guild, they released the finding in a paperback i think it cost a dollar 25 and it becomes incredibly popular especially by 1973 after a wave of politicians are elected across the 72 elections and they want to put the recommendations in practice. One of the publications was responsible for implementing the law in oregon so by 1973, it is the first state to pass statewide decriminalization turning it into a parking ticket or Something Like that. And what is remarkable is that the sky doesnt fall. Marijuana rates dont rise, people are supportive of the law and theres a couple of National Organizations founded by keith strop who will remind you of cop, that is how you can remember his last name. Theyve de criminalized possession which meant more than a third of the country was living where it was nothing more than a civil science. It seemed like their moment has come, by 76 and by 78 people think that the National Criminalization isnt around the corner. They are spinning across the country. They introduced the national lexicon but there is one Significant Growth industry, and that his paraphernalia, marijuana paraphernalia. The market is bringing 250 million a year. Its the equivalent of 1 billion today. An enormous market is able to succeed thanks to the increasing interest in the drug but also because of the panoply of new magazine and various titles ever devoted to this new culture and needed advertising dollars so the result of this room for advertising thing. There was a boardgame but i thought was quite fascinating and things like that so while they are being promoted and marketed a people start to notice there is a bit of a trickledown effect and it skyrockets during this time to the point where by 1970 9 11 report smoking pot every day and those as young as 13 report that its the ticket. So the situation with the nationwide incredibly rapid acceptance of the decriminalization compounded by this powerful and very profitable boom in the paraphernalia and darius to the marijuana use this launches the counter revolution. The movement has gotten kind of a bad rap over the last couple of years people dismiss them as angry or hyperbolic but they are legitimately terrified. It is prevalent and the only information that they could find is that it was going to do irreparable harm to their children. There were a lot of federal government reports but said it would make young boys grew breasts and render them infertile. They were terrified of a syndrome where kids would give up on life support before it had even begun. We are going to give them options after school and a couple of them publish pamphle pamphlets. These things become so popular that they distributed over 1 million copies of the pamphl pamphlet. They join them in droves and the movement takes off. The National Federation for use the most interesting thing is not only dependent activism spread like wildfire across the country was effective. Its also the year Ronald Reagan gets elected to the oval office and his wife is a platform, she is the first lady. One newspaper calls her, and i am not kidding from a frivolous social planner with more ambition than lady macbeth. She needs a platform. It seems like a perfect fit so the first way to transform into the nations most famous antidrug activists within about a year and i have a chapter detailing how she steals the concept of just say no from an africanamerican grandmother in oakland and i dont have time to gthetime to go into this but i highly recommend that you read it to talk about in the qanda. This is where we see the pendulum take a big shift. Briefing from the acceptance to the decriminalization to the demonization of the drug in the 1980s. And this was able to happen because the parent activists change the conversation about the u. S. In the United States. That is the source of the inner power. The decriminalization powers are on the idea that they have the right to do what they wanted the privacy of their own home assuming you are not doing it coming you are not hurting anyone else. They turned the conversation around. It wasnt about and adults write any more. Without the right of the child to grow up drugfree. They were being locked up and criminalized for their marijuana use. You saw punky brewster, different strokes, the first lady, numerous programs im forgetting all of their names right now. As i said before when theres nothing scary or being accused that is when it becomes the target drug of choice. The United States is going through a fairly severe epidemic from about 1967 to 1976 until the federal government got it under control of multimillion dollar programs to prevent the establishmensupporting theestabs across the United States. By the time the 19 80s rolled around, there are other drugs being used but none that are as prominent and problematic as marijuana becomes. This isnt from the headlines. They are able to become the drug of the 1980s for two reasons into the first is being portrayed and the second is that its so limited and doesnt seem like a national concern. These changes in 1986 when a new drug comes on the scene called crack cocaine. In june of 1986, what is the sports term when you are selected, drafting, yes thank you. Two days after this time he dies of a cocaine overdose, powder cocaine. It had such an impact on capitol hill legislators because it was basically like a home team and they go crazy passing antidrug legislation with hundreds of news articles written calling it instantly addictive. One writer described it as destructive across america. By taking the National Focus away from ramallah. It makes it seem it paid in comparison to say where the epidemic in the 60s and 70s did it also sets up the stage for the resurrection and surprising substance. So the crisis hits at the same time as the hiv aids epidemic is starting to make National Headlines as well. In the cities like san francis francisco, they are coming to this strange new disease, losing weight, getting symptoms of other diseases, dying in droves and no one is sure of what is going on. An activist known for the brownies that she would cook with a special ingredient, shes working with these young men. They are her neighbors in the district and find marijuana can help them give back a little bit of an appetite and relieve marsha. Give it a littl a little strengy start to feel better. Others start to pick up on this and marijuana starts to be used to treat a variety of illnesses from glaucoma to the dossier should from chemotherapy and things like that. Suddenly, after a decade, marijuana isnt a National Forest destroying young people anymore. Its medicine. And one that can provide relief that very few understand. So to gather, a marijuana and gay rights activist passed away, so we just lost a big member of the movement, they pushed for the movement which allow doctors in california to recommend, not prescribe recommended the use of marijuana for the treatment of any disease. The first law passed in the United States. By 1997, the New York Times reported nearly a third of americans knew someone who used marijuana for the treatment of some kind of medical issue. Marijuana transformed in a decade from the National Force to eight potential panacea and the drug war began to change shape. People were left concerned about the drug use and the victims of the drug war itself. No one wanted to see a cancer patient getting busted for smoking pot. This isnt to say that people automatically stop being locked up for marijuana as soon as the first laws were passed. Instead the arrest actually rise. In 90 pot accounted for 30 of the arrest and that risen to 50 by 2002. In 2007 over 872,000 people were arrested for pot. Thats possession not a surly intention to distribute. Thats a bus nearly every 30 seconds each cheer. The majority of people rest were africanamerican males. Therefore times likely to be arrested more times than white. Alexanders a name you might know. A lawyer working for the aclu in california in early 2000. She noticed the trend. Sure its a book called the new gym crow, its an incredibly powerful and influential book. She details the negative effects of a america incarcerating a greater percentage of its black americans the south africa did at the height of apartheid. If anyones interested in social justice she argues its a renewed form of segregation. Its incredibly important argument. She never outright suggest that legalization is the answer to the problems. She mentions the word legalization wants and says not to be legalized but that occurs in a long list of other recommendation. She wants to change the cultural lawenforcement in the United States. Her book is not a clearing call. Instead calls for legalization is a social justice issue become the work of a new generation of activists inspired by the 20 history of medicine see legalization us a step to do something to reduce the number of black arrest and equalize the Playing Field for blacks and white. Social justice is the most powerful for legalization yet. Everyone from republican light right leaving cops to the lieutenant of california suggest thats its important not just because of the tax dollars raised for the state, but because the social justice effects it can potentially have. I live in d. C. , 2014 we voted to legalize it. The argument had been so persuasive it pass legalization laws in eight states and d. C. Will talk about vermont in the second. Means nearly 70 Million People lived where marijuana is legal and arrest supplemented in those states accordingly. So now we have to ask hows it going. Has legalization work . The answer is yes and no. Marijuana arrests are down. Blacks are still more likely to be arrested for marijuana even in legalized states. Especially here in colorado. The state with the most transparent available statistics. Few states have included additional legislation to expunge someones prior record. It can still haunt a person will into their future. Mostly white people are starting to control larger and larger sections