school policies. the students challenge the school boards free speech restrictions and the resulting supreme court decision established that the students keep the first amendment rights on school grounds. watch landmark cases tonight at 9 p.m. eastern on c-span and join the conversation. our hashtag is landmark cases and follow was at c-span. we have resources on our website for background on each case.

the landmark cases companion book, a link of national constitution center's interactive constitution and the landmark cases podcast at c-span.org/landmarkcases. >> last friday former rhode island congressman patrick kennedy marked april 20 holiday inn the cannabis culture, referred to as 4/20 by 20 public health officials to talk about federal marijuana policy. a nonprofit organization opposing the legalization of marijuana called smart approaches to marijuana hosted this event. this is one hour and 15 minutes. >> the president the president , smart approaches to marijuana. we are very happy to be joined by multiple individuals, or presenting organizations across public health and public safety. just a little bit of background on sam, and then we're going to turn over to the other speakers. sam was started in 2013 really

as response to the growing legalization of marijuana. our message today is very simple come on the unofficial mayor one holiday, and that message is we need to slow this train down. we need to put people before profit and we need to get the signs out about the true harms of marijuana which everyday hurting more and more people as this country slides deeper and deeper into the legalization, really the commercialization of marijuana. we also hear to fight against this false dichotomy that it have to lock people up in prison or legalize marijuana. in fact, we don't want to lock people up in prison for using marijuana, nor do we want people criminalize for marijuana use. to be against criminalization is not to be for legalization and certainly not what we've seen which is the commercialization of marijuana. marijuana these days is much more wall street than woodstock or today's thc products are between five and 30 times

stronger than they used to be. in fact, i think anybody over 30 would recognize the thc products that are being sold in our communities today. we are very happy at sam to be part of really a a growing pubc health and public safety consensus. that we should have science, not deep-pocketed investors guiding marijuana policy, and so we honor to be joined by one of our cofounders and honored for chair, the honorable patrick kennedy who spent his congressional career and really his life fighting for mental health parity and this overall issue of mental health. we also very happy to be joined by a number of distinguished speakers today including this nation's first african-american magistrate judge, judge arthur burnett senior, honorable arthur burnett senior, mr. jake nelson of tripoli, the director of traffic safety advocacy and

research. medical doctor, chief of scripps mercy hospital in san diego. doctor susan weiss, the director of division of extra mural research at the national institute on drug abuse which is an arm of the national institutes of health. senator come the honorable senator ron rice, senator from new jersey elite of the new jersey legislative black caucus. bishop jethro james junior, the senior pastor of paradise baptist church and a senior advisor to new jersey responsible approaches to marijuana policy. the the president and ceo of cae and treatment centers. also join by a recovering addict who will share her story about marijuana addiction because one of the big miss out there is marijuana is not addictive. dr. christine miller, , a neuroscientist and advisory board member of smart approaches to marijuana. we're very concerned about the

edibles and we are concerned about products that are out there marketed truly are vulnerable populations. but we also very heartened by the fact even in the states like california and massachusetts that a vote to legalize marijuana the majority of localities are voting to not have legal commercial marijuana where they live. it signals a divide really between people that want to decriminalize or remove criminal penalties and actually go towards full-blown legalization. one bit of news i also want to share, a recent string of polls by emerson college, independent polls not funded by sam, for example, fairly dickinson university, others like mason-dixon which was funded by sam, have found that when people are actually asked about multiple choices with regard to marijuana, their first choice is not marijuana legalization. a majority of americans do not prefer legalization when given options like decriminalization

and other policy choices. so were really here to say that were also putting them in one industry really accountable. we want hold them accountable just like the tobacco industry. took us unfortunately a century to hold them accountable and were still pending for those costs. we are very concerned we notice that the tobacco industry in the u.s. in many ways is merging with some sectors of the marijuana industry. they are cross firing, investing in the marijuana business. this is not a surprise but we know how the story ends. to know how the story ends with a opioid crisis driven by illegal drug and special interest that relied on addiction for profit. that's what we do not take any money from the pharmaceutical companies or big pharma, opioid manufacture, alcohol or cigarettes and we're funded by individuals have had really suffered heartache from addiction. i want to turn it over.

we have a very, very prestigious group of folks here and i'm going to first turn it over to jake nelson, the director of traffic safety and efficacy research at aaa to really talk about this issue of impaired driving. because on this unofficial mayor one holiday we have warning for those on the roads, given this issue of impaired driving. jake. >> i knew -- in 201,610,497 people died in crashes due to drunk drivers. that's in the period of time when the rates of drunk driving had dropped over 30% in the last decade. now this same period of time the rates of marijuana use among drivers has increased almost 50%. this is a drug that we know without hesitation at least doubles crash risk. it does it by impairing driver

attention, coordination and reaction time among other skills that are very important for safe driving. now mixing alcohol with marijuana producers impairing effects that are greater than the combined effects of each drug use independently. in fact, this is the most common way that people use marijuana and get behind the wheel of a car use it, is they mix it with alcohol, almost two-thirds of the time. data suggest that legalizing marijuana for fun for recreational purposes has some pretty staggering impacts on traffic safety. a few years ago we do study at aaa that looked at washington state, what is the first few states to legalize the drug for recreational purposes and will be found was the proportion of drivers involved in fatal crashes who would result use marijuana doubled from eight to 17% in that year following the change in law. this is an eye-opening case study for other states were contemplating the same decision.

also this is a topic the use of marijuana and driving that a lot of people like to compare to alcohol and driving. the challenge is fallible enforcement officers and the courts don't have the same tools available to manage this highway safety issue the way we do for our call. there is no roadside test like a breathalyzer to detect the recent use of marijuana at the roadside. and even if we did have a device that was reliable, the relationship between how much marijuana is in somebody's body and the odds they will cause a traffic crash is not established in the research and that's what gives breathalyzers for our call their power. that's how come we know at .28 we know what the odds are involved in traffic crash. we don't have understand for marijuana. this is a unique problem. impaired driving kills people will more than 10,497 in 2016. that's for sure. the data we have are not very good when it comes to the drugs

especially marijuana. this is just the tip. this is just the tip of the spear when we talk about this issue and it's one of the many reasons why aaa is purging policymakers across the country to put public safety in front of drug recreation use. thank you very much. >> good morning. i'm judge arthur burnett. in addition to serving 15 years in the federal court as a magistrate judge on intake and one arrested for federal crimes here in d.c., i served 17 years on the supreme court of d.c. which is both federal and state jurisdiction. so there i had both federal and state jurisdictions. i have a total of 31 years of experience in dealing with people who are involved with the drugs. drugs from the point you of abuse in foster care. sensing thousands of defendants who in a presentence reports told me how they got started with the problem of drugs.

homicide cases where people involved with drugs were aiders and abettors and drive-by shootings. i recall a case of young guy who witnessed a drive-by shooting and fled to mexico to keep from being killed. and when the marshall center about them back to testify in the murder case i was residing in, he said that he was an a student at fourth and fifth grade level, but the drug gang beating up and so forth, got a bloody nose, took issues. they said if you want protection you got to be one of us. when david took them to a basement apartment to talk with the lieutenant lieutenant handed him a marijuana cigarette. this marijuana cigarette, like i said, i don't want that stuff because i want to be an outstanding athlete. he said you ain't going to be nothing if you don't smoke this. by the way, it's laced with pcp. he said in order to keep from

being shot that day, what a lot of people in the media doesn't tell you, among some of our brightest young boys and young girls at the fourth and fifth grade with outstanding math skills, they are coerced into association with peer pressure, that school kids involved in drugs and so forth. you didn't get that high from marijuana. let's laced with a little pcp, put a little lsd in it. like i said, 31 31 years i satn the bench and actually heard cases, five to 10,000 cases cases. what i fear, especially where people are unemployed, they are idle. they are subject to group activities, some people say. pressure, and may not be that medically speaking, use of marijuana automatically leads to

xp meeting with heroin or experimenting pcp or some synthetic drug like the criminal problems icing in the nation's capital indicates that the problem of involvement in illegal drugs results from opportunity, quality of education, dropping out of school and then drug ice is sometimes end up shooting across streets where they kill a 19-year-old girl headed off to college who was a straight a student in high school. and icing hundreds in the city of kids who were college admits he's, innocent victims of homicides and drug warfare. it's not more dangerous than even the traffic issues you heard and, indeed, it is the beginning step to a life of crime. thank you.

>> i've been practicing emergency medicine in san diego for 28 years, and and they say the world is a stage and the people in emergency department have the front seat. working on the opioid epidemic for the past seven years i see a link to marijuana would like to share with you some of the stories i see an cases in emergency departments and what marijuana looks like at the morgue. every day in california we treat patients with marijuana poisoning. every day. the number of emergency department visits related to marijuana have gone up by 830% in the past years, from 2006-2014. that's over 1000 people, the 10,300 people 300 people you're in san diego alone. picture 25-year-old girl with loud audible retching who's

writing in abdominal pain. we can hear agony across the emergency department. we term the condition -- it's screaming and vomiting and the hallmark of cannabis center. she's been to numerous emergency departments and is receiving a strong all. each time for her pain. she's been exposed to multiple ct scans and radiation, yet she cannot understand what's wrong with her. her cheer would be simple, stop smoking weed. the problem is a better marijuana addiction is becoming an opioid addiction. every day we treat cases of scromiting. my next patient is spitting and thrashing about, sweating, blood pressure and heart rate is up it takes strongmen to hold them down until the sedatives take effect. the diagnosis can be anything, but his drug test come back just

marijuana. just marijuana. and it was just a marijuana who landed another patient on life support, in the icu hanging between life and death as he was inhaling lacks, 90 90-100% thc. and tourist beware. recently a traitor and a man who is visiting our beautiful city for a convention. he came to the emergency department concerned he couldn't talk right and his arm wasn't working. i did evaluation to make sure he didn't have a stroke and when everything came back normal he showed me a small package of gummy bears that was labeled hangover remedy. he received a very expensive diagnosis of marijuana poisoning. it was heartbreaking for me to treat an elderly man who travel to our scripps institute for a second opinion for his cancer diagnosis. his son saw a prominent advertisement i was hoping they marijuana brownie would help with his nausea caused by chemotherapy. his nausea was not better and i

admitted into the hospital with chest pain and palpitations from a pot brownie. a three-car collision closer freeways for a few hours as the driver admitted to be high on marijuana and he will not interest the statistics because no one died. and what about the medical examiner? death from all drugs in the past ten years went up 56%, and at the same time death from marijuana went up 64%. there's a direct correlation with increased drug deaths and marijuana deaths, and we can no longer turn a blind eye between marijuana and other drugs. who dies of marijuana? the san diego death direst accounted for 462 people with teaching in a sits midway 16. a one year old baby, a 15-year-old, a 19-year-old driver along along with third night of the drivers. a 55-year-old motorcyclist along with night of the motorcyclist.

21 year old who jumped off the bridge along with 76 of the suicide. do you know that marijuana is associate with a threefold increase of deaths from hypertension? if you have high blood pressure you should not be smoking weed. dh he was involved with 29% of all homicides, 30% of all illicit drug use, 30% of prescription drug deaths, 30% of all called deaths. if dh he was really a medication, the fda would have a big black box warning. marijuana legalization in california has unleashed a public health disaster. [applause] >> i'm susan weiss and up frome national institute on drug abuse, and i don't have any of these stories that were really a good your heartstrings to tell you. i'm here as a scientist. i will tell you that we support

a lot of research on cannabis to look at the adverse health effects, to understand how it works in the brain and in the body, and even to look at the potential for therapeutic uses of some of the cannabinoid compounds. but what he want to talk to you today about which is what most consensus has to do with effects on the developing brain and one of the things we understand about how cannabis works is that there is a system, a signaling system called the end of cannabinoid system and it's a very important system in many physiological functions including brain development. i say this because one of the things we're saying it increases in use by pregnant women who are being given advice to the internet that this is a safe and natural and harmless plant to use to help with morning sickness. i would say that we do not have any indication that that is the case innocent what we know is that the system is very important for how the nervous

system develop and that comes on board as early as 16-22 days of gestation. among the population overall of pregnant women approximate 4% report using marijuana if you look at 18-25 euros ago sup 7% and is look at the youngest people who are pregnant, 12 to 17-year-olds olds, it's about 14%. most use it in the first trimester which is probably the most dangerous time. the other group of want to make it we have put, what we have more evidence has to do with adolescents. we know that the brain continues to develop into early adulthood and the time of adolescence is a time of very, of quite active brain development. and so we have many concerns that exposure to the brain. we have a number of different studies that are all coming together to tell us that those who start young in their teens and you use frequently are more likely to see a variety of

adverse outcomes. this is on brain develop a come on brain function as both a academic achievement, employment, possibly their mental health, including an increased risk of early onset of psychosis among people who are vulnerable, as well as the increased risk for both addiction to cannabis and other substances, and cognitive impairment. there are a number of these different outcomes that we are single one of the things that we are not, one of the things about these days is that they are not conclusive. because there are always of the factors that have to be considered. one of them is that many young people who use cannabis frequently are not using it alone. the other drugs on board and they also have effects. in addition, we don't know what these people look like before they started to use cannabis. there may then risk factors that we are unaware of that lead into these multiple outcomes. so when we which other nih institutes are trying to address

this problem is to a very large study that we are funding which is called the adolescent brain cognitive development study, or a, b, c, d which is the study of the cohort of about 10,000 kids beginning at age nine or ten for the started you substances to look at what the impact is on the development of the brain and on the growth trajectories in general. we're looking at much more than just exposure to cannabis, although in fact, the changing laws and the emergence of electronic cigarettes, all of those things are what prompted the study but now we have a much broader group of institutes that are interested, we are also looking at screen time and physical exercise and what are the resilient factors that could protect somebody. but we think this is an extremely important issue for us to understand, and as i said right now, what keeps us up at night is really the effects of brain development. >> good afternoon.

for the past 20 years i been the president and ceo of care and treatment centers and for the past 35 years i've been in the substance abuse treatment field. for those of us involved with providing treatment for those suffering from substance abuse can we provide the respite and resurrection for the casualties that you have heard the previous speakers talk about. the first of what to say thanks to kevin and patrick for shining a lot on this topic and for being out front and helping our country know the other side of the story. what i want to talk about today is how did we get here, and one of the things i have seen in 35 years is that when you put availability, accessibility, and affordability with any mood altering substance, it leads to more addiction. that's certainly been the case with marijuana. last year care and commission studied with harris poll just to get some ideas about attitudes and two that really stuck out to

me were 73% of all of those poll between the ages of 18 and 34 help that marijuana was safer and far more okay to use than alcohol. 11% of the parents thought it was okay for their teenagers to smoke marijuana occasionally. when we look at the correlation between marijuana and other substance use, dr. robert dupont, former director of the national institute on drug abuse, as extensive data and some of the statistics they really jump out to me are, even for the teenager who casually use of marijuana, they are eight to ten times more likely when compared to some who doesn't use marijuana, to smoke, drink, binge drink and use of the drugs. and if they use marijuana regularly, they are 15-30 times more likely to do those same activities. so what does that mean at care

and treatment centers? because we see those casualties. a couple of statistics to think about. for our population over the age of 28, about one-third of her patients will indicate that the use marijuana. about 15% will consider it their drug of choice. for our young adults, those between the ages of 20-28, about 60% use marijuana, 35% indicated as their drug of choice. but for adolescence, 90% use marijuana. 70% have it it as their primary drug of choice. that's the bad news, but there is hope. as i said treatment centers provide respite and resurrectio resurrection. even though there's no medication-assisted treatment yet for marijuana, abstinence-based treatment does work. we do extensive follow-up with the university of pennsylvania

to follow up on her patients. we use urine drug screens to corroborate whether someone is abstinent or not. and for our patients almost 60% have been abstinent for the entire first year. another 20%, while they may have used in their first year, our abstinent at the end of the year. so 80% alcohol and drug free. another ten-15% said even though they've not been able to make abstinent have reduced use, quality of life better, consequences down. so treatment does work. we deal with the casualties. i want to salute patrick and kevin for helping prevent those from coming to our front door. we can help those when they come by in an ideal world they would never show up at our front door. thank you. [applause] >> on alexa and i am a recovering addict, and my drug of choice was marijuana. i started smoking when i was 15,

and i started smoking recreationally at parties and 17, and by the i was in college i was using marijuana daily. i pretty much couldn't imagine my life without it. i literally couldn't do anything. i went to class hi. i went to work high. i drove high. i use marijuana to feel normal, and that isn't normal and i didn't realize that. i didn't even realize that i was addicted. it started as something fun and it quickly became toxic. and i damaged my relationship with my family. i wasn't able to excel in school. i had brushes with the law, and it really took me down slowly, and i was at the point where i

wanted to commit suicide. luckily, i checked into care and treatment centers on december 28, 2014, and that's really when my life changed. because it is the place that taught me what addiction and uncle listen look like, and that he'll be realize that that's exactly what i was struggling with. because of that i am a three years sober today. [applause] thank you. ..

>> thank you for letting me share. [applause]. >> i'm bishop jethro james from newark, new jersey. i'm also a chaplain with the new jersey state police and also a retired corporate exec. a weird combination, clergy cop, social worker. weird combination. helped orchestrate the campaign to bring governor murphy into the gubernatorial mansion and yet, martin luther king day, i stood up and said we will not have legalized marijuana. let me put on a couple of my hats, as law enforcement, we know what it does. let's look at statistics in the states that have already legalized marijuana because it will devastate, devastate communities of colorado. in colorado, for example, 55%

increase of youth caught in possession of marijuana in the fri frick-- african-american community. you have to be 21. our kids 11 years old 17 years old, and then considered adults so you start off with a record. let's faulk about the hispanic community. 38% increase in the hispanic community of kids using marijuana. let's talk about what it does to our babies. we're seeing from age zero to seven years old a 70% increase in poison hot lines for pediatrics. your baby-- there is no epipen for your baby if he or she is allergic to marijuana and their brain is going to be fried. bishop, why would you take it on because being a social scientist, the last place that

they're going to have marijuana is in the county where our governor lives. i've been to his home. there's already places in new jersey that have already passed n iech nimby, not in my back yard. it's primarily going to the urban areas. the unemployment. you will not retire from psng or law enforcement or any major corporation if you test positive for marijuana. so, therefore, the whole economic system will be brought down. where will you place these shops. let's take a look at denver. denver has more marijuana shops than it has mcdonald's and starbucks combined. they're all in urban neighborhoods. what will it do to the neighborhood? well, let's talk about crime. you must pay for it with cash. you cannot pay for it with card, cannot write a check for

it. if i'm one of the local fellas that doesn't mind sticking up other drug dealers, it becomes dealing and redealing. i talked with some of my friends in the dpa, we're finding out that marijuana, legal marijuana is sold on the black market, like anything else that there are plenty of it around, if there's any commodity. soy beans, corn, you don't put it in a warehouse, you sell it to someone and that mixture. i happen to sit on the board of a hospital. i happen to know that just a week ago, we had 28 kids in 24 hours come in and they're out of their mind because of the combination. you need to understand that there is no standard for marijuana. i went to college in the '60s. the stuff i smoked was 4% thc. the stuff that's out there now is 38 to 98% thc.

every mother ought to worry about it. there was no opioid problem in this country when it was in places like newark, places like camden in new jersey, places like trenton or patterson. these are the hoods, y'all. there was no opiate, but it got on the parkway and went up county and down county and when the people that didn't look like me, their kids started dying, then we had an epidemic. i stopped by to tell you, you can't put this and i say this to governor murphy and i say this to anyone nationally, you know want to know what it will do? stick around and talk to me. the last thing i want to point out, newark, camden, patterson, and trenton in new jersey, we have the birth rate of third world countries for our babies. i refuse to allow something else to bring down

african-american and hispanic children, that our children may have a chance in life, a chance for employment, and a chance to live the american dream. let me quote scripture as i go to my seat. the scripture says, what profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul? and what will a man give for his soul? and then there's another question asked and needs to be answered by those that made promise for our governor, made a promise that he was going to let everybody out of jail that went and so this is not social justice, this is social injustice because he just zero-based last week, he zero-based all the reentry dollars so he has no intention of letting anyone out of prison. don't be bought by the hype. don't believe the promises that

are made. they want to have marijuana sold s-o-l-d, but they're giving up your children s-o-u-l. god bless you. [applaus [applause] >> good afternoon, i'm new jersey state senator ronald delrice and i'm in washington and my son is ronald c rice and he does a lot of youtube stub and be clear that i am. i'm the third senior serving senator out of new jersey, 42 years, a former law enforcement officer, detective investigator, a former city council person for 16 years, four years deputy mayor, vietnam veteran, and my background's criminal justice administration and i lived in the city of newark since 1955, left, came home in 1967 riots,

and then got to vietnam. i'm a college grad. i've been to many events and the thing that disturbs me the most many' a product of the civil rights movement and a product of the racial south and the people i tell i went to new jersey in 1955, remind them in january 1955 i was nine years old, i could read and write. go back to 1954, that's when was board versus brown. brown versus board of education, topeka. so, as a result of that, i know what it is to live in segregated communities, i know what the struggle was to allow us to go to school and get education so we can better our lives and mix and get away from all of this craziness. in new jersey, we're being sold and what offends me the most is not so much quote, unquote, what white folk who are trying to make money and white folk who have other agendas going. what disturbs me the most are what black leaders are doing after all the struggle for get

experience of-- life experiences. they're accepting what is being told to them. accepting the fact that aum of adds all of a sudden in new jersey we're told we need to legalize marijuana primarily because it's a social justice issue. there's more black people in jail nor a certain amount and white people three times more. and the groups took our constitutional right to bail, which is a total definition. but when you look at this, the question i have is, okay, why do we allow people to use that as a we know better than anyone to sell their products. and so, my talk to my colleagues who are putting in these legalization bill, if you finally agree with us, we've been saying for years you've been ignoring us, it's discriminatory, more of us in

jail than any other thing, turn us loose. they say they can't because it's complicated. it's complicated because you ever to legalize. i'm telling you this, it's you insulting to mow and people who look like me to come from a history of struggle and frank, the history of slave families, it's un insulting me because even though i shouldn't be in jail, you're not going to turn me loose unless i help you make you money. it's insulting because we've been asked for years, long before opioid and i asked for treatment for that, and they give free needles. you put it in your veins and you die. and all of a sudden they want for opioid, in the meanwhile they want to give us legalization of marijuana. what i'm told by my colleagues

in new jersey, there are so many people dying from the opioid problem, they believe when they went to colorado by legalizing marijuana there would be a shift from opioid to marijuana and therefore, you won't have as many deaths. well, that's problematic for one like me trying to use my common sense, my academic sense as i told that you're transferring the problem. we need to deal with both because when you look at transferring the problem you're making less depth than you think, but the social justice issue is one you're promulgating because it's not money, but it is money. if it's not money and talking social justice, i shouldn't be in jail and decriminalize, we make it so you no longer have a criminal record, you can go get a job, make sure that you have treatment and expunge records, but you're not going to make any money off of that. so, what i always tell them in

new jersey, we've held three hearings and going on third hearings, okay, let's talk about what we know before we do this. we know all the things as we sat here today based on colorado, washington, california, elsewhere. but let's talk about what we know about new jersey. of because you have to put things in perspective. what i know about new jersey. in new jersey my office is five blocks from a village called south orange new jersey, which is predominantly white, upper class, wealthy, middle class people and seton hall university. in newark where my office is, down the street on my block, people get shot on a regular basis, and doing drugs, homeless, and i've got a bodega on almost every block, maybe two.

in new jersey, people are getting help with subsidies and food stamps and they're taking the bodega's and they are character them and not buying food, they'll give you 40, and buying drugs. all that we know, with the longitudinal studies at least four, five years in colorado when you legalize marijuana there's a substantial increased use of people who never used any kind of drugs. so common sense dictate to me in new jersey, if i realize marijuana, i'm going to get a substantial increase use of people who never used it. and within the aggregate of those people that increased use, there are good to be some food stamp people who are going to start to go to the same bodegas. unintended consequences. my kids go to school, your kids going to school and the teacher say why are you trying to take the kid's food:

did your parents feed you this morning? no. in my state they're not going to call the parents, they're going to call what we call disis and they're going to take the kids from their homes, without legalization. another quick, lower income people struggling, paying, 12, 1300 a month to live in slum properties and when they live there they're venturing. all of a sudden in a new population, never used drugs, they liked it, try to shave off the rent, go to the landlord. and bishop says we run into theys problems, see me next month. next month the same problem. bishop say we don't roll that way, and i have a mortgage to pay see me next month. the next month comes around they say you're evicted. now people in the system are homeless.

the final thing i want to say is that seton hall, newark is a college town. new jersey is a college state. seton hall is five blocks away, so to legalize marijuana and i'm going to have this commercialization next to my bodegas with the lipstick and other things and products they have it and south orange doesn't want it. what he is going to happen, i'm not guessing, the majority of seton hall, going to come in front of my office and somebody's going to get killed, killed. and it's going to be violent crime. and the new jersey is going to say it's racial when it's not. it's about the drugs and the money, because you're black and across the line buy it, they'll kill you, too, or whip you up. that's going to happen. and if newark decides we don't want it and south orange wants it, what's going to happen the

population, predominantly black community including knuckleheads on the corner and those that doesn't, they're going to see what the lipstick and gummies and what that's all about, and they're going to say it's profiling and we'll address that and listening to people without doing research and putting together with what we know with legalization, what we know is happening now and being objective. in close, let me say this, as chairman of the new jersey black caucus, i've asked my members we are he not going out and telling people we're for and against the legalization of recreational marijuana even though we have our own views about it. in new jersey, thanks for sam

and congressman and et cetera, we have people providing information like you're doing today on the other side. but i'm going to leave this with you. to sam and others, what i want to do when i go back and we can have this discussion because i test this last night. i kept saying that people don't know the difference and that we need to do a grass roots campaign on knowledge. i need to talk to those senior citizens who have to walk down the street and are afraid to go. i need to talk to those parents in single head of household, pta folks and everyday working folks, not following people around pro and con, they are a listening and hearing because when i test this last night, i asked some people who were elderly people, elderly and middle aged people at a debate, on the side talked to them they raised the question. i said do you know what recreation marijuana is and the lady said, i think so. and that told me something right there. i said, well, if you think so,

let me say this to you, if we you legalize marijuana, okay, and said it may be okay to do that, do you know that commercialization right out here on south lawrence avenue, you're going to have stores selling lip sticks and cupcakes, oh, we can't have that. how come someone is not telling us about that? you understand where i'm coming from? and so, we need to be talking to people not folk who are following folk around with information on one side and the other side. we need to get in the hood and talk to real people so i just want to thank you very much for this opportunity to come down and share my concerns. my concerns are coming from, really, an educated and informed person who lives in a community that i've represented for over 30-plus years and one who understands this stuff very well in the relationships. thank you very much. [applaus [applause] >> good afternoon, i'm christine miller a

neuroscientist and i'm going to talk about how marijuana has been given, really, a free pass by our politicians, a few exceptions here, and by the media. really, there's no other drug in america that can be sold without a listing of side effects. but marijuana is sold in dispresenceries across this country with no serious warnings whatsoever. the side effects that i care about the most is the disorder that i dedicated my career to researching, a suite of disorders, really, psychotic disorders and you heard the doctor mention, she sees examples of that in her clinic on a pretty regular basis, i believe. my experience was that marijuana induced psychosis, although that was not something i researched, is actually now the most well replicated finding we have in schizophrenia research. more well-replicated than any

genetic finding, and i looked at a lot of genes when i was in the lab, more well replicated than any other environmental factor. now, it is true that those who have a family history of psychosis are going to be more at risk, but that's about 10% of the population who has either a first or a second degree family member with some type of psychotic experience. and it doesn't mean that the other 90% are safe either. i'm going to get to that later. the effect size is large. 15% thc increases the risk five-fold which translates into one about out of every 20 users of high strength product being at risk for developing a psychotic disorder if they don't quit in time. i'll touch briefly on the literature that illustrates the causality.

there's no single paper that's definitive, it's a constellation of studies that looked at different angles and illuminated the causal basis. there are hundreds of studies many' ta-- i'm talking about. numerous epidemiological studies show the concentration, psychotic outcome and pharmacological research, this is considered one type of evidence for causation. in prospectus studies they've answered the obvious question which comes first, is it the marijuana use or maybe the say could say-- psychosis? and they followed young teens, the preponderance was that the marijuana use comes first. if you administer purified thc in the clinic under controlled conditions to subjects who have no family history of psychosis,

so i told you i was going to get to that, 40% will develop psychotic symptoms right there on the spot. now, fortunately, they're reversible at that point, but for recreational users who experience such symptoms and continue to use, about 35% will progress to what is known as a full psychotic break where they have more than one, multiple psychotic symptoms at once and they don't recover so quickly. they will have paranoia, racing thoughts, hallucinations, dilutions of grandeur. and of that group, about half will end up with a chronic long-term, often life long psychotic disorder. these are very large studies that have been conducted in europe where they have centralized health care systems which enable that good collection of data for controlling for demographic factors. the two studies i am talking

about totalled over 20,000 patients. and they looked at other drugs as well. marijuana was by far the most effective at reaching that sad-end state. it was worse than lsd, than pcp, than cocaine, than methamphetamines. so i like to say lace your lsd with a little marijuana and you're more likely to become psychotic. there are many studies to talk about. i don't have time now, there are more, butle' move on to the fact that this type of mental illne nesness like all mental illnesses carry heavy stigma. the families that experience it aren't that willing to speak out, you know, for obvious reasons. they want to protect their loved one, but there is a website you can go to where a few families have written their stories. momstrong.org and i highly recommend it. you know, i'd also like to point out that, let's see, my

final two points, marijuana's often compared to the legal drugs, alcohol and tobacco, and i have this to say about the alcohol comparison. unlike alcohol, if you are using two servings of marijuana per week, if you're not driving, even if you're not driving, that's not a safe level of use. it's exactly the level of use that raises the level of the risk of psychosis significantly. and compared to tobacco where you actually have sort of a window of time, a grace period, if you will, to correct your youthful mistake of picking up this habit, actually, i think until age 40, if you want to, you know, get over your risk of lung cancer, if you quit by then, you might be okay. with marijuana, the severe psychiatric effects come on very early, very fast, can be extremely devastating at a

young age and last a lifetime. you don't have that grace period. you can't be forgiven this youthful mistake and you don't know who it is going to affect. so to conclude from the press here, i hope there will be more reporting on this dark side of marijuana. there are world experts who can be reached out to, dr. robin murray at kings college in london, dr. jim von hoff in the netherlands and from our government, i think a surgeon general's warning would be a great first step, much like the warning that was given for tobacco so many decades ago. thank you. [applaus [applause] >> first let me thank everybody who has spoken already today and really appreciate the eloquence and expertise that all of you have brought to this and the service to our country, that many of you have exhibited throughout your lives. my name is patrick kennedy,

i've had the honor to be the author of the mental health parody, and addiction equity act, which says that mental health ought to be treated the same as overall health and i've spent my life campaigning to see that this parity law as it's known is fully implemented so that we can address mental health and addiction challenges in this country, just leak we address diabetes and cardiovascular disease and cancer and every other illness. and i found that it would be inconsistent for me, on the one hand, to be around the country trying to advocate for adequate coverage and reimbursement by insurance companies for mental health and addiction services, while ignoring that there will be a new addictive industry that will put more people in

jeopardy of mental illness has you just heard and in jeopardy of more addiction. it would seem to me while we're in the midst of a five-alarm fire in this country with addiction and mental illness, suicide rate never been higher, twice the car crash rate, overdose rate surpassing, well past what we saw in the height of the hiv/aids crisis, that's-- our country would wake up and say, we must have a problem here and if we do, it would seem to me the last thing we would do is pour gasoline on the fire. if everybody's now looking at pharma and saying, they got us into this mess because they had inscrupulous practices of selling more oxycontin than were needed because they were making bigger profits, and the more people they got hooked the higher those profits would be. why would we at this stage in our lives as a nation say,

well, let's repeat that mistake. and instead of oxies, we'll have all of these new forms of this new addictive drug, thc, because it's not marijuana, it's eelixir, i don't know if anyone knows what elixir is, at the bar, absolute and red bull. now see where i'm coming from, now elixir and you've got that to come to the table and now there are edibles. what are edibles? those are things you might not be aware of how much thc you were eating. and it never made any impact on me and he so i finished the brownie and next thing i knew i

was hallucinating in an e.r. let's not look at just this in an anecdotal in terms of these individual cases, let's just look big picture. our country clearly loves to self-medicate. okay. and more than ever before now because of the stresses and anxieties brought about by a shifting economy that does not share wealth equally across this country, and leaves more and more people feeling insecure about their financial well-being and about the future of their families. that's the truth. and so we have more and more kids disconnected because they think they're connected because they're on their phones and ipads, but in fact, that's leading to more isolation and lack of human connection. and so we're thinking, what should be our response? our response, according to all the experts should be we ought to be giving those kids social

emotional learning skills. we ought to be equipping them with coping mechanisms and problem solving skills. i had the honor of rededicating the fort bragg john f. kennedy special warfare center and the general said to me, you know, congressman, with the green berets, we had the most mental health, you know, training and delivery for our green berets than any other branch of the service. i said these green berets don't need mental health. they're the best of the best. no, no, we don't look at that, we look at it as a force multiplier. i said, what does that mean? because of the stressful situation we put our operators in, what makes them so special is their ability to navigate the stress of their environment. so they look at stress management as a protective

shie shield. all of these kids, all of america is heading into a global economy that's causing them a lot of stress. are we going to give them the shield, give them the mental health skills to navigate and cope with all the stress coming down or are we going to look the other way and allow an addictive industry to say, oh, we've got an easy way out? and furthermore, that easy way out is going to get you caught and imprisoned through the kinds of illnesses that you've heard described here today and it would seem to me that we want-- i know with my four kids, soon to be five, i want to help make them, as you were saying, bishop, as strong as they can be growing up. i think everybody wants their kids to be as strong and i

don't want anybody to grab them and take them down. i don't want any enemy coming across the border and taking my kids hostage by addiction, and mental illness. so, those that are out there selling this stuff and promoting this stuff, you're going to have this team right here and many others saying, not on my watch. and i want to thank senator rice in my new adopted state of new jersey for leading the charge and doing it as eloquently as he's done and we're looking forward to turning back this effort to legalize marijuana in new jersey so that we don't make it the garden state, but instead, we say, it's a state that's going to be safe for our young people. [applaus [applause] >> thank you, congressman and thank you to everybody on the panel. we have time for some questions from the credentialed press. yes, sir. >> of colorado got a deal with

president trump not to enforce in colorado. how do you feel about that? >> well, the president has been very forth coming about the impact of addiction in his family's life. so much so that it's-- he makes no bones about the fact that he does not drink alcohol, doesn't even have one single drink because of the impact. that should tell us a lot and he understands this personally. so you know, the biggest issue here is denial in just -- in our lives, those of us who come from homes where alcohol is an addiction, who lived with it in our own lives. in fact, the people with

addiction are often the last ones to know. it's the single characteristic of addiction or mental illness. the person suffering from it is the last person to recognize it. i would say as a society collectively as a nation we're in a collective denial about the scope and severity of an i-- addiction in this country. people call it opioid or-- you know, at the end of the day as all of these experts can tell you, it's addiction, it's addiction, it's addiction, we can substitute one for the other. the bottom line, we have to understand what this is, obviously it detracts when we're in an allout crisis of addiction in this country. it makes it difficult for us to have a clear and consistent voice and policy about this to be, you know, giving a wink-wink over here while saying, maybe it's not a smart idea over there. that is disassemblying. isn't that -- that's what we

call it in recovery when we're trying to have it both ways. i certainly hope the president, you know, depending on how true this story is, makes sure that his policy is consistent because frankly he has a condition and supported through the rest of his administration to really ensure that this is not legalized. so, i'm hoping that this is not literally the case that's being made out to be. >> and say one more thing about that, too. it's not only the president's commission, his assistant secretary of health to talks about the harms of marijuana as some of his new other appointees, as well as some of his own base. law enforcement will soon be releasing a letter opposing the move and so-called deal with senator gardner because we've seen the underground market get

stronger. one promise is that criminal market goes away under so-called regulation or legalization. in fact, we know that it adapts and it's able to infiltrate the legal market easily and this has been a huge problem for law enforcement to be dealing with in these states. so we have the major law enforcement association owe opposing that move and we'll send out a copy of that letter. >> on that same point, we in new jersey have met with the association of police chiefs and they have come out in new jersey against legalizing marijuana. senator schumer opposed decriminalizing marijuana not legalizing it, would you support that move? >> we don't have the full text so we can't comment on that, but from what i've seen it's more descheduling, not criminalizing. it's called decriminalizing and

we're waiting for the full text. it actually would allow states to full on legalize. so i think we'll have to wait to get more details before making a final judgment, but it's important to make that distinction between decriminalizing and that would allow to decriminalize-- >> how much difference do you think this is going to make in the long run in terms of possibly, you know, legalizing marijuana across the country? >> well, i think the issue is there's a big industry trying to advocate and dozens of lobbyists from the marijuana industry now that unfortunately are funding candidates on all sides. first of all, we have to do a better job in the public health community of keeping those candidates and politicians accountable. the public has a right to know. if you are a lobbyist like john boehner was for big tobacco and now is working for big

marijuana, we have to start doing that. in terms that have piece of legislation, again, i don't think that actually marijuana is much of a motivating factor for voters. when you ask opinions on marijuana, people have all kinds of opinions, depending on how you frame the question. we found when you offered decriminalizing, mo are people loose that actually. but as a motivating factor to vet, a reason to lead on it politicalically, even of the polls is showing a motivating factor. >> i think a lot of this is unfortunately, members of congress hearing from very loud voices of special interest groups, not very loud voices at the grass roots. i've got to tell you with the thousands of kids in new york state that have died from the opioid epidemic, with over 90% of them if the statistics are correct, marijuana having something to do with that history, i don't think that this is necessarily a smart move politically of either party. that's a message for senator

schumer as much as president trump. >> right here. >> and this is very quick. first of all, the rumor on the street it's over $100 million spent in new jersey to get the bill through. i don't believe that for any bill-- and on the decrim side. those promulgating legalization, they tell people we like decrimization, but decrimization harm minority people and harm minority people because even though you're going to come out of jail, you're going to still get a fine, if you don't pay the fine, you're going to jail. they get the impression through the conversation that if you legalize drugs, you don't get arrested. some kind of way, the press and the public have to make it clear, you're going to get arrested whether you decrim or legalize, and i think that that's important because that's the way it's being sold and i

think once the public recognize that wealthy people and special interest is spending a lot of money, they goes back in the history of drug policy alliance, not going to do that, but once they recognize people are trying to make money off their backs and recognize there's another way of doing the social justice things coming up in our face and our communities, they would see it differently. i would hope that senator schumer would look at tree decriminalization and not playing games with it because his state borders my state. >> there's no sense in large fines without, you know, and having decriminalization without having health intervention as well. it doesn't help us to have the same kid arrested ten times and fined ten times over again without an actual health intervention, so there's a lot of lip service saying that addiction is a disease, addiction is a disease, addiction is a disease. if it is, you have to treat it as such and intervention.

we support bills that remove criminal penalties that have a health aspect to them so that we can actually move towards discouraging and reducing use as opposed to perpetuating it and can't afford it huge fine in prison. that's also not the right way to deal with it. >> yes, good afternoon to all of you. all of you, thank you so much for the impassioned wisdom, you know, that you provided here today. i'm kathy henderson. i'm an effected representative in the district of columbia and my community, we are still fighting hard against that awful, awful proposition 70 that passed here in the district of columbia. we've mobilized the police who are now working harder to shut down the pop-ups that sell the brownies. they come-- well, they were coming on sundays at 2:00, lines in the

community taking up all of our parking spaces. you pay your $10 to come in, you get your little white bag and you come out with all kinds of illegal edibles that we don't want. so, we're fighting back. my question is, is there an effort-- now we have a member of the council who has sent a press release to the u.s. attorney's office and the police asking to decriminalize prostitution and the whole. and i understand that this particular individual is a proponent of marijuana. sits on his porch, you know, smoking as though it's okay. my question is, what more can we do or is there an effort to really go back and revisit the issue, the slippery slope that happened in the district of columbia? >> well, i think there is an effort and i think that we need to hear from really grass roots activists and hear from more people like yourself and others and hear so your collective voices are heard. right now they're drown out by

a deep pocketed special interest group that has limited funds because it's in their business interest to pass legalization. they benefit when they pass the legislation whereas us, they're trying to promote good legislation, we don't have that kind of financial incentive. powerful on the other side. we hear individual voices and i also ask people, you can download for free, our advocacy app, it's an app in an apple or the google play store and you can actually get alerts to be able to write elected officials, to be able to show that collective advocacy that needs to happen, because again, we see this as a bipartisan issue, we don't see this as, you know, one party or the other. and we see this as a public health and scientific issue, whether it's going to take five years, ten, 50 or 100, we know, as patrick says, we're on the right side of history and as a country we are going to collectively come to our senses

at some point and hope we don't have to pay the consequences before realizing it. >> i want to add this comment, judge burnett, i testify frequently before the council. and there's a move in the country today as a result of bail issues and talking about imposing bail where people can't make the bail and they'll sit in jail, too. this is another way for having these people sit in jail because a fine of $300 is imposed for marijuana and the person is unemployed for three years and where is that $300 coming from. the idea of dekrimmicriminalizid they're not able to make bail. >> i've reached out to my national affiliation and have asked them to, for all the

gospel churches in the usa to a meeting with my senior bishop to say i need a statement. i'm reaching across all ecumenical lines. people of faith have to operate on faith and call them out for justice. e and what they are. i, too, remember the riots. martin luther king was in newark before he went to memphis. so at 17 i got to hear martin. martin said something, you must do the analysis, but you can't have paralysis. you need to call on your faith leaders, call on every organization that you know that moves in the community. 20 years ago, there was a group of clergy, we came together and we made national history because we negotiated the first treaty between the bloods and the cripps in the city of newark and he was a part of the group. you can get gang bangers that

really help you out, or ex-gang bangers. and let me say this to you, martin said that we must know that it's always a time to do right and the time is right now. >> with that we'll end it. we thank everybody for being here today. to get more information get it learn about sam.org or also the other organizations mentioned today. thank you. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> later today, a discussion on the 2020 census and the controversial decision to include a question on u.s. citizenship. the event is hosted by the american enterprise institute

and starts at noon eastern here on c-span2. this afternoon senate foreign relations committee holds a vote on president trump's nominee, mike pompeo, we'll have that live on c-span. >> this book is-- you're not just handing over things you like when you click on like, it's also aggregating an enormous amount of information. even if you start touching a status update and don't type it. facebook exposes and analyzes that, too, why did you not continue typing it. i think the deal that we think we're making a fairly limited amount of information. the reality is intense surveillance machine that clicks and tracks you across the web, across devices, buys information about you from third parties, collects it

altogether and uses that to target you. >> watch the communicators tonight at 8:00 eastern on c-span2. >> tonight, on landmark cases, the des moines independent community school district. a case about free speech. in 1965 five students from des moines, iowa wore black arm bands to protest the vietnam war, violating school policy. and they challenged the free speech restrictions and the resulting supreme court decision established that the students keep their first amendment rights on school grounds. our guest to discuss this landmark case are mary beth tinker, one of the five students who challenged the des moines school district, she was 13 at the time. after two decades as a pediatric nurse she began working as a free speech