WEBVTT

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What goes through your mind
when I tell you

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that my 11-year-old twins
are using marijuana?

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Do you think to yourselves,

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"Oh my god, the drug problem in the U.S.
is worse than I thought"?

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How is it possible that 11-year-olds
get access to pot?

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Maybe some of you thought,

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"Geez, I wonder what
medical condition these kids have."

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The truth of the matter is,

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most of us don't think about medicine
when we hear the word "marijuana."

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I admit - I'm embarrassed to admit
that up until two years ago

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I was completely misinformed
about marijuana,

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and I think many
of our population is today.

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I remember vividly in sixth grade
being ushered into the auditorium

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to see a government-sponsored
"documentary" about marijuana.

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It was the most scary thing
I'd ever watched.

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People jumping off buildings,
car crashes - it was mayhem.

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But not once was there
a mention of the possibility

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that cannabis was useful as medicine.

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To be honest, in retrospect,

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I'm a little angry about the propaganda
that our government is putting forth;

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it's even happening today.

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My big idea worth sharing
is that medical cannabis can be

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the healthcare success story
of our lifetimes

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but only if we all engage
in learning the truth

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and ask our federal government
to end prohibition of cannabis.

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I'd like to introduce you
to my twins, Addison and Cassidy.

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Believe it or not, today's their birthday.

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Eleven years ago today,
only a mile from here,

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they were born and came into our lives.

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Happiest day of my life -
I love the date too: January 23, 2004.

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1, 2, 3, 4.

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Unfortunately, Addie and Cassie
suffer from a very rare genetic disorder

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called Niemann-Pick Type C .

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This horrible disease
is more commonly called,

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or what we call it,
is childhood Alzheimer's.

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Their little brains
are drowning in cholesterol.

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They're missing a protein
that allows them to process cholesterol

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both in and out of their brain cells.

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The cause is neurodegeneration.

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They can no longer walk,
and they can no longer talk.

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We were told the Addie and Cassie
would be lucky to see their 12th birthday.

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(Sniffs)

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After reeling with
this devastating diagnosis,

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my wife and I dedicated ourselves

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to finding treatments
for our twins in their lifetime.

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We gave up successful
high tech careers in Silicon Valley,

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and we became research philanthropists
raising money for research,

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and ultimately, we became
biotechnology entrepreneurs

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developing a compound.

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The compound we found was cyclodextrin,

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and we found it with an amazing group
of scientists, researchers and physicians

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from all over the world,
including right here in Reno.

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Every week the girls get an infusion.

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It's eight hours long -
it goes into their bloodstream,

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the cyclodextrin.

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Every other week, like yesterday,
the girls go to the hospital

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and they get a lumbar
puncture in their spine

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in order to get the cyclodextrin
to reach their brains directly.

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We think that the combination
of those two routes of administration

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are slowing down
the neurodegenerative progression,

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and hopefully, maybe even stopping it.

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Addie and Cassie were
the first little pioneers

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to try this scary treatment.

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I can tell you as a parent,

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with no one in front of you
paving the way,

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it truly is a scary moment.

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Thankfully, a couple dozen
kids around the world,

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including a few at the NIH,

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are now engaged
in further science and research

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on this experimental treatment.

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But the treatment doesn't seem
to help with their seizures.

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As a result of the neurodegeneration,
my kids have seizures almost daily.

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A couple years ago
they were way more than daily,

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they were many a day.

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We started giving the kids
traditional pharmaceutical medicines

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for their seizures.

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And they worked - some of them worked,
some of them didn't work,

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but the big problem was

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most seizure drugs cause
your kids to become zombies.

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The whole purpose of the drugs

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is to essentially take away the stress
or the triggers that cause seizures.

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We had heard about a father in California
that was treating a young son

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who has intractable seizures,
seizing constantly, all day long,

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and he was using cannabis medicine.

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We became interested.

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We contacted him;
we learned more about the drug.

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Ultimately, we decided
to pursue cannabis in earnest.

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Did you know that the cannabis plant

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was used as early as 2900 BC
in China as medicine?

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Did you know that we in America
were using, in the 1800s,

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for a century, we were using cannabis
to treat a number of afflictions.

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Unfortunately, in the early 1900s,
as you all probably know,

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cannabis was prohibited

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and subsequently demonized
and turned into a war.

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It's a shame. It truly is a shame.

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But we became convinced
that the oil would work.

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So we set out to find
a supply of oil, certainly -

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Cannabis has been legal
in the great state of Nevada

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for almost a decade,

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surely we could just go out
and buy some oil and give it to our kids.

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Not true; there was no oil
available in our great state.

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So we set out to do it ourselves.

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First we got physician approval
to do the treatment of cannabis,

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and then we became caregivers,

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licensed caregivers
in the state of Nevada,

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which allows us to cultivate
and make extractions,

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oils from the cannabis plant
to give to our kids.

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Every day - three times a day -
the girls get a little oil,

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like what you see here.

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This oil is extracted
from a very special cannabis plant

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that's high in cannabidiol,
or CBD as we call it.

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Unfortunately, this oil, by itself,
doesn't even completely, for our children,

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stop their seizures, so we still use
a small amount of pharmaceutical medicine,

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but we use less - we've reduced
the number of drugs the kids take,

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and we've reduced the amount of dose
from the few drugs we do give them,

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and consequently our kids
are not only having fewer seizures

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and shorter seizures,

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they're also bright eyed
and happy children again,

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they're no longer little zombies.

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This was great progress,
but I thought to myself, holy cow,

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there are two million epilepsy or seizure
disorder sufferers in the United States,

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who's going to help those folks,

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those kids, those adults
with these disorders?

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And at that moment we decided

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to take what we had learned
for our children

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and turn it into a commercial business
here in the state of Nevada,

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which was just preparing
to allow that to happen,

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and as Kylie mentioned,
we've endeavored to do so

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and are now licensed
to grow, extract and sell,

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dispense cannabis here in Nevada,
in the state of Nevada.

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Someday the federal government
will end prohibition.

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But how many lives
will be lost, potentially,

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or severely affected in the meantime?

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How many kids with seizures like mine
will move their families,

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will uproot their homes to move to
Colorado or Nevada to get these medicines?

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How many cancer patients
will be denied access

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to inexpensive and effective medicine

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to treat the side effects like pain
and nausea that come with chemotherapy?

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There is a groundswell of folks like me
who understand the potential of cannabis,

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and I'm grateful for that.

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The ironic thing is
some of my family and friends,

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including, most particularly,
my own mother,

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are still not convinced.

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My mother is worried

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that free access to cannabis
is actually a threat to society

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and that perhaps the medicinal value
doesn't outweigh that threat.

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And she sees the medicinal value
in her grandchildren.

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The problem, I think, is that, really,

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we just don't have enough hard evidence
yet to convince the skeptics.

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There just isn't enough
science and research

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to back the foundation
that the medicine's working,

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the medicine's effective, that it's useful
for large populations of people.

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That's not to say
that research doesn't exist,

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there's a mountain of evidence
that the cannabis plant is useful.

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But there's not a lot of clinical science,
hard clinical science to that effect.

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That's the conundrum;
that's the chicken and egg problem.

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Until the federal prohibition
of cannabis ends,

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until we take cannabis
off the schedule of harmful drugs

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like LSD and methamphetamines
that have no medicinal value,

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until we remove cannabis from that list,

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which is insane that
it's on that list to begin with,

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until we remove it from that list,
research can't take place.

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If I came to the University of Nevada,
Reno Medical Center tomorrow

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with a million dollar grant
to study cannabis,

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I would likely not have success.

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It's not that the scientists
don't want to study the plant,

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it's that they are fearful
of losing federal funding.

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It's because they'd
have to deal with the DEA

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and other regulatory agencies
at the federal level,

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which is a complex and expensive process.

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This is one of the many tentacles
of the prohibition of cannabis

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that actually prohibits us
from moving forward.

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My own personal experience with cannabis
along with the evidence,

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the science that I know about,

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makes me absolutely certain
what I shared with you earlier.

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Cannabis has the potential

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to become the big healthcare
success story of our lifetimes

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but only if we allow it.

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Here are Addie and Cassie
in a more recent picture.

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For those of you who are still skeptical,

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perhaps for those of you like my mother

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who still worry about
the societal downside of cannabis,

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I ask you to look at this picture
and consider the following:

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By limiting access to cannabis
for parents like myself,

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you're forcing me to make a decision

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between the lives
or well-being of my children

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and going to jail.

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How is that a fair or rational
set of thinking in modern society?

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Our 16th president,
the famous 16th president,

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had very strong feelings
about this subject.

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He said, "Prohibition ... goes
beyond the bounds of reason

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in that it attempts to control
a man's appetite by legislation

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and makes a crime out of things
that aren't crimes ...

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A prohibition law strikes a blow
at the very principles

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upon which our government was founded."

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This was Abraham Lincoln.

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And he said these words
before we had the experiences

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we had with alcohol prohibition
or with cannabis prohibition.

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Someday the federal government
will spend the money on research.

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Someday the NIH will actually be actively
pursuing cannabis as a treatment.

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Until that day comes, a large group of us
have come together and formed a nonprofit

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to organize and fund clinical research
in cannabis in the private sector

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until we can use
the academic institutions.

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We call the foundation PeopleCann,
in honor of advocates like myself

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who over the last several decades
have been saying what I'm now saying

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and whose words I didn't listen to
until my own situation demanded it.

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Never in her wildest imagination -
excuse me - would my wife have thought

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that today she would
be a cannabis advocate.

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She was also "misinformed,"
let's say, about the plant

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until we needed to learn.

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Neither my wife nor I would ever believe
that our young children

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would become the next generation
of cannabis advocates.

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(Exhales)

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I'd like you to meet them.

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Please give a birthday welcome
to my wife Chris - excuse me -

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and my daughters, Addie and Cassie Hempel.

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(Applause)

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Hi.

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(Applause)

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Would it be unkind to ask
if we can sing Happy Birthday?

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(All singing) Happy Birthday to you.

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Happy Birthday to you.

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Happy Birthday dear Cassie.

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Happy Birthday to you.

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Yay! Good girls!

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(Applause)