Ep.258: Ben Pollara

September 7, 2017

Ben Pollara returns to discuss the state of the cannabis economy in Florida. Of course, Florida passed an amendment to legalize medical marijuana with 71% of the vote in 2016. The legislative session just ended however with a failure to pass implementing legislation. The two houses in Florida have bi-cameral consensus to maintain the current system with both the senate and house saying new licenses need to be tied to the number of patients admitted into the program. Businesses need customers to stay in business, so from a standing start, one can see how this approach makes sense. This does ultimately mean however, that market-driven growth economy legislators counterintuitively prefer a small closed market for cannabis.

Transcript:

Speaker 1: Ben Pollara returns to discuss the state of the cannabis economy in Florida. Of course, Florida passed an amendment to legalize medical marijuana in the 71 percent of the vote in 2016 legislative session just ended. However, with a failure to pass implementing legislation, the two houses in Florida have by camel consensus to maintain the current system with both the Senate and the house saying new licenses need to be tied to the number of patients admitted into the program. Businesses need customers to stay in business, so from a standing start, one could see how this approach makes sense. This does ultimately mean however, the market driven growth economy, legislators, counterintuitively, prefer a small closed market for cannabis. Welcome to cannabis economy. I'm your host Seth Adler. Check us out on social, what the handbook can economy. That's two ends of the word economy from Florida. Ben Pollara. Ben Pollara.

Speaker 2: We're in the atrium here. Is that what you call this? I think it's, it's called an atrium because it feels like it's outdoor, but there's a roof with windows in it. If Oregon Astrodome astrodome for a hotel engineer, you can forgive engineers just way better than mine. Um, how you doing? I'm all right. All right. We got to talk about Florida. Okay. We, I, but we were just talking about, um, you know, as two humans, right? Try not to ascribe any, um, left or right to it. Just as two humans, one guy that does press and comms and knows that kind of a job function. Just seeing what's happening as far as our current administration, I guess there's a lot every day. There's so many stories all the time. How would you deal with that as like a pro? Like if you're, if you're like Sean Spicer, that's it.

Speaker 2: No, he just didn't. He just do his, uh, his army reserve tour. I mean, he must have been so grateful to be in a uniform anywhere else for those two weeks and lead a Sarah Huckabee deal with it. Um, and we'll thank him for his service. I didn't know that he was in. I think she deals better than he does. I mean, because she, there's just like a complete suspension of reality with that woman, you know, spicer you like, it feels like he is fighting the fact that he asked that, you know, suspend all basic human reality. Interesting. Okay, so there is, embraces it. I, she's embracing it. It's on message, whatever it is. Whereas he's, he's, he feels torn. What I'm trying to do, I'm trying, I come from the left and I try to be in the middle. Then that's what I'm trying to do.

Speaker 2: So if anybody listens, you understand that I have the affliction of coming from the left, but I am trying to understand what's happening. Uh, on the right. I'm trying to understand why and how people feel. So I, I read Charles Krauthammer I read, I, I, uh, saw was, you know, Pat Robertson News, but it's in relation to jeff sessions and he was saying how he thinks that the war on drugs. Two point. Oh, is a bad idea. But I saw that. Yeah, that was me and Pat Robertson drugs one point. Oh, is a bad idea. So we'll. Sure, well that's where it was proven. And uh, now here we are with a war on drugs to point out, but the Senate has come together as though they are a functioning body and they've called on him to rein it in. No, it isn't. This is the criminal justice reform, you know, recognizing that, that the war on drugs has been a failure, that, that abuse and addiction is a disease and not, and not a criminal defect is like the single bipartisan point of agreement that, that, you know, we can come through these days. It used to be like transportation right now with this, um, because uh, you know, because white people are dying from the opiate epidemic. Yeah. But yeah. So

Speaker 2: yeah, that does, uh, when kind of everybody starts to get affected when white people die, Republicans crying. I, these are straightforward comments by Ben Pollara let's, you know, they and they rhyme, so they, uh, they kinda feel good and it kind of makes sense and all that. Um, all right, so Florida, let's just talk about policy. Let's talk about what's happening. Let's talk about where we are. There was a bit of chaos. I'm not going to, we're going to hopefully touch on the personal stuff later just to make sure that we understand where everybody's at.

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