really looking for a place to belong, a place to recover, a place to rest. he came here most importantly to recover that muse. he wanted to write again but he needed something to write about. when he came to the grove park inn, he wanted to find stories in the people staying here. >> on sunday at 2:00 p.m. eastern on "american history tv", we tour the largest home in america, the biltmore estate build by the vanderbilt family. >> a home with more than 33 bedrooms, 65 fireplaces, an incredible massive staircase, architectural beauty surrounding the home. >> we'll visit the late pastor billy graham's religious retreat, the cove. watch c-span's cities tour of asheville, north carolina, saturday at 2:00 p.m. eastern and sunday at 2:00 p.m. on c-span3. working with our cable affiliates as we explore america.

joining us at the table is reason magazine criminal justice reporter. we're talking about changes in legal and social views on marijuana. good morning. thank you for joining us. >> thank you for having me. >> let's start first with this national cannibis policy summit. it's something we're covering today. it will be on 10:00 eastern time right here on c-span. what is this summit all about? how did it start? who is there? what are the goals? >> as part of the national cannibis festival going on for a few years in d.c. since the district of columbia legalized marijuana. the festival itself has music and entertainment. today they're having this policy summit where they're going to be talking about basically what we're talking about is the legal and social attitudes around marijuana and how this is changing and the effects of legalization and criminalization of marijuana. i'm going to be monitoring a

panel on criminal justice and marijuana legalization and how legalization can address or, perhaps, alleviate the damage caused by the drug war. the keynote speaker is going to be ben jealous, the former naacp president. there are going to be members of congress, either sort of video addresses or actually being on panels. i think barbara boxer's going to -- barbara lee -- representative barbara lee's going to be there. so it's kind of impressive to see this lineup, you know, if you think back to when you were, like, in high school and people talked on marijuana legalization, you had some idea of a guy with a -- big policy summit right here in the nation's capital. >> 10:00 a.m. eastern time here on c-span and watch it on c-span.org. we're going to cover the first half of the day-long cannibis policy summit here in washington, d.c. and we're talking with our guest right now of "reason magazine."

we're going to do two phone lines here. if you support expanding marijuana laws, call this number, 202-748-8000. if you oppose expanding marijuana laws, call 202-748-8001. >> this pew poll says about six in ten americans support marijuana legalization. why is that so rapidly changing? >> i think a lot of it has to do with the age demographics. if you look at older generations, they tend to be still fairly opposed to marijuana legalization, but when you get into the younger brackets, that number shoots up dramatically. so as these younger generations are getting older, we see this rising support. there is a quinnipiac poll i think that just came out showing 60% of texas respondents favored marijuana legalization.

so, i mean, this is sort of across the board. as you look at the older -- there is still a lot of opposition among the older set, but almost across the board on the younger generations, they have pretty wide support for marijuana legalization. >> a couple of more facts and figures. we're gifted here with a "usa today" headline on this friday about this. the industry is growing like weeds, they say. $25 billion projected by 2025. trump's perceived green light incentivizes cannibis investor to spend more. >> colorado posted $1.5 billion in sales in 2017, and you're seeing those sort of similar numbers, not quite as high, but also in places like oregon and washington, that have recreational marijuana sales. and as far as trump's green light, basically what happened is jeff sessions rescinded some obama-era justice department

guidance on federal law enforcement dealing with state marijuana. and that sort of spooked some people in states. but senator corey gardener from colorado was not a fan and began holding up justice department nominees until he could get president trump to agree to sort of pump the brakes and say, no, we're not going to, you know -- president trump said he would support legislation to keep the feds from interfering in state marijuana programs, and i think that's the green light you're referring to. on the campaign trail as well, trump said that he supported states' rights for marijuana programs. >> before we get to calls, let's hear from the attorney general. he was at the federalist society on march 10th talking about what doj intended to do at that time. here is a look. >> well, we're not going to be able, even if we desired, to take over state enforcement of

routine cases that might occur. federal agents are highly paid, highly trained and they work on cases involving cartels, international organizations, major distribution networks, large amounts of cash, and they deal with criminal organizations, rico-type cases. and we're not out there prosecuting those cases every day. but it is the law of the united states of america, and the law of the united states of america, in case you haven't heard, applies in every state in the united states. and i am not going to tell colorado or california or someone else that the possession of marijuana is legal under united states law. i don't think it's healthy either. if i were sick, i wouldn't suggest you take marijuana to cure yourself. i'm not sure it's proven to be particularly helpful.

so that's kind of where we are on that. i've sent out a memo that reversed the cole memorandum of the department of justice. i believe it's a rule -- i think the cole memorandum was perceived to have conceded, at least, that the states have the ability to determine marijuana policy in their states and federal law was a very limited effect. i think that was incorrect, legally so. we simply withdrew the cole memoranda. we tell our u.s. attorneys to use the resources. they haven't been working small marijuana cases before and they're not going to be working them now. >> what we've been talking about lays out a little dispute between the administration, the president and his attorney general. how do you see this playing out? >> well, i think as much as jeff

sessions would like to not allow states continue to operate their own marijuana programs is a question of both resources, as he was eluding to, the justice department can't go out and raid like eliot ness every dispensary in california. it's also about political capital. you've seen the justice department go after sanctuary cities pretty aggressively. that's been one of jeff sessions' and the trump administration's big pushes on the law front, but that's also an issue where trump has a lot of support from his base on that. i think there is a lot less political support for cracking down on state marijuana programs than there is for, you know, talking tough on sanctuary cities. so it's both a question of the justice department's limited resources and the sort of limited political capital they have to pursue this. >> let's grab a call for our guest. sergio from california. good morning. >> caller: hi, good morning. >> good morning.

you oppose the expanding of marijuana laws, correct? >> caller: yes. >> okay. tell us why. >> caller: it's basically pretty simple. many pesticides and unknown chemicals are proven to be added to the marijuana on the streets and in dispensaries. i feel like many people are getting sick and addicted and spending most of their money, while asking for food stamps and other benefits, and that's pretty much it. >> reaction from our guest? >> yeah, i mean, that is an actual issue is quality control and testing of marijuana, and that's one of the sort of big areas that people are looking into with legalization is how do we make sure that this is all adhering to proper health standards and things like that? so i think if you have an emerging sort of legal market where you can establish best practices and have regulation over that, you would eliminate a lot of the -- a lot of the risk

for sort of unknown pesticides. this is actually an open question of the long-term effects of smoking marijuana that's been treated with who knows what pesticides. so there is an open question about what the health effects of that are going to be on pretty much a whole generation of marijuana smokers. but i think that is one thing you could alleviate with a lot of -- with a lot better regulations and best practices. >> our guest is "reason" magazine's criminal justice reporter. we have rosa on the line now from newnan, georgia. rosa, what do you think of all of this? >> caller: i'm opposed to further expanding it. i'm in my late 60s. i remember in the 1970s, my mother was dying of cancer and i was a college student at the time, and i felt at that time that, you know, the people were saying that it could help, that

marijuana medicinally could help her, and at that time i was in favor of it. but i've also smokered marijud you know, in the '70s. a lot of people who smoked it went on to more drugs. i did not, thank god, but i think that it is just a gateway for people to use drugs further and affecting our young people. i'm opposed to it. >> let's hear from our guest. >> there are have annual surveys of teen drug use. since the legalization of marijuana, there hasn't been an accompanying spike in teen marijuana use. it's remained steady or dropped since about 2014, i believe. as for the medicinal purposes, there are a lot of restrictions on studying medical marijuana in the u.s. there has recently been a letter sent by senator orrin hatch, a republican from utah, and kamala

harris, a progressive senator from california, asking the dea to sort of speed up the process for allowing more marijuana to be grown for research. so there is actually a bipartisan push right now to allow for more research that would be able to better tell us just how and what the qualities of marijuana are for therapeutic purposes. i've written profiles of families who have rare epilepsy conditions and they actually packed up and moved to colorado so they could get their hands on cbd oil, which is a low thc noneuphoric oil that has sort of been maybe proven potential useful for treating rare forms of epilepsy where these kids are racked with hundreds of small seizures a day. they say it's one of the only things they found that help their kids and didn't involve dozens of pills with terrible side effects. so i think there is a lot to

sort of hash out that we still have to do. >> in terms of what else is happening in the states, governing.com has his map of the u.s. three basic colors on this map. one is a darker shade of green. one a lighter shade of green and then the gray. the darker green talks about medical marijuana broadly legalized. the lighter green color speaks to marijuana legalized for recreational use, not just medicinal, but recreational. then the gray there are no laws. what should we know about this? >> what's impressive is the speed at which it's happening. you have the entire west coast now is a legal marijuana zone. massachusetts. i believe vermont either did or was going to be one of the first states to legalize through the legislative process, which is very interesting. almost all of these legalization initiatives have happened through ballot initiatives and

things like that. >> and why so fast? >> it was the changing attitudes, like i said, really. it was just sort of -- it feels like there is almost this dam breaking. it's only been speeding up. but when colorado went, it was sort of like, oh, we can actually do this. california was the first state to have medical marijuana in the late '90s, and there was expansion of that but no one really thought that recreational was going to happen. then when colorado -- when colorado did it, i think a lot of the organizers said, oh, no, we actually have the -- we actually have the votes to do this. and we have the organization now. organization for awhile was not the marijuana legalization groups' strong suit. then they got california, which was always sort of the legalization advocates' white whale. they'd been trying for years to get legalized recreational

marijuana use in california. they had competing ballot initiatives and groups that they were narrowly or not so narrowly losing. >> let's hear from the support line. expanding legalizing marijuana. >> caller: good morning. >> good morning. >> caller: i just want to say that i was at first against the cannibis push here in california, but now i am a fourth stage breast cancer fighter. right now i'm fighting breast cancer. i'm at the fourth stage. it's in my lung and going through my chest because i had the mutation. removed my breasts and the cancer still came back in my upper left lung. my brother brought me this cbd oil. it's 150 mg-cbd and see mg-thc.

he was like try it, i kept saying i don't want to get high. he said just try it. i did and the pain went away. i couldn't believe it. the pain and all the side effects that i'm dealing with right now with chemotherapy, i had canker sores in my mouth, my body was aching, i was nauseous. it's been a tough road and i'm still fighting it because it's chronic. i'm going to be fighting cancer for the rest of my life. so i'm very grateful for the cbd oil because it's helped my life personally to have some kind of normalcy. so i'm in favor of -- >> amelia, thank you for sharing your story with us. personal story there. >> yeah, and i think that's another one of the reasons that we've seen this rapid shift is that people have family members or close friends who went through an experience like this

and found some sort of relief through medical marijuana. it may improve the quality of their lives. like i said, the science is still out on a lot of it, but when you hear something like that that improved that person's life or improved my relative's life, why should this not be allowed? you also saw john boehner citing that sort of story in his recent turnaround on marijuana, the former speaker of the house, republican speaker of the house who used to be an opponent of marijuana legalization. you know, he cited a story like that of his friend or acquaint abs who used medical marijuana and was like, you know, i had a big turnaround on this. think you can attribute that as another reason this has been expanding. >> here is the tweet from the former speaker, john boehner. republican of ohio. when you look at the number of people in our state and federal penitentiaries there for small amounts of cannibis, you begin to scratch your head. we have literally filled up our

jails with people who are nonviolent and, frankly, do not belong there, he writes. there is a little bit of pushback on his statement, though, about how many people are actually in jail, in prison over marijuana use. can you clarify the facts for us? >> so this is a common -- sort of a common trope, especially when people get into this. we throw all the -- our prisons are filled with nonviolent drug users. not actually true. there are a lot of arrests for marijuana. i'm not discounting that. there were nearly 600,000 arrests in 2016 for marijuana. most of those were for simple possession, and when you get popped for simple possession, you usually don't go to prison. the stat i saw was about 16% of state prisoners are there for nonviolent drug offenses and our prison population at its peak not too long ago was 2. 1 million. that's still a lot. it's not the tens of thoif i--

>> we do understand. we go get the point. you talked earlier about resources. as we continue talking about this issue, our guest wrote this story recently about the houston d.a. he's going to no longer prosecute pot cases. it has outraged other prosecutors. what's happening in houston? >> so this was last year. and the houston d.a., who was elected as -- on sort of a reform platform. we've seen this trend recently of contested district attorney elections, which is quite new and unusual and another sort of escalating trend. and she wrote in and said, you know what, i'm not going to prosecute and throw small time marijuana offenders in jail. and at the time, you know, they were arresting thousands of people a year. so this is having a large impact on local jail populations.

the philly district attorney is also sort of on the same wavelength and the philly jail population i believe has decreased by a pretty significant amount since he's come into office on initiatives like this. >> let's get back to calls for our guest. from clayton, north carolina, on the oppose line. opposing the expansion of marijuana laws. tell us your thoughts, gabriel. >> caller: good morning. >> good morning. >> caller: so i actually have a little bit of perspective on it that comes from -- i'm a duke medical student, and i'm actually, you know, i've been trained on marijuana to try to understand physiologically what's going on. and i'll tell you right now, amelia's case, which i think is profound and i appreciate her sharing this, is very much where most professionals currently, most physicians would agree that there is the help of marijuana being utilized. in particular those patients that are in late stage cancer or

those patients that have problems with being able to eat. because the main -- the main thing that marijuana and the thc product that's within it can do, just to put some of the facts out there, is to reverse nausea. which we don't have many that can do that. but also increase appetite. that's real the key component that allows for better quality of life. secondly, there is definitely, definitely neuroplasticity changes that happen because of what the central nervous system is depressed in who utilize thc or especially these designer drugs that are out there, which have a much higher potency. and because thc stays in the system and it's fat soluble, that's why, you know, pot test is one of the most longest lasting. you actually can be intoxicated continuously for days and days. and in the young adolescent mind, that particular impact on

the young adolescent mind is -- we know -- this has been shown statistically that it depresses their ability to reason, critical thinking, it actually can increase some of the likelihoods of schizophrenia. now, that is on lesser cases that does happen, but, you know, it definitely -- it's something -- to me i think that can be used and i see how the general public can accept it and utilize it well, but what i would also say is that you have to understand that it will be abused, and the way that it will be abused can have lasting impacts on the neurological components because of its very unorthodox on on the receptor in the brain. i want to put those facts out there. just to summarize, it should be us used in the patients that it's right for you-for- >> thank you for calling,

gabriel. med student at duke there. anything you want to respond to? >> sure. this is actually a pretty interesting policy debate right now is, you know, there is a pretty broad spectrum of agreement that keeping marijuana illegal has very bad public policy outcomes because we're, you know, sending -- we're having hundreds of thousands of people have encounters with the criminal justice system who otherwise wouldn't, but the question becomes, okay, well, what is the public health impacts of this legalization? do we want a sort of colorado free market model where you have billboards for weed everywhere or do we want to have this sort of be more managed, government-controlled legalization? and, you know, you see a lot of centrists and conservatives and liberals who come together on this and say, well, maybe colorado's not the right model for us, but colorado was sort of the experiment, the first step in this, and now that we've had

a chance to see how it works out, we can look at this and say, okay, here's what we've got to do to keep teens from smoking too much, he's how we have to label packages and things like that, so i think we'll hear a lot more about what you were talking about and a lot more debate about it in the coming years. >> we have stanley from fleetwood, pa, supporting the expansion of legalizing marijuana laws. tell us your thoughts. >> caller: good morning. >> good morning. >> caller: i'm 67 years old. i've smoked marijuana for 50 years now. i don't even have to take an asprin every day. i'm in really good health. if marijuana has something to do with that, okay, so be it, but i look -- i saw some of the history of marijuana. let's start with the prohibition when the government was going around smashing up all the beer kegs and whiskies and all that. when they legalized alcohol, now here's thousands of men in the

government will be out of a job. so they started picking on marijuana to keep these people working. in my opinion. so, you know, i don't understand why one state can have legalization of marijuana and 20 miles away another guy will get arrested for having a little marijuana. i thought this was the united states, indivisible. how can you divide us up and let some people do it and others not? >> let's ask a criminal justice reporter for "reason" magazine. can you explain? >> sure. it is very complicated. can you get on a plane with marijuana and go from one legal to the another? can you drive from one legal state to another legal state with marijuana? no, you cannot. if you get caught, the federal authorities will have a very bad time with you. so this patchwork -- what we

have now is this patchwork legalization that results in all sorts of different overlapping and confusing laws, and we're having a lot of legal confusion over that. you know, who has authority over what. you have jeff sessions, who very much wishes he had authority to stop this, but, you know -- so it creates a very confusing situation. eventually for sales and regulations. here in the district of columbia, for example, we have legal recreational marijuana, but congress has blocked it from setting up any sales or regulatory system. so you're allowed to walk down the street with weed in your hand but you're not allowed to sell it to someone else. you can give it to someone else. i could hand you marijuana right now and that would be legal, but you cannot give me money in exchange for it. >> the point about a patchwork brings us this story we found in vice news about the senate minority leader chuck schumer. he has introduced a bill to

decriminalize marijuana. what exactly is he looking to do here and why is he putting this out now? >> so i think he did it today because it's 4/20, but the bigger issue is that he is trying to remove marijuana from the schedule of drugs. so the dea has their big schedule listing of various drugs, depending on how they're used and if they have medicinal properties and they're all controlled substances. for a long time now, marijuana has been a schedule one drug, which is the most controlled. and what he's trying to do is remove it from that schedule which would basically decriminalize it at the federal level and allow states to set their own policies. states would be allowed to say marijuana is not legal, but basically take the federal government out of the picture. and likewise, there is a bill in the -- in the senate introduced by cory booker and bernie sanders just signed on called the marijuana justice act, which would go even further and withhold funding from states

that maintain criminalization and also allow expungement of -- allow expungement for marijuana offenses. so there is actually quite a bit of movement on the hill right now, and i think it has to do with a lot of the same reason that john boehner is now an adviser on a marijuana company, it's -- the politicians keep their fingers to the wind pretty closely and they see that this is going to be a big deal, and, you know, that they have the political will behind them to do something without a lot of backlash. >> let's move on to mary in martinsville, virginia. good morning, mary. >> go >> -- >> caller: good morning. i oppose expanding the laws. can you expound on the difference of decriminalization and legalization? >> did you hear any of that.

decriminalization versus legalization. >> decriminalization, for example, in a lot of places makes marijuana not a felony offense. like in d.c., if you're caught smoking in public, you're smoking marijuana in public, you just get a $25 or $50 ticket. that is decriminalization. legalization means that the police can't do anything to you if you're staying within the laws. for example, staying under weight limits or growing, you know, in d.c. you're allowed to grow three adult flowering plants, i believe. so you're allowed to do that and the police can't do anything to you. that's basically the difference. >> mary, explain why you're asking. >> caller: well, i have never known the difference. that's why. >> there you go. >> okay. >> caller: thank you. >> let's go on to adam in water valley, mississippi. adam supports expanding laws for marijuana. tell us why, adam.

>> caller: hey, good morning. >> good morning. >> caller: good morning. so here in mississippi, you know, it's widely believed that the case against marijuana has been to, you know, to keep an act of voter suppression, basically. so, you know, we keep running into those constant contacts with the justice system, you know, with local laws and that sort of thing, but i do argue for marijuana because i think here in the south and -- children basically -- with america basically in the impoverished areas, you have cases of ptsd, you know, and that's -- i think that that's very clear from the parkland students in florida that complain of.e ptsd, but it's mu more prevalent and commonplace and looked over and brushed

under the rug nationally, but a lot of people live with that because of the constant violence that is around them. but i think here in mississippi, if you legalize it, some of the good things that can come from it, you know, you'll start to have some conversations and dialogue between parents and children that do use it, both use it. along the way, you're going to have some people grow some tomatoes and that sort of thing, get interested in agriculture. and, you know, i personally know about the medical benefits. so thank you for your work. one last thing, what is the deal with the legal marijuana field in ole miss? i've heard that that's been going on for decades, and, you know, i wouldn't be surprised if a couple of pounds or two just fell off the truck. >> can you speak to that? >> yeah, so, the only place right now in the u.s. where marijuana is grown for medical

research is at ole miss. d.a., justice department, letters prodding them to speed is it up. yeah, so there is an interesting -- literally, the only place in the u.s. where it's grown is at the university of ole miss. >> i wanted to ask you the difference between marijuana and hemp. >> yeah. >> leader mcconnell, we've touched on this a little bit. it's time the federal government, he says, in a tweet, to change the way it looks as hemp. why senator ron wyden and i along with senator jeff merkley will introduce legislation to modernize and allow american

farmers to explore this promising new market. leader mcconnell on the republican side, state of kentucky, hemp,kentucky, explai connections. >> well the state of texas would like to have an industrial hip hop nation they have a poverty nation i believe. mitch mcconnell is a very conservative guy in a lot of ways, wants to get his state off the ground on this. industrial hemp is a close relative of marion but doesn't have the same element. the idea is you can use it to make a lot of useful things like rope, and all sorts of other cloth and materials like that. so, they think it could be a pretty good cash crop if it were legal but it sort of falls under the same identity of marijuana because it looks so close. the police didn't want to have to walk through a field and figure out if it was marijuana or hemp. but, yeah, kentucky really wants

to get in on this that's why you see the senate majority leader all of a sudden rallying for industrial hemp. >> we have a few more calls coming in with six or seven minutes left in this segment. mary is from wisconsin opposing the marijuana laws. tell us why mary? >> caller: yeah i have not done experiments on people who smoke marijuana and i worry about the health consequences state and lung cancer. when my brother was smoking marijuana when he was in high school he didn't want to get up and go to school so there was a good month where he didn't have the energy or desire to do anything. that's what we'd be doing to our children because they'd think it's legal and it's okay to smoke marijuana. just like when president obama

was make being beer in the white house. i heard some boys say, oh, it's okay we can drink beer because the president protects beer. i think we have to be the voices of our children and protect children? >> thank you mary. are there cancer dangerous that comes from marijuana use? >> i mean, smoking is not good for you basically no matter what you're smoking. there's the issue of fake pen and electronic cigarettes is people are still studying but generally smoking's not good for you. but, i think, you know it's still not, you know -- it's not legal for your teenagers to smoke coloradmarijuana coloradeo and things like that. it's not legal for teenagers to smoke beer either.

do we want joe camel for marijuana, you know, there's a lot of questions about corporatization and the corporatization of marijuana and big weed, what that's going to look like. >> michelle calling from wisconsin, well-. toma, wisconsin supporting the expanding of marijuana laws. good michelle. >> caller: thank you for taking my call. yes, i support legalization of marijuana. i have a daughter who suffers from epilepsy. we have gone through all the pharmaceutical-type drugs to help her with her seizures, now we're to the point where the doctor says, well, our next step is to send her to a special hospital in rochester and have them cut open her head and work on her brain. but yet, they cannot guarantee

me that this is going to work 100%. that she will not be different, that somehow she will not be disabled over this, that she will not have to rely on the government for her future, and she is a college graduate with a college degree and two minors. and this is what they are telling her, that this is what may be beholding for her future. i don't understand how anyone would want to put their child through such a thing like this and not having any type of guarantees, and still making sure that they're indebted to pharmaceutical companies and want to push those type of drugs. and then there are side effects to those drugs. and then there's more drugs to help out with those side effects

and so on and so on. >> thank you for calling michelle. c.j. ciaramella your thoughts. >> that's what i was talking about earlier, there's a lot of families going through this sort of thing that are looking for alternatives and have turned to marijuana and things like that but in a lot of states are hard to get. you've seen the expansion and a lot of availability in states where there are not of marion, they passed laws to allow cbd oil. georgia, a pretty red state, pass passed laws allowing parent to get oils for their kids and things like that. we've seen it in conservative places pass laws because of hearing from parents like you. >> how have other countries handled marijuana in terms of flaws? >> there's been -- i think portugal's often cited legalized

laws. i believe south american countries are experimenting with it pretty heavy. what else do we have going on? >> canada -- >> yeah carbon dioxinada i beli going to try a much more nonprofit sort of angle to it. >> let's here from phyllis in kansas. good morning. >> caller: good morning. i'm opposed to expanding it. i don't mind medical marijuana, but i think when you start doing recreational marijuana, my problem is, i don't want a doctor that has been out, you know, smoking a few joints coming back in and operating on me. or nurses or like a nuclear plant operator, you know, been

doing recreational marijuana. so, how would you control that? i'll listen to your comment. >> thanks. >> we have sort of same workplace controls for not operating machinery when you're drunk or on pills. and that is a being employment and how you deal with that big ongoing question with marijuana. like, should employees still be drug tested for marijuana, a lot of drug companies do that, even if places where it's legal, just because of hr and liability. i think that will be an emerging question, how you deal with drug testing and especially for sensitive jobs. but, you see things like, i believe the fbi starting loosening up. the fbi or one of our intelligence agencies start loosening up requirements that you not smoke pot at all because they couldn't find any

qualifiers accuracy basically. i think that'll be a big concern, the same kind of common sense rules governing substancings. >> devon from washington, d.c., good morning. >> caller: good morning. i want to address the prohibition of a lot of people who are talking about children and marijuana. one of the reasons regulations are in place bad they put control in places to those who have access. the other thing to mention. as of a week ago, washington, d.c. is now accepting medical marijuana licenses from other states. if you're traveling here for business or pleasure you can check out the whole list of websites for what states qualify. which is important. but i also think the other thing people aren't considering with the amount of money that we'd lose not only in the tax revenue, the states are realizing such as revenue but on

the revenue we spend keeping people locked up, prosecutoring them, this border wall to keep drug people from coming over. that will cut the financial motivation away if we legalize when we legalize nationwide. so, it was discovered one a child had cancer marijuana is an excellent answer. nature is the best decision. it's time for people to get over all these misconceptions about marijuana and legalize it so the people can get the healthcare they need. >> final thought from our guest on marijuana and the law. >> sure. well, just to address that, i agree that it's been a lot of strict packaging rules. we should -- in control you have to strictly label things if you have marijuana. and there's a common sense thing

like you don't leave an open bottle of tylenol on your counter if you have kids. you're right, this is their massive cost associated with incarceration and the drug war and it's costing us not just in lost revenue from taxation and this huge black market that has existed for decades. but also in the recourses of our police. they're every day resources. every time a police officer works a marijuana arrest or does a drug investigation, that's time they're not spending investigating other crime. so, there are opportunity cost for every time we lock someone up. there are opportunity cost and real cost every time we lock someone up for marijuana. >> c.j. ciaramella is a reporter for "reader.com." thanks very much for your time this morning. >> thank so much.

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