Medical Marijuana & The DEA | Lyle Craker

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from YouTube's captions, then cleaned up by removing filler words, repeated words and background sounds. It may still contain errors.

[00:02] [Applause] I just need those microphones back guys oh yeah it's still on hi how's everyone doing but it didn't say anything oh there you go does it work I guess work looks good see does it work looks oh this I think it works we got to make sure it works okay is it on no nope doesn't work

[01:03] Now it works I think it works now it works it don't touch anything it's Electronics man I don't know whenever you're trying with computers something always goes wrong I think I don't know what it is anyway it's really a pleasure to be here today and see such a nice crowd I'm really happy to be able to come and talk with you a few minutes they only allowed me a few minutes where I' talk all the evening but just to warn you a little bit I wanted to start out with some definitions because we're all on the same page here U and that is that we should know we're dealing with plants and I put up a plant here a living multi cellular organism he absorbs the light and tastes photosynthesizes you're well aware of that medicine a drug or Preparation used to treatment of prevention of disease or something else these are things and then we have to come down to afflictions what we're talking

[02:04] About here physical psychological physiological and mental problems that limit the fullness of life and that's what we want everybody to have is a fullness of Life of what life can be not to be ill or injured or sick in any way so we can work on this I wanted to say that I there are three things when we come to use of Med medicine or medicinal plants for medicine one of those this course is myth because we have a lot of Mythology that's handed down to us about plant material you know this is good how about an apple a day keeps the doctor away we've all heard that myth I don't think any anybody believes that just an apple of day is going to keep the doctor away we also have tradition you know it's something done in the family it's something done in the neighborhood and everybody follows it but we live in an age of science today science is the key science is the basis

[03:07] This is what we use for our measurement today not mythology not tradition but science it has to be proven and I think that's probably a good thing I brought some old advertisements here from back in the early 1900s I particularly like that a baby in every bottle Bliss native herbs how about that swamp fever what a medicine that must have been huh nice and over here is the book and I know everybody looks on the looks on Google today to find information but U their problems but I was my generation was raised we had a book in the at home you know you look up things you had a sore elbow what was good for it and but I just wanted to indicate to you that U that here's what they had back in the early 19 00s not pictures of the plants so you could go out into the woods or into the forest and find what you needed to treat

[04:08] Yourself with medicine well government does have some good things government has some things that we had to be aware of we had the old medicines in the early 1900s we we've made some progress and I thought there are some things and I tried to list them here I thought that the government does or should be doing in order to be sure that we all have a medicine that we can trust and work with for we have to be aware of the availability safety quality so and there may be some other things that I've missed but those are just some that I sketched out this afternoon well many people are interested in my story with trying to grow marijuana here for studying okay for clinical trials the idea was we'll grow some marijuana under some controlled conditions and use some different selections and we'll run some clinical trials and see some science we'll do some science

[05:10] I'm from the country okay and I'm naive I have to admit that I'm naive the country I thought it was going to be easy why I thought we're just going to go here and we're going to start here of course there'll be a few little rules we have to get through but we're going to end up here with medical marijuana and that's where you might know notice it's a little bit dark in there I missed a few things when I actually got to it when the lights came on I found this was amazing you had all these ropes and places to go through H they weren't I didn't find just a few things they threw everything they couldn't could at me to in order to stop this they came to campus you don't mind a story they came to campus and they wanted where are you going to grow this okay where you going to grow this so I showed them a room we have over here in one of the buildings on the University campus it's about oh maybe three

[06:12] Times the size of that desk the room a small room it has we had some lights in it we had temperature control in it and we grow other plants and then I said well I'm going to dedicate this room to it now this room is in Stockbridge Hall which is made out of concrete the floors are about that thick of concrete you can see them going up the elevator it has cement blocks and concrete all the way around this room just a room one door in only one door in I said well I planned on growing it in this room they said to me well you're going to have a video camera outside here so we can see who goes in you'll have to have a video camera inside the room I said okay no problem we'll put video cameras in okay then they said you're going to have a 24-hour guard okay I said 24-hour guard that's that sounds okay if that's what it takes we'll have a 24-hour guard sit here by the door the one door in okay then they said to me what's

[07:12] Behind that back wall and I gave a truth L I said well on the other side of the concrete here you know the cement blocks is is a dressing room for stage upstairs in balker Auditorium for those you have been here on campus sometime they said well you're going to have to put up a steel barrier there I said okay but why they said well somebody might go out and rent a jackhammer and Jackhammer through the wall now I'm looking at this room you know about that depth and I said won't my 24-hour guard hear the Jackhammer going I thought they said to me they're now they're serious these people are serious they said to me well they may not and I said I you know I have to confess I said to them well I said you may not know but you're on a college campus you can probably go out here in the street and buy marijuana

[08:13] Cheaper than you can run a jackhammer now I thought that was funny they did not laugh at all I thought that was so what we have here instead of we having these the science we have none of these are approved by the US government we have a problem that we've been talking about tonight well some myths we have to overcome some myths we have to overcome and I just I like I don't know if you know many of you know that Harry anslinger was the head of the Bureau of Narcotics there for a while and he had some terrible things to say about this and I marijuana is an addictive drug which produces its users insanity criminality and death anybody dead in here I be careful okay marijuana leads to pacifism and communist brace brainwashing well I thought pass you

[09:13] Know not fighting might be good but you smoke a joint and you're likely to kill your brother I' I had a brother and sometimes I thought about when we were younger about you know K but not that seriously the he said a lot of things and these are very educational type of things because they show the attitude of some government agents that that we have to deal with I also put up here something I was down to the DC last week and talking to the about marijuana and I took some of these out of there federally some of these are from the headlines I've gotten feds raid marijuana dispensaries in Colorado and just about marijuana and they you know put the even though the federal government said they're going to back off they can raate a dispensary prisoners of war

[10:14] From talked about Richard Sherry and Kristen Flor Vietnam Richard Flor was a vietn veteran who had a medicinal business with marijuana they arrested him putting him in jail locked him to the bed and he died there his wife was sentenced to jail for a couple years and fined $288,000 because she happened to water the marijuana plants and that left their daughter to try and hold everything together and pay off the fine and that so it's life's ruined lives are ruined okay lives are ruined and so this is a thing we need to F again now one of the things I thought that we should look at is what's happening to the use of marijuana and the attitude that we have about marijuana and this is the public opinion I took this off the

[11:16] The Drug Enforcement Administration I'd read their numbers off the web today they estimate it's 9,893 n for cost per or per arrest and so that they're arresting a lot of people I can see where their budget goes the but the legalization people that are feeling about legalization you can see there has been a trend up from 1969 to 2013 and what I wanted to say this is similar to all natural product medicines so marijuana is following the same type of trend if we go back to the early 1900s the drug was accepted marijuana was certainly used you took marijuana to what did they use a heroin to get you off marijuana or marijuana to get you off heroin I can't quite remember here but one of those ways so that is acceptance but as we moved into the period when we got antibiotics and vaccinations we gave the natural product medicines were

[12:18] Doing bad okay we had to go into the modern world my perspective modern world and we kind of Hit the bottom here in the 1970s and 80s and we kind of had a reassessment and we began to the acceptance of some of these of course people would go to the we have stories of people going to the doctor that tell me and they don't want to tell the doctor they're taking a natural product of any type but they tell the nurse because the nurse may be more understanding and the doctor would chew them up yell at them because they're taking not taking a modern medicine but taking a back but we've moved we've acknowledged we've gone to this and acceptance for all natural products I think in about I began I think it began about 2004 my arbitrary time and I think that we can look at marijuana is certainly being accepted by the public and undoubtedly will be by the medical field also well where are we we're here

[13:18] We're here and I think it's we need to keep if we're going to work with this we need to keep functioning on the medicine sign because we know the challeng is also there's a recreation side and people are probably still against the recreation side and more for the medicine I did a just a comparison of medical research that's been going on this today if we look at the studies the scientific studies and we talked about science is the age we're in the science age now we're not in the Stone Age we're in the science age genko which I thought you know was kind of a arbit very pick here U genko of course for those who not familiar helps you blood flow better in the brain so you can think better we tell all the college students that so that they get excited about that genko from 1970 to the present 294 research articles on genko 59 on

[14:20] Cannabis so we have a lot of work to go with cannabis yet in order to catch up with it the we want to move away from this we want to move away from this okay we want to move towards this we want to move towards this and I think it's happening because groups like this are pushing for it it's groups like this that are having a say and I think that's what we have to keep on that track when I my dream is that we're going to have this over the next few years we're going to have an integrated medicine where we have natural medicine with herbalist we're going to have conventional medicine with a pharmacist and we're all going to be kind of working together to maintain Health and that's where we want that's where we want to be so with that I'm going to disappear into the sunset I want to thank you very much for listening to me and if you want to ask me some

[15:23] Questions why I'll be around here thank you very much