Hard News by Russell Brown

And so, tomorrow, the United States of America will inaugurate a new President. I've been meaning to write about what that portends, but it's surprisingly difficult. Each of the last few dozen mornings has brought a fresh basket of outrages and absurdities. The opportunity to stop and summarise goes missing daily.

On one level, obsessing about another democracy's election is silly. Don't we have our own general election this year? We do. But it's already clear that there will be international consequences to President Trump.

The confrontation with China that Trump and his team have been fecklessly stirring, even before he takes office, bodes no good for New Zealand. We don't want a crazy trade war between two of our largest trading partners. We really don't want the actual shooting war implied by the incoming secretary of State's promise to blockade China's man-made islands in the South China Sea. We especially don't want to be required to choose sides in either war.

There's no good for us either in an unstable, roiling Europe. When Trump airily declares that NATO is "obsolete", people in Lithuania and Estonia (where thousands, mindful of Russia's annexation of Crimea, are signing up to paramilitary forces) hear something different than self-professed "anti-imperialists" in the West do. Late last year Sweden's government put local authorities on the first rung of a war footing and revived a defence strategy unused since the Cold War. As Russian military aircraft repeatedly breach Sweden's airspace, its government is drawing closer to NATO than it has ever been.

Sweden has also for the past two or three years suffered a wave of apparently Russian-initiated cyberattacks. The pattern should be familiar: disruption, the fostering of fringe ultra-right groups and a big, targeted fake news campaign spreading disinformation. Last year, employing what is now a familiar form of doubespeak, Russian attackers knocked all of Sweden's major newspapers off the internet, in a purported protest against their spreading of "false propaganda".

Last month, Germany's intelligence agency reported a surge in Russian-initiated cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns. It said that the aim was to spread uncertainty, strengthen extremist groups and parties, complicate the work of the federal government and "weaken or destabilise the Federal Republic of Germany". The Czech Republic, which, like Germany, has national elections this year, is also taking steps to protect its democratic infrastructure.

A particular focus of the attack messaging in Germany is the country's refugee intake under Angela Merkel. Last week, Trump told the German newspaper Bild that Merkel had made an “utterly catastrophic mistake by letting all these illegals into the country”.

This messaging is quite pervasive. I recently argued on Facebook with a pro-Putin New Zealander (who seemed to be a leftie or at least some sort of greenie) about Russia's actions in Syria. It wound up with her literally posting neo-Nazi material to the Facebook thread. She was not at all chastened when I pointed that out.

I guess there are always going to conspiratorial dingbats at the extremes of the political left and right, so far as their actual politics can be determined. What I've found more surprising is the attitude of people I'd always thought to to be classical conservatives – people with whom I might disagree, but who I figured believed in institutions and in conventional notions of probity. In free trade. Not so much, now, apparently.

I had trouble getting my head around this until I read this long, fairly dense New Yorker story about the "conservative intellectuals" furiously trying to backfill "Trumpism" with some sort of theory. They are more impassioned than they are coherent, but a kind of picture does emerge. As the author, Kelefa Sanneh, notes:

It is no surprise that many of Trump’s critics, and some of his supporters, heard his tributes to a bygone American greatness as a form of “identity politics,” designed to remind white people of all the power and prestige they had lost.

These freshly-minted Trumpists distrust globalism, they are economic nationalists. The same applies of course to many on the left. But the Trumpists and the Brexiteers seem to be motivated less by economic philosophy per se than by the loss of their cultural primacy.

The world is actually getting better on a range of measures. According to the World Bank, China has raised 500 million people out of extreme poverty in the past three decades. That's an extraordinary achievement and it can't be separated from China's engagement with the global economy in that time. But remarkably  low numbers of people in wealthy western countries are currently inclined to perceive the world as improving. And some, clearly, see withdrawal from institutions as a way to address their own relative disadvantage (and it is strictly relative: the poverty bar used by the World Bank is income of $US1.90 a day).

This rhetoric is not coming in any coherent form from Trump himself, of course. As Sanneh says, it's not even clear whether Trump is a Trumpist. But amid his narcissistic flailings, enough Americans in swing states heard the anti-establishment philosophy they wanted to hear.

And, again, Russia has found remarkably successful ways to employ such sentiment for its own ends. Putin does not want a cohesive Europe. He began a trade war to persuade the Ukraine government to back out of an Association Agreement with the European Union – a step Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych eventually took, on the promise of billions of dollars worth of Russian loans. The Euromaidan protests that followed led to Yanukovych being dumped by his own party, fleeing to Russia and subsequently being stripped of his role by the country's supreme court. And that led Putin to annex Crimea and facilitate, with Russian troops, a shooting war in the east of Ukraine that seems to be becoming even more intense.

In a no-holds-barred speech at the Davos Economic Forum overnight, outgoing US VP Joe Biden declared that Putin wants to see a "collapse of the international order." It sounds much less of a wild assertion than it might if you've read a bit about the strangeness of Putin's Russia. As to the motivations behind such a goal, well, let's just say that "Kremlinologist" is going to be a good trade to be in for the next few years.

In the New Yorker this week, Robin Wright notes the concern and confusion of foreign leaders and diplomats as they try to reconcile Trump's wild statements with the understandings and alliances they have had with the US for many decades. If you were trying to sow chaos, this is how it would look.

But how much influence have Putin and the needs of his mafia economy actually had on the Trump bandwagon? It's hard to say, but perhaps the multiple US intelligence agency investigations underway as the new President takes office will bear fruit. It is hard to see some things – the installation of Putin confidant (and political novice) Rex Tillerson as US Secretary of State, the Trump team gutting the Republican platform on Ukraine but being apparently almost uninterested in most other policy – in any other light.

At WORD Christchurch in August, I heard American historian Peter S. Field insist that should Trump become President it would be a thrilling time for the Congressional Republican Party, which would set about holding a President to account as the founders intended. It would be great for democracy! I've seen other conservatives express the same hopeful view since. But really? Are we talking about some other Republican Party?

The Republicans, in firm control of both houses, seem disinclined to address the unprecedented conflicts of interest which Trump takes into office. Insofar as they're concerned about ethics, it is to roll back ethical oversight on themselves. Earlier this month, House Republicans voted to gut the House's independent ethics office – only to reverse their decision on a message from Trump.

Yes, that's right. US House Republicans were schooled on ethics by Donald Trump.

But there are already clear signs that oversight and accountability will be under threat in the new regime. Trump ally Newt Gingrich is calling for the abolition of the Congressional Budget Office, because its assessments reflect poorly on Trump policy. As Forbes contributor – and government spending specialist – Stan Collender noted, it's as if Gingrich wanted to take his party back to the economic dark ages.

Simple competence is another issue. Trump's Cabinet is stacked with people who are either ignorant of their portfolios or openly hostile to them. His education secretary (and handsome donor) Betsy DeVos knows little of education, but is associated with a gay conversion "therapy" group. This week she said that there should be no federal protection for the education of disabled children.

There's one area where competence really matters – to an existential degree – and that's around climate change. His major Cabinet appointees are nearly all climate change deniers. The new head of the Enviromental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, is a coal industry lawyer who led a lawsuit against the EPA's clean energy reform.

This matters on an international level too. Multilateral accords are utterly crucial to addressing climate change, and if Trump withdraws the US from the Paris Agreement, it weakens, perhaps critically, the whole structure.

The next four years are going to be very important for American journalism. Journalists and the organisations they work for will be attacked, abused and marginalised – that's what Trump's done from the moment he started campaigning. Obama's use of his final press conference to give a pep-talk to the White House press corps, emphasising their key role in a democracy, was no accident.

They'll have plenty to work with. With the hammer coming down on oversight and transparency, I think US politics will enter an unprecedented era of leaking and whistleblowing. Public servants are likely to display more principle than elected representatives, put it that way.

In seeking to make Trump seem less unprecedented, Field compared him to the famously badly-behaved Democratic President Andrew Jackson. But as fond as Americans are of comparing presidents, I don't think that works. Jackson was a rascal, but he wasn't a compulsive liar and a sociopath. And the world is different place than it was then. Far worse things can happen than ever could in 1829. 

So it's uncharted territory, and I haven't even got to the extremely valid fears of America's various minorities, or of American women who see the prospect of a Trump administration defunding Planned Parenthood as an attack on their very wellbeing. (Some of those women are even Trump voters.)

Here in New Zealand and, I'm sure, other places, we've seen a less tangible consequence of the Trump phenomenon: an erosion of social norms that seems to have given permission for expressions of racism or misogyny that might not have been made before. The bigots have been emboldened. So, while the institutions and Constitution of the United States of America face an unprecedented stress test, I think the next four years will be interesting times for for us all.

The key barrier to the use of medical cannabis – or to even discovering what its uses might be – has long been marijuana's illegality under the Misuse of Drugs Act. But what if it transpired that a key component of cannabis is not, and has never been, controlled by the act? And that heavy restrictions on its use and importation are in fact taking place outside the law?

This may sound to you like one of those conspiracy theories your embarrassing friend posts on Facebook, but it's quite serious. And it's the subject of an intended legal challenge notified by Nelson lawyer Sue Grey. You may recognise her name: she's the lawyer who won Rebecca Rieder the right to walk through New Zealand Customs with a jar of raw cannabis prescribed to her in Hawaii.

Grey's intention, and its legal and scientific basis, is summarised in a letter sent to the Ministers of Health and Customs at the beginning of this month. I've uploaded the letter here – it's admirably clear in its language and worth reading.

The substance in question is cannabidiol (CBD), the principal cannabinoid in raw cannabis apart from THC. It's proper to be cautious about its medical potential, but a 2012 review in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology found that it was "a potential medicine for the treatment of neuroinflammation, epilepsy, oxidative injury, vomiting and nausea, anxiety and schizophrenia, respectively." No Cochrane reviews have focused on CBD per se, but advocates point to multiple recent studies investigating its application in treating a wide range of conditions, from pain and inflammation to anxiety.

CBD is present in a 50-50 concentration with THC in Sativex, currently the only approved medical cannabis product in New Zealand. It was also approved for use (as Elixinol) by the doctors treating Alex Renton, the Nelson teenager suffering from status epilepticus in 2015 – but only after approval from the Associate Minister of Health, Peter Dunne.

Ministerial approval was required because CBD was deemed to be controlled under the Misuse of Drugs Act – and Regulation 22 of the Misuse of Drugs Regulations demands the approval of the minister (even Sativex, an approved medicine, can't simply be prescribed and each use must go through and be rubber-stamped by Ministry of Health officials).

But CBD isn't explicitly scheduled under the act, and the contention of Ministry of Health officials that it is covered as an isomer of THC is flatly rejected by ESR scientist Dr Keith Bedford in an affidavit obtained by Grey on behalf of her client, a man with terminal cancer. (The affidavit reiterates the official view of ESR itself.)

And neither should it be, given that it's not psychoactive (although it does seem to moderate the "high" of THC) and poses no known individual or social harm that would meet the test posed in Section 3A of the act.

"The Ministry of Health want CBD to be covered by the Misuse of Drugs Act, but they can't get any experts that will say that it is," Grey told me when I spoke to her yesterday. "They keep getting advice from ESR that says it's not, and they've been looking around through their own staff trying to find somebody with some qualifications to say that it is."

This is a battle that has spilled over into the Expert Advisory Committee on Drugs, where Dr Bedford, a founding member, sits along MoH officials. The issue arose at the EACD's meeting in April last year, of which Grey's letter says:

The minutes of the EADC’s April 2016 identify no scientific or legal reason why Dr Bedford’s view is wrong. It appears the different views relate solely to policy consideration and perhaps vested interests, although it remains unclear to me why some members of the committee would prefer to continue to treat CBD as if it is illegal. Clearly government policy cannot override the law that was written by Parliament, and in particular s3A of the Misuse of Drugs Act.

It was discussed again at the EACD's meeting in October – a meeting for which Grey is still unable to obtain minutes.

"They don't want to release them because they're having an internal disagreement about what to say," she said. "Reading between the lines, the Ministry of Health advisors on that committee are saying 'we want it to be covered by the Misuse of Drugs Act' and ESR and other representatives are say, well, legally it isn't."

The Ministry of Health may indeed have quietly given up its argument that CBD is controlled under the MoDA in favour of focusing on the issue of cross-contamination with small amounts of THC, which is typically present in tiny quantities in non-psychoactive strains of cannabis sativa: ie, hemp.

"There's a note in the April minutes saying their secretariat needs to do some research on it.," said Grey. "Well they've had nearly a year now and I don't understand why it's taken so long when Australia's come out loud and clear on it."

In 2015, Australia's Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) down-scheduled CBD to a Prescription Only Medicine “in preparations for therapeutic use containing 2 per cent or less of other cannabinoids found in cannabis”. It observed that such low levels of other cannabinoids were "not clinically significant" and that that there was "low risk of misuse or abuse as cannabidiol does not possess psychoactive properties."

Problem solved then, surely.

This brings us to another dimension of this story: which is that cannabidiol is about to be approved by a joint Australia-New Zealand regulator – as food. This process has been grinding on for a long time, but Food Safety Australia New Zealand's Final Assessment Report is clear and emphatic. Although hemp seeds and plant material will inevitably contain CBD, it says:

There are no public health and safety concerns associated with the use of food products containing derivatives of industrial hemp, provided there is compliance with the proposed maximum levels for THC in hempseed, oil derived from hempseed and other products derived from industrial hemp.

And:

Foods containing derivatives of industrial hemp do not produce any psychotropic effects, and cannot be used as a source of THC.

And furthermore:

The current prohibition on Cannabis spp. use in food, in the absence of identified public health and safety concerns, could be contrary to Australia’s and New Zealand’s obligations as members of the World Trade Organization.

In the most recent report I can find, from September, New Zealand's Food Safety minister Jo Goodhew said she supported the sale of low-THC hemp seed food as "a safe and nutritious food, which could potentially provide economic benefits for New Zealand."

So we're left with a strangely contradictory situation. Not to mention a confusing one.

"I think it's completely clear that CBD is not covered by the Misuse of Drugs Act," said Grey. "And then everything else follows: you can have hemp seed food, you can have a hemp industry, the whole industrial hemp regulations make sense. And ESR's analytical approach fits. Everything makes sense. The only thing that doesn't fit is the Ministry of Health trying to say that it's covered by the Misuse of Drugs Act."

It's tempting to conclude the some Ministry of Health officials have a hangup with CBD, but it's hard to think of a good reason why. It's already scheduled as a prescription medicine under the Medicines Regulations. Acknowledging that it is not controlled under the Misuse of Drugs Act would simply make it more straightforward to prescribe.

Grey would like to see "some criteria that are obvious and simple and make sense. So that hemp food can be sold as hemp food, so we can have benefits of the same hemp foods they have in North America and Europe. Then probably a category for the dietary supplements. And perhaps some category for the medicines, particularly if it's in combination with THC and other medical products."

Grey has received a response from Customs minister Nicky Wagner, explaining that Customs – which has been seizing medical CBD products at the border –  is guided by the advice of the Ministry of Health, which is that "CBD is a class B1 controlled drug as it is an isomer of tetrahydrocannabinol. Customs has acted on that basis."

"How long do we have to wait? We've got people who are sick now," Grey said. "They don't want to have to wait another six months or two years for the advisory committee to align itself with what the law already says.

"I'm still hoping that the Minister of Health will get some control over his officials and ask what are you guys doing, why don't we just listen to what the experts are saying and accept that it's not covered by the Misuse of Drugs Act and it doesn't need to be? Then we won't need to go to court. But if they don't come to that conclusion fairly quickly, then we will file in court."

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Although Sue Grey is acting on behalf of a client, her action is being supported by a wider group of advocates, caregivers, processors and growers, along with The Hemp Store and Norml NZ. Norml president Chris Fowlie, who told me:

"CBD could improve the lives of many people. It is not psychoactive, has no known side effects, and is widely used in the USA and Europe. They say we must follow the law. We just want them to follow the law too.

"CBD is not listed in the Misuse of Drugs Act, and we believe the Ministry of Health and Customs are acting unlawfully when they seize it, and when they tell doctors they need special Ministerial approval to prescribe it. In fact, any doctor can prescribe it to any patient, for any condition.

"It seems extraordinary that officials have disregarded advice of their own expert, Dr Keith Bedford, and have instead based policy on the opinion of a secret scientist, whose identity and qualifications they have redacted. This is unprecedented in public policy, and we believe it will not stand up in court."

Here's a thing about dance music: half the time, it's in an identity crisis. Its founding myths are in dark little clubs full of the marginalised, but it reaches the masses as risible stadium EDM. This isn't exactly new: as far back as the 1990s, dance music tours to New Zealand were undertaken less by DJs than by megabrands. Remember when 4000 people packed into the Aotea Centre for Gatecrasher, on a school night? If you do, it's probably not for the music.

But in recent years, we've seen something more real flourish: touring club shows by real originators, promoted by real fans. That was very much the case last Sunday at the latest show in the Anno Domini series, spanning the afternoon and evening outdoors at Auckland Art Gallery's rooftop cafe and featuring Detroit's Theo Parrish.

It was a nervous afternoon for the promoters: Parrish's flight from Australia was delayed and CC:Disco (aka Melbournite Courtney Clarke, interviewed here by RNZ Music) played a longer set of of her unpretentious, good-timey disco than originally intended, until the headliner arrived. But, fortunately, arrive he did.

The most notable thing about Parrish's work is its sheer variety: from straight-up house music (he's been an associate of everyone from Lil Louis to Moodymann) to Black Jazz Signature, 2013's brilliant mix album of tracks from the obscure California label Black Jazz. But by reputation, his live sets focus most of all on his much-bootlegged Ugly Edits series of reworks of soul, funk and disco records from the deep crates.

And so it came to be. I'm not going to pretend to know much of what he played, but when his edit of Jacky Beavers' 1974 cut 'Mr Bump Man' wove its way into the mix early, it was every damn thing: taut, funny, very, very funky.

Parrish, more that most DJs, works the EQ hard when he plays live (occasionally more than the PA will comfortably bear, as was the case on Sunday) but it's not just knob-twiddling. By scooping out different ranges, he recontextualises each track live and relates it to the one before and after (he talks about that here). He actually has a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Sound Sculpture, which probably makes this all sound more pointy-headed than it really is: you don't need to know this stuff, you just need to be able to detect rhythm and move to it. My body was aching by the time the evening was done.

As the appointed end of the evening, 8.30pm, ticked over, he began taking it down – not with anything those conventional as a chillout tune, but with jazz records, bumped into each other to create crazy polyrhythms. I just kind of stood still and let my head dance at that point. It might even have been my favourite part of the whole set.

Simon Grigg observed that one really nice thing about the whole show was how clearly Parrish himself was enjoying the music he played – even singing along with the records at times. Simon also got some nice pics:

Thanks, Anno Domino: this was a fun day and a really rewarding one musically. I've come away wanting to get my head around more of Theo Parrish's music.

You can buy Theo Parrish's 2014 album American Intelligence directly from his Sound Signature website (along with a whole lot of other stuff), or here at Bleep. 

On Bandcamp, there's the 2015 collaboration with afrobeat legend Tony Allen:

And his rework of Fat Freddy's Drop's 'Mother Mother':

Did I mention he had range?

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Something – sort of different but not different to the above – I've been enjoying over the break is Brian Eno's new album, Reflection. It's an ambient album, but I don't think I'd cracked its particular nature until I read a review that made a passing comparison with the painting of Mark Rothko. Dammit, that deserves more than a passing mention, because it seems to me that's exactly what this is: the sound of a Rothko painting. And it's lovely.

Also: very good music to read books to.

PS: The album is also available as a generative app for iOS. I propose that you spend the $US40 and tell me how it sounds.

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This New Yorker story, The Folk Power of Jamaican Dancehall Signs, looks at a new book, Serious Things A Go Happen: Three Decades of Jamaican Dancehall Signs, which collects more than 100 of them. Nice.

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I really enjoyed catching up with Jay Clarkson yesterday during her brief visit to Auckland. If you're in Christchurch, be aware that she's playing with her original Breathing Cage band next week – once at Blue Smoke and again in a free gig at St Albans Park. Details are here on her website.

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Finally, I'm pretty buzzed out by the news that disco mix god John Morales has been added to the Splore 2017 lineup. Because you know how much I like that shit.

In  a story cross-posted from Newstalk ZB today, the Herald reports that it has "been revealed the New Zealand Government has paid a foundation owned by Hillary Clinton $7.7 million," going on to note  that "in November it became apparent New Zealand was implicated, but exactly how much and when it occurred was unknown."

Um ... implicated?

At this point you should be aware that this is a story generated by the Taxpayers' Union, so the level of stupidity will typically be very high.

Here's how the story came to be. Late last year, the Clinton Heath Access Initiative published its updated donor list, covering the period from 2010 to September 2016. Presumably, the Taxpayers' Union noticed that New Zealand was on the list and on November 11 fired off an OIA request to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. That request resulted in this response from MFAT. Well and good. It's mildly interesting.

What's not well and good is the idiotic commentary from Taxpayers' Union spokesman Jordan Williams:

Mr Williams said New Zealand's one of the biggest contributors and a pattern is emerging of New Zealand using aid money for diplomatic, instead of aid purposes.

"Why are we giving millions of dollars of New Zealand aid money to the Clinton Foundation? It's similar almost to the Saudi sheep saga."

It's nothing like the Saudi sheep saga at all. Not even remotely.

The Clinton Health Access Initiative has saved literally millions of lives by providing HIV/AIDS medication in countries where it was otherwise unaffordable. Nearly 12 million people currently take HIV/AIDS drugs provided by the initiative. It also provides anti-malarial drugs and other forms of healthcare support. (It further bears noting that not only is the foundation not "owned" by Hillary Clinton, CHAI itself has been a separate nonprofit since 2010.)

Williams continued:

Mr Williams added it not only looks bad to New Zealanders, it'll also surely annoy the incoming Trump administration.

"If you were forming a plan to make New Zealand unpopular among the incoming administration you couldn't formulate a better plan than giving money to the Clinton Foundation".

Mr Williams said the government needs to promise the tap will be turned off between New Zealand tax payers and the foundation.

Seriously? Have a look at that donor list. The governments of Australia, Britain, Norway and Canada have given multiples more in aid to CHAI than New Zealand has. We're not one of the "biggest contributors" – and if we were, what of it?

Our contributions are tied to a project to reduce child malnutrition in Rwanda and Ethiopia by strengthening local farming and food processing infrastructure with the goal of providing fortified foods to children and breastfeeding mothers. Successive tranches of aid are subject to reporting – which, it appears, has been very favourable. Harvests are up, there's a new food-processing joint venture and vulnerable women and children are being fed.

Oddly enough, this isn't actually news. The project is listed on MFAT's African aid page. The New Zealand-based international aid consultancy FCG ANZDEC announced back in 2013 that it would be working with the New Zealand Aid Programe and CHAI on the project

Yes, 2013. And yet somehow we're being asked to believe that this is all diplomatic pandering with an eye on a Hillary Clinton presidency.  

The Taxpayers' Union, nonetheless, doubles down on the stupid in its press release:

Even worse, this money comes from the NZ Aid budget which should be going to programes which are the most effective at helping the world’s poor - not sidetracked into political objectives.

It is possible that officials have reason to believe that the Clinton Foundation’s work does provide good value for money, although given the controversy in the US that seems unlikely. The refusal to front up and explain leaves a stench of buying political access.

Given New Zealand’s faux pas in co-sponsoring the UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel on Christmas Eve, and the heavy criticism of New Zealand which has resulted, the continued support of the Clinton Foundation risks even more damage to New Zealand’s ability to wield any influence in the US.

I submit that these clowns probably know very well they're peddling bullshit. They know this is aid money for an ongoing development project and they know quite well they're constructing fake news. I think it's unfortunate that the news media would be helping them by credulously reporting that construction.

Weediquette, the marijuana magazine series you can see on the Viceland channel on Sky, is a TV show for its times. As the law, social attitudes, economy and science relating to cannabis evolve rapidly in the US, stories are proliferating.

And those are the stories – from medically stoned kids to black-market producers trying to go legit – that host and excutive producer Krishna Andavolu explores. Although, in keeping with Vice style, he consumes weed on screen in every episode, it's not a stunt show.

Krishna was in New Zealand late last year on a publicity visit for Viceland and I interviewed him for my RNZ podcast series From Zero (which is still there for you to enjoy).

I was interested in far more than could be accommodated in the series, especially given that voters in California, Nevada, Maine, and Massachusetts had just opted to legalise the use, sale and consumption of recreational marijuana and several states had voted for medical marijuana regimes. So I've transcribed the whole interview here

Krishna was accommodating and thoughtful – and a man who clearly believes he has very interesting job.

What's the significance of what happened with the ballot initiatives this year? Was that a tipping point?

Yeah, I think so. I think California going recreationally legal offers us an example of the eighth-largest economy maybe in the world regulating the sale of cannabis. I think if you dig down into other states – Arkansas, for example, which legalised medical marijuana – they approved CDB-only. That's a tipping point for places that are socially conservative and wouldn't otherwise think that marijuana is an acceptable legal substance, to at least offer recognition that CBD for epilepsy is maybe a real thing. That's a different tipping point.

What was the story behind the successful campaigns? Who put money into them succeeding?

A lot of grassroots organisations, like Norml and the Drug Policy Alliance. Organisations that have been working from a legislative point of view for decades now. California's also very interesting because Gavin Newsom, the lieutenant governor of California, who might one day become governor, was also very much behind the regulatory push. There was the Blue Ribbon Commission that was formed a few years ago and it did quite a bit of research into how best to implement a regulatory systems – and he was kind of the head of that.

So it wasn't, as people like Kevin Sabet have claimed, "Big Marijuana" putting in the money?

I'm not really sure what "Big Marijuana" is in that sense. If there was to be an investigation into where the Drug Policy Alliance's funding is coming from, perhaps it's coming from RJ Reynolds Tobacco. But I think if that were the case, we would have known it by now. Generally speaking, those in the marijuana community are sceptical about these things. Are they myopic to their own cause being affected like that? Perhaps.

But there is specific evidence as to who is funding the opposition. In a couple of cases in states in the US this time around, it's pretty interesting. The first one is Sheldon Adelson in Las Vegas, Nevada – he put in something like $800,000 to an anti-weed campaign. It didn't work, but he has personal experience of having a kid who died of drug addiction and he believes the kid's marijuana use was integral to that drug addiction.

In Arizona there's an even more interesting money trail. A company called Insys – they're a pharmaceutical company that makes a Fentanyl patch. An opiate pain-relieving patch that's been abused quite a bit. To a lot of advocates, that's direct material proof that marijuana is a disruptive force in the broken big pharmaceutical system.

What happens from here?

It's hard to say. I would venture the guess that it's going to be a long time before Congress acts in any meaningful way to de-schedule marijuana or legalise it in any meaningful fashion. Which means it will still be up to the states to legalise as voters see fit.

You could venture the guess that a rather conservative Attorney General might want to be more aggressive in prosecuting states for allowing marijuana. But that verges into another typically conservative issue of states' rights. And I don't think there's enough political capital to be gained to go after, say, California.

We saw the NYPD officially deprioritise marijuana enforcement almost on the day that Colorado legalised. Does that suggest there's an effect even outside the states that reform?

Yeah. Marijuana prohibition has been for such a long time a tool of the carceral state. It's been a way that law enforcement has been able to pin charges on communities of people. I don't think it's completely stopped, even if in name only stop-and-frisk doesn't exist any more, even if pot is decriminalised.

To take one example, smoking weed on the street. That just happens. It pretty much happens everywhere. But that is still illegal in New York, you can still get a ticket or summons for it, or you can get arrested. And so if the discretion of the police is such that they would care to arrest you, they can still find reasons to do so with pot.

Smoking on the street is technically still illegal in Colorado too, isn't it?

It is. But again, it's not as if people don't do it. And sometimes the police do look the other way, and sometimes they don't. So they still have that kind of discretion even if in supposedly legal circumstances.

I was in New York in April for UNGASS and I did smell marijuana being smoked on the street. One thing I noticed was how it smelled – this is modern pot. Some of the terpenes have been bred out and it actually smelled gorgeous – it smelled perfumed.

We're at a high point as far as the cultivation of marijuana is concerned in the United States. The variety, the quality, the potency, the flavour can be astounding. That stuff existed five years ago, it was just hard to find – you had to have a really good connect. Now it's like all the stuff is like that and it's harder to find not-high-quality weed.

We've also seen, in Colorado in particular, the different forms of cannabis, including the refined products, the shatter and the wax. What impact are they having?

I don't know, exactly. There's a lot of cannabis aficionados, people who really love the different concentrates, the flavour profiles that they offer and the choice it offers them to consume. I know for some medical patients it's very quick and strong. One thing with medical marijuana is that we're at a very basic moment of ingestion. If you look at the way drugs can be ingested or interfaced with our biology, the pharmaceutical industry's been really good at finding different ways for that to happen. We're still smoking things and ingesting them in a really rudimentary fashion.

So I think it's a double-edged sword. Shatter and oils can be very strong and I think abuse of that on a recreational level certainly happens. On the other side, for chronic pain or serious conditions, we did a story this year about the opioid crisis in the US and how there people who are trying to get opiate addicts off of their opioids by replacing them with cannabinoids. During withdrawal from opioids there's real desire and need for kind of a hit – to get messed up – and what shatter and wax and dabbing can do is substitute for a hit of heroin in that moment. So it has a therapeutic value even though it's super-potent and we could maybe say it's a bad thing.

In the first episode of Weediquette you went to Portland and saw another side of medical marijuana – which was parents giving their children very, very high doses of THC in the belief that it would cure their cancer. And being allowed to do so by the state. That seemed to me a risky way to run a medical marijuana regime.

Yeah. You could look at it that way. We know that marijuana is good for easing the ravaging effects of chemotherapy. But that doesn't take very much marijuana. What these parents were doing was giving their children really high-potency, high-THC oils, because they believed the THC in that oil was actually killing the cancer.

There is very little clinical evidence to suggest that that's the case. There's also just enough pre-clinical evidence to suggest that it could be the case, giving those parents kind of vacuum of knowledge to fill with their desires and hopes.

The way the medical marijuana system works in Oregon offers a pretty wide latitude to caregivers as far as what they deem appropriate. I wouldn't necessarily say that's a bad thing in all cases. This is a case where these parents as a family are finding a lot of therapy from their kids being on these cannabinoids. The use-case is becoming more diverse and it can be pretty disturbing to see. But if you come at it from an empathetic point of view, it's like, these are kids that might otherwise die. And so if these parents are finding a way to keep them alive and find some peace in that process, then it's medicinal but also sort of social, in a weird way.

I must say, after you had a little dab of the oil they give their kids …

Yeah (laughs) …

I looked at it and I thought, man, this guy fronts a weed show and he is more out of it than he wants to be.

Well, you know, I front a weed show but I also don't purport to be the biggest stoner in the world. I like weed, I smoke it, I think it's a great recreational substance. I'm a medical marijuana patient in California and other states as a result. But that said, my investigation into this isn't coming from the point of view of a pure advocate or a pure hedonist. I'm trying to figure out where we are at the moment as far as how marijuana interfaces with mainstream culture.

There's a variety of regulatory systems in operation already: Colorado and Washington State regulate much as they do alcohol, DC is the "gift economy" model, you've also been to Uruguay – have you come to any conclusions about what the ideal regime is?

I don't think it's necessarily been found yet. I think the Uruguay model stifles the creativity of the market, because it's all produced by the government itself. The DC model is not a model – it's a half-finished, half-baked one, because the federal government has made it impossible for the city council to actually establish regulations. The Washington model did not initially have enough supply, so basically didn't induce people to leave the black market. California until now, under Prop 215, has been a bit of a failure as well, if you look at the diversion from the legal to illegal market – 80% of the weed in the US comes from California because of that.

But Colorado I think is still in the lead as far as a workable marketplace. It's a smaller, less diverse state as far as population is concerned, it's generally wealthy in comparison to other states. So there might not be a one-size-fits-all.

Did it work well in Colorado because they had a robust medical scheme beforehand and were already doing things like bar-coding seedlings?

Yeah. They have the seed-to-sale tracking. I think all the states that have legal pot had medical pot – it was a foot in the door. But I'm not sure I can give a definite answer on that.

Have you visited any cannabis clubs?

I went to the Netherlands. I haven't been to Spain yet, but I hear they're flourishing there. There's a couple of things about cannabis use that are interesting in those. One is social use, which is frowned upon in the US. And the other is cooperative growing – growing for oneself and not having it mediated through another company that you're paying.

Its interesting that you front a show that’s about marijuana, you smoke marijuana onscreen, you get to consume it in various ways. And your show's never been censored, it's never been taken off air. Does that sometimes surprise you?

No. We're very careful from a production point of view not to do things that are illegal, irresponsible – or are dumb. The standards and practices in the US are an ongoing negotiation, so what we're doing now perhaps wouldn't have been acceptable five years ago. That's a movement as to acceptable behaviour on television.

But the show is a sort of an emotional investigation – a rigorous journalistic investigation, but an open, empathetic investigation of where we are at this seismic time in the history of marijuana and culture. Our remit is not to be the most controversial, stunty weed journalism show. What we're trying to do is follow people's lives, see what's at stake, and through their journeys learn about what pot means to them.

I thought the Portland episode was a good example of that. And I was also impressed with the quality of the scientific information. You got that right and you expressed it in quite clear terms.

Oh, thanks! You liked the graphics? We spent a lot of time on that. My parents are both physicians, so I come from dinner-table conversations about these sorts of things. I think people who understand cannabis culture are a lot smarter than people give them credit for. The concept of apoptosis – normal programmed cell-death – I bet there's a lot of people you'd see on the street and go "that's a stoner" who'd know what that is. Most people don’t.

Pot geeks.

Pot geeks! There're tons of 'em!

What's the best weed you've smoked in the course of the show?

I think the time I enjoyed smoking pot the most was in the Emerald Triangle in Mendocino County and Humboldt County. There are a couple of producers up there and it's really nice to be there – the air is fresh and you're at elevation. The terpene profiles of what they're growing up there are astounding. It's sun-grown, it's outdoors and it has a different consistency and flavour as a result of that.

Is the market in the US already at a stage where you can ask for weed that does what it says on the label? That will do what you want it to do?

Yeah, I think so. I haven't purchased pot in a recreational sense that often, but I think there's enough supply that if you were asking the right person you can get what you would like. If you go to dispensaries there are pot geeks, very knowledgeable people behind the counter, who help you get what you're looking for.

There are also websites that give you potential insights as to what's out there. But I think is most interesting is the next level stuff where it's not about the specific plant that's being grown, it's companies taking specific terpenes and cannabinoids, extracting them, and recombining them for specific effects and flavours. Clearly there's a future there because it can do precisely what you're asking.

That is a consumer need: I want to feel energetic and creative, gimme the pot that does that. A lot of the time first-time users are really put off by marijuana because they don't understand how it's going to affect them. That's also what makes it hard to regulate, because marijuana isn't just one plant – it's thousands of varieties of that plant that have thousands of different types of effects.