especially good view. the national book review -- he has not written a memoir, so much as a report from the front. the great news events of the past half-century. we talk with him about his time in vietnam and the soviet union, other things. >> listen at c-span.org, or ever get your podcasts. ♪ kevin sabet is joining is now about efforts to legalize marijuana. he is author of smokescreen. he is also president and ceo of smart approaches to marijuana. kevin sabet, what do you do? >> thanks -- guest: thanks so much

for having me on. when i was 13 years old, i called in to ask vice president gore about human rights abuses in iran. i think it was my parents most proud moment. thank you for your public service. host: thanks for calling in back when you are 13 and being with us for so long. guest: it was really fun. it was great. host: we will try to find that clip. guest: sure. i worked in a couple white house demonstrations. i left the obama ministration into thousand 11. i notice that the conversation about marijuana, but essentially there was a massive industry whose is this that is to make money. i was burning -- i was promoting this idea that marijuana was essentially safe, natural. it was the herb of the 60's and there was no problem with it. the only way to have policy

would be to legalize it. when i spoke to officials in the obama administration. i go into some of those discussions in my book. when i spoke to them, when i spoke to scientists around the country, every medical association i spoke with, there was such a disconnect with what they were saying is we are concerned about today's highly potent marijuana. we are concerned about the tobacco industry getting involved. we are concerned about mental health outcome. psychosis, schizophrenia, suicide. the public's perception, i figured there was a gap that

needed to be filled. patrick kennedy -- congressman patrick kennedy, we had gotten to know each other during the aca discussion and we were focused on how to treat mental health as well as addiction on par with -- addiction. we have made a stark divide between mental and physical health. although the brain is -- we decided together that our next journey togethe

>> certainly, we do not want to see a for-profit industry, tobacco, alcohol, taking this over. we have worked for the last almost nine years now as an organization pushing back against efforts to legalize a for-profit industry and trying to increase education and treatment. we are funded by individual donors -- almost all of them have had personal issues with families or themselves, with high potency marijuana. the stories i hear -- again, i highlight many of them in my book -- who have unfortunately died by suicide, whether a suicide note wrote because of the marijuana.

i cannot imagine living through that kind of tragedy. a parent i spoke to last week, whose son is in a thc induced mania and inpatient hospital, it is costing them -- an extremely intensive inpatient stay. some of those people have deep pockets, they have made money in this vibrant economy over the last 20 years and they have donated to us. we do not take a penny from industries like pharma, alcohol, tobacco, we never will because essentially we are saying we do not want to copy those industries. we are very lean organization, very small. we are one that thrives off of small individual donors. host: let me get the phone

numbers to join the segment. he has talked about his book. here is the phone numbers. if you support legalization, (202) 748-8000, if you oppose it, (202) 748-8001. the cannabis administration opportunity act would allow possession of up to 10 ounces of marijuana without facing criminal penalties. further medical research, allow cannabis companies to access financial services. your thoughts on that bill? guest: i guess i am grateful that this discussion draft is not an official bill, so there is room for improvement.

i think there needs to be a lot of improvement. need to make the distinction between decriminalization and legalization. that is such a key distinction. i know it is one your smart viewers will grasp. decriminalization is about reducing or eliminating arrests or criminalized sanctions against people for relatively low level amounts of use. one ounce is something around 60 to 70 joints. when we are talking about 10 ounces for personal possession, you can make a small fortune off that because that is something like 600 to 700 joints. let's put some of this in context. the legalization is different from decriminalization. it is about sales, production and trafficking. i wish we could make that distinction better in our country and i wish this bill focused on decriminalization,

not legalization. it left -- it leaves a lot of room for criticism. there are over a half-dozen democrats, people like joe manchin, people like president biden, kind of important when you have a piece of legislation, you usually want the president to support you. these folks are against legalization. along with not only republicans, every single major medical association in this country because it does not address things like driving issues. it does not address things like driving impaired high on marijuana, it is a huge problem in this country. we just had a brand-new medical journal come out showing the increase in legal states like washington. it is not really address that. it does not address the fact that it is really guys that look like me, to be frank with you

this morning, who are the ones making the money and continuing to make the money under legalization. it will not really be about guys who used to be drug dealers in the inner-city who all of the sudden have access to capital and the connections and a head start you need to thrive in any business. i think it is frankly insulting to say the time we will care about job opportunity is going to be because we want to legalize marijuana and use drugs. i would hope we would care about that regardless of our feelings on marijuana. i do not think the bill is going anywhere, to be honest with you. it does not have the support it needs and i think it is far from being optimal. host: let's chat with plenty of call. ers tom connecticut is on the line. good morning. caller: how are you this

morning? thank you for taking my call. i am 74 years old. i cannot hear you. host you are the one talking. caller: i am 74 years old, i have not smoked marijuana since the vietnam days. i support legalization on a federal level to make things equal around the country. in connecticut, i have a medical card. my point is you need to have controls generally the same. in connecticut, they are just putting into place and they will make marijuana smoking the same as cigarette smoking. i think it is wrong. i think alcohol and marijuana should be the same. you do not smoke marijuana on the street, you do not drink alcohol on the street.

with federal law, those would be regulated. i have issues with marijuana. there are a lot of problems. how could you make alcohol legal and pot illegal? host: we will pick up that question. guest: it is a good question. it was the pressure point for the legalization act 20 years ago when they saw themselves in disarray, they did not have support among the american people. when they did focus groups, the issue of alcohol is the main issue they got traction on -- this inconsistency. the wise person once said consistency is the hog glob in a mind. alcohol is the number one issue for violent crime in this country. there are more arrests -- this is really important -- there are more arrests for alcohol-related violations in this country --

dui, selling to kids, public use -- then all drugs combined. and alcohol is legal. we have a huge criminal justice problem. it is the top issue for domestic violence, the number one killer on the roads. we are not treating it very well. we have a runaway alcohol industry that markets to kids, advertises the super bowl, has ever kind of flavor you could imagine, we have a huge alcoholism problem -- you want to talk about the opioid problem, we have to first talk about the alcohol problem the kills more people that fentanyl ever did. it is an embarrassment to our national fabric, the way we have handled alcohol. we have not raised taxes on alcohol in decades. if you look at adjusting for inflation, we are at 1/5 where we were during the korean war. big problems. but alcohol is legal. it is not legal because we

handle a particular well, it is legal because it has been in our society for 5000 years. it has been used by the majority of western civilization spread a form of marijuana -- weak marijuana -- absolutely was used by ancient chinese and ejection cultures, but nowhere near the prevalence and -- egyptian cultures, but nowhere near the prevalence of today. why would we want to repeat something going badly? let's not have marijuana in the fabric of society like alcohol. it is like if your headlights are broken, would you break your taillights to be consistent? i do not understand it, but does that argument have traction and probably one of the main reasons public opinion has changed. host: heidi is in california. opposes marijuana legalization. good morning.

caller: good morning. i want to talk about a couple of points that tom brought up. when legalization happened in california, people began flaunting it. they were using it in public places. they use at the beach, smoke in their cars, and they have no shame about it and know there will be no consequences. nobody gives them a consequence. i cannot even go to a public park or a beach and not smell marijuana. it is not being enforced. the kids use it and they all say, it would not be legal if it was not safe. that is what they all say. my concern is the increase in homelessness. it is like all of those marijuana in public places, you can smell it everywhere. with that, came more homeless people. can you please talk about that

connection. guest: thank you. shoutout to her most of beach, a beautiful part of the country -- shoutout to hermosa beach, a beautiful part of the country. you are exactly right about the flaunting of it. enforcement and this country -- i did not know until i studied this, i have studied for 25 years -- drug enforcement, things like enforcing local laws like open container laws or marijuana smoking in public, that is not fall to the feds. the dea is not surveilling your house to see if a 16-year-old is smoking a joint on the balcony. that is local, sometimes state, but usually local law enforcement. it is a very difficult issue, they do not want to be arresting

people in most parts of the country for marijuana. they have not done that for a very long time. even before any state legalized, less than 0.5% of prisoners were therefore smoking a joint. the point is this falls on local law enforcement. it is a huge issue, frankly in manhattan, anyone who is bent to new york in the last two years -- even prior to legalization, even when they were discussing legalization, use a a palpable change in the environment, the smells. one issue we do not talk about his second and third hand marijuana smoke. marijuana has at least as much tar as cigarettes and we are just learning about the negative effects. it follows easily on the poor. it is the poor people and people

without resources that bear the brunt of these problems. if i am smoking marijuana, i will not be fired from my job. i can stay home from a week if i want to get stoned and get treatment if i need it. that is not the case for a lot of people. when i see celebrities, many of whom i respect who are smart news hosts on hbo, flaunting this, talking about how many joints they are using, i want to say, good for them, but that is not the average person that has the resources to deal with appeared the homelessness issue, extremely complex. homelessness is a systems failure -- multi-systems failure across our country in terms of access to affordable housing. we see how difficult that is in our major cities and elsewhere. it is a failure on her health care system, the richest country in the world should not have the health care access problems we

still have. it is a failure of the child welfare system that is basically an archaic system built in post-world war ii. it is a failure of all other things, we have absolutely seen the link between all kinds of drugs and homelessness. we have seen an uptick in homelessness where marijuana has been legalized. host: let me focus on the marijuana industry itself. we talked about the legislation from majority leader chuck schumer. legislation actually passed in the house earlier this year, the safe banking act, prohibiting bank regulators from limiting financial services to legitimate cannabis related businesses and their ancillary service providers. dig into that a little bit more, what that would mean for the industry and what we each know about the industry to understand

we have the same call to control substance as 1970 upheld by a court decision. the race decision was the majority decision by mainly the center and the left on the court. including justice scalia, who joined in concurrence. justice thomas dissented as well as rehnquist and o'connor. but the majority wrote the majority and superseded state law. all these state laws are illegal. it would be a great discussion for the limits of the supreme court when you have a federal law that is crystal clear and a state law that is crystal clear in flaunting it.

essentially banking and financial transactions are illegal if you are in the drug business. we don't want drug dealers to have access to banks or credit. it's probably a bad idea that people like escobar and the other cartels getting access to the u.s. financial system. what the safe banking act would do is essentially carve out an exception for state legalized marijuana businesses. the problem i have with it is that the excuse for the banking act is we don't want to operate in cash. that is really dangerous. so please pass this so we can accept credit card and debit card. we actually did an undercover investigation that showed that the majority of pot shops take credit and debit cards already.

whether they work with credit unions or financial service companies that have no idea they are in the marijuana business. whether they essentially do a thing where they say will give you the marijuana for free from the marijuana company, but we are going to charge or credit card for the consulting company that helped you choose what kind of marijuana to find. a lot of ingenuity goes into it when you have to fit a square pay into a round hole. i worry, because the marijuana industry, a lot of it is entangled with the illegal industry. i spoke to a person who helped run the colorado industry from the states perspective you told me all kinds of stories about how drug dealers, convicted drug dealers smoking a joint or selling a gram to their friends, major dealers getting involved in the legal industry.

we should not be surprised. we see that in some industries like gambling. the marijuana industry today is not only those folks. a lot of it is. the part i'm more concerned about is the fact that you have big tobacco who brought us the juul, the vaping crisis among young people. vaping among 16-year-olds is not the same thing as a vaping 60 year old who has smoked a pack of cigarettes for 20 years. -- for 40 years. those are two audiences that are very different in the discussions. i'm talking about kids that are vaping who brought us to big tobacco. remember the old joke? the camel ads. marlboro? smoking is fine.

the tobacco industry was lying through their teeth for years and laughing all the way to the bank. making billions of dollars. that's the biggest player right now in marijuana. that should give us the most worry. host: i will take a call from arizona, for those who support legalization. caller: i would like to ask kevin a question. let's turn some pages. cut right to the point. i want you to tell me what is the most important part of your book and the message you want to get out. i want to have a slight discussion on it. go ahead. host: we are going to take your question on the book, but let me

get in diane, who is waiting on the opposed line. caller: great. thanks very much. i understand that we just had this past year a record number of drug overdoses. i think 93,000. and we have a record amount of violence in the cities and the line from the proponents of legalization is that marijuana has no effect on these things or that it even makes people mellow. and not violent. i think the evidence is contrary to that, and i would appreciate it if you could explain whether that is the case or not. host: we will take those two calls. there's plenty more waiting for you, mr. sylvester. go ahead. guest: there is a growing body of surprising evidence linking violence to today's highly potent marijuana. mainly through the mechanism of psychosis and mental illness. why would a drug be correlated with violence, especially a drug knowfo