Episode 4
This 4th “Legacy Edition” of the Wise Talkers podcast features an interview I conducted in 1996 on KMUD radio in southern Humboldt County, California. In conversation with two doctors from the heart of the famed Emerald Triangle, one of the world’s largest marijuana-producing regions, we discussed the long-term health effects of regular marijuana use.
There were very few research studies in the United States on marijuana in 1996, 20 years before it became legal for recreational use in California. We reviewed research conducted in Jamaica and other countries, and also the professional expertise of Dr. Marc Phelps and Dr. Bill Hunter. Four listeners called in, relating their own experience and views on the subject, addressing built-in research bias issues, sacramental used of cannabis, and how usage and health effects vary in different cultures.
Only the first half of the original one-hour interview was available, unfortunately, but it nonetheless covers a variety of views on and experiences with cannabis use. After the truncated interview plays, I close with a suggestion of doing a future live-streamed episode of Wise Talkers with listener call-ins, focusing on the use of marijuana not just for recreational or medical benefits, but as an aid in the exploration and expansion of consciousness.
(I did not create a transcript for this episode, partly because it was difficult to distinguish voices when there was cross-talk. However, Apple Podcast displays its own AI-generated transcript of the episode.)
These are familiar voices and philosophies from a hopeful culture of back-to-the-land homesteaders, solar energy pioneers, peaceniks, environmentalists and creators. Most were “tokers” and believed it to be our right and only natural, someday to be legalized, its virtues recognized.
And it amazed me how soon after those days that this right – to use cannabis if and as we wished – got widely legalized.