Cannabis Legalization - Will it SAVE or DESTROY the Industry?

Steve: People know me best as the founder of the Harborside Dispensary Group, but I've been a cannabis activist and entrepreneur my whole life since I was 13 years old. From the time that I first tried cannabis, and I realized that if I was going to be able to consume as much as I wanted to consume, I was also going to have to be selling it. So it's been about 50 years now.

Steve: I teamed up with Homegrown because I think that the right for every individual cannabis consumer to grow their own cannabis is a sacred right. One of the most outrageous things that I've seen in recent years was an effort by leading cannabis companies to convince the state of New York to ban home growing. And for me, this is just an act of betrayal.

Steve: You know, the cannabis industry didn't change the laws. The cannabis freedom movement changed the laws, and the cannabis industry grew out of that movement. And one of the things that we stand for is cannabis freedom. And cannabis freedom means exactly that. It means that anybody has the freedom to use cannabis. And for many, many people, the only way they can really exercise that freedom in a meaningful way is if they can grow their own cannabis.

Steve: Another reason that I'm really happy to align myself with Homegrown is because, like me, Homegrown is dedicated to the idea of empowering cannabis consumers, empowering the cannabis community with information, with education. When you look on this site, and you explore, and you poke around a little bit, it's one of the very best places to get a good cannabis education. Lots of people say that the very best cannabis is the cannabis that you grow yourself. Moving forward, what I really hope to be able to do is to learn more about cannabis, to research more about cannabis, to tell the story of this amazing plant. And the most important thing to me now is to make sure that enough generations come along are behind me to finish this job that we started, and restore cannabis to its rightful place everywhere on the planet.

Kyle: Our next guest is a man who needs no introduction to the cannabis community, known as the father of the legal cannabis industry. He's an activist, author, entrepreneur, and the visionary behind Harborside, one of the first dispensaries in the U.S. His work has paved the way for the movement we see today. Give it up for the legendary Steve D'Angelo.

Kyle: Well. Hello, everybody. And here we are. Steve D'Angelo. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Steve: What a pleasure it is to be here. Kyle, thank you so much. Happy to be here. 

Kyle: It's always a pleasure to see you. I always, whenever I see you, I long to spend more time with you. 

Steve: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, this is a common thing, right? We go to conventions. You know, those of us, you know, who are part of this tribe, right? We share a consciousness, and we share values. We share a culture, but we're all over the world. And so, you know, we get together at these events and that's, you know, that's kind of where community is. We spend a lot of our time communing with each other. And, you know, so those of us who've taken on leadership roles in the community or, you know, or greater scholars, documentarian roles like yourselves, we're like, we get into these conventions, and we're surrounded by the people that we wanted to connect with, and that's really great.

Steve: But it's like, oh, there's Kyle over there, and there's you there. Let's get together. So, yeah, 

Kyle: It's a lot like a family reunion. You know, like you haven't seen people in ten years and stuff, and it's almost melancholy sometimes, you know, I'm happy, but then I'm sad that I'm going back to my life and, we, you know, we all just live in the same city, and we can all cooperate together, and I'm looking for, like, scheme. We can all be together and scheme together. 

Steve: Well, you know, it's interesting that you say that. And then we will just segue right into it since, since it seems to make sense. So I've been spending a lot of time embedded in a community in Jamaica called Rastafari indigenous Village and one of the things that I've been helping to support the community is to accommodate, build accommodations for guests and guests to come in, hang out in the community village and have an immersive type of experience. 

Steve: So we recently had our first changemakers retreat, the Changemakers Retreat feature people who I invited, who, you to be changemakers in one way or another. And what we did is that the more affluent changemakers pay a rate that allows me to build some economic diversity and to experience. So we brought people together who are changemakers in very different communities, but have a common, a love of the planet and, and psychedelics and, and so we had this amazing experience together and, so moving forward, one of the things I want to do is have these kinds of, you know, like, you sit down, and I sit down and the five people that we had most want to hang out with. And then do the invitations and go hang out in this little village with each other and hang out with five days and go down to the river and go to the waterfall and sit into the tabernacle and, and immerse yourselves in the rhythms of the jazz and, and go out to the ceremony and start a fire, or maybe do some, plant medicine or have a beach or have those conversations. 

Kyle: The deep, long, protracted ones that you don't know where they go, where they end up. And I'm wondering, you know, it's kind of like, when you do some psychedelics, some mushrooms or some LSD or something, for the first time with somebody, but somebody who is, you know, of your culture or of your you grew up with them, you know, how different is it to experience that first time experience with somebody who is completely foreign to you? I mean, Rastafarianism is a pretty serious, yeah. It's a religion. 

Steve: So Rastafari. I would not, say or at least the Rastafari, you know, would not describe it as a religion. We talk about liberty. 

Kyle: Okay. That's why I hesitated to use the word. 

Steve: Yeah, and there's good hesitation. Really. It's a way of life, 

Kyle: Right.

Steve: And, now, you know, when you think about Rastafari, the people that are, you know, for serious Rastafari, I say that, you know, nobody is for Rastafari. All right? You can speak as Rastafari. And I'm not Rastafari. I’m hippie. And if you say close cousins to us. Right. So we can really fight with each other. Right? And I have respect Rastafari, all right? Because it's because this amazing spiritual force in the world, through reggae music. And one of the reasoning people are so moved by reggae music is, is the underlying vibration of Rastafari that is expressed through that. 

Kyle: So what I'm what what I'm trying to tap into is what kind of, unique feeling did you get, from, having experience with these people as opposed to some hippie freaks in San Francisco? You know, that was all your life you grew up with. 

Steve: So, these, Rastafari Indigenous Village, is the first Rastafari community in Jamaica that has incorporated mushrooms. Iowaska, people got into their spiritual practice, and they did that years and years ago. And so, that consciousness is built into their art, their murals, into their songs and chant. You will get a rhythm. 

Kyle: So this wasn't new. This wasn't a wholly new experience. It actually, Rastafari have had experience in psychedelic before you came along, or was it a first time experience? 

Steve: No. They had experienced two years before I came along. So what happened is there was, and this is, I think around 2017. And so, Amazonian people are in Jamaica and they're looking for a place to do a ceremony and they see the name ‘Indigenous’ and they're like, ‘okay, our people’. They come to the village. And of course, Rastafari revered lands of all kinds, right? Including ganja. Really. You know, the most revered plant. And so when the Amazonian plant medicine people showed up, it was kind of a natural fit. And so the village, participated in the ceremony and was initiated into these other visionary plants. And, they, like, you know, most people would have this experience they wanted to share with everybody that they that they knew. And, and there was a learning curve there. Right? Because when you do that with psychedelic plant medicine, changes happen, right?

Steve: You know, relationships end, jobs are left, people travel to new countries. They decide to do entirely new things now. And, you know, that's the nature of plant medicine.

Kyle: It's from the nature coming from an island where people who generally intend to spend their whole lives there. So now you're opening their mind into this incredible enormity of consciousness, even beyond that of what I, I think it's just a really, really I would love to visit. I would love to visit that, that experience myself. 

Steve: Yeah. Well, I mean, it's been a wonderful experience. I have, sadly, I have to say that the village is in a process. It is facing some serious challenges now. And is resolved to go through those challenges, as a fresher and better work of expression of itself. So there's been a road project that's been coming up towards the village for some time, and it's been very difficult to get accurate information about exactly what's going to happen. And, yeah, unfortunately, the road construction company came in and took out a lot of the trees that were on the property of the village. They brought them a road much, much closer to the village than anybody else was like, right up against the village.

Steve: There's no buffer trees anymore. And, the village is trying to figure out what to do. And can they transform the village now? In the area where all the trees are taken down, and there's hope that it will return the village to its former self, which was a natural oasis that had been started, way back, I think in 2007. And the outskirts of my to the back. But as I went to go, they grew up and expanded. The Rastafari village didn't cut down trees. That's, you know, the story. The namesake was there, so it became this oasis. Yeah. Where it once you go being built up around it. And, and so that was a very important part of the experience there.

Steve: And a lot of, you know, that experience now is a challenge, right? For the villages trying to figure out what the way forward is, is, and the other German here, they can put 20 years of us, you know, intention and energy focus into the village. They don't need that spot. But it needs to be transformed here. So what opportunities does the military, and, and what does shape, right now. So, when we figure it out, we're going to be coming back to the community. Maybe you'll have me back again, and I can talk about how people can plug into that. But it's a very special place because it's, you know, it's this very unique culture that's growing that when you're asking, how is it different?

Steve: Well, you know, one of the really cool things is, you know, most times when people are going for medicine ceremonies now they're going to Peru, they're going to Ecuador, and they're listening to beautiful ancient songs. But, you don't understand the lyrics of the song. They're in a language that you don't know. Well,  Rastafari Indigenous Village, these beautiful ceremonies, amazing music, and you can understand that every word and lyrics and it's got this underlying reggae kind of orientation. So there's this very universal groove that plug in to deeply spiritual, but also something that's, you can reach it. And so, and, you know, Rastafari has tapped into in my opinion this really you know Universal kind of values and energy. You know, and it's like you take a look at it, you know, Rastafari, you know, not thinking of the village, but Rastafari village is something that was created by the descent of former slaves. Rastafari praise 1930s where it really emerged. And almost everybody who was involved in creating it was descent from former slaves, and the slavery in Jamaica was incredibly brutal. 

Kyle: What was Rastafari before? What was it called? What was it called before that?

Steve: So it was always called Rastafari, right? As it came together. There's always been a lot of spiritual groupings in Jamaica. 

Kyle: I'm very. I'm very, enamored by the whole Jamaican culture. I got married in Jamaica. I did my marriage ceremony, nine years ago now at the first annual High Times Cup. Yeah. Rich married me and my wife. And, and all seven tribes of Rastafari were there. They were living drummers. And, Mark Golding, the prime minister, was there. And it was just such an amazing event. If it wasn't so appropriate, it would have been to get married at the High Times Cup. But it was really so appropriate. And, it was so spiritual and, you know, I, I've just always been drawn to it and connected just as a spiritual hippie, you know? And I like the way you say we're kind of cousins. 

Steve: Yeah. We're close cousins. Yeah. And we really share, you know, our underlying values, the values of peace and love and respect for nature and individualism as well. And, you know, Rastafari talked about the holidays like none above or below, sovereign in their own realm. And that's, you know, that's very easy for me to fit into that. Right? It's like we also believe in the state that. 

Kyle: Innately, ‘innately’, ‘innately’. it is ain't even talked. 

Steve: Yeah, you know what? It's just it's very easily fit. Now, there are some places where the fit is, you know, just a little bit different, a little bit of friction there. So, you know, you know, hippie culture, they said the culture of sexual liberation, a big important part of our culture and our, you know, our principles of radical you should go to like you can be any kind of free if you want to. And if you culture that, you know, come on, help me welcome know you know that's free flag fly, free flag fly.

Steve: You're here it’s your home now, that's a right. Well, Rastafari comes out of a tradition where, black families weren't allowed to exist that were slaves. Any of the black woman were subjects of any kind of sexual abuse and attacked, by people who were higher up in hierarchy than they were, black men were deliberately demasculinized. Families were broken up and sold. So, we go to different places. And so when you look across the far right or when you look at, like when Rastafari get together, with mass gatherings, you'll see the family groupings, right? The family grouping, the mother and the father, children is seen as a symbol of liberation that wasn't allowed under slavery

Steve: And it's a challenge because Jamaica is so starved with resources. So start with resources of scarce resources there it's challenging for anybody to hold a family together there now. So In Rastafari there's this reverence for the nuclear family and you know when I was young growing up, you become you. If you see, up on the second floor, we had a room where we all slept. There were about 15 mattresses, 20 mural on the wall, smash monogamy we all left home at 14 and 15 perhaps looking out every night. And you know, hippies are very happy being naked with each other. You know, being free. Well, you know that there's a sense of modesty and Rastafari culture and so you'll see both men and women tend to cover their bodies, I, their bodies and men will wear pants or shorts.

Steve: So, and, you know, a lot of that's just coming out of the Crucible of slavery, right? And so hippie developed a different environment. For me, I was this young. 

Kyle: We've been repressed in a completely different way. 

Steve: Yeah, exactly as like, you know, I, I grew up in a quite sterile suburb where there was very little that was colorful at all. And everything was beige. And, and for me, I needed to break out. I needed to get color. And I did that in every way you can imagine. Right? I get that the way that I dressed, I knew that the music, that the drugs that I just took, that the kind of sex that I had in the way that my interaction, everything was going to be different.

Steve: So I, you know, like we didn't know what it was that we wanted. We didn't know what home would look like. But we fucking knew that that's what we had been born into was dysfunction, right? Right. Wars, nuclear weapons, pesticides, destruction of the planet. The stigmatization of people. The kind of sex that they had, who they love. So we knew that that didn't work. Right, we end up so we didn't have to figure it all out.

Kyle: We just knew we wanted something different. 

Steve: We're still figuring it out. 

Kyle: That's right. Every day. 

Steve: But when you think about like, for me, a lot of what made that was psychedelics. Right. So first there was the first there were the beatniks and the beatniks encountered LSD, and out of that, my others and.. .

Kyle: What, you lose your thought? It’s a road.

Steve: Looks like I lost my voice.

Kyle: Ahhh. Take a minute. I'll talk for a minute. All right. You want to keep going? Okay.

Steve: So, you know, in the beginning, there were in the beatniks, right? They were kind of the first people ended up in the after World War II in American society who were looking for a different way. And then beatniks encountered LSD… and, but okay, let's try this again. 

Kyle: So you could carry a squirt bottle of honey. 

Steve: Maybe. Coming out from World War II. The first cultural manifestation we saw that was like, you know, not mainstream culture in the United States was the beatniks. And, and then the the beatniks were around for a while, and they were about poetry and jazz music and, you know, they worn like these turb sweaters. They were established, like, definitely dropped out. But then they encountered LSD and they turned into hippies and tie dyes and colorful stuff and the music turned to a psychedelic rock. 

Kyle: Everything I wanted to be when I was growing up!

Steve: Yeah, that was the encounter that, and so I don't know what I saw set me on that long historical disquisition. 

Kyle: I'm pretty sure somewhere along the line when I was a pre-teen, somebody asked me what I wanted to be when I grow up. And I said, a hippie. 

Steve: That was what I mean. My introduction to it, I was when I was growing up, my family lived in India from 1967 to 1969 and during that period I went from 9 to 11 years old. I turned 12 years my family was traveling in Europe on the way back from India and in London I encountered hippies for the first time and there was like not even any thought was acquired I knew immediately this was my tribe. And there was like, 12 years old. I was like ‘this was my tribe’, right? You know it took me you know another 3-4 years to figure out how to really connect with my tribe and that's when I ended up connecting with Y and you know spent 10-15 years really is like a you know fulltime identified building stuff all over the country.

Kyle: I mean, I'm really glad that you, you know, you found the cannabis. You know, culture. Because I feel that we're better off with your voice. Even though it's sometimes controversial to some people. But as I was saying to you earlier, you know, unfortunately, in this life, if you've been doing anything for a long period of time, you're going to have haters and detractors and people who want to pull you down for various reasons. They want to take your place. They think you're wrong. There's plenty of reasons. It doesn't. It doesn't matter. But I'm glad you're here and you've been in the movement for so long, and I want to bring it back down to cannabis a little bit. You know? Here we are at the Cup and I got my namesake Strawberry Cough here. And I love to share with everybody. 

Steve: It is beautiful. 

Kyle: It is wonderful, you know, and so tell me a little bit, tell us a little bit about the progress that the cannabis industry has made and maybe some that you think has yet to come. 

Steve: Well, you know, I kind of think of it this way. Like, we sacrificed California to save the world.

Kyle: Oh. 

Steve: So, you know, anybody who's been following these things knows that the legalization of cannabis is really in California has really been a complete failure. And, and, you know, a lot of other states have gone in quite weird directions as well. But I've been traveling around the world, to country after country. And they're legalizing cannabis in places like Jamaica and places like Colombia. And so Rastafari communities, Jamaica now have a recognized right to the sacramental use of cannabis for years and years and years the Jamaican constabulary prayed on Rastafari. Anybody who has dreadlocks is walking around talks. And now that fear is gone. I mean, you know, it took a while for the court to now recognize this right. And so that's a huge change, you go to Columbia. And I've talked to people, women who I've held in my arms who were weeping because of the relatives that they've lost in the ongoing violence in Columbia. And legalization of cannabis played an important role in the piece of work that cannabis. 

Kyle: By providing other sources of, of income? 

Steve: Well, the problem that you have in Columbia is you have a whole bunch of working groups there who have been making money off of underground, illicit, unregulated, trade in a variety of different things in people and cocaine, and AR and in cannabis. If you're going to bring peace to Colombia all of the people who are in those armed groups need something to do, they need a living. And so um in Colombia there uh is a real difficulty because there's not much roads and much development in the rural countryside. And so even if you grow stuff there it's difficult to get it to market before it rots like vegetables fruits and stuff. 

Steve: So cannabis and of course cocaine is something that you can grow and harvest and pack up and you can transport it over long distances of, you know, maybe you need to use a mu train. So maybe you need to use a speedboat, maybe it gets pushed off an airplane, you know, all these different things, but it still has the value for now. So now you have to figure out what are you going to do for all the people who have been running all that activity. And legal cannabis was seen as a way to uh a legal livelihood for a lot of people who were in our..

Kyle: And do you think that California legalization paved the way for some of that?

Steve: Well, I know that it did. So, you know, your real back to when you were running legalization in California prop 64 Obama was President, but we didn't know who was going to come after Obama or what kind of cannabis policy they going to have. There were only two states that had thus far had legalized for adult use in the country that was Washington and Colorado. And, all of the eyes were held on California because a couple of years earlier, we had failed statewide legalization effort Prop 19. And that failed largely because of this unity of the cannabis people were not united. And so, there was this real, that was hesitation. The stakes were really high, because we knew that people were like, okay, if California doesn't legalize, there's no place else. So the whole world was watching what happens in California, whether or not we could legalize cannabis. 

Steve: And so after we legalize it, you start seeing something that we never seen before, which is state legislatures started legalizing cannabis. Up until California, everything had to be through an initiative process in our state. And after the initial process, it couldn't have a cannabis. So after we got a victory in California, Illinois legalized this legislature in New York, legalized through this legislature. So and a number of other states allow us to, where we never would have had a chance. So if, on the other hand, California had not legalized for the second time, we would have sent a message out to the world that if you this is something to marginalize, it's not ready for the mainstream. There might be some hippies that can do it. You know, in California, she got away with it. Oh, we can't take the world. 

Steve: So see, I above all else, I believe in the power of the plant. And we just spread this planet to all the people around the world. And more and more people consume cannabis and have consciousness is that helps us more easily become the people we believe more to. And if we if there's more of us that we can strive to become the people we would like to be. We'll get so much closer to the world today. And that's why we started doing this in the beginning. Just like it. You know, I didn't think about this back in 70s when we started the Cannabis Liberation movement, we didn't know  about industrial hemp. We didn't know about all the medical uses of can. We just knew that this plant helped us be the people we wanted to be. 

Kyle: You just told my story. My story, your story. It's our story. 

Steve: Our story. You know, it's our story. 

Kyle: So, you know, okay, so we screwed up the cannabis industry screwed up. We screwed up again. You know, I, I sometimes think for years and years, for decades, we had this drug war and they tried to eliminate drugs, drug use and drug sales and all these things. And it's almost ironic that legalization killed the cannabis industry. I don't think it was deliberate. I honestly don't think it was, I think it was, it was symptomatic. It's ironic how it how after trying so hard to wipe it out, legalization wiped it out. The business end of in a couple of years. 

Steve: So in California was deliberate. It was driven by… 

Kyle: Somebody thought this out. 

Steve: Oh yeah. It was a strategy that was thought out that was pushed forward, by coalition, as the alcohol industry. Or against, California Products Officers Association, the League of Cities, the League…  

Kyle: How did they predict that we could; how did how were they able to predict this outcome? But we weren't 

Steve: Because they knew the process of regulation and how things in the legislature and how to build a winning political coalition was a lot better than we did. And they brought a lot more money to the table. Like, I was really the only person that cannabis movement that at that point was willing and able to, you know, bring some money to fight this effort. And so what the alcoholic did, doing everything up until California, I preserved the model that that had grown out of the legacy market, which was the growers probably directly to dispensaries, dispensary had to be the that they sold it. Right? Because to sell it, you got to test results back. But the alcohol industry saw that California was, they wanted something different for it because they, they thought that has help for you. So in the country, when we saw federal legalization and so they wanted to get to do it, they've done in the alcohol industry was insert a new player in the supply chain of mandatory distribution. 

Steve: So like in the case of Harborside, we, sourced five small independent growers directly tested by. We had, the mandatory distribution, piece for legalizing cannabis for officers before what, was could have, made both of those relationships possible. And we destroyed or require those growers to instead take their weed to distributor and then that distributor to take it to Harbor Side. 

Kyle:  Look, I'm in the middle of this just as much as you are not I don't I'm not as important by talking about the issues. But, you know, I'm aware of all the problems and immersed in them and my life is affected by them. My friends businesses are affected by them, and what then is the answer to my answer to this. My answer is that I surmise was that, you know, it came from just say yes. Say yes if they're furthering it, but they're passing a law that makes means less people are going to go to jail. Just say, yes, we will change it, we'll vote better, blah blah, blah, blah blah. What is the reason why we allowed or didn't allow? How come this way forward without people such as yourself interjecting and saying this won't work? 

Steve: Oh, I did interject believe me. I interjected far, right? But we were up against the alcoholic extreme, right? And they have been doing dirty politics for a long, long time. So one of the things that they did in California was they took over heavily influence the California Growers Association. And they actually got a member of, of the… 

Kyle: So this is how they poisoned my mind. I'm wondering how did I get on their side, you know? How did I get with this program? You know what I'm saying? Because I wasn't protesting. You see what I'm saying? You were pro. You had all the information. I did not. So I'm going just say yes. Just. And, And I'm broadcasting it to people. Just say yes. Vote yes. This is going to be good for cannabis. What? I would think it was good. 

Steve: I’m saying yes too. So, you know, there's a long twist of story about what happened with Prop 64. But, you know, in essence, we when we started out with prop 64, so. And Parker had pledged $25 million to with. Hey. And that that money would be given to DPA policy alliance. In the end, after all the signatures are collected and activists, you know, mobilized, instead of using the draft that all of us had been free, you went to some political hacks in Sacramento, and they took the draft of props where we had all agreed on as activist, and they chopped it up. And they, just alliance I was telling you about, put in all of these things like this mandatory distribution, a requirement.

Kyle: So I. And what was and what was their motivation for that? For what was their motivation for making it so dysfunctional?

Steve: Oh money okay. So here's the thing. The alcohol industry wanted to get into California, both because in California and because they thought at that point the Federal League came if they had the system in place in California they could have it put in place at the federal level. And the main feature of their system was that they would create a new step in the supply chain that never existed before, where growers would always be able to sell to distributors and dispensaries would be able to buy from distributors for all these years we've been doing business directly with each other. 

Steve: So that increased the cost of cannabis like by 25% and interjected a whole layer of people didn't know anything about cannabis, right? They just had enough money to get the licensing fees. And what are the people who were driving, that was a company called ‘Southern Wine and Spirits’, and it was the largest provider of alcoholic beverages in the United States. And their CEO stepped out of that and formed a company called ‘RVR’, R-V-R, which was a cannabis distribution company. And so they were, they wanted to save money both in California, but also to set that model for the rest of the country.  Here is the thing, in every place that legalized cannabis, and they realized this, the rate of drinking goes down. And they saw their sales slipping. They' already slipped 15% in Colorado, so they knew that they needed to do something and they needed to get into this industry, because people were just drinking less alcohol and smoking more weed. And and and drinking more weed and eating more weed and so that's why they got into it.

Steve: And so I was standing there way. Right? I was and people who understood what that would do, and I managed to; I wasn't able to get rid of it, but it was managed to get a provision of it in there that a grower or, or a dispensary could get a self-distribution license and, and would be able to do business  with each other directly. And that's still a provision in California law, not many dispensaries do it, but that's—you know, I fought really, really hard for that, and the alcohol industry never forgave me. 

Kyle: Do I got five more minutes? Okay, so I've got two more questions for you. One has to do with wrapping up the subject we were just talking about, and then I want to mention Last Prisoner Project. So, is there a solution? Can we fix the industry, or is there never going to be an ethical cannabis industry?

Steve: Well, I think that we need to carve out a place in the Cannabis industry for people who really love the plant to get back involved with it. What we need to do is, instead of trying to replace the existing underground unregulated cannabis industry with a whole new industry, we just need to surface what's already there. I put out a piece that people can find online called "Topple the Pyramids"; you find it at my website stevedeangelo.com. In there, I advocated for a universal cap on cultivation canopies of 5,000 square feet. The reason that I advocate 5,000 square feet was that when I talked to growers and asked them, by themselves or with one or two helpers, what's the maximum number of square feet they can grow and still get their very best output, more often at the end of the day, we ended up at 5,000 square feet. But in that 5,000 square feet, growers would be able to do anything that they wanted to do with that weed—they could turn it into hash, they could turn it into edibles, they could roll it into cigars, they could sell it in big bags, you know, anything they want, and they can do business directly with the public. 

Steve: Right, so direct to consumer, from grower to consumer. Imagine that there was a marketplace, an online marketplace like Etsy for weed where all these growers could have an online shop and people can just go to Etsy for weed and browse the different farms and order directly from the growers. And then those packages could be delivered by UPS or FedEx or any other delivery service. 

Kyle: So that's the model I say, call it the Willie Nelson model. 

Steve: Call it any model you want to, but what you do then is you create room in the industry for people who really love the plant and all the thousands of small growers who are out there who have not been able to find a place in the industry, who grow way better weed than this big commercialized industry can grow, and would be able to offer way better deals if they could just sell directly to consumers. And all the technology that we need to have a direct consumer marketplace, it exists, right? You can build that's ZR, we can arrange the delivery services, and there's an army of great small growers out there who would LOVE an opportunity to come from the cold and just, you know, they don't need to get rich. They need to be able to buy the land that they're living on, they need to be able to send their kids to school, and they need to be able to go on a nice vacation from time to time, and you know what? That's enough for our people, for our tribe, for people who love this plant.

Steve: That's fine, you know. So, take away this emphasis on building these huge corporate companies and creating intergenerational wealth, and you know, all these plans with hockey sticks and growth. No, this plant didn't come to us to help us concentrate wealth. Right? So it came to us to help spread prosperity and spread freedom. 

Kyle: That's why I came to California. I didn't come to California to make money. I came to California to not be a criminal for the first time in my adult life. That's why I came here. Well, I honestly think we could talk about that for hours, just the whole industry messing up and straightening it out, but we don't have infinite time. So the last thing I want to mention, very rightfully so, is your organization of the Last Prisoner Project. Are you a co-founder?

Steve: I am the founder of the Last Prisoner Project. 

Kyle: The founder? I'm always hedging my bets when I'm not completely sure. 

Steve: Look, I was part in the idea of a Last Prisoner Project for a long time. If you read my book "The Cannabis Manifesto," you will read that the very last line says that there are millions and millions of us who are not going to stop and are not going to quit our efforts until the last cannabis prisoner comes home. So I've been carrying that vision of the last cannabis prisoner for a long time. After leaving Harborside in 2018, or stepping down as CEO was in 2018, I finally had the opportunity to kind of get away from these shops that I devoted all my energy to—a retail business, yeah, and, you know, there at that point, there were three shops and expansion efforts and a farm and 250 employees. So I was really chained to Harborside until we were victorious in California; we passed legalization, right? And that's why I came to California, to legalize weed, and we legalized them. So it was time for me to be able to do some other stuff.

Kyle: You made it able for me to come here. But, I, know you, worked with Richard De Leisi and helped Richard get out, and now you're going to be working on the movie "Santa Maria gold." Are there any other really big victories that you'd like to mention that you had with Last Project?

Steve: Well, you know, you have to think about Michael Thompson, who was a huge victory. Like Richard De Leisi, he had been serving an extremely long sentence. In Richard's case, he served 30 years, but he was moving tons and tons of weed. In Michael's case, he was convicted for the sale of 3 lbs of weed, and he was a black man in Michigan. He served 27 years in prison because they found some old antique guns in a locked gun cabinet in a house that had nothing to do with the sale of 3 lbs of weed that he was convicted of. So it was a tough time in the '90s when the drug war was at its height. So he got tagged with that add-on for the guns, and it was really hard to get Michael out. Governor Whitmer was the governor there, and the parole board, for years and years, we were fighting to get Michael out. 

Steve: We put a lot of focus on his case and finally, it was this really broad-based effort by lots of different people to make that happen. Here's the cool part—after he got out, we worked with herb.com, a group out of Canada, publicized Michael's case, and asked people for a donation to buy Michael a house. So he was able to buy a beautiful house, all cash, all right, and have a little bit of money left over to fix it up the way that he wanted it. And, you know, he went from the prison cell to his own house. And then, like Richard, Michael ever since he's gotten out has really dedicated himself to this mission of freeing every other cannabis prisoner. Right, until the last cannabis prisoner. How can we build a legal industry and watch people building companies—you know, this guy Ted Simpkins who was the guy who built the RVR Distribution Company—he exited it and got something like $9 million when he exited, right? 

Steve: So how can people like that come and get these kinds of payoffs and leave? Meanwhile, you have people just like Michael Thompson and Richard De Leisi, thousands of them, tens of thousands of them, who are looking out for their cell, and they are doing time for exactly the same thing that people are making millions and millions of dollars for. The thing that Ted Simpkins is doing and getting away with. So for me, it's—I could not imagine being a part of a legal cannabis industry and not making sure that we freed everybody who's in prison. We have to do that.

Kyle: Well, it's a fantastic organization with nothing but the best intentions. Unlike everything else, and everybody else who tries to do good, they get picked apart by people who just don't know what they're talking about. And the Last Prisoner Project is a very worthy organization. Thank you for setting it up and thank you for being here, taking time out of your time today, you know, and we could talk for hours. I think we're going to have to schedule another show for sure. And I don't know what else to say except just thank you so much for being here.

Steve: Yeah, well thank you for sharing this space with me and allowing me to spin some of my tales, and I look forward to the next time. 

Kyle: Thanks for being my friend.