Steve Robinson

It's a...

a different podcast, the Freakonomics podcast did an episode, I think maybe last year, all about marijuana.

And they noted that last year was the first year where the total number of daily active marijuana users surpassed

daily active alcohol users.

And I think that that probably underestimates the actual trend that we're seeing where daily active marijuana use has become not just destigmatized, but totally normalized as a form of like having a cup of coffee or taking medicine or popping a nicotine pouch.

And the amount of money being made there is huge.

And a lot of it is being poured into politics.

And it was something that I realized too late in my reporting on this.

Once I'd gone around all of these different Chinese grow houses and documented them and had hard proof and tax records and all of this, I thought I was going to publish my story and the cops were going to show up and be like, OK, we're taking care of it now.

done, problem over.

And I'd move on to my next story and go report on like welfare fraud or tax policy or something.

But that didn't happen.

Nothing happened.

In fact, the operation professionalized, grew and got even better and got even bolder

And one of the few differences I noticed was that there were some Republican lobbyists and Republican politicians and non-Republicans who used to like me and want to make small talk with me at the State House who no longer wanted to make eye contact with me and stopped picking up the phone when I called.

So there's the Hemp Roundtable is a conglomeration of people who represent the hemp industry and say that they're representing the industrial purposes, but there's also state level associations.

So there's like the Kentucky Association for Hemp or something like that.

So there's a couple of those.

And then there's one that I know that I believe Vince Sanders is affiliated with called it's Hope 7 or 7 Hope.

So 7-O-H is their logo.