The Drug Report
The Drug Report
New York OCM Celebrating Marijuana Profits, New York Times Stories
High THC cannabis products are under intense scrutiny, and with good reason. Kevin Sabet, CEO of SAM Smart Approaches to Marijuana, joins us to dissect the cannabis industry's parallels with big tobacco, especially concerning unproven health claims and the relentless drive for profit. We examine a noteworthy New York Times article and question whether New York's $1 billion in cannabis sales is worth the potential cost to public health. Our discussion focuses on prioritizing health over profit, learning from the tobacco industry's past mistakes, and the crucial role of effective regulation in safeguarding public health.
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Yes or no? Do you believe nicotine is not addictive?
Speaker 2:I believe nicotine is not addictive. Yes, Congressman, cigarettes and nicotine clearly do not meet the classic definitions of addiction. I don't believe that nicotine for our products are addictive.
Speaker 1:I believe nicotine is not addictive. I believe that nicotine. Hi everyone, this is Luke Neferratis. I'm your host of the Drug Report podcast brought to you by SAM Smart Approaches to Marijuana and FDPS, the Foundation for Drug Policy Solutions, and today I'm joined by our CEO and my friend, kevin Sabet. Thanks for joining us, kevin. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Well, we've got kind of a slew of fun things to talk about today, and it's good to have you back in the new year. By the way, it feels like it's just last year you were on the podcast.
Speaker 2:I know last year.
Speaker 1:So what do you want to kick us off with? I think we have some news we want to share.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, a couple things, I mean over the weekend. If those that saw the front page of the New York Times on the Sunday New York Times above the fold, so this would be like, basically, one of the most prominent, if not the most prominent, article to be seen. The headline was marijuana pushed to limit in a race for profits and the sub headline was high THC, low prices and curative claims still shy on proof. Um, this was like waking up in the twilight zone. I mean to see that was incredible. We have been talking about this for over 10 years.
Speaker 2:And incredible, we have been talking about this for over 10 years and you know the the, you know the iron lady and others, uh, would, uh, mainstream media where it was not covering this and um, and so you know, basically, it's, it's been, it's incredible to see that they're actually doing that. Finally, and um, you know, it's just, it's, it's really, it's really amazing to see that. And so, saying the same things we've been saying. It talks about it's Stizzy, which is the best selling brand in America and how, of course, by the way, they're like engulfed in so much, so many lawsuits right now too. I tweeted about that yesterday, but just to see that I think was pretty amazing to see that they're covering that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean I think was pretty amazing to see that they're covering that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I think especially, you know, obviously, the New York Times.
Speaker 1:You know early on they were supportive of legalization and it wasn't like we were getting these stories in the first five years as states were rolling them out.
Speaker 1:But I think now that we're past a decade of these experiments, if you will, in different states, the data are so clear that it's going so poorly and that the harms are very real and that big tobacco is very much invested and this is starting to look exactly like that experiment and so or not experiment, excuse me, that failure of what we had with tobacco policy, and we're still cleaning that mess up. And I just think it's so obvious now that there's nothing they can do but run these stories. And it's interesting, the people that they have that they quote in the reporting on marijuana now in New York Times. I mean you have doctors. I saw Dr Pachulia on there, I saw a number of other doctors that we're all well aware of, other folks in our field who are really experts, who have been, you know, really raising the alarm about this for a long time, finally getting into the pages of the New York Times to talk about it.
Speaker 2:No, it's been great and it was lucky for us to have been working with some of these folks behind the scenes for many years and just to see these articles now come out I should have said the gray lady by the way, Iron Lady's Margaret Thatcher.
Speaker 1:I was going to say I don't remember Margaret Thatcher saying anything about that, you know things.
Speaker 2:I don't. She did say some things, but that wouldn't have been as extraordinary. No, the gray lady, the gray lady we call the New York Times, but yeah, so pretty amazing and it's just really interesting. And the other, of course, bit of big news is that I don't know if you want to tee it off what's happening in the Capitol today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, off what's happening in the Capitol today, yeah. So what's happening is I mean to lay the setting for you. This morning, which is Tuesday morning, the top cannabis regulator for the New York Office of Cannabis Management, their OCM, hosted a press conference in Albany, at the Capitol building, celebrating $1 billion of sales for the marijuana industry. This is the person that is in charge of regulating this industry, holding them accountable, protecting the public health. This is the person that's working on that, that's responsible for it, and they are hosting a. They hosted a press conference to celebrate the money that this industry is making yeah, which, I think.
Speaker 1:If we had the FDA commissioner celebrating the money that tobacco industry made last year, there would be a lot of people very unhappy about that, and it's just astonishing to see this person doing that. So we were so sickened by it. We decided this is time to kick off a campaign in the state of New York, and so we set up a you know, a mobile billboard to drive around the Capitol. Kevin, I don't know if you want to share with folks what that billboard is sharing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, the mobile billboard essentially has a couple messages. The first message is same game, new name, with a juxtaposition of an old Marlboro ad and big tobacco with a big marijuana. A picture of a cigarette box that says marijuana on it. That's meant to mimic Marlboro. And then we're saying to New York put our kids before drugs. The other picture is addiction, for profit is never something to celebrate. And then, cause that is what they're celebrating and it's really, really upsetting. So, and we also actually show some of these New York times headlines, cause we've had more than just the one from Sunday, We've had several others. Uh, so this is a this is a really important issue and I'm just so happy that we're at least trying to raise, and we are raising, awareness. Today we have, uh, Chrissy Grandwagon, who's in our action network, who's there doing interviews, because this is just ridiculous to be covering, you know, to be celebrating addiction. We would never do that, like you said, for tobacco or alcohol, and why are we doing it for marijuana? It's very sad.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think you know the public has come to expect that. You know there's got to be someone that is protecting their interests, the interests of public health and safety. It can't just all be about the almighty dollar. And I think what is striking to me is, you know it's not even that they're celebrating the amount of tax revenue that they've made. You know that would. There would be an argument to say that that is a sane thing they could do. But it's not the tax revenue, it's that they are celebrating the financial success of this industry which, frankly, is not in their job description. Their job description is the Office of Cannabis Management is to oversee the regulations and the rules and make sure that people are protected.
Speaker 1:I mean, that was the idea going into this. I'll never forget talking to the Senate the chair of the Senate Health Committee there in Albany several years back, who said that the whole point of this was to do a health first approach, an equity first approach. Well, first of all, they failed at equity in New York and they failed at keeping the illicit market out of this the overwhelming majority of the market in New York is illicit and they failed at protecting the health of the public. So we actually launched a companion website page. That's on our website right now. You can check it out.
Speaker 1:I believe it's learnaboutsamorg slash, new York State, I think with dashes in between and each of the words, and you can check that out as well. It's also, I think, on our slide or on the front of our website and basically what that page details are the early data. So sales just started in New York in 2022. So the early data that has come out there's not much, but there's a little bit of the public health harms, of what this policy is at and, frankly, the harms have not been. It's not a good showing, at least here at the early outset. Kevin, I don't know if you want to get into that.
Speaker 2:No, it's not. We're seeing increases in poisonings from the poison centers. We're seeing increases in emergency room admissions as well, and actually this has all been covered by local media, so these are verifiable sources. We're seeing no real equity. This idea of social equity is not happening at all. No real equity, this idea of social equity, is not happening at all. We're seeing marijuana-related calls involving little children increasing fourfold. According to Upstate Poison Control, the New York City School Department is disciplinary data up 10% since 2019.
Speaker 2:So I mean on and on. By the way, the prevalence of marijuana just generally, has almost doubled in a seven-year period, which is really remarkable. And you know heavier use that's really concentrated, especially among heavier use. And then we're seeing law enforcement talk about an uptick in the people driving under the influence of marijuana, which, by the way, the illicit market has not gone away. I mean there's still, as of a few months ago, nearly 3,000 unlicensed stores across New York that have opened, and so you know the underground market, the black market, is thriving. There's very little equity happening at all, in fact.
Speaker 1:One thing I worry about yeah, to host a press conference celebrating the money made by this industry. With that as the backdrop, it just makes you wonder, wonder. Who is the audience for these regular?
Speaker 2:audiences, their audience. It's the marijuana industry that are paying these politicians.
Speaker 1:I mean there's more, and the marijuana industry is the industry they're supposed to be in charge of regulating, and they are their audience.
Speaker 2:It's pretty amazing. Yeah, they're just. They think their mandate is. Regulate means just make them succeed by any means. Like this is like like they're selling, you know, balls of yarn or T-shirts. I mean that's really. And they're not realizing this is not, this is, this is hard, this is harmful stuff. So you have to, if you're going to do it, which you shouldn't do you have to really take care in doing it. You don't, you don't want to be pushing for use, and that's what's happening, unfortunately.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll never forget.
Speaker 1:Here in Colorado, which many of you know is where I am from, our marijuana czar is a marijuana industry tycoon and he had to sell all of his pot shops in order to take the role all of his pot shops in order to take the role.
Speaker 1:And I'll never forget one of the headlines from a newspaper here in Colorado that said it's like the Marlboro man is being put in charge of the FDA. You know people would have questions about that. People also have questions when it's somebody from the board or a former CEO of a mega pharma company that is also put in charge of the FDA. Because I think we all know, just implicitly, that there is something wrong with a person who their interests either you know immediately before or even during their term in public service being in charge of regulating an industry. That matters, and if they have a conflict of interest, that matters because they're not going to put the people first. And so I think you know, particularly in this era where I think there's a lot of people that want accountability, they want to make sure that there is truth being told when it comes to public health, we have to ensure that the people who are in charge are doing their jobs and that their audience is the people and that it is not the major industries that they come from.
Speaker 2:Yep, no, completely. So we're going to keep keep them accountable, we're going to keep pushing this and we're not going to. We're not going to back down.
Speaker 1:That's right, kevin. You know another thing that was interesting in the news. You know we just saw that Harvard has a new $16 million study department that is looking at psychedelics. And you look down towards the bottom of Harvard's press release on this department by the way, the front page of the website. You all should check it out. It's unbelievable. They're looking at religious uses of psychedelics. It's every kind of way of using psychedelics. It's like, well, I thought you were all supposed to be studying it, not promoting different uses, but that's what they're doing.
Speaker 1:You look at the bottom of the press release, kevin, and it's from this foundation I've never heard of, called the Gracias Foundation, and the head of the foundation is a member of the family and he runs a private equity firm that is investing in these spaces. So, industry-funded research, which is something we've talked about before, research, which is something we've talked about before. You know, again, the audience has to be the people, the folks whose interests are served by these efforts, need to be. The interests need to be public health and safety, not, you know, private equity firms and industry P&L sheets.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it's pretty amazing. I mean, they're buying themselves into universities. Universities, you know, they always want money, so anybody that kind of comes with an open checkbook pretty much unfortunately gets often what they want. And so, whether it's an endowed chair of some sort or an institute of some sort and you know, obviously we want to increase the things the foundation could actually do is write a letter to this institute and copy the Harvard chancellors and board of trustees I should say overseers and ask what is being done to ensure that research is done in a non-biased way, that there is, you know, ethical considerations of subjects, that students are protected. I mean, I think these are like legitimate questions we need to actually ask.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think we will. I mean, especially when you have a quote like this from the Gracious Foundation, harvard is the ideal place to explore the topic of psychedelics for new angles and to craft a framework for their legal, safe and appropriate impact on society. So, yeah, it doesn't give me hope that there isn't a mission behind the dollars. No, it doesn't, it doesn't at all. So, anywho, that is kind of your summary of some of the news and other things that we've got going on today. Kevin, thank you as always for joining us and to all of our listeners, we appreciate you listening and sharing. We have all kinds of amazing people that listen to this podcast, actually from dozens of countries around the world, from all the cities and towns across the country, it seems. So thank you for your support. Please leave us a review if you could. Five stars would be great and a review if you have time. Always appreciate that. Have a wonderful rest of your week.