Coming up on The Outlaw Lawyer, we're going to be talking about the legality of marijuana, the history of marijuana legislation, and what the future holds in regards to the legalization.
Next. Outlaw Lawyer with Josh Whitaker. Welcome to The Outlaw Lawyer. I am Josh Whitaker, one of your co-hosts. I am joined as usual by Mr. Joseph T. Hamer. Hello, Joseph.
Hello, Josh. I really do appreciate your formal intro, including the Mr. and the middle initial. Well, I want to give everybody a sense of professionalism. You know, like we're here with top hats and monocles maybe having some sort of fancy tea, which attorneys often do.
Yes, attorneys love tea. And if you hear us on the show, we are dressed in a full tuxedo suit with top hats. I definitely have my monocle to read my extensive research and notes on the program for today. And that's just the way we like to keep it formal. We do that for our listeners because we care that much.
We make the sacrifice for you guys. This week's going to be an interesting week. This week, we are talking about basically marijuana. That's a good summary, Josh.
It's a simplification. You know, we're going to talk about a few different aspects. We're going to talk about the legal history of marijuana in the United States. We're going to talk about recent developments.
We're going to talk about some conflicting state and federal laws. We're just going to dive into it. Do one of those deep dives that we like to do on this program. And so this came up, you know, me and Joseph spend the week kind of thinking about what we're going to talk about. If you're new to the show, you know, what we try to do is kind of pull things out of the news, take legal tidbits out of the news, cases the Supreme Court may decide, or look at something that's, you know, based on a statute. And we kind of try to look at it like attorneys, look at it like it's a courtroom or it's coming before us as if we were judges. And so that's kind of, that's kind of what we do. So we're kind of flipping the script a little bit today because we, me and Joseph just came back from Las Vegas.
Yes. We took a trip, a research related trip for the show. It was all deductible. It was all business.
It was, it was business related. We did this for our listeners, um, went to Las Vegas and, you know, anyone who's been to Las Vegas recently, one of the most prevalent things that you, you think of almost immediately upon stepping out of the airport or onto the strip is, is marijuana because it's literally everywhere. Any well-intentioned young man who gets poured into Vegas, you almost have to slap the weed away from you. Yeah, it's, it's everywhere. It really is, man. And the smell like, I mean, it has a distinct smell. And like I said, it's, it's prevalent.
It's ever present in the streets of Las Vegas, because again, it's, it's legal in Las Vegas. And so we, we, for research purposes, took a trip to a dispensary or two just to see how they operate. Just strictly for purposes of research for the show. One thing we like to do, uh, for our listeners is, is really extensively research these topics and make sure we're giving you guys the most accurate information possible.
And so we really wanted to take that field trip to, to give you guys the most accurate insight we could, and to do that hands-on research. Yeah. And so it's everywhere. It's, uh, you know, in Las Vegas is billboards, the smell you can smoke or consume on the street. Um, I guess in the casinos too, really. I mean, I don't think there's any, I think technically there's, there's gaming commission issues where you're not technically supposed to be able to, and they, they do enforce that. But again, we saw it, we smelled it.
We, it happened. Um, I think the best way to describe, cause I think technically, technically again, we're not Las Vegas attorneys. And in our short period of time in Las Vegas, we did not develop a proficiency for Las Vegas law.
But in my research, cause again, we do the research. I believe that technically you're not supposed to smoke unless you're on private property. I don't even think you're supposed to smoke on public property, but the at the leniency towards it. I don't know that I saw a cop while we were in Vegas.
I don't think I did. I don't think that I saw a single police officer. Um, so, uh, it's, it's very lax. So while it may be prohibited to smoke on a public street or in a casino, obviously we saw that and it was something that took place and there's just a very, very relaxed attitude towards it in general. You know, and it got me, it got me thinking on the long clean ride home, you know, it got me thinking, we were going to talk about how federal law treats marijuana possession and distribution and what have you. And, and the States, you know, medicinal marijuana was a big push there for a while. And a lot of States now are, are, are legalizing or decriminalizing, uh, possession and things like that. And it's, uh, it's kind of an interesting, we talked, I think one episode here recently, we started talking about the conflict of laws. We had a case where we had Virginia should Virginia law apply or North Carolina law apply.
And that's the court wrestled with that. And so here it's kind of, you know, you've got a federal law that says no weed, and you've got state laws that say, yes, weed. And how do those, how do those come together? How does, how does that work? That should be the, that should literally be the text of the statute, just yes, weed.
Yeah. You know, it's one of those things that, that we thought about because you, you visit these dispensaries and you see people who are, you know, there's people who live there, there's regulars at these dispensaries, but we talked to in our extensive research, we talked to some of these people that work at the dispensaries. And, and one of the gentlemen we spoke to actually said they don't have a ton of, of regulars. There's not a whole lot of regular customers there. They it's, it's a lot of through traffic and people who are visiting. So you got people coming in, buying copious amounts of marijuana from these dispensaries. And these are people who are in town, I say three to four days max for a Vegas trip. That's, that's enough. Any less may not be sufficient anymore.
It may be problematic for you. So you've got a lot of people who are hitting that same window. They're buying a ton of these these marijuana products that they probably can't consume completely in that period of time. And then they're turn around, get on an airplane, they're heading home. So what do you do with your excess marijuana products? That's kind of the hypothetical. You know, we, as attorneys, we create these hypotheticals and that's the hypothetical that popped into my head.
What do you do with whatever weed you've bought that you need to get back home? How do you handle that? And, uh, and that's where that conflict comes into play. And I think, and before we get into the nuts and bolts of everything, I mean, I think it's real clear by what's going on in different States and just kind of the culture that here in 2021, we have a much different idea and thought and feeling towards, uh, marijuana than people even in 1980s. I think there's been a rapid development of, uh, how it's perceived.
And, you know, we'll talk a lot about the history and we'll talk about why things are the way they are, or at least were the way that they were. Um, there was a lot of media and governmental pushes, uh, you know, to basically, uh, ban and really push against any narcotics and, and marijuana kind of got lumped in with every other narcotic, which again, there's arguments. We're not going to do a whole lot of discussion of the pros and cons of marijuana.
That's not what the podcast is about. Um, but, but just factually speaking, there were a lot of, there was a lot of governmental interference and a lot of governmental agenda pushing as far as really pushing that no drug agenda. And then marijuana got lumped in with a lot of harder drugs that, that you could argue should be in a completely separate classification. Um, and that kind of, uh, that is really what shaped the narrative around it for so long. And it's only been relatively recently where there's been kind of a renewed emphasis on the medicinal benefits. And that's what's kind of really separated it out.
And I think led to a lot of the advancements in the way that it's perceived today and a lot of the legalization efforts. Well, I thought again, before we get into the, the, the meat of this, of this show, I want to see how many terms we could think, how many nicknames we could think of for marijuana and not an exhaustive list, just like our top, maybe our top three favorites, our top three, is it our top three favorites or is it the top three like coolest? I mean, there's, there's like the most popular names and then there's just the ones that are like, that's pretty cool. Cool name. I think favorites are three, okay. Three coolest.
Oh man. I've always liked the devil's lettuce. That's always been one of my, that's been one of my top ones. Um, recently broccoli is, is, is a way I've heard it referred to that that's resonated with me. And then you gotta go with the tried and true classic, just Mary Jane, just simple.
It's efficient and it's effective. I think it's part of an older generation. I appreciate, I appreciate doobie, which I guess is not, it's a, it's not a generic term for marijuana, but I, I think it works. I like, I like doobie. I like reefer. I'm looking on our list here that we made. I like those two.
I think I'm just going to go with those two. Mary Jane may make my cut. We'll share Mary Jane, but again, there's the links that our research go to goes to it knows no bounds and, uh, we want to be prepared for anything. I think we could do an hour long show on, uh, slang terms for marijuana if we really wanted to, but that's not what we're here for. And you know, this culture, this, this, this, uh, I don't know marijuana culture, this culture that's more accepting of, of marijuana as a, as a drug that can be used every day or has medicinal value. You know, you see it movies, television, everything's kind of moving towards a more accepting, um, not everything North Carolina is not, you know, but, but a lot of people are. And I think again, bold prediction. I don't know this for a fact, but barring some unforeseen development and science that no one has uncovered in the years of marijuana use that have come before the airing of this show, I think the general trend is heading in the direction of nationwide legality at some point, maybe not in the near future, but at some point I have to think that that is the direction that this is going in. I got to think we're within like five years. I think there's going to be a tipping point. And a lot of States had referendums like the past year, but there's going to be a point where, you know, if 35 States it's okay, you know, eventually you're going to hear the stories of someone getting caught in a state where it's not legal with all this stuff and getting all these charges. And at some point it's just got to even out.
I don't disagree whatsoever. And I think that's the way it's heading. So, um, yeah, I got a lot of talk about, we're going to dive into this. It's going to be a very, very, uh, deep topic. We're going to talk about the history. We're going to talk a little bit about every aspect of it. And again, really that intersection between the law and marijuana. Do you know when marijuana was first outlawed? We do, because we Googled it up next. We talk about the legal history of marijuana. Joe and Josh back with you at the outlaw lawyer.
In case we haven't mentioned it already. If you guys want to give us a call, um, our phone number here is 1-800-659-1186. That's 1-800-659-1186.
That line is set up to take a message. Um, so you can leave a message for the show me or, or Joseph, and we'll be glad to get back to you. Uh, you can email us questions. That's plural questions at the outlaw lawyer.com. Uh, website is the outlaw lawyer.com and we are on Facebook and Twitter as the outlaw lawyer. So we always would like to hear from you.
We've heard from a lot of you and, uh, but, but it's, it keeps it interesting. We, we like to keep it topical and, um, anyway, be happy to hear from you, but right now we're going to go ahead and get started and kind of paint a picture of how we got to, to where we're at with the, the legality or the illegality of marijuana, depending on how you want to phrase it. But basically prior to 1930, if you could get your hands on marijuana, it was yours and you could do whatever you wanted to with it. Um, in the early 1900s, there, there became a movement for States to, to ban. So some of the States, uh, kind of took it upon themselves to ban it. Um, but the first federal restrictions didn't come about to a little bit later.
That's right, Josh. So there was a time, like you said, when cannabis and, and really, if you're looking back that far cannabis, opiates, opiates, cocaine, all these things that are very illegal drugs today were, were basically freely available at drugstores, uh, either in a liquid form or as some kind of refined product, the, the refined version of cannabis was hashish. And, you know, cannabis was really a common ingredient and a lot of turn of the century patent medicines. And you'd have a lot of these over the counter concoctions that could be kind of brewed into proprietary formulas. So, uh, and back then it was very similar to how it is now where you, it was really kind of difficult to distinguish between medicinal and recreational use, because at its essence, the purpose of cannabis is to make you feel good.
So, I mean, that's really, if you boil it down, that's, that's kind of the gist of it. So you couldn't at that time, just like now, really distinguish between that recreational and medicinal use. And you'd see a lot of, uh, there was candy, there was cannabis candy. You had cannabis liquid, you had a lot of things that really, you know, we've, we thought recently more so about the smoking of marijuana.
And it's only kind of been recently where you've seen a resurgence of the different forms. You know, we saw some, some sparkling water, cannabis infused products, bath bomb, bath bomb, all the, it, it runs the gamut now, but that's how it was back then. And I should point out, you know, before 1930, the federal government wasn't really involved and it was up to the States and a lot of States didn't do anything. Uh, but the practice of smoking marijuana wasn't, wasn't very popular until later on into the, you know, I guess it's still the early 1900s. Um, but Mexican immigrants are the ones that kind of brought that custom to the United States.
Yeah. You know, a lot of anti or a lot of marijuana scholars, we aren't marijuana scholars, but the marijuana scholars out there, a lot of them cite the fact that it really was Mexican immigrants that brought that smoking, be it in cigarettes or pipes. And a lot of the knee jerk reaction to marijuana, once that, that started to be a thing was really kind of exacerbated by some anti Mexican xenophobia at the time.
So, and it's, it doesn't make it right, but again, that was kind of the prevailing wisdom. And that's what a lot of people credit with some of the negative connotation that marijuana received after that practice became more prevalent. So we kind of skip ahead to the present and in present day, marijuana is currently a schedule one drug. It basically meaning that the government feels it's got no health benefits and a high potential for abuse.
So it is treated essentially like heroin, like LSD or peyote or ecstasy or bath salts even. Yeah. So that was the, yeah, they, they lumped everything together. Now I really wonder how, and I guess, you know, we weren't alive back. Well, yes, we weren't alive back then, but you wonder how that happened.
You wonder how it all got lumped together like that. Well, lucky for you, Josh, I've done extensive research and we can, we can tell you exactly how it happened, at least according to the historians, but, but yeah, it doesn't make a lot of sense for, you know, marijuana to be lumped in with heroin or especially bath salts. Bath salts do terrible things to people. I don't, who, who created bath salts? I remember hearing about the, you take the bath salts, you become a zombie, uh, some guy ate another guy's heart. I think bath salts were originally designed for baths and not for consuming. Um, but, but yeah, apparently you consume bath salts, you turn into a zombie and eat people.
The, uh, we on the outlaw lawyer do not recommend if you're going to try a drug, not bath salts. And I don't think I really ever heard much about peyote until law school. There's like 90, we've talked about one of the cases, but there's like 9900 cases on the use of peyote.
Yeah. Peyote is a strong one, but again, lumped right in with marijuana for the longest time. So, um, I think it's good now to just kind of, kind of take a trip through history and we can kind of briefly summarize starting back in that early 19 hundreds and moving forward through today, kind of all of the, the legislative developments in the history of pots legality. So we start off with the olden days, which we kind of talked about already where the baseline position was that cannabis is legal. So the first attempt at any form of real federal regulation came in 1906 with the passage of the pure food and drug act. And basically what that act said was that cannabis had to be listed among various other substances that were included in these patent medicines so that any concerned customers could kind of avoid it.
So this was more of like a soft restriction. It wasn't necessarily a hard prohibition, but it was the first time that we saw any kind of attempted regulation. And after this initial kind of soft restriction, uh, between the period from about 1914 to 1925, there were 26 States, like you mentioned earlier, Josh, that actually passed their own individual prohibitions of marijuana.
So, and the thing is, is at the time these anti marijuana laws that were passed by these States were really kind of uncontroversial and they really kind of pass without much public outcry or really any kind of legislative debate around them. Joe, I just remembered a nickname for marijuana that we didn't say that would be my third place. Okay, Josh, let's supplement your list. Wacky tobacco.
You don't hear that one much. Wacky tobacco is a, is an all time classic. And I'm going to, I think that's number one on your list now.
It's up there, but getting back. So prohibition was going to going on at the same time. So you've got the temperance campaigners. You've got people in favor of banning alcohol.
And of course we know they were eventually successful for at least a short time. So you've got this giant social movement against any kind of, uh, I don't know, fun stuff, I guess, drugs, alcohol. I think you said it, man. Uh, I cannot, I can't imagine a more exciting person to hang out with in a temperance campaigner from the 1920s.
That would be, we should get one on the show. We could find time machine, bring us a temperance campaigner and just let them ruin our day. So they, they got more involved as, as they were more successful with alcohol, they saw this as being another evil. And so, um, we saw, we saw that affect how the Supreme Court kind of looked at different things. And so there was a, the 1914 Harrison narcotics act, the Supreme court really interpreted strictly.
Yeah. So like you said, over this whole period, there's really kind of a public opinion shift from a weed as just a, another thing that you can use for any kind of a therapeutic purpose, um, to, with kind of some of those xenophobic beliefs, plus these temperance campaigners, it all kind of combines. And we see really kind of a shift of the public opinion. Um, and you actually see some governmental officials and some legislators that also start kind of pushing this narrative of the dangers of narcotics in general. And somehow we just gets lumped in with every other narcotic. And eventually we actually, it's kind of funny today, but you see a narrative that's pushed where marijuana is literally labeled as an unknown drug that is linked to murder, torture, and just all kinds of horrible cruelty. So they, I mean, that's as literally how it's written in some of these reports at the time. That's what people thought it was associated with.
I definitely think that was an angle. I think, I think historically, if you, if you look back at what was going on at the time that, that smoking marijuana was a habit of, uh, immigrants and, and the lower class. And I think being associated that way at that time, that really helped play a good, you know, that, that was one of the reasons prohibition really pushed at it.
Yeah. And so we talked about sensationalist journalism, uh, on past episodes. And it's just interesting to see that even back in the good old days of the early 1900s, it was still a relevant thing. And it still played a big part in the way that, that the narrative was shaped. Um, so riding this whole temperance wave, we move into the 1930s, when you had really one of the nation's top anti narcotics officials that kind of took up the anti weed crusade. And he would actually eventually lobby in favor of the marijuana tax act of 1937 and testified in front of Congress. And he actually used a ton of cases. And these were cases of murder, rape, and torture. And he basically used those cases and alleged that the individuals that committed these crimes were high on pot as evidence of the dangers of marijuana. And then it was a short year later that the scare film, the historical classic scare film reefer madness comes out.
Wow. It was that long ago. And it kind of just sends people into a panic. Um, so the 1937 marijuana tax act was passed shortly thereafter, and there really wasn't much investigation going on into the safety or the, the use of the drug medicinal value. It basically all this panic, this public panic and public outcry, um, kind of did it in. So during this time, there's a lot of behind the scenes work being done by people firmly against marijuana to discredit any positive evidence of its benefits and push for and to push for harsher prohibition. So you've got people behind the scenes high up who have decided this is bad, and this is the way it was going to go. There's you'll see throughout the history of marijuana.
There's a lot of that, a lot of behind the scenes, wrangling from people to just basically look at it one way with no nuance and kind of keep it down. So, um, I think it's a good time to take a break coming up on the outlaw lawyer. We will transition into the 1950s and our continuing look at the history of legalization of marijuana.
So Josh, we continue our journey through time and we're into the 1950s. And at this point, lawmakers and really journalists alike really seem to have little patients or any kind of interest in giving marijuana, any kind of nuanced distinction between all the other illegal drugs. So basically you've got heroin, cocaine, marijuana, everything falls under the same broad category of just dope.
And it's all considered addicting and frightening and bad. Kind of at the behest of the U S in 1961, the United nations have a convention on narcotic drugs and what to do with this problem and, and how to treat it. And so the U S is a treaty came out of it. The U S signed it, helped pushed it through and it classified cannabis as a schedule one substance.
And it required all members of the UN to adopt special measures of control to prevent its trafficking. That's right, Josh, the convention on narcotics drugs, not to be confused with the convention of narcotics drugs to very different times. Um, well, what's interesting is that despite the fact that you've got this UN convention taking place during this time in the sixties, the sixties are really a time when the general public's view on drugs in general is kind of changing and becoming a lot more relaxed. You've got a lot of college students that are kind of sparking a spike in sparking. You see what I did there, a spike in marijuana's popularity. And, uh, the youth is starting to use this drug more frequently, which is there's a lot of historical factors for that, that we don't really have time to get into. But by the time that the late sixties roll around, it seems that there's a lot of people questioning the harshness of marijuana penalties and legislation for what to many people seems to be a harmless activity. But despite that fact, the number of state level marijuana arrests actually increases 10 fold between 1965 and 1970. I'm going to pencil in a note on my paper that we should have more puns just as a overall show note, we should try to focus more on puns.
We will, we will add that to our research and our repertoire in preparation. Uh, so that brings us up to 1968. So we were to the presidency of Richard Nixon and, uh, Nixon, like you did on most things kind of takes what I would see as the wrong side of this thing. And so he's really aggressive. He's the law and order candidate.
Um, cause the country's going through a 68, one of the most tumultuous times in the history of the U S so the riots protest assassination. So he comes in as the law and order president. And so he declared a national war against drug abuse.
Yeah. And so it's kind of a comprehensive campaign and what it involves is we see, you know, the white house and Nixon, they, they basically attempt to strong arm radio broadcasters into no longer playing drug theme music. They start recruiting celebrities to kind of be anti-drug spokesman and they start basically mandating that television shows. And they, and I think they trade out advertising and money for this, but basically mandating that they're going to start including anti-drug themes into popular shows and movies at the time. And this is really the error where things get kicked up a notch in the drug war. So the powers of law enforcement get drastically expanded, you know, between 68 and 72, 73. So this is where you see the no knock, the late night search warrants kind of come into play and you see anti-drug agencies, uh, kind of become more directly responsive to the white house and what the president wants to see and how enforcement should be.
Yeah, that's, that's right. And so there's some all time classic TV shows and movies that are, that have that anti-drug spin. So we got some good media content out of that. And that's a, that's a discussion for another podcast, but, uh, so in 1970, Congress passes the comprehensive drug abuse prevention and control act. So that's, that's actually what formerly in the United States places marijuana in the most restrictive category of drugs, basically stating that it has no permissible use in medical practice. So the thing that's most wild about this to me in our extensive research that we did was the fact that there was actually a commission that was appointed to study marijuana. And that commission presented president Nixon, a report that basically stated there should be no criminal penalty for marijuana, that it's a waste of money.
It's a waste of resources. And ultimately Nixon's actually on tape as rejecting the committee's findings and refusing to acknowledge that report in the public at the time, he basically took a hard line stance and there's actually quotes of his where he, he basically told the people in charge of the drug policy at the time, he said, you know, you can, I'll take your recommendations on anything, but when it comes to weed, that's it, nothing, it's it. There's a hard line stance and that's it. Well, despite his stance kind of in the seventies, we see public opinion really starting to shift to more lenient overall, uh, opinions on, on marijuana. And there are several national organizations that are pushing for the decriminal. I can't say that decriminalization.
You did great. Is that how you say it decriminalization of at least small amounts of marijuana. So like possession under announced that kind of thing. Um, and the opinion shifted so much that in 1977, so Jimmy Carter's in the, in the white house now, and, uh, he called for decriminalization in a message to Congress.
You did a fantastic job on that word yet again, Josh, and, uh, that's right. So, so Carter calls for decriminalization, remineralization to, uh, Congress and, uh, and obviously it's unsuccessful. We does not decriminalize at this point. Um, but, but it's just an illustration of kind of how the public opinion was shifting, but still again, just like we said before, despite that overall shift in public opinion, there's still plenty of people who are very uncomfortable with the growing prevalence of weed and the loosening of attitudes towards it. And most of these people I'm going to get us have never partaken in marijuana themselves. Um, but there's actually a lot of parent action groups that are formed to advance fears that there are adolescents that are being exposed to this drug. And so there's kind of an increase of this anti-drug movement that takes shape with a lot of these parent action groups and these kinds of grassroots organizations that, that crop up.
And we kind of see a resurgence of those temperance types that we talked about those very fun people that we experienced back in the 1920s. So then we get Ronald Reagan, who's a fantastic president, except for. He had a crack cocaine problem, right? Not him personally, but the country had a crack, a crack cocaine problem. And so he came in and he was tough on drugs. Um, so there was a lot of anti-drug legislation that came through the eighties under Reagan's watch. And that's the war on drugs really.
I mean, I came up in the eighties. That's really when the war on drugs kicked into high year. Um, in 1986, Reagan called for the implementation of drug testing to ensure schools and workplaces remained drug free. So Ronald Reagan really took it to another level.
That crack cocaine, uh, problem really did a number on the, the, the hopes of legal marijuana. And, uh, like you said, there was, I came up after you and I still remember a lot of the remnants of that war on drugs. You know, uh, it was, I believe it was Reagan's wife who rolled out the just say no campaign to elementary schools back in 1982, you had the creation of the dare drug abuse resistance education program. I vividly remember the dare program. A lot of great lessons that you learned in the dare program coming up in elementary school. So I go to a little off topic here.
I go to the earnest my Presbyterian church on 401 south heading out of Raleigh, um, in that church's library, it's fantastic church, great people. But in that library, one day I was sitting there pulling books and we have a book Nancy Reagan wrote a book on, uh, on avoiding drugs. And, um, that's all I remember about it. I took a picture of it.
I don't have that picture with me. Well, what I took from that is that you, even on a Sunday at church, you're still doing research for the program and your dedication is unmatched and you are a true scholar and we appreciate you. So, um, long story short at this point, there's a greatly increased push by the government. And again, the media really to roll out that, that same anti-drug agenda that really doesn't distinguish between the types of drugs. So, um, even though there are surveys showing that during the 1980s drug use is on the decline, that war on drugs is still a very major campaign issue by the time that George H W Bush is campaigning for presidency in 1988. Um, and really that anti-drug media campaign continues well into the 1990s and it really involves pretty much every medium imaginable. So we saw it's, it's in TV, it's in commercials. Everybody remembers that it was on milk cartons. I think literally every form of media that, that was possible at the time, there was some form of anti-drug message. Is that at the beginning of video games? At the beginning of video games. Exactly.
Um, you're, you were correct, Joshua. Um, but, but over time studies have ultimately found that these efforts were not very effective. Apparently putting the anti-drug message at the beginning of the video games is not the way to go about deterring the kids from using drugs. Um, so regardless, the government has kind of continued over time to periodically pour money and energy into anti-drug campaigns. And I don't, I don't think we're saying that anti-drug campaigns are bad. I just think, I think we would urge a distinction between bath salts, crack, cocaine, and marijuana. I'm for all of it, Joseph.
I think everything should be legal and available. Even the bath salts? Yes. Right.
Even the bath salts. So, uh, so yeah, it's controversial statement, Josh, take some time to process that. Um, but we move into the present and we move into recent history and kind of the more recent developments. And, and I think we mentioned it briefly, but I think a big part of the shift in attitudes towards marijuana and kind of the distinction between it and other drugs has really been the fact that activists and people who are really touting the benefits of marijuana have really leaned into that medicinal aspect of it.
And the fact that there are medicinal properties. So we're kind of getting to the present here. And so we know that federal there's federal law against a drug, you know, drug owner, having drugs possession use, and we've got international treaties that the U S is, is, uh, the primary, uh, sponsor of, and they all have marijuana as a schedule one drug. So we're, we're pretty clear on where federal law stands now. So up next, we're going to have to take a look at Joseph, we're going to have to take a look at that, that conflict between state law and federal law. We're going to start digging into that. We're going to talk about how States have kind of individually pushed back over time against these federal laws. And we're just going to talk about the interplay between that state and federal government piece. You may not, you may not realize it because of the nature of our discussion. Me and me and Joseph are always going to try to take a laid back approach when we're talking about this, talk about it really relaxed.
We don't want to give you the wrong image of us though. We actually believe they're not run a successful law firm called Whitaker and Hamer. If you need a lawyer, you need legal advice.
You have, uh, some problems with these federal drug laws. You can give us a call. You can also call us at, uh, the outlaw lawyer. Our phone number is 1-800-659-1186.
That's 1-800-659-1186. You can email us questions at the outlaw lawyer.com. Our website is the outlaw lawyer.com. So you can contact us through the website.
All of our archived episodes are there and you can listen to that. And we're on Facebook and Twitter as the outlaw lawyer. I also think it's important to mention, Josh, you talked about, we, we do take a laid back approach, but I want to make sure all of our listeners, when you listen, I want you to close your eyes and I want you to imagine both me and Josh in full tuxedos with top hats and monocles, because that's how we're dressed every day that we come into the studio.
Super fancy. Up next on the Outlaw Lawyer, states fight back. Welcome back to the Outlaw Lawyer. Again, Joshua and Joseph here talking with you guys. We always encourage our listeners. If you have any questions for us, if you want to reach out and give us your thoughts, we'd love to hear from you. Give us a call anytime at 1-800-659-1186.
Again, that's 1-800-659-1186. Or you can email us at questions, that's questions plural at the outlaw lawyer.com or visit us on our website, www.theoutlawlawyer.com. And again, we are also on Facebook and Twitter as The Outlaw Lawyer. I would remind everybody, if you email or call us, if you leave us a message, you call us. Let us know if you want one of our attorneys to reach out to you for a consult, or if you're just leaving us information that we can use for the show. We obviously don't want to get an email from you.
And then sometimes we'll read those on the show if they're just for the show, just for the sake of conversation. So let us know if you're commenting or if you need some help. But we're going to go and get started. So we've kind of painted the federal picture, but the states, you know, they, they've, they've been fighting back pretty hard. The states have been fighting back.
So we have gone through history and we have arrived at the present. And the statistics in the present day tell us that about 800,000 Americans are arrested annually for marijuana offenses. Most of those are just simple possession. And very few of those people wind up in prison as a result of their first offense, but their encounter with the criminal justice system still has serious consequences. You can have loss of eligibility for federal student financial aid, loss of eligibility for subsidized housing. There's consequences to having that run in with the law.
And a lot of states have, you know, these were very popular in the eighties and nineties. These three strikes are out laws where, you know, and, and you get too many mistakes and you get handed a, a bad penalty on your third felony. So, you know, while simple possession is not that serious of offense, it can really lead to some, some serious implications down the road.
If other things were to happen, We've always recommended a hard two felony limit that third felony. We can never recommend the commission because like you said, the three strikes laws, but, uh, it's also important to note as another kind of indirect consequence of this, this marijuana prohibition is the fact that all of us, everyone has a listener as a taxpayer. We all contribute billions of dollars a year to the enforcement of anti-marijuana laws and to punish those offenders. So there's some real serious implications to marijuana prohibition that, that may be less apparent than you think on the surface. So we know now that possession distribution of marijuana since at least 1970 has violated national and international law, but there's been various points in history where individual States have made big time efforts to fight back. And I think we're really reaching a crescendo right now.
Yeah. So the States fight back, uh, in 1973, Oregon decriminalized possession of one ounce of marijuana and basically just made it a hundred dollar fine. So decriminalization means that you basically take the teeth out of the existing laws. And in that same year, Texas actually made possession of four ounces or less a misdemeanor. So we've seen some States soften those laws. I saw in 1975, that the Alaska Supreme court established that our constitutional right to privacy, which we should talk about one day, that's an interesting, uh, conversation in and of itself, but we have a constitutional right to privacy and that included possession of small amounts of marijuana. So I really want to read that case.
I didn't have time to track it down and read it before. Uh, but I did see Alaska here recently, uh, kind of swung back the other way, but we'll get there. Big fan of the Alaskan Supreme court. We are on the show friends of the show, the Alaskan Supreme court. Um, so Josh, let's talk about North Carolina.
It's where we live. Um, so, and you know, with a lot of these States trending and making their own individual, the individual statements on the legality of marijuana, Las Vegas being one that we just recently visited. Tell me a little bit about possession in North Carolina. What is the penalty for possession of less than an ounce of marijuana in North Carolina? All right, Joe, as it stands now in North Carolina, a half ounce or less is a misdemeanor punishable with a $200 fine. A half ounce to one and a half ounces is also a misdemeanor, but the fine is a thousand dollars and carries a possible prison sentence of one to 45 days.
And then one and a half ounces to 10 pounds, which seems like a big difference substantially three to eight months. It's a felony. And, uh, the fee, the penalty is, is a thousand dollars, but it's that three to eight months. That's, uh, that's kind of a big deal. And so that's, that's kind of simple possession, personal use type, uh, marijuana crimes. Yeah. And you, and you see a real escalation of the penalties, uh, when you get into that intent to distribute piece, you're basically everything's a felony at that point.
Um, same thing with the sailor delivery. You're starting to talk about major issues. Same thing with the cultivation thereof. You're going to be looking at substantial penalties and felonies all around the board, essentially for those crimes. It's interesting.
I'm just looking at the schedule. So 10,000 pounds is a felony and one 75 to 222 months and $200,000, uh, fine, but 10,000 pounds is a lot of marijuana. That's a lot of marijuana, man. Who was the ex football player who was like, got caught in the van. There was like a van that may have had like 10,000 pounds. Do you remember that? I don't remember that. I think it was a Dallas cowboy. I can't remember, but, uh, but there's severe penalties for sure.
Looks like he's facing some severe, whoever it was, they, they put them under the jail apparently. So, so we talked a little bit about the penalties in North Carolina. And I think it's important to talk again about the, how that initial state by state legalization push really came to fruition. And it really began with a push for legalization just for medicinal purposes. Um, which it's kind of funny because if you've looked at the history as we have that medicinal purposes in a lot of ways is kind of a sham. Basically in order to qualify to purchase medicinal marijuana in areas where it was allowed, patients would need to visit what's called a pot doc, uh, who were basically licensed physicians that specialize in prescribing marijuana.
And they would have to give you a diagnosis of pretty much any of a dozen extremely broadly defined category. So you could have it for chronic pain, gastrointestinal distress, depression. Um, I remember cataracts. You always used to hear, yeah, I need it for my cataracts, but essentially anything, any ailment you had, I don't know, uh, how much you watched the Simpsons, Joseph, but there's a Simpsons where Homer gets a marijuana prescription for cataracts.
I can't remember how the crows picked out his eyes and he got cataracts and, uh, it's a funny episode. It sounds great. Um, and, but again, it medicinal purposes was in a lot of ways, it was very, it's always been difficult to distinguish between, cause there are a lot of people that really need medical marijuana for legitimate medicinal purposes. And I think there's been recent studies and I think it is fair to say we got to kind of classify weed for the time being as an alternative medicine in the sense that there are still to this day, haven't been a wealth of clinical peer reviewed studies done to back up these claims of medicinal benefit first for the longest time. That was just a push to outright prohibit it.
There wasn't a lot of studies being done. Um, so there's, it's a kind of a rapidly developing area. Uh, but, but there's a lot of people out there who would swear by the efficacy of marijuana treatments. Um, so 1996, California is one of the first, uh, first States to really legalize medicinal marijuana. Um, and then pretty quickly, you're going to see a lot of other States follow.
Yeah. You see a whole lot of other States follow and, and that's what we have for the longest time. You've got that medicinal legalization until about 20 years later, you have Washington and you have Colorado who were the first two States that officially allow recreational use with actually it's Colorado that is the first to do so on the very first day of 2014. Since then, a majority of States have legalized medicinal marijuana, decriminalized possession of an ounce or less or flat out legalized the entirety. I know we have some da's here throughout the state, uh, da's, uh, on the County level. I've just said, Hey, look, we're not even going to prosecute simple possession anymore. Yeah. They give da's a lot of leeway and you, and you see that there's a lot of da's who selectively do that. And again, it's just evidence of that, that general gradual movement in the direction of just full legality.
All right. So if you need to get ahold of us here at the outlaw lawyer, the phone number again is 1-800-659-1186. That's 1-800-659-1186. Our email is questions at the outlaw lawyer.com. The website is the outlaw lawyer.com where you can go contact us through the website, listen to our archived episodes on Facebook and Twitter. We are the outlaw lawyer. So we've set the stage and now comes the conflict. So if this was star Wars, the next section would be return of the Jedi coming up next on the outlaw lawyer conflict, the federal government versus the States who will win.
All right. So we're back at the constitution. All these things come back down to the constitution. Um, but our we're in article six, paragraph two of the U S constitution, which is commonly referred to as the supremacy clause. And it establishes that the, that the federal constitution and federal law generally take precedence over state laws and even state constitutions. It prohibits States from interfering with the federal government's exercise on its constitutional powers and from assuming any functions that are exclusively entrusted to the federal government. It does not however, allow the federal government to review or veto state laws before they take effect. So the supremacy clause is, is, is kind of how we've all understood it to work. You know, the States have their laws, but you're doing everything, um, kind of under the, the webbing of the federal government. Supremacy clause is a pretty cool name for a clause.
That's the first thought I have about it. And, and the way you describe it, Joshua, it sounds fairly open and shut and federal is federal laws just going to control. Is that correct? Not quite in States where they've made marijuana, made cannabis legal. Um, the federal government doesn't interfere. So there have been different attorney generals that have different opinions on, on what to enforce and why, um, I can't remember. Um, I can't remember, uh, Obama's attorney general, but he basically had a policy to leave everybody alone.
Right. If you're obeying your state's law, the federal government's not gonna, not gonna interfere. Um, I think sessions kind of reverse that. And it's kind of interesting and it's kind of gone back the other way where, where the federal government's going to leave you alone. If you're obeying your state's law as the handling and selling marijuana, but a lot of banks aren't comfortable, you know, so a lot of these, a lot of these businesses who make big, big money off marijuana sales, they're not putting their money in a bank because banks are scared that this would violate the Monday law, the money laundering federal laws.
Yeah. And so what we see is this conflict between state and federal law. It really locks up a lot of items kind of on the periphery and it does create a lot of conflict and it's, it's a tricky, tricky area because even like you said in the States, in these States where it is legal by state law to do these things, it is federally illegal at the exact same time. And you got a lot of these people who are running businesses and this is their livelihood. This is what they do for a living. Uh, they are, they're running dispensaries, they're growing marijuana, they're selling marijuana, and it's gotta be a stressful existence just on the essentially verbal promise of an attorney general that they're not going to federally prosecute you for something that is illegal. Yeah. They always, even the attorney generals who look the other way, they always say we could 100% prosecute you and we may later, but we're not going to do it right now.
And so it doesn't give me the warm fuzzies. If I'm growing copious amounts of marijuana and selling it to legal customers. I remember I read a new story. It was right about the time Colorado legalized it and people didn't know how it was going to be treated. But, uh, the bank problem, these people, this company was selling so much marijuana, taking in so much cash. They had to build warehouse warehouses to store their cash. So they had these security guard on the perimeter warehouses full of cash. I think that's a great problem to have. Um, I think we as the outlaw lawyer collectively, and all of our listeners should all aspire to have warehouses full of cold, hard cash, where we can just go and throw it in the air, lay on it, spend time with it.
But this long hour journey that we've been on kind of gets us back to our original question that Joe asked. And so you're in, you know, you've got a tourist who's in, we saw some of these people, you got a tourist who's in Vegas. They buy as much weed as they can carry out of the store for two or three days. So every day in Vegas, you got all these people with all this extra gummies and, and, and marijuana and, and what do you, they all get thrown away.
Do they take dads? Do they bath bombs? Do they take them on the plane? Uh, what do you do with it? Cause you take it on the plane.
You got TSA, TSA is federal. One man's three day supply of marijuana is very different than another man's three day supply of marijuana. And I think what you see when you go to Vegas and we saw this in our extensive observation of these dispensaries, you see a lot of people who come in, who come into Vegas, they're looking to have a good time. They may not be super experienced with marijuana in general, because it's illegal where they come from.
So they don't really know what to do or what to get. And you know, some of these dispensaries, the thing about the dispensary process in our extensive research, it's really a kind of a one on one process. You enter, you show them an ID to prove that you are legally able to be in the building. Um, and then you walk into a, just kind of a room, right?
It's not really like a traditional, it's a traditional storefront, but you really kind of have this one-on-one attention. So you're really being guided by these employees and you could get a great person who's going to take good care of you and he's going to, he's going to guide you along and tell you exactly what you need. Or you could potentially get someone who's just going to try to sell you all the 50 bath bombs or whatever it may be. So you do see a lot of these people who are, who can't really quantify what they need in that three day period. And they're going to have a lot of excess.
So what do you do, Josh? It's, uh, in our, in our research, it kind of on T you can go to TSA's website and they kind of tell you this cause it's, I'm imagining this comes up a lot. Uh, cause for all they know, you could be playing, flying from Vegas to what's another state where it's like California. So you may be going between two States where weeds legal. And of course, federal law says it's not, but they've also said, Hey, we're not gonna, we're not gonna bug you. So it looks like the consensus from the TC TSA's website is that they're not gonna bother you unless they think you violated state law.
I thought your answer to what do you do with the extra week was going to be, you just strap your belt on tight and you just get to smoking and that's what you do. You're just gonna, and then you can't even find your plane and that's going to be your answer. But yeah, it's kind of like we talked about with these individuals who are running these businesses where the TSA's website's abundantly clear.
Again, we did extensive research on this issue. It is abundantly clear that once you cross that threshold in the airport, weeds illegal, it's not legal to have, you can't have it. If you do have it, there are penalties. And basically what the TSA says is we're going to report you to the local authorities. And again, even though it is legal in that state, it's still federally illegal. So it's still a crime.
You're going to have an issue and it's an issue that none of us want to have to deal with. Um, that being said, there's a lot of anecdotal evidence that TSA is not looking for these types of things. They're not looking for your tiny bag of weed or your bag of gummies. They're looking for bombs, for knives, for dangerous things.
And, and no one's going to blow up a plane with a CBD bath bomb. Well, and that's kind of where we're at. It's a, it's a, it's a conflict.
It's, uh, it, it's going to change. You know, the next attorney general could decide he's going to take a hard line stance and treat it differently, but there is conflict. And depending on where you're at, where you're going, uh, what you have on you, it kind of is going to determine what, what law applies. So that's, that's the excitement of a conflict of law situation.
Yeah. And we can't advise anybody in any of these states where marijuana is legal. But I think what we would say practically speaking is if you're in a place where weed is legal and you've got extra supplies and you want to bring them home with you, you are, there's a very real risk that you are going to be in violation of federal law.
And even though it has been said by the TSA that they are not necessarily actively looking for these things, if they do find these things, you could definitely have a problem on your hands. And so we, uh, we would proceed with caution. I think this is a good time to remind our listeners that me and Joseph are licensed North Carolina attorneys only in North Carolina. And when we talk to you on the Outlaw Lawyer, we're not here to give anyone any personal advice.
We're here to just generally discuss legal topics that are hopefully interesting. Um, if you want to reach out to us at the Outlaw Lawyer, our phone number is 1-800-659-1186. Again, it's 1-800-659-1186. We encourage you to email us. If that's easier, you can email the show at questions at theoutlawlawyer.com. Our website again is theoutlawlawyer.com. So you can contact us through the website.
All of our archived episodes are there should you be interested in listening. And we are on, uh, social media, Facebook, and Twitter, The Outlaw Lawyer. And again, Joe and I are the managing partners of Whitaker and Hamer, a law firm with offices in Garner, Raleigh, Clayton, Goldsboro, and Fuquay-Varina. We have a lot of attorneys and a lot of staff that would be happy to help you. If you did have a legal issue that you needed to consult with an attorney on, you can use that same contact information to contact the law firm.
So if you need Whitaker and Hamer, again, 1-800-659-1186, questions at theoutlawlawyer.com will get you there as well. Um, but Joe, it's always fun to sit down and, and this is topical for us since we were just in Vegas. We were just in Vegas.
We should, I feel like we should do an hour long show next on gambling, another popular topic of conversation from being in Vegas. But, uh, like Josh said, reach out to us. We, uh, we love to hear from you guys. We love each and every one of you equally. And, uh, we care about you a lot and we want to hear your thoughts. We want to hear your questions.
And if it, on a serious note, if you ever do need any kind of assistance with anything, we would love to help you out. So we just encourage everybody to reach out to us. Um, we're gonna, we we've been stockpiling a lot of those listener questions, uh, to take at a later date. So we're going to keep building those up. Maybe we just do a whole episode of Lister Questions soon. Yeah, maybe we do that.
Cause we care about the people. We want to address what you want us to address. And, uh, we are, we, uh, our attorneys, we're always happy to help you give us a call if we can be of any help, but we will talk to you next week. Outlaw lawyer is hosted by an attorney licensed to practice law in North Carolina. Some of the guests appearing on the show may be licensed North Carolina attorneys. Discussion of the show is meant to be general in nature and in no way should the discussion be interpreted as legal advice. Legal advice can only be rendered once an attorney licensed in the state in which you live had the opportunity to discuss the facts of your case with you. The attorneys appearing on the show are speaking in generalities about the law in North Carolina and how these laws affect the average North Carolinian. If you have any questions about the content of the show, contact us directly.
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