I don’t know what he meant. But I know what I heard when I saw it - and that was traditional market legacy operators.
But that doesn’t matter to me. What matters to me is what the legislators hear when we say it. What matters is the STIGMA associated with the plant is strong enough to continue to try and divide us when we should be standing together against the prohibitionists and government who has actively destroyed lives over this plant for nearly a century.
And what legislators hear is sensationalized drug traffickers (they still treat people like this all the time!) coming in guns blazing, living in villas, and generally out to hurt everyone and rape their daughters. They don’t see the pharma companies as villains - even though they have killed so many people. So so many people. And that’s fucked because even our own community continues this bullshit stigma ridden fiction. It hurts my heart.
And even so many people are completely disenfranchised from medicine - which always seems intentional to me when I wear my tinfoil hat.
The real key for me is safe access. Access that doesn’t cause your supplier or you to end up in prison. Access that is safe enough that you don’t have to wonder if its weed or if its some stinging nettles or god knows what else. Access that is affordable so you and your family don’t break the bank to get the medicine you need.
And the rest - everything that isn’t medicine, that’s just gravy. Its letting the world have a relief valve that doesn’t come in a bottle of poison.
But what I want and what legislators seem to be saying they want are so different. They want tax revenue. They still seem to want an effective prison pipeline for their slaves. They still seem to want more designer drugs by pharma companies to fix what ails you, instead of a plant that evolution designed to help you. Sometimes they talk about not that but always there is the STIGMA fear of criminality.
Its a strange place for sure. In recent months I’ve seen kiddos sick in hospitals from unregulated products - and I don’t want that. I don’t want someone to think they have SAFE ACCESS when really what they have is junk.
So I’m hopeful that people will continue as they are, but with a little more guidance on foods and dietary supplements. And that whoever decides to pick these things up on the pharma side (assuming anyone does…) won’t fuck it up royally.
I’ve gotten so much of what I’ve been working for in the last 25 years in the last couple of years. That really I just want to feel grateful and I am!
But the fight goes on. Legislators were still talking about CRIMINALS. They were still talking LAW AND ORDER. They were angry that they had fucked the rules up and that people were getting high and shouldn’t be. They were pissed off royally that the courts were not on their side. And they did not seem interested at all in loosening the reins - and when asked about why they pointed to criminals (which included me!), they pointed to bad actors hurting children (in the news!), and they pointed to frustrations that good farmers are being lumped in with criminals.
Which means they are hearing the message but the STIGMA is still so loud that they cannot overcome their fear. We have to help them with that. By standing together and not denigrating each other.
But that’s just my take on it. Its a heavy lift I know. Even I don’t agree with what some companies are doing. And I think that many of those things are against the law. But I haven’t yet met a group that was willfully working to hurt people - only those ignorant of appropriate practices. And those honestly trying to bring people access but unable to afford to do it to the level one would expect in a regulated market.
So even though I want us all to be working to the same set of standards. I don’t call those that are not interested in doing so criminals, capitalist pigs perhaps, but never criminals. 
