Marijuana: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

marijuana's basically catnip for people it was gained increasing acceptance in recent years in fact one small bright spot on election night was pro marijuana referenda passing in eight states a big win for lovers of weed so we are really excited I mean this is a huge victory not just for Californians but for really the country and the world everybody here should be so excited by this it's a little weird that those celebrations happened the same night that Trump was elected it's like celebrating your baseball team winning on the deck of this sinking Titanic bit of a mix back today but still go Sox Yankees suck now as it as it stands 44 states now have some form of medical marijuana law and eight have laws allowing recreational use and that is good news the war on drugs was futile expensive and imposed overly harsh penalties especially on African Americans who police data suggests over four times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession although interestingly white people are a million times more likely to be shocked by that statistic and this is clearly no longer a fringe issue in 1969 a Gallup poll showed 12% favorite legalization today it's 60% exactly marijuana is something we've just all gradually decided is okay like Mark Wahlberg as a serious actor you know what sure I've decided I'm fine with that but the legality of marijuana is actually much more fraught than you may think in fact if you have marijuana right now even if you are acting completely legally according to your state you may still be in serious jeopardy and that's not your weeding juice to paranoia talking you could lose your home job or possessions Greg and yeah I know I'm freaking the out of any stoned viewer named Greg right now but that is not a bad thing because this story is genuinely worth worrying about and let's begin with going back to why marijuana is so heavily regulated in the first place it was legal at the start of the 20th century but anti-drug hysteria fueled partly by racist stereotypes about who was using it led to it being gradually outlawed around the country and naturally it was Richard Nixon the Mozart of racially motivated lawmaking who targeted it in his war on drugs for rhesus that he was open about in conversations he inexplicably recorded [Music] [Applause] yes quick historical footnote do you know who he's talking to there Billy Bush yeah people just open up to that guy Oh Nixon Nixon signed the Controlled Substances Act in 1970 and it's still in effect today marijuana is classified as a schedule 1 drug the highest classification alongside heroin schedule 2 a step-down features drugs like cocaine and methamphetamine and marijuana it's not a Schedule one any more than a hedge hog is an apex predator you're not scaring anyone Roland get a tattoo but that federal law is constantly clashing with new state laws and it's causing big problems for instance legal marijuana businesses have struggled to get bank accounts because at the federal level they are still seen as criminal enterprises so if banks took their deposits that could be considered money laundering and this was meant that businesses had to operate all cash 100% of our revenue comes in cash this is federal taxes that we pay in cash also our payroll when we pay all 12 employees they're getting envelopes of cash these are state taxes that is a shitty way to be forced to do business on the suspicious scale cash stuffed envelopes ranked somewhere between unfilled hundreds dusted in white powder and a wad of damp ones containing a single pubic hair and if you are wondering why he was talking about paying his federal taxes yeah amazingly under federal tax law you must declare income even if the source of it is illegal the tax code even has provisions like if you receive a bribe included in your income and if you steal property you must report it's fair market value which seems such an obvious trap to catch criminals it's really been listed on the form as this is a trap are you really this stupid oh my god you're filling out a federal form admitting guilt aren't you you dumb dumb idiot so marijuana businesses have all the tax liabilities of other businesses but what they don't get is one major advantage the agency bars them from making most normal business deductions you know you could end up with a tax bill far more than you you know any potential profit you could ever make that's right you can't deduct certain expenses and that can mean that you pay double the amount of tax that you would if you were selling any other products and just think about that that means the shop where you bought your weed may pay double the amount of taxes paid by the shop where you ordered that shitty pizza Greg yeah I'm talking to you again Greg I told you this was important pay attention and it is not just businesses facing difficulties its customers to just look at Brandon Coates who is paralyzed from a car accident as a teenager now he had a prescription for medical marijuana but he was fired from his job at the Dish Network after he filed a drug test what was it like for you when they said we don't want you to work here anymore well it was devastating I mean it's hard enough for somebody like me to get a job people look at me like they probably don't think that I can do what I can you know did you think because you had a medical marijuana car that you had license to go ahead and use it well it was always under the impression that we had passed a law and that we had made it legal yeah it's frankly understandable that he thought he was doing nothing wrong the state had given him a licensed to use medical marijuana legally and yet he got fired anyway and also he couldn't turn to the Americans with Disabilities Act for help because that is a federal law and it doesn't protect marijuana use all of which is pretty frustrating that's like driving exactly the speed limit and getting pulled over by a cop who tells you sorry the federal speed limit is three and the legal age to drive is 62 and also you have to be drunk surprised you're under arrest now and even if you are only dealing with your government at the state level decades of enforcing anti-drug laws can result in local officials making big mistakes as to michigan parents one of whom treated his epileptic seizures with marijuana discovered in 2013 steven maria green of lansing helplessly watched as their infant daughter bree was taken from their care the reason given the state sanctioned medical marijuana users home was too dangerous for their six-month-old because of the plants inside it would place our residents at a higher rate of armed robbery and therefore was an imminent danger for my child to be removed that is just completely absurd if you have valuable items in your home we might take your children and i will say that is gonna add some real excitement to the prices rights from now on I really want that entertainment center but I love my kids it sorry Tommy daddy's going for the plasma screen it's a dream son a dream of mine and look I know that some people will say well hold on the medical efficacy of marijuana needs a lot more study and that is true the problem is it's very difficult to do that because again federal laws are standing in the way to study marijuana you need approval from three different federal agencies which can take years in fact one scientist was forced to wait six years just to begin studying its effects on PTSD which is a long time I frankly wouldn't blame her if she just said it I'm studying dust chocolate during sex help red wine make you lose weight at least at least that way I'll get to go on the Today Show if you are conducting a federally approved study on marijuana you can only get it from one place dr. mahmoud al solely oversees the University of Mississippi's marijuana project its mission to aid law enforcement and produce pop for federal study mostly related to addiction for all intents and purposes you're the government's sole producer of marijuana records it's true the sole source of government sanctioned marijuana is that guy at the University of Mississippi so please update your stereotypes about the University of Mississippi which I believe is the official slogan of the University of Mississippi and what researchers wait for marijuana to study whether it helps with PTSD plenty of veterans will tell you it absolutely does take Danny Belcher he is a Vietnam vet who'd be prescribed a great deal of medication for pain and depression but as he told the Kentucky legislature in 2014 he found that when he tried marijuana it started really helping him I do have my bola pot in my house if I wake up at night in that nightmare when I'm wringing wet with sweat and I see Cramer his dead body Rodriguez his dead body if that nightmare gets a bad I can't wake up I realize it's just a nightmare I will light that pipe up I'll be a criminal I'll go back to sleep the next morning I will get up at 6 o'clock like I always do my four days a week I go to the gym I run to help other veterans I couldn't do that if I was on him damn drugs the VA had me on exactly so for all the talk you hear of marijuana being a gateway drug in his case that gateway led to peaceful sleep rigorous exercise and community service pretty nice gate it turns out nice one to walk through if you get the chance now you may have noticed that he said he's acting like a criminal there which is a little odd because Kentucky actually has a medical marijuana law on the books but these shortcomings of that law touch on many of the reasons why legal marijuana can actually be a bit of a gray area for a start Kentucky's law has many striction see only applies to one marijuana product and it requires a written order or a prescription and that is a real problem because under federal law it is technically illegal for any doctor to write you a prescription for marijuana now so most states that they get around that by just calling for a recommendation or a certification which doctors can give you but even if Kentucky's law did that if Danny went to his doctors at the VA they couldn't give him anything because they're a federal hospital and federal policy prohibits VA doctors from even recommending marijuana regardless of the state law and regardless of their medical opinion which again is a bit weird a doctor shouldn't be ignored because he recommends marijuana a doctor should only be ignored because he is televised we all agree on that we're all on the same plates on that one I think it gets worse even if Danny have a private doctor and Kentucky rewrote its law where would he get marijuana from because Kentucky's law also neglected to set up any system for legal marijuana distribution so he'd have to obtain it from somewhere else but where would he do that and how now he could have it shipped right except no that would be a federal crime but what if he flew to a state where marijuana is completely legal and just brought it back to Kentucky here's the thing no again that is also a federal crime could he drive to a neighboring state to get what he needs unfortunately no because two of those states have total prohibitions on marijuana and the rest don't currently recognize out-of-state patients now if you are thinking whoa hold on could he train a carrier pigeon to carry the pot from Colorado yes that's a good idea and cool bird stamp but but as a practical matter there no partly because it's illegal and partly because you know the birds will eat it on the way stop flying and spend the whole night giggling about how owls seem like they have glasses but like don't have and that's crazy right they don't know but it's there right the point is if you live in Kentucky despite that being a law that ostensibly gives access to medical marijuana there's virtually no legal way for you to get it now things fractionally improved so will the end of the Obama administration because his general attitude was essentially this we still have federal laws that classify marijuana as a illegal substance but we're not going to spend a lot of resources trying to turn back decisions that have been made at the state level on this issue what he's attitude to pot was basically I'm not gonna hassle you over this and unless you make me essentially the same policy as a security guard at a Dave Matthews concert and his administration issued guidelines in that spirits by the end of his term it was actually a little easier to study marijuana and for dispensaries to get bank accounts but those guidelines weren't permanent and that could be a real problem because our new Attorney General is jeff Sessions the concept of golf expressed in man form and he he's been pretty clear where he stands on marijuana this is not an non dangerous drug this drug is dangerous you cannot play with it it's not funny it's not something to laugh about and in trying to send that message with clarity that good people don't smoke marijuana well Lady Gaga said she's addicted to it and is not harmless okay Jeff but Lady Gaga also said I believe that men and women deserve to love each other equally as well as touch me in the dark put your hands all over my body parts so please Jeff if you're going to live your life according to Gaga quotes accept the entire canon listen I'm not saying there shouldn't be laws that play sensible restrictions on marijuana as there are with other substances but our federal laws desperately need to be brought up to date and perhaps there is no clearer sense of just how establishment that view is becoming than this the cannabis caucus is a bipartisan effort to protect state marijuana laws and blow out outdated federal prohibitions on weed believe it or not these are the guys pushing for legalized pot in Congress yes there is now a cannabis caucus in DC and it's co-chaired by these four narcs and if even an 83 year old Republican from Alaska has come around on this issue then it's probably time for our laws to catch up and there are a bunch of ideas out there one bill proposed just this week would remove marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act and officially renamed the ATF the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco marijuana Firearms and Explosives which does really make sense just get all the awesome stuff together in one place in fact why not keep going and making it the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco marijuana firearms explosives monster trucks motorcycle jump and sick-ass leather jackets with Tigers on them and by the way that jacket is even sicker in person this is my jacket this was me this morning this is an actual $6,000 Gucci jacket stupid enough to buy one of these it's worthless now I just made your jacket uncool and worthless by wearing it but that bill is just one proposal fixing all of these is a huge undertaking marijuana laws affect everything from environmental regulations to international treaties and ideally we should also go back and expunged records of people convicted of low-level marijuana offenses in the past and all of this I know is a lot of work which is why we should really start right now because I would argue that it is absolutely worth it for people like Brandon Coates and for people like Danny Belcher and perhaps most of all for Greg who has been freaking the out this whole time I can see you Greg and I can hear your thoughts

Channel: LastWeekTonight

Views: 12,612,800

Rating: 4.8182073 out of 5

Keywords: last week tonight marijuana, john oliver marijuana, marijuana

Id: BcR_Wg42dv8

Length: 16min 52sec (1012 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 02 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/anonymousmusician93]

As a Greg, this video cut deep.

[u/MetallicYoshi64]

Woah, the Vietnam vet was hard to hear about.

[u/[deleted]]

For my fellow Canadians: http://tubeunblock.net/watch?v=BcR_Wg42dv8

[u/wristrockets]

Damn that Alaskan senator looks pretty good for 83

[u/yankeesfan33]

So many benefits come with legalizing. Look at Colorado they are making so much money off marijuana it's actually helping many that live in the state.

[u/KA1N3R]

Jesus Christ, are the laws surrounding Marijuana a clusterfuck.

[u/Doenerschuh]

Loved the guy with the cash. It's legalized, but it still looks kinda shady and gangster.

[u/travio]

Poor Greg.

[u/bll0091]

Finally not that I have been against the anti-trump segments, but this is the John Oliver that made me start watching him religiously in the first place.