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  • He is a trial lawyer with more than 20 years of experience.

  • He regularly appears on Fox News, CNBC, Al Jazeera, iHeart Radio and Yahoo! to discuss

  • breaking legal news stories.

  • He's recognized as one of the leading insurance litigation and sinkhole attorneys in Florida.

  • And when he's not battling large insurance companies on behalf of policy holders, Mr

  • Corless authors and presents lectures throughout the United States on a wide variety of topics,

  • including cannabis legalization, insurance coverage, complex expert testimony, criminal

  • law, sports and entertainment law and insurance bad faith.

  • As I noted, he's been working on a book, he can tell you a little bit more about when

  • he anticipates it coming out, but he's had it in the works for a couple of years now.

  • So please, help me welcome Mr. Ted Corless.

  • Thank you very much and as a lawyer of 20 years, talking to people who voluntarily spend

  • their days with lawyers, you have my sincerest apologies.

  • Marijuana is coming to mainstream.

  • Right now it's in 28 states.

  • I am right now violating the law in the State of Florida, depending on who you ask.

  • If you are carrying less than 20 grams of plant material in the State of Florida and

  • you're stopped by a police officer, you're probably going to get a $75 fine.

  • If you're stopped by a sheriff you're probably going to get a misdemeanor, it's going to

  • cost you around $400.

  • So I have $475 with me at all times whenever I travel.

  • And so far no one has asked me to give that to them.

  • Light-heartedly the issue is, is that let's begin by saying that what I want to do in

  • the next few minutes is to introduce you to this plant.

  • I want to tell you why this plant has been so relevant to me.

  • And then, I'm going to show you why it should be relevant to you.

  • And when we're done with that, I'm going to need your help.

  • Why am I talking about marijuana?

  • I have been practicing law, I was licensed in the state of Missouri in 1995 and I immediately

  • started working for the biggest, the nastiest law firms I ever could.

  • And I enjoyed that, I really did.

  • I spent several years working for companies that represented some of the largest oil producers

  • in the United States.

  • I represented large tobacco companies as a senior associate at Shook, Hardy & Bacon.

  • And I represented some of the biggest insurance companies in the world when I was an attorney

  • at Carlton Fields.

  • But looking way back in my past, 1988 when I was 22 years old, I moderated a debate between

  • a member of the DEA, an agent in the DEA, who debated the Missouri President of the

  • National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

  • Very little publicity, and this was in 1988, and a thousand people showed up.

  • And I've pretty much been hooked on marijuana since then.

  • Now, if you, let's begin with what Dana was saying, we know this plant is a variety of

  • things and that the reason why it is presented on the board in this way is to show it's simplicity.

  • Lots of interesting things to know about this particular plant.

  • If we're going to be technically accurate, we call it cannabis sativa.

  • And then if any of you have been tinkering with cannabis over the last couple of years,

  • you would also hear another description of cannabis, indica, and if you really get into

  • it, you'd know it as cannabis ruderalis, which is the kind of cannabis that we use to make

  • rope.

  • Thomas Jefferson used all three forms of it to make rope and to smoke a little.

  • Now, marijuana is coming to mainstream because a lot of people were tired of the manner in

  • which the federal government was regulating this product.

  • Now I joked earlier about, it depends on who stops me, regarding what the charge would

  • be.

  • That's called arbitrary enforcement of the law.

  • Now what do we know, what happens when we arbitrarily enforce the law, who suffers when

  • that happens?

  • It's usually not lawyers like me.

  • It's usually not adults like me.

  • It's usually not white people like me.

  • You see, people ask me what is the most effective way I can protect myself about being arrested

  • if cannabis is somehow in the picture.

  • If I get caught with it or someone else does.

  • My suggestion to you, first thing: be white!

  • Because if you're black, you have a four times, four times the chances to be arrested for

  • possession of cannabis.

  • Even though the numbers reflect that white people smoke pot more than people of color.

  • Now why is this , why are we having these disagreements.

  • Well it's a real simple word that we just heard Jeff Sessions use recently, called the

  • Supremacy Clause.

  • Now see, Republicans like to talk about cannabis because they're going to protect us from it.

  • Now the reality is, is when you hear you're being protected by the federal government,

  • you should be very afraid.

  • Now, why are we having this problem?

  • Well, a lot of it has to do with the fact that this plant is pretty special.

  • It's been around for over 3,000 years.

  • We have Egyptian hieroglyphics that show cannabis being consumed by pharaoh.

  • He had a really good grower.

  • And I, if you want to know the best places to grow marijuana, if you've ever been there

  • and you've enjoyed wine, that's where you want to grow marijuana.

  • You're in the, what's commonly referred to as the Emerald Triangle in California, which

  • prior to 1996, 80% of all cannabis grown in the United States was grown in 3 counties

  • in Northern California: Mendencino, Humboldt and Sonoma.

  • And if you've ever been to wine country, you'll know that it's everywhere.

  • Always ask the bar tenders.

  • Because right now, while California recently passed recreational marijuana, it has not

  • yet been rolled out yet.

  • Or rolled up!

  • Alright, so what happens is in 1996 there were a whole bunch of people in California

  • that decided they didn't really care what the Supremacy Clause said.

  • That Main Street was taking marijuana back from the federal government, who's held it

  • hostage since 1937.

  • Long time!

  • The original prohibitions on cannabis that were formulated in 1937 were by a gentleman

  • by the name of Henry Anslinger.

  • Mr Anslinger was a racist.

  • He hung out with people from the Klan and he loved to talk about jazz musicians.

  • Because he was concerned about the influence of jazz culture on America's youth.

  • Does that sound familiar to you?

  • Any of you ever listen to Elvis?

  • Ever hear stories about how Elvis was precluded from coming to places because they were threatened

  • by his hips?

  • Well Anslinger wanted to use cannabis, not necessarily to protect us from cannabis, but

  • what he wanted to do is, he saw all these immigrants coming from Mexico.

  • He also saw a lot of people of color moving to urban centers like Detroit, Chicago and

  • New York.

  • And they were bringing cannabis with them.

  • And they needed something to be able to surveil them and to be able to arrest them to control

  • their population.

  • Let me put it this way.

  • If people from Argentina had been coming through Mexico in 1937, yerba mate would be illegal.

  • It had nothing to do with the plant.

  • So when they passed the various laws that formed what would ultimately become the Controlled

  • Substances Act, cannabis got put on the same list with PCP, but not with opioids.

  • Why not?

  • Well, because the people in the state of Florida that are now slow rolling Amendment 2, they

  • don't want you to stop using opioids.

  • Because in 2012, 1500 people.

  • One thousand five hundred people just in the state of Florida, overdosed on legally prescribed

  • opioids.

  • The opioid epidemic in Chicago is the reason why El Chapo is able to sell Mexican heroin.

  • Because Big Pharma was producing so many opioids by the pound, that when they finally figured

  • out the epidemic they had created, they started restricting access to it.

  • Well here's the problem, if you are a junkie on oxycontin, it doesn't matter, you've got

  • to have heroin.

  • There really isn't a difference between heroin and the other opioids.

  • So marijuana in 1996 became a citizen's initiative in California, where the state of California

  • said, "We're going to create a not-for-profit organization that will allow individuals to

  • grow their own marijuana and even allow other people to grow it for them.

  • As long as it's being sold not-for-profit."

  • Now you can imagine, everyone in 1996 froze when that amendment passed.

  • Well, nothing happened for almost 5 years.

  • And a gentleman, who I met, walked into city hall on Market Street in San Francisco and

  • said, "Good morning!

  • I would like a permit to grow medical marijuana!"

  • The guy kinda scratched his head, says, "I don't think we have one of those!"

  • So those of you who know constitutional law would know, well, I'm going to file a writ

  • of mandamus.

  • I'm going to ask a court to order you to produce one.

  • He walked out.

  • An hour later he received a phone call.

  • A man had sat down at a typewriter and prepared a permit application to allow you to grow

  • medical marijuana.

  • He took that permit and he wen to the Emerald Triangle and ultimately he became the mayor

  • of Sebastapol, California.

  • He asked those growers to come out of the light.

  • And what I think I'm kind of asking you today, I want you to think about it.

  • I want you to come out of the light too.

  • I'm a pot smoker and I vote.

  • Now, where are we in the state of Florida?

  • Now in 2014, there was a citizen initiative that was placed on the ballot after they got

  • the required number of votes necessary, or the signatures necessary to get it on the

  • ballot as a constitutional initiative.

  • You see, we have the pleasure of that ability.

  • We have the ability to put a constitutional amendment on our ballot.

  • We take that for granted, though.

  • Because not every state in the United States has that.

  • It's easy to find the states that don't have it.

  • Did they ever have slavery?

  • Yes!

  • No citizens initiative there.

  • There's no citizens initiative in Alabama.

  • There's no citizens initiative right in Mississippi.

  • Why?

  • Because they don't want the population getting together and deciding what the constitution

  • says.

  • Instead, they're going to let the people who are in the legislature decide who, as of right

  • now are in direct opposition to the will of the people.

  • Now in Florida, Initiative...

  • Amendment 2 failed in 2014, by only 3 percenage points.

  • 57% of the people who voted, voted for it.

  • It also happens to be right around the time period when one of the leading advocates for

  • cannabis in the state of Florida was seen intoxicated on a YouTube video.

  • Maybe you heard that story.

  • So why am I talking to you about this?

  • Well, I generally avoid talking to lawyers.

  • Unless someone's paying me of course.

  • But a lot of lawyers see themselves in different ways.

  • I'm here today primarily, not as a lawyer, but as a public... private citizen exercising

  • his First Amendment rights.

  • Now, if you think this is a sensitive topic, since we published that we were going to be

  • coming in here and I was going to be speaking on this topic, I received multiple e-mails

  • from people who are here now, with questions about cannabis.

  • Now we, we call it cannabis, not marijuana, because marijuana is a Mexican slang term

  • and technically if you're talking about marijuana, you're not supposed to be talking about marijuana

  • that would have come from the Hindu Kush Mountains.

  • So I ask people to use the word cannabis.But my editor keeps changing that word.

  • He doesn't like it.

  • Alright, but it's relevant to you for a lot of reasons.

  • And what I have been doing over the last several months is gathering a list of areas where

  • we as people in the legal profession will be addressing cannabis on Main Street.

  • And here's our list.

  • Now I'm going to go through this list quickly and if, I'm going to think that probably all

  • of you are going to find yourself somewhere on this list.

  • But if you haven't found yourself on the list, I can even tell you the one thing that's not

  • on there, because I'm being pretty honest about where we will see cannabis moving forward.

  • But the one that's not on there is medical malpractice.

  • You're really going to deal with medical... when would we deal with medical malpractice

  • in the context of marijuana?

  • Well so far I've not heard any issues associated with doctors performing procedures without

  • fully understanding the cannabis history of the patient.

  • I haven't seen that yet.

  • That's the only reason it's not on the list.

  • But everything else you see here, and I'm going to read through this quickly, are areas

  • where you, as members of the professional, of the legal profession, will see cannabis

  • on Main Street.

  • Administrative Law.

  • It's a highly regulated area and when Republicans regulate products that are sold to consumers,

  • there's a lot of regulation!

  • Because a lot of legislators don't like to talk about regulation unless it's cutting

  • them, except when it comes to cannabis.

  • I am now a card holder for medical marijuana in the state of Florida.

  • In order to gain access to that, I had to file with an administrative agency my identity

  • with copies of my birth certificate, my driver's license and I have to provide specific information

  • from my doctor before the state will issue me permission to use it.

  • My doctor told me if I would have preferred not to go through that, he would be happy

  • to provide me with unlimited access to oxycontin.

  • And in that context, he can write me a script as big as a blue ribbon hog and I can shovel

  • in opioids as much as I want.

  • And in all likelihood, if I consume them for more than 10 days, when I stopped taking them

  • I will suffer from withdrawal.

  • Okay, I'm getting a little distracted.

  • Opioids distract me.

  • Alright.

  • Anti-Trust Law.

  • Of course.

  • We don't want our pot growers getting together an deciding what the price will be.

  • I'll tell you right now that cannabis is selling in a variety of costs.

  • But costs are coming down, because there are so many people producing it.

  • Business Law.

  • Of course.

  • How do you put together a transaction between two people where one agrees to provide 10

  • pounds of cannabis while the other agrees to pay for it.

  • If there's a breach of contract.

  • Can you sue them?

  • Now when I interviewed a lawyer in Colorado who spends his entire day dealing with these

  • issues.

  • He told me that as a law firm, they agreed that under no circumstances would they ever

  • assert illegality of contract as a defense.

  • Because that's what it is.

  • It's an unenforceable agreement because it's illegal.

  • It's void ad initio.

  • You cannot seek enforcement of it in any state in the United States.

  • Now the judges in Colorado have seen a way around that by passing an amendment to the

  • Colorado constitution that says, if it's protected under Colorado, it's an enforceable law.

  • Alright.

  • Social Justice and Criminal Justice.

  • Well that's pretty easy.

  • Think about it.

  • If you're a paralegal dealing with issues associated with people going to prison and

  • you have someone who is looking at an accelerated position on a sentencing chart because of

  • a prior marijuana bust, but marijuana just got legalized, aren't you probably going to

  • file a writ of habeas corpus to ask a court to toss it on fairness grounds?

  • Which is one of the reasons why the federal government, especially our new Attorney General,

  • Jeff Sessions, who vaguely reminds me of the Sheriff on Smokey and the Bandit.

  • But they don't want to deal with the hassle associated with all of the people that are

  • in private prison.

  • Energy and Resource Management.

  • Right now the issue of sustainability and environmental protection is so much at the

  • heart of the cannabis industry.

  • I was in Denver a couple of weeks ago interviewing a dispensary owner who had to toss an entire

  • harvest because they had discovered that someone had used a forbidden pesticide in cleaning

  • the duct work near one of his grow operations.

  • He doesn't have insurance for his plants.

  • Because he can't.

  • That's a pickle.

  • But energy resource, energy and resource management is a pivotal part of the entire cannabis movement

  • because the products that are being sold must be free of any kind of pest and they also

  • must be free of any kind of pesticides.

  • Family Law.

  • Here's the common problem in family law that I hear.

  • There's a divorce.

  • Shared custody of a child.

  • And one of the spouses knows that the other one is a regular pot consumer, cannabis consumer.

  • And so they request that the other parties be subjected to regular drug tests.

  • And so they use that against them.

  • In fact, even if that individual has a medical marijuana card, you're probably going to find

  • that the judges are going to be completely unpredictable.

  • I really don't know what the judge is going to do.

  • But that's a family law issue.

  • Health Law.

  • Of course.

  • Most of the applications we have have questions regarding the illegal use of drugs.

  • Is cannabis a drug?

  • Medicine and drugs.

  • This is medicine.

  • This is drug.

  • Okay.

  • Do you think that cannabis can treat symptoms?

  • The truth is that big pharma hasn't figured out a way to turn this into these.

  • That's the reason why.

  • But I'm gonna hold that question for a second.

  • Insurance Law.

  • Easy.

  • You can't buy insurance for it.

  • In fact, if you have, we've had two different cases where I've represented individuals against

  • insurance companies because tenants had turned the rental property into grow operations.

  • Shockingly that can be covered under certain insurance policies.

  • Okay.

  • Property Law.

  • Easy.

  • Because we're talking about locations that have grow operations, it's all over the place.

  • Okay.

  • Tort Law.

  • Public Contract Law.

  • Real Property.

  • Trust and Estate Law.

  • Local Government Law.

  • Tax.

  • Tort Law or Tort Trial and Insurance Practice.

  • Cannabis on Main Street is going to be affecting all of the legal issues associated with these

  • areas.

  • And I would expect, based upon what I saw in Colorado five years ago when I really started

  • researching this issue.

  • That you can see this similar, what like when those legal issues started to creep out.

  • And now we're seeing the same thing happening in the state of Florida.

  • Because this is right now something of enormous interest to people not only because of their

  • own personal investment in it.

  • But also because of the financial interest associated with it.

  • Now, why, I know why I came to cannabis.

  • Because of my own intellectual interest and some of my own personal background and the

  • way I saw this roll out when I was a kid in the '70's.

  • But maybe you come to cannabis involuntarily.

  • What do I mean by that?

  • What I mean by that is when I interviewed a family who's daughter was having as many

  • as two hundred seizures a week and would code anywhere from three to four times a month,

  • and I think we're clear on what I mean by that, they stopped breathing.

  • A 9-year old girl who after being provided a low THC high CBD oil was able to go the

  • entire day with fewer than a half dozen seizures.

  • Or people who are wasting away from the effects of chemotherapy.

  • And those individuals have told me that cannabis was the only thing that allowed them to be

  • able to consume food without throwing up.

  • And they're able to sleep through the night.

  • Maybe you're coming to this issue because you or a member of your family had breast

  • cancer.

  • And somebody told you that there had been reports that CBD in high enough concentration

  • can reduce the size of individual tumors.

  • These, or a neurologist from Canada that I met who told me that he did a study on Huntington's

  • Chorea.

  • Huntington's is a horrible neurological deficit, it's horrible.

  • The Chorea, Huntington's Chorea, is when people will get contorted to the point and begin

  • seizing.

  • But when provided a spray called Sativex, that was 50% CBG and 50% THC, that... that

  • stopped.

  • And so when people tell me there's no medical purpose, I say, "You know what?

  • Maybe we don't have the data yet?

  • But why is that?"

  • Maybe it's because the federal regulators that are looking at cannabis keep it a Schedule

  • 1 drug and it is nearly impossible to study a Schedule 1 drug.

  • So ma'am, you say it's been debunked?

  • I say the people that are controlling it are preventing any opportunity we may have to

  • study it.

  • More than we already have.

  • But if you're one of those people that come to cannabis involuntarily, maybe you would

  • remember back in the '80s when the AIDS epidemic occurred and the FDA was restricting access

  • to AZT and other methods of treatment for people who are HIV positive or have full blown

  • AIDS.

  • And what they were saying is, "We don't want to wait for the FDA and we shouldn't have

  • to."

  • Because those individuals have their own reasons.

  • And what could those reasons be?

  • But first, before I tell you the reasons I think, what do you think?

  • What do the people think?

  • Well when people voted for Amendment 2 in 2016, things changed.

  • There are 67 counties in the state of Florida.

  • Guess how many of those 67 counties voted by a majority vote to pass Amendment 2?

  • 100%.

  • 67 out of 67.

  • Now in order for Amendment 2 to pass, we had to have more than 60% of the population vote

  • for it.

  • Did we make it?

  • 71% of Floridians supported Amendment 2.

  • Can you even conceive of anything else in the state of Florida that 71% of the people

  • would vote on?

  • I cannot find it!

  • I think I read somewhere that 75% of the people do not believe that angels live among us.

  • How did our other politicians fare that are now trying to control cannabis for us?

  • Well let's start with the governor.

  • Governor Scott won his election by 60,000 votes.

  • 600,000 more people in Florida voted for Amendment 2 than voted against it.

  • If 1 in 10 of those people voting had voted for another governor, Rich Scott would not

  • have been governor.

  • It's not my intention to necessarily affect elections, but what my intention is, is to

  • empower people to understand that they are not in the minority when it comes to cannabis.

  • They're very much in the majority.

  • And people like me think the government should leave cannabis alone and let us take care

  • of ourselves.

  • How did Pam Bondi fare?

  • No?

  • Sorry.

  • More people voted for Amendment 2 than voted for her or Rick Scott.

  • And what about Donald Trump?

  • Sorry.

  • More people voted for Amendment 2 than voted for him.

  • But all you really hear is Jeff Sessions, the new Attorney General, and people like

  • Chris Christie coming out and parroting all of these other issues.

  • Like gateway drug or saying that it can't be effective in reducing opioid, even though,

  • did you know the state in the United States that has the lowest drop in opioid overdoses

  • in the last 4 to 8 months?

  • Colorado.

  • Now are we having an academic conversation about whether cannabis should be studied?

  • Or whether it should be legalized?

  • Well, I think, I believe that we were.

  • But we're not.

  • What we're doing is we're talking about it, but the government is over here slow rolling

  • it.

  • What I mean by that is they're in no hurry to legalize it.

  • It's why Rick Scott appointed a director for the Division of Marijuana in the State of

  • Florida that had 15 months of experience on his resume, which turned out, even if you

  • thought that was enough, it was a lie.

  • Because the company that he said he was working for wasn't even formed until the day after

  • he was appointed.

  • So why are the roadblocks out there?

  • Because, I mean people say to me, "We should legalize it."

  • "We should tax it."

  • Okay.

  • Or we say, "You have to prove to me that this has medical value."

  • And what I say is, "I don't think so."

  • Because you're telling me you're going to continue to put my fellow citizens in jail

  • until I prove to you that it has medical value to you?

  • So I started asking myself, "Why are you doing that?"

  • Well let me tell you why.

  • The estimates right now are by 2025, cannabis sales nationally will be in excess of $30

  • billion.

  • That's a lot of money.

  • You may sell $30 billion worth of this, but you're selling $200 billion of this.

  • And we also know that the more you smoke pot, the less you drink of this.

  • So by the time we reach $30 billion in sales or the United States does, big alcohol would

  • have sold over a trillion dollars worth of beer, spirits and wine.

  • They're in no hurry to legalize cannabis.

  • What about big tobacco?

  • You'd think if you smoke one you smoke the other, in fact most of you, come on, you've

  • been 11:30, having that last martini and you say you know what, give me one of those cigarettes.

  • What about gambling?

  • Uh oh!

  • No?

  • Nobody gets really high and heads to the slot machines!

  • They don't do that!

  • They don't do that.

  • So we can go on and on.

  • I mean, what, I think you might buy more Apple products.

  • You know, that might be the only thing you do.

  • You might buy another iPad or whatever.

  • I'm still waiting for Apple to come out with a toothbrush.

  • Cause I, anything for Apple.

  • So I'll, because the reality is if you've got people who are coming to the state of

  • Florida and they have $100 to spend.

  • They come to Florida and they've got $50 to $100 to spend on vice or fun, they're going

  • to spend, say, $100, say $90 of that on beer or a fish bowl drinks with big straws coming

  • out of them.

  • Which I think is fun and I do it too.

  • But what they don't want is you to now spend $50 on umbrellas for your drinks and $50 on

  • cannabis.

  • They don't want that.

  • And, so while we're having this intellectual conversation about why can't we really study

  • cannabis?

  • Get it off Schedule 1.

  • It's not like PCP.

  • In fact if you are curious, there has never been, not one death, associated with the consumption

  • of cannabis.

  • Not a single one.

  • In fact when I was in college my professor of criminology on the first day said, "If

  • you can prove to me a case of an individual who died from consuming marijuana, I will

  • give you an A in my class and you need not attend."

  • And he said, "I've been offering that the last 12 years and no one has ever proved it."

  • He's still alive and I'm still looking.

  • He gave me a B. All right.

  • So what is, so we have Big Pharma, Big Tobacco, Private Prisons.

  • Well these prisons were built with complicated industrial revenue bonds that assume a certain

  • population of prisoners over time.

  • Well the cannabis industry has blown up, really, in earnest in the last 8 years.

  • A lot of these complicated industrial revenue bond projects are scheduled over 50 years.

  • They're not interested in subtle changes in consumer behavior.

  • Like the idea that cannabis can go from being criminal to being decriminalized like it has

  • been in Hillsborough County.

  • But what does this mean for Main Street in terms of how you're going to handle cannabis.

  • There are a lot of questions left to be answered.

  • Example, "Can you be pulled over for driving under the influence of alcohol?"

  • Yes.

  • But can you be pulled over for driving under the influence of cannabis?

  • Or what is being called "buzzed driving."

  • Well I tell people all the time, don't travel with cannabis.

  • Yet here I am.

  • In fact, I'm going to take this lid off, I mentioned to the ladies in the back, let me

  • know when you think you can smell it.

  • Um, but I met with a city alderman in Denver and we were talking about the issue of driving

  • under the influence.

  • He told me an interesting story which I think really makes the point about why people mess

  • this, really screw this topic up.

  • And that is that someone had proposed that in the event of a death, we do a blood draw

  • and if the individual driving had more than 5 nanometers of some metabolite in his blood,

  • that would be an indication that they were intoxicated.

  • Sounds pretty good.

  • And they started pressing.

  • Okay 5 nanometers of what?

  • I don't know.

  • What do you mean you don't know?

  • Well there's a variety of metabolites.

  • We can just pick one.

  • Which one?

  • I don't know.

  • Okay.

  • Why 5 nanometers?

  • I'm not sure.

  • What about 6?

  • Is there a difference between 4 and 6?

  • I don't know.

  • And they literally had a public debate about an issue that was a complete mirage.

  • Because we can't study it the way we need to.

  • And the other thing is, all that these regulations by the federal government are doing is creating

  • a massive black market and gray market.

  • I read an article just yesterday that the TSA has really stopped looking for marijuana.

  • They don't care.

  • They have bigger and more important things to do.

  • Like your safety.

  • Which is not affected by an individual who's bringing concentrates back from Colorado.

  • I'm not encouraging people to do that.

  • But here's a real simple idea I want you to think about.

  • Wouldn't it be better to have a well regulated legal product than a poorly regulated illegal

  • one?

  • Let me say that again.

  • A well regulated legal product than a poorly regulated illegal one.

  • We have a lot of questions that I want to address that I received.

  • And so here's what we're going to do.

  • Okay, so this is my blog.

  • Now we built a studio at my law firm.

  • A thousand square foot studio, sound proofed it, we have interview space, multiple cameras

  • and I have photographers following me around all the time.

  • What I'm going to ask you to do is I want you to either tweet to me or I want you to

  • email me at ted@newsmunchies and I want you to send me your questions.

  • And here's why, a couple of reasons.

  • First, we can cover a lot more ground.

  • Because what I'm going to do is I'm going to take all of your questions.

  • Yeah, that's a good idea, take a picture of that.

  • We're going to take all of your questions and then we're going to, I'm going to prepare

  • an extended video where we're going to go through and answer every single question that

  • we receive from you folks today.

  • Because I mentioned earlier that several of you had reached out to me in anticipation

  • of this presentation.

  • The most common questions I get relate to adult children who are caring for an older

  • parent and they've just met with an oncologist who told them that, based upon the diagnosis,

  • the doctor strongly recommends that they gain access to medical marijuana.

  • A lot of the problems with that are that, based upon the immaturity of the Florida market,

  • most of the products that you would want for that purpose are not yet available to you.

  • But they are available in other states.

  • But there is an enormous amount of questions and fear associated with this topic.

  • And my primary objective today is not to come in and talk about a boring topic that is associated

  • with lawyers.

  • But it's the idea of putting this subject in front of you and to open a conversation

  • with you about it.

  • To address whatever concerns that you may have.

  • And here's the thing.

  • I'm not asking you to agree with me.

  • I think that's good.

  • Disagreeing, public discourse is very very important.

  • But what I'm not going to do is preach to you about or recommend people consume marijuana.

  • But I think what we all want is we move, as we move forward on this topic, we want the

  • rules and the regulations and the stigma associated with cannabis to go away.

  • Because there's a lot of very successful people who have made cannabis a regular part of their

  • lives.

  • Forget, I mean we can talk about Presidents, whether you like them or dislike them.

  • But there's a lot of other people out there too.

  • I'm a big Carl Sagan fan.

  • He wrote one of the very first books in the 1970's about advocating on behalf of the cannabis

  • industry.

  • But there are a lot of questions that you might have that you might not feel comfortable

  • asking me.

  • I'm gonna talk to you about a couple right now.

  • And I'm going to answer these questions when we do the video.

  • How am I supposed to talk to my children about marijuana?

  • See when I as a kid, it was easy, because my parents would just come in and go.

  • "It's illegal.

  • If you get caught with it, you're going to go to jail."

  • Now that didn't really work very well.

  • But because the messaging right now that you're getting about cannabis is so different than

  • what it was when I was a child, or maybe when you were younger.

  • So I think that it's important we share how we address these issues with children.

  • Especially if you have someone in the family that's consuming it.

  • And really while we're talking to children about drugs, maybe we ought to have a more

  • honest conversation about what role they play.

  • You can't tell a child that if they smoke marijuana they're going to die.

  • Because when they do it and they don't, they don't trust you any longer.

  • Really.

  • Can you smoke pot and be a religious person?

  • Can you do that?

  • A very dear friend of mine is an especially devout Christian and also one of the biggest

  • pot smokers I know.

  • His answer to that is, "It's not about the plant.

  • It's about my behavior."

  • And so he's comfortable consuming cannabis and he want to bring it to other people in

  • his community as well as something that provides him tremendous joy and helps his wife who

  • suffers from symptoms associated with a serious neurological condition.

  • Now whether that's accurate or not.

  • I don't know that I care.

  • Because if you tell me that there's medical value.

  • I say, "There is."

  • You say there isn't.

  • I say, "It doesn't matter.

  • Then don't use it."

  • You know when I talk to parents who have children who suffer from regular seizures.

  • One of the most common questions they get is, "So you live in a state where you can't

  • buy medical marijuana.

  • Move to one that has it!"

  • And that seems so simple.

  • Except for the fact that they have two other children who are in high school and they're

  • well planted where they are.

  • Man has a job he has his own company.

  • The wife has a burgeoning CPA practice.

  • So she's supposed to give that all up so that they can potentially use a drug to treat their

  • child who has seizures every day?

  • And the real bad news is, given the immaturity of that marketplace, less than 30% of the

  • people with those deficits have any positive effect from cannabis .That's good enough to

  • keep looking.

  • But it's not enough to uproot your entire family for one shot at health and comfort.

  • And so what I always tell people is, "Give a man a fish you feed him for a day.

  • Teach a man to fish and you can sell him accessories!"

  • What I really want, this is what I need from you.

  • We live or die by social media.

  • I'd like you to find us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and I want to have a conversation

  • with you.

  • Tell me I"m wrong.

  • I love it.

  • Bring it.

  • We'll talk about it.

  • I'll give you information.

  • Because see that's the great thing about today.

  • Other than the fact there wasn't a Power Point presentation.

  • Is that I'm not here selling you anything.

  • I'm giving you ideas.

  • And I want you to think about them and tell me if you agree or tell me if you don't.

  • Email me and tell me you think I'm an idiot.

  • Email me and tell me you need help.

  • And I'll appreciate both of those emails.

  • You guys have been terrific.

  • Thank you very much.

He is a trial lawyer with more than 20 years of experience.

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Ted Corless為坦帕灣律師助理協會舉辦大麻講座。 (Ted Corless Gives Cannabis Lecture to Tampa Bay Paralegal Association)

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