with john lott from the crime prevention research center. later, kate are enoug -- aronoff joins us. ♪ host: good morning and welcome to "washington journal." more and more states are re-examining their marijuana prohibitions.however, it is still illegal on the federal level and congress has not yet taken any steps to change that officially or to provide safe harbor for businesses that now deal in cannabis. our question for you this morning, what is your view on marijuana laws in your state? if you support your state's

current marijuana laws, whether they are making it legal or illegal, we want to hear from you. if you oppose what your state is doing as far as cannabis goes, we want to know your opinion. keep in mind, you can always text us your opinion. we are always reading on social media, on twitter, on facebook.com and is now on instagram, where you can follow us. once again, we are talking about this morning your state's marijuana laws and whether you support what your state is doing. we are going to start with setting the stage. right now, there is a story we are going to bring to you from "the hill" newspaper that talks

about how our laws are changing in this country. as we came up on july 1, we saw a new laws go into effect. let me bring to you that story. new laws legalizing marijuana for recreational or medical use take effect in three states on thursday. significantly expanding the number of americans who will have access to consumable cannabis products. new laws may give momentum to the push to legalize marijuana across the country as supporters begin circulating new ballot petitions and legislators drop their historical reluctance to marijuana reform. residents in virginia and connecticut will be allowed to legally possess and use marijuana for recreational purposes after lawmakers in those states approved new measures earlier this year. in south dakota, a voter past ballot measure legalizing medical marijuana takes effect.

those are new laws that came in just as july 1 came in. we are seeing more states allowing either medical or recreational use of marijuana. let's look at what the situation is around the country right now. right now, marijuana legalization in states, there are 18 states where recreational marijuana is legal. 18 states. now, there are 16 states where only medical marijuana is legal. that should be about 34 states that allow marijuana in some shape, form or fashion. you can see the map on your screen that shows where medical or recreational marijuana is legal in the united states. we have been talking about this

issue on "washington journal" this week. yesterday, we had someone on this program talking a little bit about this issue. [video clip] >> we are at a time of unprecedented momentum to legalize marijuana across the country. it is something the overwhelming majority of americans want to see happen no matter party affiliation or demographic supporting ending our prohibition. not only do 70% support it, but almost 50% of the country lives in a state now where the adult use of marijuana is legal. as you alluded to, and just the past six months, we have seen a lot more states begin to come on board through the legislative process, a lot of previous states were failed initiatives.

we had new jersey followed quickly by new york, new mexico and virginia. i'm not even sure we are done for that moment this year. i expect several more states to strongly consider it. it just goes to show the american people are sick and tired of wasting our money on this prohibition to lock up their fellow citizens for a plant that is objectively less harmful than alcohol and tobacco. 10 years out from one colorado first legalized american use. host: president biden has not agreed to making the change in any laws on the federal level. white house press secretary jen psaki was asked about his stance on the federal marijuana laws back in april. [video clip] >> president biden still opposes the legalization of marijuana.

why does he still oppose taking this step at this point when two thirds of americans support legalizing marijuana, several leaders in his own party are pushing for it? why is he reluctant to take that final step in support legalization? >> as you know from covering this, rescheduling cannabis is a schedule 2 drug and would allow researchers to study its positive and negative effects. he wants to look at that. he supports decriminalizing marijuana use, supports decisions left up to the states and legalizing with asthma marijuana, but he will look -- legalizing medicinal marijuana, but he will look at research. >> but right now, why is he so reluctant to support legalization despite the movement? >> of course, we understand the movement.

i am speaking for what his position is. he wants to decriminalize, but again, he will look at the research of the positive and negative impacts. host: let's go to our phone lines and let's start with mike calling from sun city, california. good morning. caller: good morning. i oppose this. between this and the fact that the left controls the media and just break down one taboo after another in this culture. it is really kind of sad to witness. they virtually eliminated wholesomeness in this country and replaced it with political correctness. they look to assault judeo christian values every day. i really think this direction is quite deplorable as far as that goes.

i am really tired of media driving issues that they are concerned about and want to pursue instead of what america wants, i.e., the wall, climate change. you have 31,000 signers are on record -- scientists on record for saying climate change does not exist. but we have an elite level media that refuses to recognize them. it is a little tired of the elite level media serving as the offensive team on the left while democrats serve the defensive team at the expense of the american people. host: you live in california. california legalized recreational marijuana back in 2016. did you vote in that referendum

or where you opposed to it back then? what would you do with marijuana laws right now? would you make it just illegal all across the country or do you think states should make their own decisions? caller: i would leave it up to the states as far as that goes and not the federal government. we don't need a government knows best sort of philosophy as far as that goes. as a retired teacher, just the overwhelming to sensitization -- de-sensitization of judeo-christian values in this country and the assault all day long, just like with same-sex marriages. that was put on a referendum like 50 times because the american people did not want it. the left pursued by judicial fiat and was eventually able to

get it that way, circumventing the will of the american people. host: if i am understanding you correctly, you are ok with the way things are right now, that states are making their own decisions on whether marijuana should be legal or not, and the federal government is saying it is illegal. caller: my personal opinion, i am against it for the reasons i already cited. the whole town is very unfortunate direction to see how america -- the problem with this country is the elite level media and their agenda. their responsibility is to report the news objectively, not to try to convince me to be a liberal democrat. host: let's go to patrick calling from lady lake, florida. good morning. caller: thank you for taking my call.

i would like to remind mike that under jeb bush, florida was known as the -- capital of the usa. the capital bishop's association took out a full-page article in the miami herald asking jeb bush to get control of these pill mills. nope. the florida catholic men's association did the same thing -- nuns. nope. would not control them. i know c-span leaves out that oxycontin made the newspapers, the liberal newspapers, as mike says, in 2003 as the hillbilly heroin. still did not get any control over it. c-span does not bring out either -- there was a front-page article on the "washington journal" -- " wall street

journal," that in states that legalized marijuana, consumption went down because they had no street dealers they could get it off of because they all went out of business. it is kind of amazing how c-span is always into opinions, but seems to always leave out the facts of the situation. one other little fun fact that your pro-life christians leave out is that the reason that white kids have to move back in with their white parents, grandparents, because mommy and daddy oh deed -- od'ed on the prescription narcotic. host: you live in florida where florida only has medical marijuana. they don't allow recreational use of marijuana. would you be in favor of changing the law to allow both recreational and medical? or would you be in favor of changing the law making

marijuana completely illegal in florida? caller: that is another thing. c-span misses the fact. florida voted on making medical marijuana recreational marijuana legal. the state government said no even though the citizens wanted it. truly, once most of all the medical marijuana dispensaries around here, as far as i know, there are canadian companies. foreigners are making all the money. host: but do you support the current law that allows medical marijuana in florida and would you support a change to allow recreational use? caller: i am sick of the war on drugs. it is none of my business what people want to consume. let me just say one other thing. i am originally from new hampshire.

new hampshire controlled all the liquor stores because they had to deal with all the aftermath of drunk drivers, putting them in jail and all of the medical reasons because nobody has insurance anymore and they just walk away from their bills and the state had to absorb that. i would like to see illegal, but the governments get all the money, not some private company. host: let's go to kelly calling from new jersey. good morning. caller: good morning. i am an individual that has suffered chronic illnesses that require me to take some opioid medications. i have been able to lower the doses of my opioid medications because of medical marijuana. it has greatly changed my life. i am able to do so much more

while taking the medical marijuana than i could on the opioid medication's. i am 100% for the support to make marijuana legal. host: let me interrupt you real quick. new jersey, where you live, has legalized the recreational use of marijuana. just in 2020. do you see any change in your state now that cannabis is legal? do you see any differences in your state? caller: i see no negative differences. none. i only see good. i only hear people talk about the good that it has done for them. host: are you worried about -- because sometimes we hear that the use of marijuana perhaps increases in children, in

teenagers, in states where recreational use is allowed. are you wearing about anything like that? -- worried about anything like that? caller: i am not because teenagers can get a hold of alcohol. the teenagers are still getting a hold of opioid medication's. i believe there is responsibility starting with the parent. there is a responsibility to the people the children look up to to make sure the children are not getting a hold of it. i believe there should be an age limit. if it is not for medical use for children, i'm not in support of that. i can say as far as the medical aspects of it, when i am in line

to get my medical marijuana, the ages of the people that are in line are mostly elderly people. i would say the elderly people outweigh in numbers the younger people in line for the medical marijuana where i go for my dispensary. host: let's go to gary calling from indiana. good morning. caller: good morning. host: what do you think? caller: i think it should be legal. i think it should be legal in every state. i don't think it needs to be only for medical purposes. i personally don't use it, but i could very easily if i wanted to. if it weren't for -- it would

make it a more competitive thing too where people are not paying ridiculous prices. that is basically how i feel about it. growing up, i have been around it near my whole adult life and teenage life. i choose not to use it, but i also see the people that do use it. i don't see a negative effect other than if they are trying to operate. it puts everyone in a good mood, as opposed alcohol, which i do use, that could go either way. i seen a lot of fights started when people are on alcohol as opposed to marijuana. host: you live in indiana where all uses of cannabis is illegal.

do you see that changing in your state anytime soon, or do you think your state will keep marijuana completely illegal? caller: they will keep it completely illegal. i came here from utah where it was the same conditions, except they approved medical use but then never let it go through. it is just the way it is. i ain't saying it is healthier than alcohol, but it is healthier than tobacco. there are people that i have known that used it for the medical reasons and it is a very good thing. it is better than seeing them lie on the ground. host: let's go to david who is

calling from liverpool, new york. good morning. caller: good morning. i support this. i would rather pay taxes then go underground and pay somebody on the outside or support the cartels, basically. i have always seen this as state run type liquor stores. get 18 years on older, go in there, by your own -- buy your own. i would even like to see all natural types, mushrooms, other types of recreational drugs be sold under a controlled environment. that is about all i got. host: let's talk to charlie calling from alexandria, louisiana. good morning. caller: good morning.

i'm not in alexandria, louisiana, i am in los angeles, california. host: go ahead, what do you think about california's marijuana laws? caller: i don't think they are good because if it is for cancer or something like that, sure. they should be using it. for medical purposes. i think it kills most people's spirit to educate themselves to be the best that they can. i am talking from experience. i did drugs for most of my life and it just led from marijuana to lusty -- lsd to other things, and i got nothing but negative stuff out of it. thanks to god, i am sober and i have been sober for 28 years. host: do you think allowing marijuana use in the united states will make people who use

marijuana then transition to harder drugs as the years go by? caller: absolutely. without a shadow of a doubt. yeah. that is what happens. they go from that to heroin to this to that. it just kills our united states citizens. if it is for cancer, aids or something like that, sure. why not? or if they have trouble eating, consuming food, why not? it leads to harder drugs. it really does. my brother did it and it was no good either. gee. host: let's go to thomas who is calling from birmingham, alabama. good morning. caller: good morning to you. host: what do you think about

alabama's laws on marijuana? caller: the population here has never really had a say so much of what goes on. it is always legislative. the laws here are behind the times, you could say. i believe in legalizing, but we have to look out for our children. the brain is in such development at these young ages, just like alcohol, we have to keep that stuff away from our younger people. the older people can make their own decisions. like a lot of people say, we have to be responsible, but marijuana is turning out to be such a beneficial drug to thousands of children that used to have severe -- i am trying to

think of what the technical term is. kids that would go through shaking 20 times a day. and now, they don't do it at all. they had to fight for years to get that approved for the children. hey, it is one big grand experiment. host: alabama now allows medical use of marijuana. that just happened earlier this year. would you agree with the state continuing to move forward to allowing recreational and medicinal use, or do you think alabama has gone far enough? caller: no. that seems to be the progress of most states. first, they ease and stick their feet in the water. usually, it ends up being

legalized. host: let's go to howard who is calling from nashville, tennessee. caller: good morning. how you doing? i agree with the man who said marijuana leaves two other drugs. i have been a prostitute since i was 19 and i don't think tennessee whatever legalized marijuana. they do sell cbd in the stores, but as far as marijuana, i don't believe so because we are in the bible belt. host: i was surprised to find out that alabama had medical marijuana. mississippi has voted for medical marijuana. a lot of the southern states do seem to be making that change. you don't tennessee ever moving forward or staying exactly where they are with marijuana being illegal? caller: i think they will always

stay where they are. i don't agree with it. i have been smoking weed since i was seven years old. i am 30 and i am rolling a blunt as we speak. host: university of virginia visiting professor opposed virginia's move to legalize marijuana. here he is on fox news earlier this spring as the legislative voted. [video clip] >> in the last 15 years, the last decade has been the decade of the brain in medicine, we have found marijuana is more problematic than we initially thought. no question about it. every expert will tell you that. in the last 15 years, the average american views it as even safer than 15 years ago. we had this huge gap between the science evidence and what people believe. it is not that different than

the early views of covid or the pandemic. people need medical education. i was in some of these hearings trying to get the medical evidence, the scientific evidence across. they were debating how many plants can grow in your home, how do we regulate this. nobody seemed interested in really learning what the medical science shows. >> why do you think that is? >> i think there are four major groups i found myself opposing. one is corporations. this is not hippie farmers growing pot in their backyard. these are major operations. number two, politicians who would like a new tax revenue source. number three, you have a group of extreme libertarians who really want unlimited and no access and no restrictions on any drugs. the fourth group is celebrities.

besides a few, most of celebrities, if they go on a talk show, it is all laugh giggles about marijuana. they're not talking about increased car crashes, pregnant moms and the unborn. one hospital in colorado, 50% of the newborns had thc in their bloodstream. host: let's see what some of our social media followers are saying about marijuana laws in their states. in mississippi, most voters voted for medical marijuana with 70%. our courts overturned it. tony can how our votes matter. a text says i don't pay attention to laws. i go as much as i need every year and have since i was 18. i am 53 now and still growing.

also, one that says i support decriminalization, but i worry about the government taking over the role of suppliers. another text says my son just completed a drug program and is now living in a sober living environment. i have had several opportunities to ask the facility counselors about early stages of drug abuse, and every counselor said all of their patients started with weed. repeated use of recreational marijuana leads to stronger drug addiction and leaves behind families and especially children who suffer greatly. i'm a victim of drugs. i do not support recreational drug use. it is a death sentence. let's go back to our phone lines and start with

-- caller: good morning, sir. i live in oklahoma and the people voted three years ago on marijuana and i think our government wanted the revenue. they went ahead and -- there are hardly any regulations in oklahoma. i am glad you put the map up to show what states had what. arkansas has medical marijuana and they have like $115,000 for a license. anyway, i think it has not helped our state. because we have illegal marijuana farm planneds growing -- farm plants growing, what

they are doing is growing at here in oklahoma but they are sending it back east, which is against the law. we have a cartel that has come in here and they are helping to grow it. they are buying up our land. our farmland is being bought. i noticed in an ad, for 1000 acres in purcell so they can do this marijuana and everything. the legislature is letting our land be bought. host: would you be in favor of going back to making marijuana illegal in oklahoma or do you think there needs to be more regulation? caller: there needs to be more regulation. i think it desensitized everyone. anyone can use marijuana, you

will be safe, i do not believe that. they have a friend who works for -- pharmacy, business, she said 90% comment and buy it to get high and 10% use it medically. i am for the hemp, you cannot get high on that. let it be legal where you can use the medical part, the hemp part. you cannot get high on it. i think it is ruining our state. our government refuses to regulate it. that is all i know. host: there are some studies that are coming out that show marijuana can possibly be blamed for crash rates jumping for people who drive automobiles. i will bring a couple paragraphs from this study to you. more evidence is emerging that

crash rates go up when states legalize recreational use and retail sales of marijuana. crash rates spiked with recreational marijuana use and retail sales in california, colorado, nevada, oregon and washington. a new study on highway safety and another by the affiliated highway institute shows part however, the preliminary results of a separate study of drivers who visited emergency rooms in california, colorado and oregon show drivers who use marijuana alone are no more likely to be involved in crashes than drivers who did not use the drug. that is consistent with the 2015 study by the national highway traffic safety commission that found a positive test for marijuana was not associated with an increased risk of being involved in a police reported crash spread that is coming from

the institute for highway safety and the affiliated institute. let's go back to our phone line and talk to james, who is calling from manhattan, kansas. james, good morning. caller: hello, how are you? host: i am fine. go ahead. caller: i live in kansas, which is a prohibition state, and the biggest problem we have in these little towns, even higher penalties on people. in our town of -- a $2500 fine for cannabis. the need to get away from these superhigh penalties for people. host: let's go to stan, who is

calling from alabama. good morning. caller: good morning, sir. host: go ahead. caller: i live in alabama and -- i am opposed to the government sticking their nose in my business. i have been growing our wanda since 19 step -- i have been growing marijuana since 1971. host: you would prefer marijuana state illegal? caller: yes. host: why? caller: it is not the government's business. they want to interfere in every damn thing. it is greed. it is pure greed in the state of alabama. host: wouldn't it make your life easier if it was legal in alabama? caller: no, sir.

i have been growing and selling pot for 50 years. the government ruined my business. host: explain how making it legal ruined your business. caller: i am an illegal pot grower and i have been making good money. host: by making it legal they are sending your customers to other places? caller: yes, sir. the government is sticking their nose in everything. they are sticking their nose in the pot business. they send airplanes and helicopters with machine guns for years and now they want to legalize it. i have something else i want to say, too. tell all of the hippies to get off the phone and let someone with good sense talk.

host: let's go to rick from spokane, washington. good morning. caller: good morning. thank you for this interesting topic. as someone focused on therapeutic applications and working with our medical school to design a pain management study that would allow individuals who are suffering from ptsd or long-term care, pain related issues, to use cannabis and reduce the levels of opiates, this is the critical importance of legalizing cannabis and removing several draconian laws that still exist. it opens the door for healing, it opens the door for economic drivers, it allows marginalized individuals to have employment and be successful. all one has to do is look at washington state's 502.com,

which will show you all the statistics and the data from our cannabis experiment, which went from medical to adult use. host: do you have any sympathy for the illegal dealers? we just have someone on air that's at the legalization of marijuana is putting him out of business because he has been selling it illegally. do you have any sympathy for anyone like that? caller: that gentleman, who has the experience of growing the plant, and obviously he was successful in his world, needs to take the steps -- necessary to apply for licenses. as we end prohibition, you have

to follow the rules. as someone who once was prosecuted by the federal government for having an excess of 10,000 plants, i personally was able to survive that because we were meticulous about following all of the state criteria. it is not that hard. just move forward and embrace the new economic drivers that cannabis presents for the community. host: let's go to tony, who is calling from ohio. good morning. caller: good morning. good morning. host: go ahead, tony. caller: the medical marijuana bill in ohio, i voted against it. it was a joke from the beginning. the money they wasted on numerous studies, on a weed that 99% of them have already smoked in college, they know

what he does to you. i agree with the guy who grows pretty i have grown it since 1976. i'm sure a lot of people have heard of weed from this county. here in ohio, one gram is $22.50. i can bite off the street for $8 and it is better weed. this bill was flawed from the beginning because it is for the rich people -- it always is. you cannot grow your own, you cannot own a gun if you get a medical card in ohio. it costs you almost $400 to get the card. no insurance covers it. it is just a joke. it needs to be recreational nationwide. host: that was the question i was just about to ask you -- do you think your state should move forward and move it from medical

to recreational, or do you think your state should go backward and make it illegal again? caller: no, i think they should move forward and make it recreational and keep their nose out of it. that is exactly what i think. i can grow just as good of weed as they can. host: jamestown, north carolina, good morning. caller: good morning. i would like to make a few points. first of all, on your map, where it shows kentucky, mitch mcconnell's state, his second cash crop is marijuana, versus the first cash crop, tobacco. fox news first got their foothold by broadcasting sports events -- baseball, football and all the beer commercials that you see that fox news had to

support the broadcasting of sports events. what i'm trying to say is the alcohol and tobacco lobbies have been the greatest force against the use of marijuana. also, i would like to say in terms of medicinal use of marijuana, and from a judeo-christian point of view in genesis, the bible says god gave us every plant for good use. i do support strict restrictions on recreational use, and in terms of medical marijuana, my dad, god rest his soul, had cancer. my mom is a fantastic cook, my dad would not eat. but once he was given a thc tablet, his appetite snapped back quickly. i can talk from personal experience, i was involved in a very serious auto accident, my own fault, i was under the

influence of marijuana and god save my life. i believe the penalties for dui for marijuana use, while using a motor vehicle, should be the same as someone under the influence of alcohol. the other thing is, one has to make a differentiation between thc and cannabis. i think many callers have tried to make that differential and i appreciate the comment about hemp, too -- one more comment, here in north carolina, please let me say this, the rate of suicide for veterans is twice the national average. we are losing 22 veterans a day. in north carolina, if medical marijuana, thc, was made

available, this might help slightly to offset some of the suicides that are happening in terms of using it in a medical way. host: congress has moved a little bit toward changing the laws in the united states when it comes to marijuana. the house has passed a bill called the marijuana opportunity investment expungement act. it passed the house last september on it 228-164 vote. it would remove cannabis from the controlled substance act, which would make cannabis legal under federal law. it would allow people with cannabis convictions to have the records expunged, and it would create a federal tax on marijuana, with the revenue going toward reinvestment programs. that bill passed the house last

december, 228-164, but there has been no action in the senate on that legislation. let's go back to the phone lines and talk to david, who is calling from atlanta, georgia. good morning. caller: good morning, c-span. just listening to all the comments, i really appreciate the show because this portion right here is taking government people out of it and putting regular citizens in to speak about the issue. i think what the illegal growers were talking about, there will always be a need for people who sell without licenses, the reason being the dispensaries will be higher because they have to pay more on utilities and whatever, but the guy on the

street who grows, he does not have that overhead cost, so he can supply the marijuana for less. i think ohio, he was saying the dispensary, it is like $22 a gram and $8 a gram on the street. that is a part of it. i had a total knee replacement in may. i just happen to have some marijuana and i smoke before i do my rehab exercise. i take one puff. it really helps me do the exercises i need to do to rebuild my knee. it has helped me in that way. i looked at the schedule for the controlled substances and on level 3 and 4, they had ambien as a schedule 4, and that is

basically where marijuana should be because it does give medical benefits. i am in georgia, we have megan's law, -- we have -- the sad thing about their family, they had to leave the state to go to colorado so their baby could get treatment for seizures. here in georgia, we have the first state that have legal hemp growing in south georgia. we are doing things commercially. the commercial aspect holds up when you have illegal marijuana because hemp does not have high thc content, it is less than 5%, but it gives you more from the plant. you can make clothes, oils, you can do industrial stuff for that, so it is a great way to

get our economy -- i do support it. i feel sorry for the people who have to use dispensaries. they have to pay the government taxes, which they showed, but our government does not set it up to where they can take their money and bank it. they are just stacking their money up and cannot get any interest off it. r.j. reynolds in virginia just put $2 million into research and development in trying to get marijuana into tobacco. budweiser just dropped money into research and development to try to use cannabis in beer. corporations are doing it. i just think by me living in the bible belt in an evangelical state, we will not see it -- i

hope we would. host: let's go to jessica, who is calling from arlington, virginia. good morning. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. i oppose legalization of marijuana for many reasons. first of all, i agree with what dr. avery was saying earlier, the medical health impact long-term on individuals is not clear. i am sorry to hear the story earlier of children being born with levels of thc in their system. that is a concern. also, in virginia, recreational has been approved. i totally support medical marijuana nationwide. and i have personal experience smoking the stuff off and on

when i was younger. the stuff that you buy today has often been treated. it is not the natural stuff. it has other elements in it, often come up that i think could be harmful to you. i purchased some in washington state a couple years ago and it was a completely different kind of experience than smoking the original, natural weed many years ago. last but not least, we have millions of people in this country in narcotics anonymous programs, overeaters, various drug overuse programs, alcoholics anonymous, we have states where opioids are dragging people down. i do not think we need another

drug out there. again, i am totally in support of medical, but that is it. host: let's see what some of our social media followers are saying about the marijuana laws in their states. here is one text that says, i support the laws in my state for marijuana, but i think that he to move forward with recreational use. they have held this for long enough that disagree with the last caller that said marijuana leads to other drugs. it is not a gateway drug, it is a plant, needs to be recreational in all states. another text says pot is everywhere in the workplace. can america ride high and remain an exceptional country? think not. both recreational and medical marijuana should be legalized. the reality is people are using

it either way. another text says i can tell you our children are high going to school. as a city bus driver, you can smell it on them. we have more deaths on our highways. stop with the getting messed up. another text says communist new york says it is funny how the people weed is so safe and useful as soon as the fiscal and morally bankrupt blue states realize they can make a cashtown out of it. what could possibly go wrong when the feds become the drug dealers? leave crime to the criminals, nothing government. come on, man. it is time to legalize it on every level. it will eliminate the criminal element. the ills of alcohol are much more dangerous than the dangers of marijuana. let's go back to our phone lines and talk to don, who is calling

from michigan. good morning. caller: good morning, america. good morning, c-span. another good program. marijuana use, i have been a marijuana smoker since i was 16 years old. i served in the military, retired from a great job after 25 years. now, i sit back -- marijuana in the state of michigan, legally. i think the country needs to stop telling people how to live their lives. republican senators want to tell you when you can have a baby, when you can smoke weed, when you can drink, we need to start letting people live their lives. we live in america. we can do what we want in this country. if people want to smoke weed,

they should be allowed to smoke weed. when we try to illegalize alcohol, what did we have? murders on the street. let's let people live their lives. host: let's talk to linda from northern virginia. good morning. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. i am in the appalachian mountains from southwest virginia. we are protected from richmond, generally speaking. i have to oppose the marijuana laws in virginia but i certainly see some benefit in marijuana. but once a goes into the hands of government, it goes straight into the hands, probably, of tobacco companies, would be my guess. we have the problem with the conflict of the federal laws in

the state laws. i think it is too soon. we should have gotten the federal laws straightened out first if we were to have some sort of state law. our law sounds great in writing, in principle, but it will not work out. we have so much abuse here with alcohol. we have at least two drug cartels. we do not need to fool with this right now. but thank you for taking a voice that is never heard in our country, and you have a great day. host: there seems to be some conflict between conservative lawmakers from states who have allowed marijuana use when it comes to trying to make a decision on whether the federal government will allow marijuana use. here is a story from politico. marijuana's popularity boom in red states is not breaking through with conservatives on capitol hill, pinching an

already narrow path to legalization. a growing number of republican senators represent states that have legalized recreational are medical cannabis. without their support in congress to make up part likely democratic defectors, it falls critically short of 60 votes needed to advance legislation. republicans say they do not support comprehensive federal cannabis reform. i oppose it, said one, was otherwise a lead sponsor of the safe banking act, which would make it easier -- the people of montana decided they want to have it legal in our state and that is why support the act, as well. it is the right thing to do but

i do not support federal legalization. chuck schumer is vowing to push for a far-reaching federal legalization bill even if president joe biden is not on board. chuck schumer must convince at least 10 republicans, possibly more, since democratic senators are unlikely to back the measure to join the cause. let's go back to our phone lines and talk to raymond, who is calling from nevada. good morning. caller: hey, how are you doing? i support -- i have multiple sclerosis and there are many benefits. this is not -- medical marijuana

is not increasing car accidents. there is nothing negative about it. it is just people's bias about it. people are going to do it whether it is legal or not. we need to stop destroying people's lives over a plant when we have alcohol killing people -- i don't even know the rate -- but it is terrible. if we are going to make stuff illegal, marijuana should be legal and alcohol should be pulled off the streets. host: let's go to john from ohio. good morning. caller: good morning. host: go ahead. caller: i would like to remind america of what it used to be like back in the good old days,

when they used to bust you for a joint and put you in jail for 20 years. they used to bust in your house and if you have the wrong poster on the wall, you would get in trouble for that. we have come a long ways from those madness days, but people still have it, don't they? they want to hurt people know matter what. they will not give you health care during a pandemic. they love passing out misery like it is their job, like it is their duty. hell no, it ain't. i am against them and what they stand for. what they stand for is not freedom. host: let's go to matt who is calling from westwood, new jersey. good morning. caller: good morning. thank you. let's not confuse the medical -- i have no issue with the medical marijuana. however, look at the facts.

colorado, which has legalized it for over seven years, the traffic accidents have doubled, and that is not to mention all the serious injuries because driver reaction is slowed. that is a fact. it is also a fact that the marijuana of today is not like back in the day in the 1970's. it is like 10 times more potent and there are possibly other chemicals mixed in with some of it. it affects children negatively with school performance -- that is a fact. it slows driver reaction, as i said. and the stuff is getting into the hands of very young people because they infuse gummy bears and soda-type drinks with that. unfortunately, it filters down to kids and is being resold for

profit, and that causes other problems. i have no problem with the medical, ok? but it is counterproductive for the health and psychological well-being, and the safety of drivers, especially in states like new jersey, but happens to be the most crowded state congestion-wise. look at what happened in colorado. thank you very much. host: let's go to michelle, who is calling from wisconsin. did i pronounce the name of your city right? caller: yes. thank you for taking my call. wisconsin, of course, has not legalized it in any way, shape or form, not even for medical. i have a son who has grand mall seizures and marijuana relaxes the brain enough where those seizures can get under control. unfortunately, they will not even take up. they would rather be in bed with

pharmaceutical companies and push medications that have a lot more side effects than marijuana. i do not understand up. it is a benefit for those who have seizure disorders, who are in cancer treatments. it helps with your appetite. i do not understand this. wisconsin is a farming state and a dairy state, and our farmers are struggling and i could not tell you how many farms have been shut down because they cannot make it. these farmers have often said if they could grow marijuana, they could get back on their feet. they could change their productivity from dairy to marijuana, yet our state will not even take it up. our farms are being closed. they are being bankrupted, basically, because they cannot afford to keep farming, and it

is so sad because we are a farming state and a dairy state. that could be a big revenue in our state to help out everybody with medical and recreational. host: let's go to raffael, who is calling from staten island, new york. caller: i am calling to oppose marijuana in new york. if it is not legal, you give the power to illegal organizations who call for force and violence to sell their product. if it is legal, it is regulated. you now take power away from the cartels, the people who supply it and bring it to the country in order to make a profit. at the same time, it reduces the amount of people who go to jail for marijuana crimes. i do not get it. lobbying, cartels, the people

who push the war on drugs. at the same time, it helps insurance companies. they make you take one medicine, there is a side effect, they take another medicine for the side effect. legalizing it is more effort, more money and more blood spent to preserve something we could be investigating. host: let's talk to catherine, who is calling from st. joseph's , michigan. good morning. caller: good morning. i oppose it and the reason why i oppose it is i grew up in the 1960's, i know what the 1960's did for our whole generation.

when we would see somebody who was a marijuana smoker, you would say the are a pothead because it does alter your brain. nobody is saying anything about the mental problems you have after using marijuana. when you are high, you are not 100% and -- all of these people who have smoked marijuana over the years, they are all in counseling. i just do not see how it will help our society if everybody is walking around high all the time. i do not think they should legalize the marijuana for medical reasons because all it does is give them the opportunity to want to do it recreational.

i think we should have left it in the hands of the pharmaceuticals and let them be the ones who took care of people who needed it for medical. i think we are opening a whole can of worms that this whole society does not want to address. host: let's talk to terry, who is calling from lafayette, indiana. good morning. caller: good morning, everyone. yes, i would like to claim that i had trouble with alcohol, i went to jail many times for using alcohol. resisting arrest, fighting the police, running from the police. i started using marijuana to stay away from alcohol. the 26 years i have been sober, i have been using marijuana instead of alcohol and i have not been in trouble since. the facts i would like to show to you is before they made the

laws for alcohol, there were no alcohol gangs. before they made the drug laws, there were no drug gangs. after they made the laws, murder and crime rates went up 70%. they repealed the alcohol law 13 years after they passed it and the murder and crime rate went down 70%, broke up all the alcohol gangs. it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out what they should do about the drug laws. you will cut the murder rate and crime rate in half or more. host: thank you to all of our callers and viewers for that segment. coming up next, john lott of the crime prevention research center will be here to discuss gun violence in the united states. later on, in our weekly spotlight series, the new republic's kate aronoff will

discuss the bipartisan infrastructure bill which she says is a gift to wall street and detrimental to the environment. stick with us, we will be right back. ♪ >> today on the communicators. >> republicans and democrats have been attacking big tech from all sorts of angles, and antitrust is one of them. they have coalesced on, we need tougher antitrust laws, more antitrust enforcement to go after tech companies but they have different reasons for doing so, even so they coalesce on the same solution. for democrats, it is rooted in a typical animosity toward big businesses in general and skepticism about corporations in general and the need to shrink them down to size. for the republicans, it is tied

to a culture war against technology companies in general, where they perceive them as biased against conservatives in the way they moderate content or their corporate culture. the antitrust portion of big tech is tied to their general feeling that tech companies are opting at them. >> watched the communicators with elizabeth nolan brown on her recent article today at 6:30 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> an intellectual feast. every saturday, events from our nation's past on american history tv. on sunday, book tv brings you the latest on nonfiction books and authors. learn, discover, explore. weekends on c-span2.

♪ >> "washington journal" continues. host: we are back with john lott, who is the president of the crime prevention research center and is here with us this morning to discuss gun violence in the united states. john, good morning. guest: thank you for having me on. i appreciate it. host: tell us what the crime prevention research center is, where you get your funding and exactly what you do. guest: we are about eight years old. we are group of academics from around the country, harvard, the university of chicago, the wharton business school, some places i have taught myself, former chief economist for the u.s. sentencing commission. i recently worked as an advisor to the department of justice. we know where the data is on lots of things.

we cover a lot of crime issues, everything from police shootings and gun control, to vote fraud type issues. host: we know gun issues are controversial in the united states. you recently ended up going to what you thought was a commencement address and it turned out to be something else. tell us what happened without. guest: for years, i have been trying to get debates with gun control groups, they refuse to debate you. they have an agreement among themselves not to debate me. i cannot tell you the number of times i have gotten calls from tv networks to come in and do a show and then be disinvited when they are told the gun control groups will not debate me on tv. what happened in this case was a very elaborate, very expensive hoax that a gun control group put together to get me to do a dress rehearsal for a

commencement address in las vegas. they set up a very good looking website that was there to get me to believe there was a school. they spent a lot of money on 20 staff members, big banners for the school, multiple tv cameras when i was there. i agreed to give a commencement talk to what i thought was a large graduating class of about 2000 high school seniors in las vegas. i thought, originally, i was going to give the type of talk i would give to my kids on how to pick a career and be successful. but then they asked me if i would go and give something about background checks, the name of the school was james madison, they wanted me to talk about james madison's role with

the second amendment. i told him i was not comfortable doing that because i do not think it is appropriate to give talks for commencement addresses that people perceive as being political. in any case, i finally agreed to do it. then they asked me to get down there a day earlier and i did. i gave the address. a 15 minute address. they ended up cutting it down into less than one minute of me talking. and they really distorted what i said. i can give you an example. one thing they have in the cuts is about background checks and me talking about gun control groups fighting tooth and nail against me on that. they completely reversed the meaning. anybody who has seen me talk about background checks knows i always say everybody wants to

stop dangerous people from getting guns. there is no question about that. i do not believe background checks work very well but if they make people feel better, that is fine. the problem is the current system is a mess. when biden 1.5 weeks ago talked about the 3 million prohibited people that have been stopped from buying guns because of background checks, that is simply false. what he should say is there have been 3 million initial denials and virtually all of those are false positives. about 99% of those are mistakes. it is one thing to stop a felon from buying guns. it is another thing to stop a person simply because they have a name similar to a felon from buying guns. those mistakes overwhelmingly occur against black males and hispanic males. it is a simple fix. have the federal government meet the same standards for doing

background checks that private companies have to meet. if private companies have an error rate that is 1/100 the rate of the federal government, they would be sued. gun control groups will fight you tooth and nail against these reasonable, simple fixes. there is no reason 3.5 million law-abiding americans are improperly stopped from being able to buy a gun to protect themselves and their families. they can appeal, but most people will need a lawyer. you are talking about starting costs of $3000 or more they're having to spend through no fault of their own. through my point -- they cut out the part about fighting against simple fixes -- they reversed the meaning of what i said. host: let's talk about what is going on right now with the uptick in deaths.

over 10,000 people have been killed in the u.s. over the first half of the year. we have a cnn story that says more than 230 people were fatally shot over the fourth of july weekend. what is causing this uptick? what is going on? guest: it is an uptick in violence across the board. gun deaths, or gun violence represents 10% of all violence in the united states. 90% does not involve guns. it has been an increase across the board. there is a simple reason -- last year, in many urban areas, more than half the inmates a been released from jail. police have been ordered to stand down or that budgets cut. you have that prosecutors in many major urban areas from philadelphia, to chicago, to st. louis, to san francisco come up

to portland come up to seattle, who are refusing to prosecute violent criminals. guess what -- you make it so it is not risky for criminals to commit crime. even when they rarely do get caught, they are not prosecuted. if it is not risky for them to commit crime, you will see a lot more crime. take chicago. over a year ago, the arrest rate for murders in chicago was 20%. it has gone down since then -- i don't know how much. gang murders are arrested at an even lower rate than the average. when you consider the rate they are prosecuted, you are talking about gang murders being prosecuted and convicted at a rate of about 10%. that is not very risky of them to go out and commit those crimes. host: do you see any of this to be involved with the pandemic and people and post-pandemic

reality, or is this just a normal swing up and down for crime statistics? guest: it is not normal. the pandemic had a sure role in the sense that you had large numbers of inmates being released from jails across the country. huge percentages. in many major areas, over half the inmates were released, many of them violent inmates that were released. that is part of it. part of it also has something to do with the election last year in the sense there were large, organized riots happening across the country. there was the derek chauvin case out of minneapolis, which served as a starting point for a lot of this going on. and so it became a partisan issue. you had many places,

minneapolis, where the city council voted to defund the police. $1 billion being cut from the police budget in new york city. other large cuts being made in police budgets around the country. it is not really surprising that the arrest rates go down and it is less risky for criminals to commit crimes. host: let me remind our viewers they can take part in this conversation. we will open up our regular lines. democrats, your number is (202) 748-8000. republicans, you can call in at (202) 748-8001. independents, your line is (202) 748-8002. keep in mind, you can always text us at (202) 748-8003. we are always reading on social media, on facebook and facebook.com/cspan come on

twitter, and you can also follow us on instagram. john, we have an abc/washington post poll the talk about how americans differ as what they see as a solution. 55% majority say more funding for police departments would be effective. about half, 51%, said stricter enforcement of gun laws would reduce crime, 46% said the same of tougher gun laws. eight in 10 democrats and seven and 10 independents say social workers helping police defuse situations would reduce violent crime, while just over four in 10 republicans agree. while roughly eight in 10 --

there are a lot of different opinions on how to deal with the current violence. what policies do you support, john? guest: i think giving more funds to the police, having more police on the street, having higher arrest rates, convicting people when they commit the crimes and not releasing this huge number of inmates from prison. i think that is all important. unfortunately, the biden administration focusing almost exclusively on gun violence misses 90% of the problem that is going on. people being raped, murdered in other ways not involving guns have been increasing, too. my concern is a lot of gun control laws the buy demonstration is pushing will make it costly and more difficult for law-abiding

citizens, particular the people most likely victims of violent crime -- poor blacks who live in high crime urban areas -- to be able to defend themselves. in washington, d.c., where we are, it costs $125 to privately transfer a gun. that might not stop you or i from up tenney a gun, but the very people who need it most, the $125 might make a difference between whether they can legally obtain a gun or not. that is only part of the problem. there are simple fixes the can be made. if you believe background checks reduce crime -- i am skeptical -- but if you believe they do, you want to encourage people to go and do the background checks. how is making people pay $125 to do the background check encouraging them to do that?

if you want to encourage them, pay for that background check out of general revenue. if you believe background checks reduce crime, they reduce it for everyone, not just a law-abiding person going out of their way to obey the law. if they benefit for everyone, as an economist, i would say everyone should pay. everyone who benefits should be paying. if you really believe these are big benefits that are there, pay out of general revenue and you would solve that problem. you would make it so the poor minorities, that are most likely victims of crime, will afford ways to protect themselves. police are extremely important. i think they are the most important factor. they always arrive on the crime scene after crimes occur. what should people do when they have to confront a criminal by themselves?

having a gun is by far the safest course of action to take. host: john, you brought up the biden abatis ration and what the current presidential administration is doing about guns and violent crimes right now. president biden addressed his concerns a few weeks ago and i will bring to you what president biden said. [video clip] pres. biden: crime historically rises during the summer. as we emerge from this pandemic, with the country opening back up again, a traditional summer spike might even be more pronounced than it usually would be. for folks at home, there is what you need to know -- i have been at this for a long time and there are things we know that work to reduce gun violence and violent crime, and things we do not know about. things we know about -- background checks for purchasing a firearm are important. a ban on assault weapons and

high-capacity magazines. nobody needs to have a weapon that can fire up to 100 rounds, i miss you think the deer are wearing kevlar vests. these efforts work. they save lives. over time, these policies were gutted and woefully underfunded. host: react to president biden there. guest: many times over the last couple months, biden has said the big increase in violence we have had over the last year has been due to lax gun control laws. i would like someone to ask the abatis ration or the president one time what gun control law changed this last year because i do not know of anything that could explain the big increase. if it is lax gun control laws,

why did they not increase it two years ago, three years ago, four years ago? i think it is pretty simple white increase, and that is the things we have been taught -- i think it is pretty simple why it has increased, it is the things we have talked about. there is no reason 3.5 million law-abiding citizens should be improperly stopped. overwhelmingly black males and hispanic males. the error rate for black males is 3.5 times their share of the population. there is no reason those mistakes should be occurring. there is no reason why those law-abiding people who need guns for self-defense, particularly now, should be stopped from protecting themselves and their families. host: lets let some of our

viewers take part in this conversation. we will start with cornelius who was calling from louisiana on the republican line. good morning. caller: good morning. god bless both of y'all. i am a military police officer. i served in the louisiana army national guard. i want to thank c-span for having john lott on. i joined the republican party, i was a democrat for a long time. what i wanted to say is blacks have always been denied guns. after the civil war, you can look at the history -- the white democrats did not want us to have guns. i believe you are right. we are trying to get constitutional carry in the louisiana, where everyone can carry a gun without a permit. can you talk about the history

of blacks trying to get guns? we were denied because our names might be similar. thank you, c-span, and god bless america. guest: sure. you do not need to go through a long history, just go through the stuff today. we recently got a hold of all the concealed carry permit carriers in los angeles county. los angeles and new york are different from the rest of the country. all you have to do is pay your fee, pass a criminal background check, do your training and it is up to you if you get a concealed carry permit. in places like los angeles and new york, you have to give a good reason to a public official -- and in these places, it is a democrat. in los angeles, you only have about 5% of the permit population being black, even

though they make up twice that share of the population. nationwide, about 14% of permit holders are black, which is close to their share of the population. is it just that blacks in los angeles do not have crimes being committed against them and do not have a reason for doing it? it is because the reasons they give are not approved by the politicians will prove whether or not they have a good reason. it is a similar issue with women in los angeles county. nationwide, about 30% of permit holders are women. in los angeles county, it is 7%. is it just that women are not being stalked or threatened? i will give you an example between illinois and indiana. illinois is a heavily democratic state, indiana is a heavily republican state. in illinois, .3% of the adult

population as a concealed carry permit, indiana, it is 20%. illinois, it costs over $400 to get a concealed carry permit. >> in illinois overwhelmingly white males who lived in the suburbs. in indiana, a bigger mix of people. many people living in high crime, urban areas who are able to go through the process of getting a permit. and the dual source of other things. -- and they do also's of other things. there's no training source in chicago. you're not allowed to take a permit concealed handgun on public transportation. if you are a poor black living in chicago and you don't own a car you have to borrow somebody's car for two to four

days to travel way outside of the city to get training to get a concealed carry permit. they went through everything they could in terms of the checklist to put in a huge cost. we are talking about the total cost of getting a permit. not the cost of buying a gun or the other fees you have to pay in illinois. it's not too surprising that when you have those huge costs, the very people, poor minorities , who are the ones stopped for having the option to legally defend themselves and their families. host: you brought up people needing a car to get the training. one of our social media followers has a question -- short statement about what they think should be done. this is from crag, in albany, new york. he says gun ownership he forced to get insurance just like car owners. what you think about that idea.

that idea? caller: if we treat cart -- guest: if we treat gun ownership like cars there would be revamp of many rules. you could drive your car from one end the country to another. if you have a concealed carry permit depends on whether your state has a reciprocity agreement with other states. if you are a truck driver you are not able to travel through may be illinois or california or new york for a number of other states that are there. or new jersey. so with regard to insurance, i think this is one way to make it particularly costly for people to go and defend themselves. the impact of this. there's a whole range of things they are trying to do, whether the cost of the background checks, or insurance, or a range

of other types of fees that they are trying to do on this. it's just a try to make it as costly as possible for people to be able to own guns to protect themselves. you have another side to this. which is not being taken into account with insurance. which is the benefits. people use guns defensively to stop crime. about five times more frequently than they are used to commit crime. are we going to pay people money because of the benefits they are producing? if you are going to make them after pentecost it seems like you have -- you want -- if you have them wanting to pay the cost you should also have the effect. it's the net benefit, not just making them pick up the cost. if you look at surveys of police officers, 76% think that private ownership of guns is extremely important or very important in terms of reducing crime. it makes their job easier.

that's why police officers overwhelmingly support private ownership of guns. are we going to pay people a fee for the fact that they are helping reduce police costs and making police jobs easier at the same time? you hear about things to make it costly. look at the proposal from the biden administration to go after rub gun dealers. everybody wants to stop rogue gun dealers but that's not what they mean. they have a zero-tolerance policy for any gun seller makes a mistake in terms of the paperwork. no matter how trivial. he put down the city name in the county box. what are they going to do? drive places out of business. make it more costly for people to go buy guns to protect themselves and their families.

when biden says that 5% of the gun dealers make up 90% of the guns that end up in criminals hands, he fails to note that 5% of the gun sellers make up 90% of the sales. they make up slightly more than their share of guns being used eventually by criminals. these are not people selling guns out of the back of their store. i could go on, but unfortunately i believe this is just one out of many ways of just making it costly. particularly minorities will be priced out of being able to buy guns. democrats are concerned about voter ids. they see -- they even free voter ids prevent poor minorities from being able to vote. what is a $400 fee do to people being able to defend themselves

and their families. what does $125 background checks in washington, d.c. due to people's ability to defend themselves and their families. what are the fees that the person that is running that down is going to do them. host: let's talk to robert, from chambersburg, pennsylvania, on the democratic line. caller: i've been listening to for 15 to 20 years and i agree with 100% of what you say but i will be honest. i think you're wasting your breath. these gun grabbing democrats and politicians that are supported by them, they want one thing, to disarm america. they want to take guns away from law-abiding citizens so we can defend ourselves. they want to make it dangerous to even walk down the street yet i think we ought to let them come and get it. come and take these from us now and we can get this all over

with in a few short months and put republicans back in power so they can keep the constitutional way it is supposed to be. thank you. guest: over the last year, one of the big increases in gun sales, because there has been a big increase in gun sales has been by democrats. many in urban areas have gone out and bought guns. they want the police to defend themselves but they realize there are limits on what the police have been able to do. i have been making what i think are reasonable suggestions to fix the gun laws. to try to make them work more reasonably. get rid of the mistakes in the background check system. make it so the poor people are able to pass background check rules. if you make those simple changes you could go and get your

universal background check system past tomorrow. but they fight against them. when i brought it up, they will fight me tooth and nail against those reasonable changes. and i've come to agree with the caller. the main motivation for why they pass these types of rules is to make it costly for people to be able to own guns. particularly to prevent poor minorities from being able to going get guns to protect themselves and their family i wish it was otherwise. tell me what reason you can have first system that creates about 3.5 million mistakes. where you have law-abiding stop buying guns. when all you have to do is make it that they base the same rules as private companies face. if the rules are good enough for

private companies, why is it so horrible to have the federal government have to meet the same standards for making sure there will be mistakes. do you want private companies to go out there and use roughly phonetically similar names to do background checks? there would be huge numbers of mistakes. it would be -- it would not be occurring if they were looking at similar names and similar birthdays. they would not think of doing that on their own. why is it ok that the federal government has those mistakes. host: let's talk to joann, falling -- calling in from nevada, on the republican line. caller: i worked for job corps in the 90's. that was an eye-opening experience for me. the thing was, the gang bangers

that i was a vocational instructor. the kids went to christmas and vacation and i moved a chalkboard which had a home murder plot. we had the reno pd and the university cops. but until they address the problems of the gang banging neighborhoods -- because compton, california. i got a lot of their kids. the women, girls, they would take a white baby and want to kill them. until they address that mentality, because it's the blacks. i heard a gentleman call on here saying he feels safer and his gang banging neighborhood. yes, you're probably grandpa gang banger. they are all related. we had generations. this has been fed into years --

for years. what are we gonna do. guest: a lot of our laws have been responsible for those types of problems you're talking about. the victims of these crimes are overwhelmingly black. that's why you have adam, in new york city, who had such strong support among the black community. because those are the ones being harmed when you have these riots three web parts of the cities do you think were being destroyed. whose jobs were being lost with the business is being closed? who owned those businesses? where are those people going to shop? they are not just the victims directly of the crimes in terms of the assaults or the murders. they are also the victims in many other collateral ways. murder in the united states is a

very localized problem. over half the murders in the united states take place in 2% of the counties. if you look at a murder map of those counties what you find is that almost two thirds of their murders occur within 10 block areas. murders are extremely heavily concentrated in tiny areas within the country. those areas, overwhelmingly the murders tend to be drug gang related. gangs fighting against each other over drug turf. i was listening to the call before i came on today, your talk about drug legalization and what have you it's a complicated problem. there's no nirvana. if you were to go and legalized tomorrow, it would do a similar thing that you have when alcohol prohibition ended in 1932. you have a 60% drop in murders

that occurred over the next two years. if you legalize drugs he would have more drug use. the price would go down, people would use more. and you would have more people addicted to it and problems there. it's not like you got nirvana in either case. he will either have or drug gang activity because there is a lower -- a learner -- a lower -- allure. maybe if you legalized it you could have the money being used on law enforcement and other thing to go deal with drug addiction. but you have to make a decision on which one those two problems you fear the most. host: we have a question from one of our social media followers. they want to know what are your thoughts and opinions about school administrators and teachers having a gun for protection against possible violent attacks including students. guest: i appreciate that.

it is something that has motivated a lot of my research for over 20. we recently put out a report that looked at all shootings in schools in the united states from 2000 up until the hand of 2018. there are 20 states that have teachers and staff being able to carry guns. in some of those states, any teacher with a permanent concealed handgun can carry. in others, texas, oklahoma, ohio, 40% of the school districts have teachers that carry. we have found that there was no attack of any type during any school hours were teachers were around carrying at any of the places where teachers are staff were able to carry. all the attacks in which somebody were harmed, wounded, or killed, occurred in places where teachers and staff were not allowed to carry.

you often have these concerns about teachers losing control of their guns or students getting a hold of it. you can look through the data. there is not one of those types of cases that has ever occurred in any of the schools that allow teachers or staff to be able to carry a gun. you can have a police officer in one of the schools, but they have an almost impossible job in stopping like a mass public school shooting. if they are the only person with the gun, and the attacker knows that, who do you think they will go after? having someone in uniform is like having somebody with a neon sign that says shoot me first. because the killer knows that once they take out that one person that has the gun, they are gonna have free reign to go after other people. there's no way a police officer has eyes in the back of their head. they cannot guard against everything. even if you're going to have a

police officer servant of school, having teachers or staff be able to carry makes the job of the officer safer because the attacker knows if they go after the police officer and reveal their position there is somebody behind them or to decide that they will have to worry about that could maybe stop them at that point. you look at the data and what you find is that none of the problem people have been concerned about have occurred when teachers and staff are carrying guns and you've not had any of the attacks that have occurred. we have had some increased school shootings over the last few decades. it's been occurring entirely in schools which have not allowed teachers and staff to be able to go and carry. host: let's go back to our phone lines and talk to jell-o on the independent line. good morning. caller: good morning.

god bless you. it irritates me that it's referred to as gun violence. the gun is violent. this issue of gun control from the biden administration, and most democrats, just don't believe they are concerned about human life and the safety of humans. they are anti-gun. they would like guns to be removed society. it's all gun control and its racist in my opinion. guest: 90% of violent crime does not involve guns. the people who are being harmed, the vast majority of violent crime in the united states has nothing to do with guns.

even if you could go to magically eliminate all criminal guns that are there, you are not to have -- juergen have a lot of violent crime. my concern is that a lot of the rules that get past are more likely to take guns away from law-abiding citizen as well as criminals. look at mexico, a couple tens of 1% of the mexican adult population legally owns gun. it's costly, difficult. they have one gun store in the country since 1973. the most powerful gun you can legally buy in mexico is a 22 caliber short round rifle. yet mexico has a murder rate that is six times the murder rates that we have here in the united states. it's gone up a lot because they have the types of gun control laws that they have. but i did have a criticism of

the callers comment. you have to acknowledge that guns make it easier for bad things to happen. but they also make it easier for people to protect themselves and prevent bad things from happening. you have to keep in mind that guns are used about five times more frequently each year to go and stop crimes then to go and commit them. you have to be careful. i will give you a simple. there are number places that have tried to ban handguns. washington, d.c. tried to ban all handguns. but there are other places in the world that have tried to do that. every single time that either all guns are all handguns have been banned, murder rates have gone up. this applies to gun control generally. you have to be careful that when you have a regulation it does

not primarily disarm law-abiding citizens. it's not that these criminals are paying for the background checks. if you pass a rule and ban guns as a simple example, turns out it's the most law-abiding good people who turn in their guns. not criminals. to the extent that you disarm law-abiding citizen relative to criminals, you actually make it easier for criminals to commit crime. one time, one place where they banned guns, murder rates went down or stayed the same. yet every time they went up, guns are bad. then murder rates should fall but they go up every time. host: we would, the president of the crime prevention research center for being on with us and talking about the gun violence in the united states. john, thank you so much for your time.

guest: people can find more at our website. thank you. host: coming up next. we are going back to our original question. we want to know what your view of marijuana laws in your status. we want to know what your view is. you can see the numbers on the screen. we will take your calls when we come back. ♪ [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2021] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> former president trump gives or marks on the conservative legal action conference in dallas on sunday. watch live at 4:45 on c-span.org, or listen on the free c-span radio app. >> sunday night on q and a, donald ritchie tells us about drew pearson, a man who do real

the political careers of several members of congress and attracted the attention and anger of every president from fdr to nixon. >> he called -- he had a column called the washington merry-go-round which appeared in almost 600 newspapers every day. he did that from 1932 until he died in 19 nine. -- 1969. it continued under jack anderson. he had a sunday night radio show . he tried to make it into television in the early 50's. he was a best-selling author for his books. he was a man who told the truth. he said when you hit the truth that hurts the most. he told what politicians would prefer not to see in the newspapers and try to get behind the news. to tell people is really going on in washington. he ruffled a lot of feathers. especially presidents, senators, representatives, british prime

minister's and other politicians. >> donald ritchie, sunday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span's q and a. you can also listen to q and a as a podcast wherever you get your podcasts. >> washington journal continues. host: we are back and we want to know what your view of marijuana law is is in your state. we want to know what you think about it. if you support your state's current marijuana laws, whether the state makes it legal, allows only medical or recreational, if you support your state's current law we want to hear from you at (202) 748-8000. if you oppose your state's current loss, no matter what they are, we want to know why. call us at (202) 748-8001.

before we get to the conversation i want to bring to you a story about amazon, one of the nation's largest employers. now saying that in some instances it will no longer test for marijuana use and its businesses. this comes out of cnn. amazon is one of the first major corporations to arrive to the cannabis reform party. it publicly plans to relax its drug testing policies and to back federal legalization efforts. and now it's a question of how many others will follow, especially during a time when some firms are desperate for workers. amazon kicked off june with an announcement that it should not testing cannabis as part of its screening program for positions not regulated by the u.s. department transportation. the company also said it would back the federal marijuana opportunity reinvestment and expungement act.

a bill aimed at the scheduling marijuana and reassessing past cannabis convictions. that's amazon, one of the country's largest employers saying that some situations will no longer test for marijuana and will support federal decriminalization of marijuana. what do you think about the loss in your state -- the laws in your state or let's start with braddock, in st. louis, missouri. -- brad in st. louis, missouri. caller: i'm 64 and support the full legalization of marijuana. i don't partake but i have seen too many lives ruined because they are smoking a plant. i don't think it's that dangerous. and there are so many reasons to explore and research this plant that's been around humankind for tens of thousands of years. so there's my opinion. host: scotty is calling from

fort hearn, michigan. caller: good morning. i oppose the marijuana thing. in michigan it's just a joke. it's like the old west. people -- it's all about money. you take john boehner, the old speaker the house, he's involved in it. nothing but to make money, money, money. the marijuana has no good for the brain. the guy just brought up marijuana as a plant. it should be legal, people -- copies are a plant -- poppies are a plant and do nominee people are oda not heroin -- oda -- oding on heroin? marijuana should be illegal. it's no good. it's ruining the brains of the youth area it's a communist

conspiracy. get rid of it. host: let's talk to james, calling from endicott, new york. caller: i support the new york laws for medical marijuana. we are on her way to legalizing marijuana. i want to say, i would like to see it taken out of control of drug dealers and gangs. i don't think that -- i know there are some statistics that say if you legalize marijuana the harder drugs will be used more often and the drug dealers will get a hold of that. but by the same token -- it's a tough situation. a lot of people addicted to various drugs. data no.

i honestly don't know what the solution is. i don't like to see the use of drugs. but to see people penalized because of a marijuana violation and not able to get a job. i think part of the solution is changing the law so an employer cannot discriminate against hiring somebody who has one of those. people change. when you are young a lot of time to take drugs and realizes get older it's not smart. it's affecting your potential career. people change. they become law-abiding citizens. go ahead and legalize it. that's the solution. host: let's go to mike, calling from marion, iowa. caller: from a medical

standpoint, when i was seven i was pushed out of the barn and i hit my head. and i got brain trauma from that . i would have the rest of my life involved by epilepsy. severe headaches from the time i hit my head. i was introduced to marijuana at an earlier age and i did not understand it and i didn't do it all the time. i was a kid. i would go to a friends house maybe. but eventually i have realized as i was growing up in my teens, depending on the severity of the headache it would get rid of the headache. or get it down to where i could do my schoolwork.

or do my job. and function. i'm definitely a proponent for marijuana. i think with the amount of people that have the problems that they do, and they can get to a doctor. not everybody in america can get to a doctor. i think it should be legalized. host: let's talk to ruth. good morning. caller: good morning. how are you? and thank you for c-span. i oppose marijuana. i'm opposed to any drug that takes something that keeps you from being able to learn and function be normal in life.

i have seen so much of it in my life. i have seen people sitting up on the streets, beautiful girls in show business, young people going into drug places and get the marijuana. the next thing you know they are in the street. we don't need this. you have young people coming up, a new generation. we want to see the generation without using drugs. a generation that eats properly. a generation can function and help us in our life. keep giving the marijuana and they will not be around to help you. host: let's go to olivia, calling from pennsylvania. good morning. caller: yes. i am for the legalization of marijuana. i had a hemorrhagic stroke about

11 years ago in march. i'm going to tell you something, my heart stops every night. my husband give me one puff, he buys marijuana legally -- i am for it. for it. i had that hemorrhagic stroke 11 years ago. massive. i have seizures. i had a grandma seizure after -- grand mal seizure after the stroke. i don't know what to do. can you tell me what to do? can anyone tell me what to do? host: tom is calling from winterhaven, florida. caller: good morning. before i begin, the caller that

mentioned epilepsy. i have epilepsy and i take zina barbara tell -- and i take a medication. legally i have to show my id for it. with gun violence, what's going on with that, just based on casual observation in the news, it seems like it's definitely linked to the war on drugs. host: we are talking about marijuana laws. you are in florida, what do you think about florida's decision to allow medical marijuana? caller: i think it should be medical and recreational. legal it come -- legalize it, regulate it, and accept. -- tax it. host: let's go to mary, in philadelphia, pennsylvania. caller: i oppose recreational marijuana. because the government has no control over who is actually

issuing the marijuana drugs. because they have already documented that they are mixing marijuana with other illegal substances which is basically making people out of control. k2 is very high in philadelphia, pennsylvania. and they can't trace it. so the government needs to make sure they have total control over any controlled substance, all background checks, do not privatize like we have in the past. based on gun control. illegal substance in this country. if we should not privatize anything that the government cannot find -- sign off on. when we privatize and give it to the hands of private industry, you cannot find who signed off

on background checks. that's the problem that we have in this country. host: let's go to mike, in iron mountain, michigan. good morning. caller: good morning. thank you for the format. i am totally for the legalization of marijuana for the state of michigan. i have suffered from two types of cancer, both similar types of cancer, cll and lymphoma. basically, anything that i have tried to have prescribed by doctors, the side effects, headaches, migraines, vomiting, rashes from head to toque, sores -- had to toe. medical marijuana doesn't give me any of that.

a couple of miles from the house we have a dispensary. i see more out of state cars from wisconsin than i do see from my own michigan. which is a little disturbing. host: let's see what our social media followers are saying about their views on marijuana laws in their states. here's a post from facebook that says i don't like it, never have, not my jam. there are drugs -- drug studies that show health benefits. alcohol is far more dangerous. the question is, will the alcohol and pharmaceutical companies loosen their grip? legalize it, let people make their choices. here's a text that says if you are for medical marijuana because it makes people feel better, why doesn't everyone deserve to feel better? another facebook post that says support the legalization but

having problems with the plantation. statewide legal, but county to county laws differ and cops are seizing crops and ruining lives. also we have to get -- have to let people out of jail and clean the offenses off their records. there's a facebook post that says legalize, regulate, tax. and one last one that says i don't support california cannabis laws. despite making it legal they have imposed taxation and regulation that makes it impossible, except for big businesses to do startups. it also has not created jobs. it's been a huge job. and stop calling it marijuana. let's go back to our phone lines , jerome, in pineville, arkansas. you're on. caller: the reason that i oppose

my state laws against marijuana is because i don't want her alana legalized -- marijuana legalized. i have sold marijuana illegally. i personally don't agree with the legalization. the government will do it in the weed sucks. why would you want to pay more money for weed that sucks and cost more. host: we had a former dealer from the west coast on earlier who said that he had transitioned and illegally selling marijuana on the west coast -- had transitioned legally to the legal sales. what would be response? caller: you have a person who is been arrested for selling marijuana in the past, they can

go through the -- if they can go through programs to be a proper licensing program, because there have been people selling us from long time [indiscernible] some of us have been arrested for selling illegally and we know that we have a lot of knowledge. is there a way for us to be legally certified? because it is simple [indiscernible] you just make it accessible to a small minority. host: let's go to ricky, calling from philadelphia, pennsylvania. good morning. caller: good morning. i am for the use of marijuana because i'm a desert storm veteran.

the reason for me, you know those opioids of the pharmaceuticals put out. that's taken out some of the younger generation, mainly in states like west virginia. and most of the servicemen, they go to opioids which is more dangerous than marijuana. i've heard most of the other callers that are opposed to marijuana. but alcohol is dangerous. it says that it's dangerous on the pack of weed, causes lung cancer. and on marijuana, you don't see anybody getting -- dying over marijuana like opioids or crack cocaine or anything like that. but it's been stigmatized, people getting locked up for for

small amounts. but i am all for it. i'm all for the use of marijuana. and hopefully, in the near future, the federal government sees the benefit evidently approve it. host: let's go to richard in blackhawk, colorado. caller: good morning. ain't you -- thank you. i'm calling from the great set of colorado where we legalized many years ago. the money that is collected from taxation -- host: are you still there? caller: yes. the money collected from taxation from licensing fees has been used for rose, education, extend collecting millions and millions of dollars over the years. it should be federally legalized

. there could be lots of money collected. i'm not a prescription drug user , but i do use marijuana to great effect. it takes away depression among other things. and it's a personal choice. personal choices should be left up to the people of this country. host: let's go to jim, calling from california. caller: good morning. i'm calling because california has more duis after they passed the marijuana law than they did. i think the bad parts of marijuana outweigh the good parts. that's gotta say. host: let's talk to lance,

calling from fort lauderdale, florida. caller: good morning. i support the change to medical marijuana in florida. i'm a chronic pain patient trade i've been on a morphine regimen for more than a decade and will be on one for the rest of my life so i can function. i'm also disabled. my medication is paid for by the united states government. with the laws where they are now with dipping a scheduled one drug, i can't get my marijuana car with medicare. i can't afford to do it myself or to pay the $25 a gram for it. if i could get it and it was not a schedule one drug it could decrease the amount of morphine i have and make my life better. but i can't because it is scheduled and medicare cannot

cover it. nobody thinks about folks like me who are elderly and disabled and do not have the funds to pay $125 every six months and then you have to pay $25 a gram for marijuana. host: kate is calling from adrian, michigan. good morning. caller: i want to say, briefly, after listening to that fella, my experience is that marijuana is extremely expensive to buy. i will start with that. i was looking at a site on dispensaries in our community. part of the line michigan is that you have to do something to support some kind of organization. so what this dispensary does is gives part of its money to the local soup kitchen, the daily bread.

i think that's written in the law. the other part that i read about was the effort to get people out of prison who are sitting there -- anyway. they were arrested for marijuana and now it's legal and i think it would be extremely difficult to sit there in prison realizing that it's legal. those were couple points i wanted to make. host: we would like to thank all of our callers for that segment. coming up in the weekly spotlight on magazine series, our guest will discuss the bipartisan infrastructure bill which she says was a gift to wall street and detrimental to the environment. she will be with us in just one second. >> weekends on c-span two,

bringing the best of american history. american history tv explores the nation's past and book tv features leading authors discussing their latest books. today, a war veteran calls that are called his experience, including the day his vehicle was hit by an ied in his road to recovery. on lectures in history, and emory university professor teaches the class on the ufo conspiracy theory in american culture. our changes in public opinion about extraterrestrials offered parallel -- often paralleling societal anxieties. find a full schedule on your program guide or visit c-span.org/history. coming up monday on c-span, federal and state supreme court judges testify before a house judiciary subcommittee about

having g -- diversity in the judicial branch. that's live at 10:00. at 1:00, the house administration committee for hearing on congressional authority. on c-span2, health agriculture subcommittee meets to review income eligibility requirements for food assistancerograms. and then the senate is back to consider the nomination for the under secretary of state for the -- washington journal continues. host: we are back with kate arnott, who is here to discuss a bipartisan infrastructure bill which seat -- she says is a gift to wall street and detrimental to the environment. kate, good morning. caller: good morning. host: the bipartisan structure bill, which has been endorsed by the white house and we expected to be pushed into the senate later this month. but the version they are working on cut out some of the president's key climate

initiatives. including carbon free electricity and clean energy tax incentives. why were those pieces left out? what effect does not have on the bill? caller: to give it a little context, when we talk about things being cut out, like that american job plan which the biden administration put out, we already have people paying attention to what's happening in the atmosphere. this plan, the american jobs plan was about $1 trillion of climate spending over eight years. which is about 1% of gdp, and really nonpar within existential crisis or what economists say is necessary. so the american jobs plan was already -- and in the bipartisan infrastructure package, by virtue being negotiated is much

smaller than that. there's two things that i think are important to focus on about what that packages, there's a spending limit -- there's spending on climate which is a few billion dollars each for great investments, -- grid investments, and for electric vehicles much smaller. which was the pledge that the president made coming into office. and there was also a mechanism -- we have been looking at the -- over the last [indiscernible] like this program borrow from australia, basically to selloff on top of an exchange for quick cash to build more public assets and other infrastructure. and there's a way to put public goods, things like water pipes, water systems, or electricity

grids, all of these things are critical to living life in the united states. selling it to private actors who want to extract user fees and do that for cash which may or may not be enough to fund the venture. public-private ships are big part of how the that partnership is -- public private partnerships is a big part of how -- was going to pay for this. [indiscernible] giving house democrats and senator something they can run on for reelection. republicans would never be interested in passing something to attack all the climate crisis . but even something that is broadly popular that could help them cracks with real -- help

democrats with reelection. this is sort of a poison pill. there is some of this critical infrastructure that we need to deal with the climate crisis and they put it in the hands of paul whose goal -- the hands of people whose goal is to extract profit which -- from things that nobody should be extracting profit from. and to make a return to their investors. that's when i in this article and other advocates have argued this as well. we could see an infrastructure plan which is worse for the climate overall. partly because we know that traditional infrastructure packages which concrete, big carbon investments, the need to be balanced out. they need to take carbon away from the projections we have.

and that -- included in this bill will probably not balance this. i don't have the degree to say for sure exactly the carbon intensity. in part because we have so few details about it. but it's worrying that even through compromise legislation, the compromise has been with her -- widowed down -- winnowed down so much. we have to see what happens with reconciliation. we don't have great signals so far. host: you address this a bit in your statement, but i want to ask this question directly there has been a lot of talk about the definition of infrastructure during this whole debate. that brings up the question, are climate concerns -- is this the

place to have that discussion? in the middle of an infrastructure bill? infrastructure isn't about climate, is it? caller: i would say infrastructure is all about climate. look at the last couple of weeks . look at the pacific northwest. there were transit line whose wires were melting in the heat. the building that collapsed in miami, the below it -- that you don't of been built. there's critical infrastructure weaknesses. our infrastructure is not set up to deal with this. if you look at hurricanes, he bay street i live in new york city. after about an hour of rain the other day you saw people waiting -- waiting -- wading through the subway systems. it looks like titanic.

that's what many subway stations looked like. so we have an infrastructure that is not equipped to deal with the climate crisis. we hear this line often from republican that this is all extraneous to a debate about roads, bridges, and the focused infrastructure conversation. nothing could be further from the truth. all infrastructures going to have to deal with the climate crisis. and this could be a way to make sure that you're dealing with it. to lower emissions instead of dealing with them. that's not been where republicans really want that conversation to go. there was this call with greenpeace and last week there was a transcript with

[indiscernible] and he said honestly on the call , very transparent about what exxon wanted from washington, lame -- lawmakers, all of this discussion. it something that we are trying to do to refocus. instead they want to focus on just the traditional things. it's not too hard to parse out why republican might be saying that. especially those who take a lot of money and have regular meetings with exxon mobil. host: our viewers can take part in this conversation and we will open up the regular lines. for democrats (202) 748-8000. for republicans (202) 748-8001. for independents (202) 748-8002. you can text us at (202) 748-8003.

we are always reading on social media on facebook and facebook.com/c-span, also on twitter and instagram. kate, the infrastructure package in front of congress right now has money to build the national network of electric vehicle charging stations. they are going to purchase thousands of electric buses and upgrade the grid. is that good enough? caller: no. it's good. it's not good enough. especially if you look at the scale. electric vehicles are positive. we live in a country where a lot of people drive and people should have cleaner transportation options to get to work. but the american jobs plan mentioned that it would fund 500,000 electric vehicle charging station. that requires tens of billions

of dollars. what we are getting in the most recent proposal was $7.5 billion in grants to build electric charging stations which could produce maybe a couple thousand. definitely not 500,000. and another tax credit to maybe incentivize some corporation somewhere down the line to build these things. if we are investing in the climate crisis as a thing that's worth spending public money on and worth protecting the united states from this really dire challenge, we could spend that money directly. there is no shortage of cash to go around in the u.s. government. there's no reason we cannot spend the money directly instead of using this tried-and-true method of coaxing private capital along.

there are strings attached. so even by the administration's own terms, they are not going to get to the 500,000 charging stations. that should be worrying. this is a small part of what we should be getting. we need electric transit, we need funding for trains buses, high-speed rail. all these things requires many millions of dollars. it's not controversial logic about deficit spending. if you put it towards investments you get the money back. there is no need to be beholden to those who put public assets into the hands of private capital. you don't -- you can make those investments directly through the

federal government instead of helping that private companies will come along and make good investments and make them work. we have too many examples of private companies building public infrastructure which falls short. they don't have the expertise. that should be in the federal government host: i think you just touched on this a bit. but explained us how this would benefit wall street. guest: sure, one thing -- i did not have details as of yet, but i laid out a couple of these reasons in the article. there are all of these documents in major banks that we are really excited. to put these things on their balance sheets. have the government the risk and

what that means is essentially that the government will come in and shoulder all of the project. they will come in and say, if you lose money on this, if you are going to take a cut, we will absorb that cost. that is the role the government traditionally played and that has allowed wall street to come in, take no risk, just make profits off of critical climate infrastructure through assigning user fees which has been the case for highways. to set up climate infrastructure like the highways. it makes it expensive to beyond, -- be on. that becomes a steady asset class for whether or not

blackrock or goldman sachs or any of these companies who very much like to have something steady and robust, but those goals, the go street -- the goals of wall street investors are not the same. -- the same as climate change solving. to make our basic binational -- foundational infrastructure, the things we need to get through our lives, to get to school, to get to work, to get home, to make that contingent on private companies making a profit is irresponsible. that is why myself and others argue that this could be dangerous, actively harmful beyond spending on climate change being lower than it needs to be. host: that some -- let's let some of our viewers take part. let's start with pamela from new york on the democratic line. pamela, good morning. caller: good morning, i have not heard from the beginning what

kate had to say because i just tuned in. but i have some things to say about both of these topics. i am a senior citizen and from 2001 -- between 2001 and 2009, i drove the country from new york to california six times. back and forth. i was completely appalled at the infrastructure problems we have in america. i did not even know the extent to what it was until i drove these highways. and i have done the northern route and i had down the southern route and i can tell you if the american people who want to go on vacation just take a drive, across the country, they will see that the infrastructure is crumbling. -- crumbling in america. it is horrific. i do not even know a whole lot about that, what it takes, but i

note that is the price of a two by four would make your hair stand on end. the fact is, we need the money to do this and it is going to be next to impossible to get this through congress. that is one thing. i have a question about that in a minute. the other thing about climate is, i just came back from oregon in june. i lived out there for a year and a half trying to be closer to my son. between the covid -- it was enough when it shut. i got there in the fall of 2019. when covid struck, that was bad enough. what got me back to my home state in new york was the firestorms. in oregon, washington, northern california. i really thought that was going to be the end of me, i am 73 years of age and i could not to another firestorm in that state. i am telling you now, if you do not believe it, climate has something to do with it.

my son is 46 years old, he was born in portland, oregon, and it used terrain 282 days on the average -- to rain 282 days on average and now they are in a drought. if you do not think that is just enough proof, i do not know what to tell you. but the question i have about this is, you touched on it a bit saying, what is the deal with the finances of doing this? what is the real bottom line that congress does not pass this? is it just about money with the corporations? can they really ignore this knowing that their own grandchildren and great-grandchildren are going to be affected sunday? -- someday? guest: thank you so much. i would just really emphasized the first two parts of your question. infrastructure is really crumbling around the country and the american jobs plan, which is much more ambitious, was doing

the ordinary functions of what government should do, invest in it. in roads and bridges and in many things that are essential to deal with climate crisis, i would thank you for that and i would emphasize that and i am glad to hear your son is all right. that is the situation so many people are facing. the places where they grew up are no longer behaving the way they expected them to. this is something that should be obvious to people who are living through this, the people who have worked outside or in warehouses that get up to 120 degrees in portland, oregon. that is not normal, right? that is not something that anyone should have to deal with and something that would not be possible as recent scientists have found were not for the climate crisis. the heatwave would not happen happened -- would not have

happened if it were not for rising temperatures. there is a willful ignorance among republican lawmakers in particular about this crisis and there is no shortage -- in periods of crisis, it is a fraction of what we are dealing with now. we will reshape the country within. if we spend no money, that will be further work. if we spend the money, this country will be reshaped, our environment will be reshaped and that will lead people out of their homes or lead people to running to different parts of the country. it will make parts of this country uninhabitable if we do not invest in our infrastructure. and republicans, you know, know that. that is the lie that we have been good at testing, they do not believe in these things, the republicans did nothing climate change is happening. i think that gives us too much

credit and we know again and again, seeing people saying this frankly, whether at conferences or i read a book that touched on this, they know the climate crisis is happening, they know how bad it is, they have constituents who are dealing with the stuff day in and day out in places like california. you know, minority mccarthy, his constituents are dealing with climate change. they also know how big the scale of the crisis is and what the sort of sweeping policy changes would be needed. they note that that represents -- they know that represents a threat to business as usual and that has been dangerous to their donors and in many cases -- study after study has shown us that continuing to dig up fossil fuels is not going to get us where we need to be and that model of these companies is on a

collision path. taking on this crisis, even passing and for structure, which can help, which will not get rid of the climate crisis, we have about 1.1 degrees celsius -- what we are seeing now will get more intense in the coming decades what we can do now is head off the worst of that and keep ourselves from getting to two degrees celsius and make the full court press to do that. and build and infrastructure that is equipped to adapt to the changes we know are coming. the escalation of the types of heat waves plus hurricanes that we have seen over the last weeks. i know that the republicans know this full well. host: this seems to be a good point to define a couple of key

terms from your story. first, tell us what critical climate infrastructure is and second, talk to us about what esg assets are because these are important when we talk about the businesses and infrastructure. guest: sure, yeah. first one, critical climate infrastructure is not a practical term. i use it in a broadway to refer to and for structure. as we discussed -- it will be essential to dealing with the climate crisis and this is basically everything. there was no infrastructure which will not have to deal with the climate crisis. when you look at the roads, the highways that are going to be hit by harder weather, that in some cases are ill-equipped to deal with extreme heat in some parts of the country. those will need to be proofed again cap fires, floods, all of

these effects coming our way. bridges, they are the things that can break down if -- and take a lot of stress under extreme weather. we know they will need it more likely. even the bread and butter traditional infrastructure things, where republicans and exxon mobil and these traditional infrastructure investments, where fossil fuels -- those are climate infrastructure, critical climate infrastructure because there is no piece of infrastructure that is not affected by the climate crisis. there is no part of the country that cannot be affected by the climate crisis. this is the terrain on which all politics is happening and we cannot ignore it. that is the reality we are living in. these are the things we had seen getting much worse in every part of the environment. esg is a technical term,

environmental social and governance factors that his -- has evolved a bit in the last several years. that term traditionally referred to a investment where investors in companies like blackrock or vanguard, these big institutional investors, or people who are putting their money there to say, i want to make -- these funds that screen for these factors. with that transformed into with the rise of green vines, green bonds, a fleet of things not well defined, that transformed into a suite of asset classes which there is not a great definition of, the conversation is a bit more advanced. -- more advanced in the eu then

here. -- than here. that can be anything, including something which arguably are not sort of needed to deal with the climate crisis. anything that sounds a bit green can fall into that category. and, you know, that does not go to discussion of what esg means. it is primarily a way for wall street investment banks and companies to make themselves look green by offering green funds and esg funds and building that culture as a revenue stream. there is not a great definition for what that actually means as of now because we are still evolving. host: we will try to get some of our callers in here, let's start with david, calling from massachusetts.

david, good morning. caller: good morning, sir. thank you for having me on. it is north acton, massachusetts. i did not hear -- staff writer there. are you with me? host: keep going, david. caller: i do not know if she has a degree as an economist, as a finance major, as an engineer, or science, i do not know what. she is all over the waterfront. let me go from -- to a larger example. in this time, we have woke select persons who want to have electric charging stations in the town. many people did not want to do, but it happened. they told us at the same time

that they would not use any of our tax dollars to buy an electric car for any of the town's departments. within a year, they bought an electric car for the fire department when quality was readily available for the same purpose. that is in a microcosm. we go to the much larger thing, that they want to essentially take that same example and have it all across the u.s. at a great expense to taxpayers and never mentioned the level of pollution that the chinese -- that china puts today or india puts out. we never talk about that. it is not in the discussion at all. yet they are polluting far beyond what we have a clue. now, people have talked about the infrastructure in this country. i have driven on these roads. i am approaching 70 years of

age. in my working history, it has brought me back and forth across the country. we have been doing nothing but building new roads and bridges as long as i can remember. almost everywhere you go in this country, they either have recently completed new bridges and roads, are in the process of building new bridges and roads, so for some to say that it is all crumbling, i am sure that there is some stuff that still needs work, but a heck of a lot of work has been going on for the past 30 plus years. host: go ahead and respond, kate. guest: sure. there's a lot to respond to. i would say that we have different readings of what is happening and that is ok. i am sorry that your town of massachusetts bought an electric charging station without consulting you, is maybe what it sounds like. i would say that federal

infrastructure investments in any climate smart infrastructure -- i am not hearing the downsides of that. is it bad? are your town bought it -- or your town bought it. i know that the climate crisis is happening, people are dealing with it in the here and now and we have an interceptor that's it up to deal with it. -- ann infrastructure not set up to deal with that. host: does bite and have an overall policy on how to fight climate change? there are two types of climate infrastructure, does that help mitigate climate change and those that fortify structures against it. which does this infrastructure bill spend the most money on? guest: i would say the latter, and that is a good question. i would say this is more -- in

the bipartisan package, it is geared toward sort of making our existing infrastructure more resilient. what we have not seen and maybe what the commenter was getting not -- getting at was a broader use of power, around what can happen through executive action, other arms of the u.s. government, that does not an easy set for the interceptor package -- for the infrastructure package. that can do a lot, we can get something to electricity standards, not in the bipartisan infrastructure package, but in a reconciliation bill where more is possible. with a partyline vote. it is hard to do under the government's purview, like

regulate in carbon dioxide, which during the obama administration came under a lot of pressure, was held in a lot of lawsuits, but there is a broad goal that the administration can use in raising capital requirements are for wall street banks to invest in fossil fuels so that they have -- it raises the cost in investing in fossil fuels. what we are seeing in the infrastructure proposal is a small fraction of what is needed to deal with this crisis. and even that is much smaller than what we would hope for that segment of it to be. host: let's talk to randy calling from alabama on the democratic line. randy, good morning. caller: hi, how are y'all doing this morning?

host: go ahead. caller: she reminds me a lot -- the world will come to a end in 10 months, 10 years, and we listen to that forever. thank you. host: do you consider that a compliment or not, k? guest: when i was younger, -- that is hard to hear. the climate crisis has gotten worse. i do not think you need to look at anything beyond the last couple of weeks. that we really are facing an existential crisis in this country and around the world. it empirical reality would show for that fact. host: let's talk to louis from marlborough, massachusetts on the republican line. good morning. caller: good morning.

hi to your guest too. i am fifty-year it -- i'm a 58-year-old man. i have seen democrats and republicans fighting it out over votes. when it comes down to it, each party wants to get the other party out of office. the green new deal is a great deal, i care about the planet as well. it is not really one of our talking points because we really want to move ahead with and. we do. i understand kate's point where it does affect bridges and i get it. you have to have something to deal with the environment. i get that part. great talking point on her part too. but the bottom line is, what are we going to do? it is a serious question. electric, does not run by coal? if we have all electric cars, i get it, what will happen?

we will still pollute the atmosphere with coal. how many -- not wind mills. how many turbine plants do we need? how many solar paulos doing it. -- solar panels do we need? where will we put this? won't that affect the environment too? beside looking for votes, talk to me and the people so we can all pitch in. republicans and democrats. i will leave it at that. guest: that is a great question. i would agree with most of that than i disagree. i think electric vehicles are a really -- i am confused because exactly as your guest said, if we have electric vehicle charging stations run out of coal, that can be worse for the planet. then if we had standard internal combustion engine cars running around. i do not agree with any of that. i am not looking for any votes to subscribe to the new

republic. it underlines for me what the scale of this transformation entails. we know that this has to be a transformation to invest in the grid, to bring things on to the electric grid. a small amount of activity happens on that grid. it is coming from sources that are not coal, oil, and natural gas and methane gas essentially in the long run. this is a massive problem. i am frustrated that from a different end of the political spectrum -- these little things around the edges are going to get us where we need to be. i think people should have a say in deciding where solar panels go because some covered companies should not come in and build those in your backyard

without a say on how those spaces are used. these sorts of investments, which are on the table in the american jobs plan, could really do a lot for folks who had a hard couple of years around this country. i do not think having that over to private companies to get us -- is going to get us to where we need to be and it could feel some backlash because of people -- they see a wind developer coming in, making a huge profit off of something that they were not informed about, maybe they are not seeing dollars returned to them in a real way, seeing jobs go to their neighbors or the people around them. why would they support that? that speaks to the needs of structure and infrastructure

package that shares those benefits widely. that will get people essay -- a say. over where the job go for these projects. host: let's go to york, pennsylvania on the democratic line. good morning. caller: good morning. i want to say thank you for having this platform. i just drove from the houston, texas area to pennsylvania. about two weeks ago. our infrastructure needs help and credibly and i fear almost that unless there is incredible loss of life like a bridge collapses, that our politicians will take heat -- he dealt these important counties. you will see a difference from the west of one state to another.

it is nationally detrimental to the everyday man -- we get this done as soon as possible, not down the road, not in five years, but right now. this is very much needed and i do not think a lot of the people making the decisions with the votes have traveled these roads. thank you. guest: yeah, i do not have much to add onto that. what i will say is, what your infrastructure looks like is incredibly lovely. i always think about the county where i grew up, you drive from one county to the other, the roads will get bumpier in the county i lived in and will be less maintained. that is the reality for a lot of people. places like new york city where i live now, wealthier zip codes, will be able to deal with the climate crisis and have higher

tax rates in many cases and they will cover a lot of the investments needed to make our infrastructure resilient, to make the roads resilient against the climate crisis, but that will not be everyone. that is the important thing, to level the playing field and make sure everyone has infrastructure that can withstand what is coming in the next couple of decades. host: let's see if we can get omar from san diego, california. can you get a quick question in for us? caller: yes. i definitely agree with the infrastructure as far as roads, especially in california. but then there are those subject to plate tectonics. please get off the kick of climate change, so the up --

study up -- unfortunately, your generation is pretty much lost on that subject as far as climate change in the previous caller regarding india and china. it is always america first on this. if other countries are not willing to cooperate. at climate change is real, which i believe it is not scientifically speaking, then it is lost. as far as electric vehicles and what have you, get out that kick in the people do not want electric vehicles. it is a political scan. we need to stop -- start talking scientifically. thank you very much. guest: i would say that i wrote about that addressed these points called "overheated: how capitalism broke the planet and how we fight back." if you are curious to a number

of those talking points, you can find it on that book, "overheated: how capitalism broke the planet and how we fight back? i would consult that with answers to this question. host: we would like to thank kate aronoff writes for the new republic for being with us this morning and talking about her article, the bipartisan infrastructure bill is a gift to wall street at the planet's expense. thank you for coming here this morning. guest: thank you for having me. host: we will like to thank all of our guests, our callers, and our viewers for joining us for another washington journal this morning. we will be back again tomorrow morning at 7:00 a.m. for another edition, everyone, have a great saturday and please remember to continue washing your hands. have a great day, everyone. ♪

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