The federal government has classified marijuana as one of the most dangerous drugs in the country, alongside heroin and LSD. Also, President Biden has officially signed legislation that says TikTok either has to be sold or be shut down within the next 12 months. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.

Transcript:

*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Mike Papantonio: A majority of Americans believe that marijuana should be legal, but federal government, well, they refuse to take action. Instead, they’ve classified marijuana as one of the most dangerous drugs in the country alongside heroin. God almighty. I mean, really? Tell that to Willie Nelson. Right. Call Willie Nelson. Did you know how dangerous it is, Willie? Pick it up.

Farron Cousins:: Yeah. This is ridiculous. We’re in the year 2024 now and marijuana is still scheduled as a schedule one drug, meaning the federal government says there are no medicinal values in this at all. It is dangerously addictive. It is deadly. Marijuana will kill you just as quickly as heroin, according to the government. Even though, as far as I have seen, and I’ve researched this a lot, I have not found a single person that has overdosed on marijuana.

Mike Papantonio: Well, full disclosure, I’m in the business in Florida. We have the license, one of the licenses in Florida. We started off with this, doing this, because we found that CBD oil would stop children from having epileptic seizures. So we were approached and they said, well, look, would you invest in this? Can you get it out? Can you talk about the value of CBD? And we did. And all of a sudden it was legalized. We had medical marijuana legalized in Florida. Lot of different reasons because finally scientists were willing to come forward and say, yeah, we’re not, we don’t have all the studies yet. We can’t and I can’t tell you 100% that everything’s okay, to tell you the truth. But I do know that there’s enough history to know that it’s not like heroin.

Farron Cousins: Right.

Mike Papantonio: And so, but this, so you have a government that they won’t change the rules at all. And just, this whole issue remains in limbo. Right. And people in the business have a tough time even staying in the business because the tax rates are so high that companies can’t even keep up with the tax rates. 82% or some ungodly number like that.

Farron Cousins: Right. It is absolutely ridiculous what they’re doing because we don’t have federal action on it. And anytime you don’t have federal action, what happens? Which a great example of that is with Covid. We’d had no federal Covid regulations to get everybody on the same page. So just like with legalization of marijuana, we end up with a patchwork of different states with different rules where it’s legal here, it’s kind of legal here. It’s mostly legal.

Mike Papantonio: We’re gonna look the other way here. But it’s not really.

Farron Cousins: Right. And nobody knows if you’re crossing the border from one state to another, suddenly you could be committing a serious felony.

Mike Papantonio: Oh, it’s a federal. I mean, it’s a federal law that says, yeah, this is a controlled substance and it’s as dangerous as heroin. And if you use it, you have the risk of going to prison. So.

Farron Cousins: And the government says it’s also more dangerous than cocaine and meth.

Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Interesting.

Farron Cousins: And those are schedule two drugs.

Mike Papantonio: Yeah. 70% of the American public supports it. You know, as I look at it, the studies that are coming out, I think are quick. There’s some real signs that this could be a problem. I mean, heart attacks, heart problems. But it’s, at this point, there’s not any empirical data. There’s not epidemiology that says one way or another. But the government, I can tell you, they’re not going to change this law. That’s the DEA. They’re not going to change this law. Really, it helps support the DEA doesn’t it? I mean, it’s kind of.

Farron Cousins: Oh, yeah. It’s their bread and butter. That’s where they get their money. We arrest these people. The private prison industry is fighting to keep it illegal. The pharmaceutical industry is fighting to keep it illegal.

Mike Papantonio: Oh yeah. They’re.

Farron Cousins:: So you’ve got these two billionaire powerhouses that it’s almost impossible to fight against them. And what it’s gonna take is a leader from some party that is not bought and paid for, and cannot be bought and paid for, to make this happen. And I don’t know if we get there in my lifetime. I really don’t.

Mike Papantonio: Oh, you don’t because you’re gonna be so much pushback from the feds. It’s just gonna be, first of all, they’re making, just the tax base on it state to state, these states are making a lot of money on the tax base. But they don’t understand, they’re basically gonna be putting the people who are trying to sell this outta business because you can’t, you simply can’t keep up with the tax responsibilities. But I think the way to look at it is to say, okay, we need some epidemiology. I’m the first to admit, you need to take a closer look and just see what the science really says. Not science that’s been, that’s phonied up. You’re gonna, if I look at any science by the pharmaceutical industry, I always start from the standpoint, yeah, it’s been phonied up. Clinicals have been messed around with. I always start from that position. And when I’m involved in the case, most of the time I’m right. You know.

Farron Cousins: Yeah. And look, we’re talking about the pharmaceutical industry that has a very large body count. And so, take what they say with a grain of salt because we are seeing real results from this. And the public agrees it is time to get out of these dark ages of making this, or classifying it, at least classify it lower on the schedule.

Mike Papantonio: Well, you got alcohol and tobacco, Jesus Christ. I mean, how many people have been killed with that? We just look the other way on that. It just doesn’t make any difference. But I think you have to, at this stage where you have states that are saying, yeah, we’re gonna legalize it. It provides an opportunity and the opportunities to say, let’s study it. Let’s have some serious epidemiologists take a look at it and let’s see where it goes. Right?

Farron Cousins: Yep.

Mike Papantonio: Call it what it is. Like we do. Balls and strikes.

Mike Papantonio: President Biden has officially signed legislation that says TikTok either has to be sold or be shut down within the next 12 months. The legislation is gonna set up a massive legal battle, and the facts aren’t on the government side on this. You’d agree with this?

Farron Cousins: I agree that the facts are definitely not on the government side. Look, this is something, obviously, we’ve seen it coming in slow motion and we have dissected this from every angle. And I think the most important one is that the talking point about, oh, China could use this to get your data. Even the government itself says that that’s literally never happened and probably will never happen.

Mike Papantonio: And they say we have no evidence of it.

Farron Cousins: Right.

Mike Papantonio: You would think if this was going on the NSA or the FBI or the CIA might know about it. Look, this is just a product of the other tech companies saying, TikTok, we want you to go away. And there’s really good, there’s really good information that points in that direction with Facebook or whatever they’re called today, spending millions of dollars to try to make this happen, right?

Farron Cousins: Yeah. Just in the last, or the first three months of this year, Meta, Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook, Instagram, all that, $7.6 million they spent on lobbying, more than they’ve ever spent in a single quarter. And even though they didn’t specifically mention TikTok, they said they were lobbying on national security concern. Basically all the same thing they’re using to trash TikTok. So, yes, I think at this point it is safe to say Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, is the driving force behind this ban.

Mike Papantonio: Oh, of course. He’s hired a bunch of lobbyists. He’s put millions of dollars into doing away with his competition because it would increase his business by something like 50%.

Farron Cousins: Yeah.

Mike Papantonio: I mean, the numbers are staggering, if he can do away with TikTok. And of course Congress buys into it because they’re getting a lot of money, a lot of money being spread around by Meta. But it’s clearly, this is a jihad by Zuckerberg. I don’t think there’s any question about it. And so you look at this and the arguments are, well, we’re doing this because we’re worried about security. We’re worried about this company finding out about your personal data. Like, really? Like it’s not out there already. Like Meta doesn’t already have it. Come on.

Farron Cousins: Right. I’ve gotten multiple emails from AT&T in the last couple weeks letting me know that, hey, we had a big data breach. Your data was accessed by outside individuals. So we have that happening with our companies here, either by selling it to people or by just not having security to protect their own platforms. So I’m not gonna sit here and be worried about TikTok doing it when I’m getting emails every other week from American companies saying, oops, we accidentally gave your data away.

Mike Papantonio: Right. Okay. So here’s the argument. Simple argument. We’re different. Instagram saying we’re different. Can you identify anything that’s different? Anything at all that’s different about them spying on folks the same way that they’re accusing TikTok of doing? Processing their data, selling the data, they’re doing everything. But we’re saying, oh no, we’re different. The only difference is that Zuckerberg has spread around more money than TikTok. That’s all that’s going on here.

Farron Cousins: Yeah, absolutely. Meta has all the money in the world that they want to spend, and they’re using it. This is what lobbying is all about. If you have the most money, you’re gonna win the day. And so now we have 170 million Americans that use this platform every month. They’re gonna have nowhere to go. And they will be forced to go to Meta, Facebook, Instagram if they want to continue what they’re doing. But TikTok is the number one source for news for people under the age of 30 in this country.

Mike Papantonio: Okay. He signed the legislation. It’s gonna be months before anything happens. This will not stand this, I promise you, will not stand scrutiny by the courts. It won’t. They’re gonna say, well, if you’re gonna do this here, why not do it to Zuckerberg? Why not do it to Musk? Why not do to everybody? If you’re gonna do this, do it with equal protection. Let’s look at the equal protection clause of the Constitution. And there’s no way they just simply say, yeah, we’re gonna do this because we are worried about TikTok doing everything else that all these other companies are doing.