Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Ethan Nadelman, and this is Psychoactive, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. Psychoactive is the
Speaker 1: show where we talk about all things drugs. But any
Speaker 1: views expressed here do not represent those of I Heeart Media,
Speaker 1: Protozoa Pictures, or their executives and employees. Indeed, heed, as
Speaker 1: an inveterate contrarian, I can tell you they may not
Speaker 1: even represent my own and nothing contained in this show
Speaker 1: should be used as medical advice or encouragement to use
Speaker 1: any type of drug. Hello, Psychoactive listeners, Well, today's episode
Speaker 1: is gonna take me a bit more out of my
Speaker 1: comfort zone than is normally the case. Uh. My guest
Speaker 1: is Steven Jackson. He was a highly respected basketball player
Speaker 1: in the NBA for many years and he's now the
Speaker 1: co host of video podcast called All the Smoke with
Speaker 1: one of his friends and another former NBA player named
Speaker 1: Matt Barnes, which has been really sort of getting a
Speaker 1: tremendous amount attention, having incredible array of guests, really some
Speaker 1: of the most famous basketball players and other athletes in
Speaker 1: the world, and arrange of celebrities and others. So it's
Speaker 1: a real honor for me to have him on the
Speaker 1: reason I wanted to have Steven Jackson, and he goes
Speaker 1: by Stack. That's what I'm be calling him is because
Speaker 1: he's been one of the people who's been more outspoken
Speaker 1: about the issues around drug testing and cannabis in the
Speaker 1: NBA and in professional sports for quite a number of
Speaker 1: years now. And he's also been somebody who's been one
Speaker 1: of the people most out there among professional athletes and
Speaker 1: addressing issues around the drug war and racial justice and
Speaker 1: has a particular connection to all this that we'll get
Speaker 1: into um as we proceed. So Stack, thanks so much
Speaker 1: for joining in me un psychoactive eightan, I'm honored to
Speaker 1: be here. Thanks for having me. Let's just start off
Speaker 1: with this. I mean, the sense I have is that,
Speaker 1: you know, in professional sports, I mean NBA, football, baseball, hockey, whatever,
Speaker 1: and even the Olympics, right, we're seeing a real movement
Speaker 1: around testing for marijuana and punishing people from marijuana. Why
Speaker 1: do you think that's happening. Is it just because it's
Speaker 1: getting legalized everywhere or or what? Well, I think at
Speaker 1: one point, you know, it was a certain it was
Speaker 1: a certain demographic and and a certain culture that was
Speaker 1: glorifying marijuana, and and and and that marijuana was basically
Speaker 1: put on the pedestal in and when that demographic, you
Speaker 1: know as being young black athletes who are having a
Speaker 1: lot of money, and who's who's reaching a lot of
Speaker 1: success at a young age, when it became a problem
Speaker 1: in sports, for for for teams and for businesses, I
Speaker 1: think that's when they really tried to step on it
Speaker 1: and make it bad, you know, to to to the masses.
Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, you know, I
Speaker 1: remember when I was a kid. You know, my mom
Speaker 1: used to have house parties. My mama stepdads to have
Speaker 1: house parties and they're smoking weed and I was like
Speaker 1: a cigarette. So it's a conversation that you got to have.
Speaker 1: But you have to know what you're doing. You have
Speaker 1: to know why you're doing it. And everybody's not in
Speaker 1: health in cannabis and and then consuming cannabis to be
Speaker 1: seen to be in the hip crowd. A lot of
Speaker 1: people are doing them for the right reasons, for medical reasons,
Speaker 1: to be saying. And so I mean when you talked
Speaker 1: about it's a kind of quale, I mean, there's you say,
Speaker 1: it's a kind of a social aspect to the marijuana use.
Speaker 1: It's very popular among young athletes, especially black athletes, bit
Speaker 1: more generally, but also a medical thing, right, And I
Speaker 1: say you talked about how it would help you relax
Speaker 1: or feel better after games, right, I mean, I mean,
Speaker 1: is that what it is for most people? What for what? What?
Speaker 1: For me? I can I can definitely speak for me
Speaker 1: and guys like Matt Barnes because we were very similar.
Speaker 1: And I went the long road to get to the NBA,
Speaker 1: you know, trying out for eighteen team, breaking both of
Speaker 1: my feet, dealing with death to my older brother, and
Speaker 1: a lot of different things coming up that that can
Speaker 1: have you mentally disturbed, you know. And as as a
Speaker 1: kid dealing with so much, especially as a teenager, within
Speaker 1: one to help my mom and want to do the
Speaker 1: right things, but it's so easy to do the wrong
Speaker 1: things around me. The cannabis and basketball helped me escape.
Speaker 1: That was my two escapes. So when I played basketball,
Speaker 1: I was able to escape from back from the world
Speaker 1: that what's going on. As soon as I leave the court,
Speaker 1: I'm back to the real world. Where the only way
Speaker 1: I could escape and keep myself sane was cannabis. So um,
Speaker 1: I know, the injuries that I that I played. I
Speaker 1: played three years with a broken toe. I couldn't have
Speaker 1: done that without cannabis. Being able to to play eight
Speaker 1: or two games. Deal with the ups and downs, deal
Speaker 1: with UH being UH labeled as a thug or something
Speaker 1: that I'm not while I'm playing basketball. All those things
Speaker 1: can be frustrated and people don't want to stand. You
Speaker 1: can make all the money in the world, but mental
Speaker 1: health is undefeated. I don't care what you have. Mental
Speaker 1: health can still deal with you. And you have all
Speaker 1: the money world, but you still deal with mental things.
Speaker 1: You still have insecurity, you still deal with ups and downs.
Speaker 1: And you think there's generally true of guys in the
Speaker 1: NBA and maybe other leaks as well. It's definitely true
Speaker 1: an all sports. And that's why they're not drug testing
Speaker 1: now because they see that cannabis one. You're not going
Speaker 1: to stop the players from from doing Canada because this
Speaker 1: is the safest drug. It's safer than alcohol. It's definitely
Speaker 1: safer than alcohol. So so, and that's why all professionals
Speaker 1: are not testing now because Okay, I would rather my
Speaker 1: player go home and smoke and join it too, then
Speaker 1: go to a club and get drunk and possibly getting
Speaker 1: the d U. I. So it's making sense now, and
Speaker 1: I think it's been made since a long time ago.
Speaker 1: But like they say, they're starting to make money off
Speaker 1: of us, so now they're starting to listen. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it's also the fact of course here Now you've
Speaker 1: got illegal for medical uses in thirty eight states and
Speaker 1: for all adults in eighteen states. So you've got the
Speaker 1: craziness right of people playing for teams and states whards
Speaker 1: legal and still having a policy that says you can't
Speaker 1: use cannabis or you can't test positive for I mean,
Speaker 1: that also makes no sense, right, So it's not just
Speaker 1: the money, it's the broader political legalization of the whole thing, right,
Speaker 1: And you got and that and that the thing make
Speaker 1: it makes sense. You can't tell me that I can't
Speaker 1: use cannabis when I'm living in the state where it's legal.
Speaker 1: I don't care what sport I'm playing. We're going by
Speaker 1: this is we're going but we're going by the rules
Speaker 1: of the state. There's a law. The state makes the laws,
Speaker 1: not the team you're playing for. They don't make the rules.
Speaker 1: So that's why all these sports teams now we're saying Okay,
Speaker 1: we're not tested for cannabis no more. And I remember
Speaker 1: when I first retired, soon as I worked out on ESPN,
Speaker 1: the first chance I got to speak on cannabis, I said,
Speaker 1: I smoked. I know, I was the first one that
Speaker 1: I smoked. My whole career. I played more games than anybody.
Speaker 1: I played hurt. I didn't want to miss a game.
Speaker 1: But if I couldn't go home after playing forty two
Speaker 1: minutes guarding a guy a hundred pounds heavier than me,
Speaker 1: if I can go home and smoke a joint just
Speaker 1: to come down, uh and relax, there's no way I
Speaker 1: would have made it fourteen years. Yeah, and by the way,
Speaker 1: I should told the audience, I mean, yes, Stacks is
Speaker 1: not just bragging here. I saw a quote where Larry Bird,
Speaker 1: the very famous player for the Boston Celtics, you know,
Speaker 1: back when, back when I was younger, he described Stack
Speaker 1: is basically the toughest player in the league when it
Speaker 1: came to playing through paint and injury. So I very
Speaker 1: much respect what you're saying. I assume the same thing
Speaker 1: has been true in football as well. Now, when I
Speaker 1: wonder is though you're using marijuana all during your career
Speaker 1: while it's against the policy, right, so and you never
Speaker 1: want you got suspended for some other ship, but you
Speaker 1: never got suspended for weed, and so how did you
Speaker 1: manage that? I think for me one, I didn't do
Speaker 1: it for the wrong reasons. A lot of people do
Speaker 1: it for the wrong ways. They do it to be cool,
Speaker 1: they do it to be seen. It was always for
Speaker 1: me to be able to relax my mind, to be
Speaker 1: able to sleep, to cope with a lot of things.
Speaker 1: For me, you know, I always knew the drug rules, right.
Speaker 1: So at one point, if you have a positive test,
Speaker 1: then you're go into a drug program. And and for
Speaker 1: five or six years until they caught onto what we
Speaker 1: was doing that you can smoke as long as you
Speaker 1: you was in the drug proc program. You just couldn't
Speaker 1: get out unless you pass three consecutive tests. So I
Speaker 1: felt so I figured it out. So I'm like, before
Speaker 1: you'll even test me, I'm gonna let you all know
Speaker 1: my pistons uh is gonna be positive. So just put
Speaker 1: me in the drug program for the next six years.
Speaker 1: I don't care about getting out. I'm not getting suspended.
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not losing any money, but I'm still
Speaker 1: in the drug program. So that's when the things wasn't
Speaker 1: so hard. So I figured that out. So I was
Speaker 1: able to smoke for six years until they're like, okay,
Speaker 1: they just in the program smoking, They're not even trying
Speaker 1: to get out. They figured it out. They came up
Speaker 1: with another with the random test, and it's definitely ways around.
Speaker 1: I had different relationships with different people. Sometimes we drunk
Speaker 1: certain things to to mask to mask our yearine we did.
Speaker 1: We did a lot of things that that we probably
Speaker 1: could have got caught and got in trouble for, but
Speaker 1: we didn't. But um, cannabis was just that important to
Speaker 1: us being sane enough to do our jobs. And what
Speaker 1: about the guys who were getting caught. Were they just
Speaker 1: being dumb or unlucky or with somebody get trying to
Speaker 1: get them or what was going on there? A little
Speaker 1: bit of both. See I wasn't riding around with cannabis
Speaker 1: in my car and smoking with the car smoked out
Speaker 1: and something like like. That's stuff like that. They just
Speaker 1: that's just dumb. You you you you tell them on
Speaker 1: this stuff. You want to go to jail. You have
Speaker 1: no reason to be doing that anyway. You you want
Speaker 1: to get pulled over with guys doing stuff like that,
Speaker 1: just they're doing it. That's that's that's called doing it
Speaker 1: for the wrong reasons. I never rode with it. I
Speaker 1: never put myself in a position outside of my home
Speaker 1: to be caught with it. So I did everything in
Speaker 1: the comfort on my own home and all with people
Speaker 1: are all my teammates and people around who who would
Speaker 1: like minded, And that's what I did. I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people get caught because they get sloppy, uh,
Speaker 1: Like I said, they want people to see them doing it,
Speaker 1: and they do it for the wrong reasons, and that's
Speaker 1: when you get caught. It never fails, you know. I
Speaker 1: saw when the guy who ran the NBA, David Stern
Speaker 1: for like thirty years, right, kind of an almost an
Speaker 1: authoritarian but very foul power effective leader, right, and he
Speaker 1: was the one suspending people left, right and center. And
Speaker 1: then I see this thing where a former NBA player,
Speaker 1: somebody you had in your show, Al Harrington, is now
Speaker 1: in the marijuana industry, you know, interviews Stern after educating
Speaker 1: about the issue, and Stern goes, well, I think we
Speaker 1: should change the policy now, I mean, why do you think?
Speaker 1: And I see his successor Adam Silver. You know, it's
Speaker 1: kind of you know, he won't boldly say let's just
Speaker 1: stop to damn marijuana testing, although I think they're just
Speaker 1: about there. But why does it take so long for
Speaker 1: these guys to do it? They know that of all
Speaker 1: the players are using cannabis in one way or another.
Speaker 1: What what took so long? Well, I mean a lot
Speaker 1: of things with just a conversation, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Like I said, I'd rather somebody sit back and wait
Speaker 1: till they have a conversation with somebody from that demographic
Speaker 1: or somebody who understands it, and before they just come
Speaker 1: out and say no, I'm against it. Right So, and
Speaker 1: that's what David Stern did. Als my as my closest
Speaker 1: friend in the world. I was right there on the
Speaker 1: side of him when he started Viola in he is
Speaker 1: he's a marijuana business, right, yeah? Is this brand vowel
Speaker 1: is called Viola is named after his grandmother. And I
Speaker 1: saw his vision. I was right there, invested from the
Speaker 1: jump and with al doing Now he's a trend settor,
Speaker 1: you know, he he saw something that a lot of
Speaker 1: people didn't see by by playing in for the Nuggets.
Speaker 1: You know, when when cannabis first came legal in um
Speaker 1: In Colorado, Devil, Colorado, so he was ahead of the game.
Speaker 1: He studied, he took his time to learn everything, and
Speaker 1: he has had so many athletes benefit from being in
Speaker 1: the cannabis business. So far from him teaching him the
Speaker 1: business and helping them start there on different brands and
Speaker 1: on growth houses and dispensaries such. But David Stern sat
Speaker 1: down with the right person. Al knew everything about it.
Speaker 1: He knew the business, he knew the positive side of it.
Speaker 1: Any negative idea question that David Stern had, I was
Speaker 1: able to answer it with a positive answer, and David Stern,
Speaker 1: you know, respected it and understood the hours coming from facts.
Speaker 1: So by David started going to the right person, I
Speaker 1: can see why he instantly changed his mind. Because is
Speaker 1: the spokesperson for the NBA and for athletes all around
Speaker 1: the world, because he is the leader. He's so he
Speaker 1: has the biggest we have the biggest black owned cannabis
Speaker 1: brand called Viola, and he is the biggest athlete involved
Speaker 1: in it. So that conversation was had by the two
Speaker 1: right people, and their conversation was long overdue. A lot
Speaker 1: of these owners, a lot of these people who run
Speaker 1: these leagues, like the commissioners toff like that they're the
Speaker 1: ones that need to sit down with someone that's from
Speaker 1: that different graphic that understands cannabia, that that knows the
Speaker 1: benefits of cannabis, and they can sit down with him
Speaker 1: and get an understanding. But a lot of these people
Speaker 1: have never sat down with anyone. They just judging from
Speaker 1: the outside looking in the automatic naking okay, drug drug,
Speaker 1: Cannabis is a drug, is a drug. What's a lot
Speaker 1: of drugs? I hit the child making money off of
Speaker 1: that's killing people, you know. And also it seemed like
Speaker 1: in football, you got a little more of this, you know.
Speaker 1: I remember back, it must have been seven years ago.
Speaker 1: I was doing a TV interview at CNN with Fred Zakaria,
Speaker 1: and in the green room with me is Marvin Washington.
Speaker 1: You know, football player had been in the Super Bowl,
Speaker 1: Super Bowl has the Super Bowl ring, and he was
Speaker 1: out there talking about CBD, right and and and he's
Speaker 1: now become kind of one of the leaders in there.
Speaker 1: And one of the things they seem to notice is
Speaker 1: that in football, the guys seemed to be a little
Speaker 1: more focused on the CBD side of marijuana. Whereas maybe
Speaker 1: in the basketball thing it's more combined th hc cb D,
Speaker 1: and maybe the football thing is about you know, the
Speaker 1: traumatic brain injuries and and all that stuff. But I mean,
Speaker 1: do you notice this difference among different leagues about how
Speaker 1: they come at this issue. See with me, I look
Speaker 1: at things different, Like it wasn't a secret with me,
Speaker 1: Like before I even got into the NBA, Before I
Speaker 1: got to the Spurs, Greg Popch came to me after
Speaker 1: summer league and told me this is this is Greg Papers.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell you two of the best coaches to
Speaker 1: have a coach in the in the NBA. These are
Speaker 1: the conversations I had with them before I play with
Speaker 1: Greg Paptch comes to me and says, Stephen Jackson, I
Speaker 1: want you on the team. You had a great summer league,
Speaker 1: but I hear you like to smoke cannabis. You cannot
Speaker 1: smoke cannabis while you played with the Spurs. This is
Speaker 1: when I'm this is my introduction to the NBA, so
Speaker 1: they already know what you like to do a lot
Speaker 1: of things about you. I get to go to State
Speaker 1: don Nelson, he applauds the fact that I get my
Speaker 1: last drug test. We were smoking all year anyway, but
Speaker 1: he did not have a problem with us smoking. When
Speaker 1: we beat Dallas in the first round, the first A
Speaker 1: t to be the number one seed in the playoffs,
Speaker 1: we go to don Nelson's house. Soon as we walk in, he,
Speaker 1: like Jack Hey Woody horrises in the back rolling Dubies.
Speaker 1: So some coaches understood the dynamic of what it did
Speaker 1: for the players, and guys like me, I didn't abuse it.
Speaker 1: And and Nether and these coaches, I'm pretty sure, like
Speaker 1: don Nelson, he played, so they heard they did worst
Speaker 1: things when they were playing. You know, the locker room
Speaker 1: was drinking beers and smoking cigarettes at halftime. So I
Speaker 1: was blessed to be a positions where coaches let me
Speaker 1: be me, you know, at all times, and even when
Speaker 1: we're called our coaches let me be me. So let
Speaker 1: me just back up for a second. Tell her audience.
Speaker 1: So some of the names that status mentioned. Gregg Popovich
Speaker 1: is the famous coach of the San Antonio Spurs, I
Speaker 1: think the President team too, who's won tons of champion
Speaker 1: one of the one of the leaders in basketball history
Speaker 1: for winning championships and major games. And Don Nelson is
Speaker 1: in the Hall of Fame, I think because he's probably
Speaker 1: the second most winning coaching history. Popovitch is interesting right
Speaker 1: because Popovich, among all the coaches, has been among those
Speaker 1: speaking out the most about racism and racial injustice and
Speaker 1: jumping on with Black Lives Matter with George Floyd gets killed.
Speaker 1: But I haven't heard much on the stuff about about
Speaker 1: drug testing and about marijuana, and I mean, let's have
Speaker 1: missed something there, and I'm so I'm curious both if
Speaker 1: you heard different. Has he been on that issue too,
Speaker 1: and also that I mean when he told you that,
Speaker 1: did you actually stop smoking marijuana or you just got
Speaker 1: more careful? Absolutely not. I never stopped, and I knew
Speaker 1: I wasn't gonna stop. And uh, I think he knew
Speaker 1: that too, but I think he still had to say it.
Speaker 1: I don't think he'll ever come out and publicly to
Speaker 1: stand behind cannabis or anything like that. That's just not
Speaker 1: who pop is. But at the same time, if he
Speaker 1: knows it's helping people, if you know it's saving lives,
Speaker 1: if he knows it's it's medication for a lot of
Speaker 1: people and help a lot of people stay safe, he won't.
Speaker 1: He won't. He won't go against it. He might not
Speaker 1: stand behind it, but he won't go against it. And
Speaker 1: and and that's one thing I respect about him. Pop knew,
Speaker 1: Pop knew me. He knew I was smoking the whole time,
Speaker 1: but I was performing. I was doing my job. If
Speaker 1: it ever became a problem where it embarrassed the team
Speaker 1: or embarrassed the organization, I would have to stand behind
Speaker 1: that and and and deal with my punishment. But that
Speaker 1: never happened. And that's why I always have Pops respect
Speaker 1: in a way. Right, It's basically what he was telling
Speaker 1: you was don't get caught, right, And what what the
Speaker 1: whole policy was doing was taking an activities almost like
Speaker 1: alcohol prohibition and half the country's drinking. You're in the
Speaker 1: NBA or NFL whatever, and half the players are using
Speaker 1: this stuff and where another if not more. But they're
Speaker 1: all being expected to lie or to cheat in some respect.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's part of the thing that So I
Speaker 1: think that was so kind of pathetic about the whole
Speaker 1: drug testing policy. It's a kind of wink wink, not
Speaker 1: not everybody knows it's bullshit, right, But meanwhile you're expected
Speaker 1: to basically be dishonest and to scam um. I mean,
Speaker 1: is that do you just learn to live with that
Speaker 1: or do you disagree with I just put out there
Speaker 1: I thought that, Yeah, I mean you're right, I mean
Speaker 1: we we I know I did. I mean I had
Speaker 1: to finesse the system, you know, in order to keep
Speaker 1: smoking and keep myself saying. I mean I can't imagine,
Speaker 1: you know, I had I had a number of years,
Speaker 1: five or six years. Why I average twenty points? You know? Um,
Speaker 1: I know if I was able to walk in the
Speaker 1: arena knowing that when I leave the game, I can
Speaker 1: smoke in piece, don't have to worry about being drug
Speaker 1: tests like hiding it, how better my performance would have
Speaker 1: bun off? Oh? Man, I just I think about that
Speaker 1: all the time. How these guys can just go home
Speaker 1: and smoking piece, you know, and stuff like that. So, um,
Speaker 1: it would have been a different league for a lot
Speaker 1: of people. A lot of people wouldn't have got caught,
Speaker 1: a lot of people would have got suspended. A lot
Speaker 1: of stuff that happened in the league wouldn't happen if
Speaker 1: guy didn't have to hide the fact that they were
Speaker 1: smoking cannabis. Stackle tasm history. It must have been the
Speaker 1: late nineties or something, and something had popped up for
Speaker 1: early two thousands, can't remember exactly. And I actually called
Speaker 1: Billy Hunter, who was then the head of the Players
Speaker 1: Association the NBA, and I said, you know, we gotta
Speaker 1: do something. You know, this is ridiculous, and he was
Speaker 1: very engaged. He said, you're right, You're right, we gotta
Speaker 1: do something. And this is over twenty years ago. And
Speaker 1: then I never heard back from him, and I don't
Speaker 1: know whether it was just he felt too early to premature.
Speaker 1: Now you jumped forward and his successor as head of
Speaker 1: the Players Association, Michelle Roberts. I think she's on the
Speaker 1: board of a cannabis company, right, So, I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess there has been a significant evolution in what's going
Speaker 1: on here. You know, Michelle Robbins is the one who
Speaker 1: initially reached out Harrington to start that conversation, so she understood. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she was. She was a trailblazer for you know, people
Speaker 1: can't actually say the truth until after they retire, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I tell you, in football, remember there was
Speaker 1: that guy, was his name, Ricky Williams. I mean, Ricky
Speaker 1: Williams is an incredibly talented football player and he actually
Speaker 1: he made an issue of it while he was playing, right,
Speaker 1: I think he even he even quit for a while
Speaker 1: because he said, I don't want to right, but nobody else. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but he was a rare and unusual case in all
Speaker 1: of this stuff. Yeah. Yeah, it never and it never
Speaker 1: got to that point with us, I think, especially with me,
Speaker 1: because like I said, I was from nesting the system.
Speaker 1: I had made so many connects to do what I
Speaker 1: needed to do that I wasn't even worrying about, you know,
Speaker 1: taking it to to that point. But um, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't think at that time either guys like me
Speaker 1: had the power to even speak on it, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. Like I wasn't. I wasn't one of
Speaker 1: the top players in the league. I was considered the
Speaker 1: thug because I was a lawyer teammate, because I went
Speaker 1: the stands with my with my my teammate ron Or Testing,
Speaker 1: because I defended jamal Ten's lead the Strip Club, I
Speaker 1: was considered the thug, which I wasn't. I was just
Speaker 1: a lawyer teammate. So with me, I don't think I
Speaker 1: was even the person to speak up and to bring
Speaker 1: that to the attention at the time. It had to
Speaker 1: be a bigger name player. They would have just laughed
Speaker 1: at me. Yeah, what about I saw you know that
Speaker 1: Steve Kerr, you know who played for the Bulls and
Speaker 1: then as you know, won all these championships with the Warriors.
Speaker 1: At a coach recently, he came right out um recently
Speaker 1: talking about his own use of medical neural Wanda, I
Speaker 1: think for you know, back surgeries or back pains. I mean,
Speaker 1: is that's the kind of thing that's having a significant
Speaker 1: influence on other coaches. Yeah, I mean Steve was on
Speaker 1: the two thousand three championship team with me in San Antonio,
Speaker 1: and all those guys knew what I was doing. Um.
Speaker 1: I think with Steve, I think, you know what you
Speaker 1: put your body through as a professional athlete with Steve
Speaker 1: put his body through and still and now he's having
Speaker 1: back problems. Uh. A lot of people don't want to
Speaker 1: take pills. A lot of people want to take um pills.
Speaker 1: That's gonna have them having withdrawals like they like they
Speaker 1: did a hard like they're doing cocaine or something where
Speaker 1: they having shakes because they don't want to take that medicine.
Speaker 1: No more like it's it's amazing how how uh they'll
Speaker 1: forced that on you. But taking a piece of candy
Speaker 1: with some with some TA with just say fift percent
Speaker 1: t C and that a relaxtion whole body and does
Speaker 1: no damage to you. Won't won't won't make you have
Speaker 1: have a major withdrawals. That's a big problem. But I
Speaker 1: love the fact that you know, people are caring about
Speaker 1: their lives and not being afraid to speak up on
Speaker 1: how simple things can be. You know, it's not a secret.
Speaker 1: It's been holistic doctor saying with benefits of cannabis for years,
Speaker 1: but they never want to listen. So I'm glad guys
Speaker 1: with the statue of Steve Kerr are standing up behind
Speaker 1: it because there's there's so many benefits of it and
Speaker 1: they just want to push those pills and those pharmaceutical
Speaker 1: stuff because that's big business. But they know cannabis is
Speaker 1: way better for you. We'll be talking more after we
Speaker 1: hear this ad. Let me branch out here a little
Speaker 1: bit stack. You know, when it comes to marijuana, you
Speaker 1: know we talked about is having these benefits right, and
Speaker 1: obviously we're talking about you know, very few people we're
Speaker 1: using marijuana, you know, before a game. So what's your
Speaker 1: view about drug testing for these other drugs in sports?
Speaker 1: You're seeing more and more people getting suspended in the NBA,
Speaker 1: not just other leagues, for performance and dancing drugs. Does
Speaker 1: that all sound right and fair to you or do
Speaker 1: you think these policies are I think they're getting caught
Speaker 1: for performance enhancement drugs, but I don't think they're taking
Speaker 1: it to in hand. I think they're taking like dick
Speaker 1: hardener peals like to make the dick harder a little longer,
Speaker 1: those type of pills, and they have certain things in
Speaker 1: them that when they do take drug tests, that that
Speaker 1: that drug tests that they end up positive and and
Speaker 1: and some I guess some of the ingreedy it's in them,
Speaker 1: so the same positive test as it was it would
Speaker 1: if they took performance enhancement drugs. Yeah, but you know,
Speaker 1: I saw it was one of the former m v
Speaker 1: P Derrick Roads some years ago. You know, he said, oh,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of performance dancing drug use in basketball,
Speaker 1: and then he kind of walked it back and then
Speaker 1: there was a yeah, I disagree with that. I disagree.
Speaker 1: But then it was a coach George Carl who won
Speaker 1: like over a thousand games, and he wrote a book saying, oh,
Speaker 1: there's a lot more of it than people realize. And
Speaker 1: when you think about some of these performance dancing drugs,
Speaker 1: they're not like bulking you up the way Barry Bonds
Speaker 1: did it, put on fifteen pounds and you know, break
Speaker 1: Babe Ruth's home run record. Some of this is just
Speaker 1: enabling people to kind of heal better, you know, get
Speaker 1: their muscles better. I mean, not all that removed from
Speaker 1: the way you described the benefits of marijuana. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: I kind of disagree with that and agree with that
Speaker 1: you write something at some at some stages. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: when you're taking stuff like a performance and drugs, you're
Speaker 1: you're you're you're taking it to get an edge? Are
Speaker 1: you taking it to help give yourself had a chance
Speaker 1: after injury or something like that? We stayed injury, we
Speaker 1: we We was hurt a lot. I mean last I
Speaker 1: played three years with a broken toe. I never thought
Speaker 1: about taking something that would give me a boost. Are taking?
Speaker 1: Uh even even thought about something that wasn't natural to take,
Speaker 1: you know, I never. I I didn't even like taking
Speaker 1: you know, pills that gave me for pain. You know
Speaker 1: the word the fathers I went with was it leave?
Speaker 1: And that's all I take today besides cannabis. But um,
Speaker 1: I think I think a lot of guys in the
Speaker 1: in the NBA, especially around my time, wasn't nobody taking
Speaker 1: you know, uh, performance enhancement drugs. And I know guys
Speaker 1: that being the playoffs and you know they're dealing with
Speaker 1: the two broken fingers and broken toy or something like that.
Speaker 1: They might take a shot to get through that game.
Speaker 1: You know, they might take a shot to get through
Speaker 1: that game, you know what, just to play that game.
Speaker 1: But that wasn't helping his performance. It was helping him
Speaker 1: get through to to be able to get through the
Speaker 1: four quarters. So it's a big difference. Yeah, I remember,
Speaker 1: you know, when I was a kid, the famous Bookball
Speaker 1: for like the picture Jim bounding, right, and if you
Speaker 1: you know that, you know you were just say this
Speaker 1: probably before you were born. But he kind of revealed
Speaker 1: kind of out at all of the drug use and
Speaker 1: other sorts of stuff going on professional baseball. But one
Speaker 1: of the points being made was, you know, in professional baseball,
Speaker 1: you're playing a hundred sixty two games a year, You're
Speaker 1: traveling across time zones all the time, you're playing night games.
Speaker 1: I was playing day games, right, And that basically he
Speaker 1: was in the amphetamine. You know, it was just absolutely
Speaker 1: pivotal to helping people, you know, live this way. I mean,
Speaker 1: it should almost have been a prescribed drug. And yet
Speaker 1: that's band And I wonder you know what your thoughts
Speaker 1: are about that millions of people are being prescribed riddle
Speaker 1: and which is basically amphetamine. Um should that be a band?
Speaker 1: Uh drug? Especially we talked about you guys being on
Speaker 1: the road all the time and the exhausting nature of
Speaker 1: that stuff. Yeah, I mean I could speak on that
Speaker 1: Riddlings for sure. I I had my third older's daughter.
Speaker 1: She used to have Caesars a lot, and uh, that's
Speaker 1: what they prescribed tour and it was making no worse.
Speaker 1: She couldn't think she was having more siezes, and um
Speaker 1: I could. I couldn't wait till we was able to
Speaker 1: get off. She just graduated high school, she was in
Speaker 1: home school. She graduated with honors, and she's been vaping
Speaker 1: for three years now. You know, she's still dealing with lupus,
Speaker 1: but she's doing a lot better. And uh, I couldn't
Speaker 1: see it no other way, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: So I think all all all those things that they're
Speaker 1: pushing's big business has proven too many times that it
Speaker 1: is not healthy and a lot of that stuff they
Speaker 1: give it to you to to get dependent on it,
Speaker 1: to keep buying it. I mean, there's no secret what
Speaker 1: what what what those medications done, But it doesn't But
Speaker 1: it doesn't help those kids at all. Well, I'll tell
Speaker 1: you something. I mean, I'm sorry to hear about you
Speaker 1: about your daughter dealing with lupus. But you know the
Speaker 1: fact that matter is, even with that riddling all the kids,
Speaker 1: for some of them it helps them, and some of
Speaker 1: them it's really the wrong thing. And you're right to
Speaker 1: pushing it too much. But when it comes to the
Speaker 1: issue around you know, the use of amphetamine, I mean healthy. U.
Speaker 1: S Military has been allowing its long distance pilots to
Speaker 1: use low those amphetamine for decades because they found it
Speaker 1: reduced the number of crashes, reduced fatigue, and so you know,
Speaker 1: I keep thinking that when it comes to to professional sports,
Speaker 1: competitive stuff like that, it's a matter of I mean,
Speaker 1: drugs are so often a matter of different strokes for
Speaker 1: different folks, right. We know that we it affects people differently.
Speaker 1: We know that stimulants affect people differently. We know all
Speaker 1: the sort of stuff. And I keeping the point that
Speaker 1: if it's not giving you a really an unfair competitive advantage,
Speaker 1: the kind of bulking up your muscles the way say
Speaker 1: Barry Bonds did or Ali Stretch Brigus did or whatever that.
Speaker 1: You know, essentially, you should leave people alone and let
Speaker 1: them use what's gonna work for them to get through
Speaker 1: a season, right, which is incredibly you know, I don't
Speaker 1: know anyway think think about but you write, but you
Speaker 1: write about that. But I think the reason what what
Speaker 1: makes it all, what made it bad, is when you
Speaker 1: have those athletes getting caught in the hotel with two
Speaker 1: women with cocaine, missing the games, when you have them
Speaker 1: getting pulled over with drunk you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: Like all those situations is what made it bad. You know,
Speaker 1: I say, guys doing it for the wrong reasons, not
Speaker 1: not and and and and and letting it the drugs
Speaker 1: was doing them instead of them doing the drugs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you also hear about you know, why was the
Speaker 1: NBA management so resistant to opening up on this stuff,
Speaker 1: and you know about the fear of you know, you know,
Speaker 1: ball players walking through a hotel lobby with the girls
Speaker 1: and smelling of weed and not presenting the wrong image.
Speaker 1: I mean, wasn't that part of it as well. Well,
Speaker 1: I can tell you about me, and I think Matt
Speaker 1: barn said it don't on our shows. I used to
Speaker 1: get on the plane with a little a timeback, with
Speaker 1: at least about uh three four ounces on it every trip,
Speaker 1: and everybody smelled it, everybody's but everybody knows it was me,
Speaker 1: and nobody said nothing. But so you know, it's it's just,
Speaker 1: it's just it's just, you know, some people do it
Speaker 1: the right way, some people don't, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: But like I said, like I said, I never I
Speaker 1: never was caught with it, So it was never a
Speaker 1: problem for me to to finesse it and get away
Speaker 1: with it. But if you're you're in a position where
Speaker 1: one at one time where you embarrassing team or embarrassing organization,
Speaker 1: getting caught, getting pulled over something like that, that is
Speaker 1: forever as forever on you, and it's gonna be hard
Speaker 1: for you to kind of shake that, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, And that that's gonna be like a little
Speaker 1: cloud out over wherever you go. Yeah, okay, so so stack,
Speaker 1: let's just shift gears here a bit. So a year
Speaker 1: and a half ago, right, a guy named George Floyd
Speaker 1: gets murdered by a cop named Derek Chauvin in in Minneapolis,
Speaker 1: and it unleash is a kind of second wave of
Speaker 1: Black Lives Matter and demonstrations all around the country and
Speaker 1: around the world, and more white people speaking up on behalf,
Speaker 1: you know, on the issue of racial justice and ever before,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden you pop up in Minneapolis
Speaker 1: and maybe just explained to our listeners how that came about. Well,
Speaker 1: I've been knowing George for five years. We grew up
Speaker 1: an hour away from each other. The He's a couple
Speaker 1: years older than me, and we had a friend that
Speaker 1: was from my hometown named Telly Joyce and till he's
Speaker 1: tell he told me one day on the basketball called
Speaker 1: that me and me and he has a friend that
Speaker 1: that that looks just like me and we might have
Speaker 1: the same father. I'm like, yeah, right, He said, IM
Speaker 1: gonna bring him down here. He brought him down there.
Speaker 1: I look at him as soon we see each other.
Speaker 1: The first thing we say is who your daddy? Who
Speaker 1: your daddy? We looked alike that much where we really
Speaker 1: could have been brothers, and uh, we just hit it off.
Speaker 1: We became good friends, and we we started calling each
Speaker 1: other twin from that day forward. And Uh, he was
Speaker 1: an athlete. He played, He was one of the best
Speaker 1: football players in Texas and when he was in high
Speaker 1: school at Yates and also one of the best basketball players.
Speaker 1: But twisting turns and and and in the areas we
Speaker 1: lived in, you know, can can change our lives in
Speaker 1: the heartbeat, and uh we put out. So we both
Speaker 1: put ourselves in certain situations growing up. You know, I
Speaker 1: think UM with me, I was able to escape some
Speaker 1: things that he wasn't able to escape. And uh, our
Speaker 1: neighborhoods end up taking them under a little bit and
Speaker 1: getting them in trouble where I ended up continuing to
Speaker 1: play and getting to the NBA, and he ended up,
Speaker 1: you know, trying to figure it out being home in
Speaker 1: Houston and trying to figure his life out, stay out
Speaker 1: of trouble. And we became good friends. Every summer when
Speaker 1: the season is over, especially around the time when I
Speaker 1: was in San Antonio, I used to go to Houston,
Speaker 1: and I spent my whole time in third Ward and
Speaker 1: counting home projects with him and the rest of the
Speaker 1: family in Third War Texas and Um time passed, you know,
Speaker 1: he we both got our families. We both got kids.
Speaker 1: We both got daughters the same age, and you know,
Speaker 1: you become men, you separate, but you still love each other.
Speaker 1: You know, you might not see each other every day,
Speaker 1: you know, because like I said, we wasn't real family.
Speaker 1: He was. He wasn't my real brother, but we stayed
Speaker 1: in contact. So he was going to Minnesota because he
Speaker 1: had got the CDL license and he was going out
Speaker 1: there to drive trucks, and uh, we had spoken before
Speaker 1: he went because he wanted me to see him. Boxes
Speaker 1: are closed for job interviews, which we we both posted
Speaker 1: on our social media's around that time. And I was
Speaker 1: so happy for him because one thing about him he
Speaker 1: was he was one of my friends that never abused
Speaker 1: our friendship. You have a lot of guys, especially when
Speaker 1: you're an NBA player and you have money and your
Speaker 1: rea success, a lot of people around you for the
Speaker 1: wrong reasons, and they want to be with you for
Speaker 1: the wrong reason try to benefit off you. He wasn't
Speaker 1: that guy. He he genuinely cared about me, and uh,
Speaker 1: he kept me out, He kept me out of harms way,
Speaker 1: he kept me around, came me away from the wrong thing.
Speaker 1: So that's why our relationship, why I valued our relationship.
Speaker 1: So he was down there trying to change his life,
Speaker 1: and you know, sometimes regardless where you go, certain things
Speaker 1: are hard to escape. He got caught up a little
Speaker 1: bit while he was down there trying to change his life,
Speaker 1: and uh, I got it. I was on the couch
Speaker 1: sleep one day um that morning with my daughter, and
Speaker 1: my mother in law called me, you know, she's something.
Speaker 1: She actually text me a video of it, and I
Speaker 1: didn't really look at it because me and her speak
Speaker 1: on the injustice that police do all the time. So
Speaker 1: when she sent me the video, I'm thinking it's just
Speaker 1: another video that she's sent in me. So I go
Speaker 1: back to sleep. I get like sixty more messages and
Speaker 1: I just opened one and it's my close friend Mike
Speaker 1: Deep from my hometown and and it's and it's zac
Speaker 1: text that he's something. Me says, did you see what
Speaker 1: they did your twin in Minnesota? And when he said twin,
Speaker 1: it instantly clicked that I got the video from my
Speaker 1: mother in law and she's from Minnesota. She lives in Minnesota,
Speaker 1: so everything just clicked. I'm like, no, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. I end up screaming. I started crying. I
Speaker 1: jumped up and scared my daughter. It was tough to
Speaker 1: see because you know, I saw myself down there, and
Speaker 1: a lot of times as a man, especially with with
Speaker 1: your loved ones, you feel it's it's not too much
Speaker 1: you can't control. Besides unfortunate sickness are unfortunate depth everything
Speaker 1: else as a man, you feel you control. So I
Speaker 1: felt helpless. Man. I know his daughter Gianna, I can't
Speaker 1: imagine how she felt at the time, and and and
Speaker 1: her mother Rock saying, you know, that's the that's the
Speaker 1: two that I kept a relationship with over the years,
Speaker 1: and I instantly just thought about them. But one thing
Speaker 1: I did know and that I could clearly keeping my
Speaker 1: mind at the time was out of all the people
Speaker 1: over the years that's been brutally murdered by police, I've
Speaker 1: been wronged by police, I killed by police and never
Speaker 1: got justice. They never had a professional athlete who's an
Speaker 1: NBA champion, who has one of the biggest podcasts in
Speaker 1: the world to speak up for them. And a lot
Speaker 1: of times when they do that, the first thing they
Speaker 1: do is bring up a person's past and try to
Speaker 1: demean them as much as they can to make the
Speaker 1: murder look valid to the world. And I wasn't gonna
Speaker 1: let that happen to my to my twin. I went
Speaker 1: to Minnesota. I had no idea what I was doing.
Speaker 1: It was all off emotion and real pain and hurt.
Speaker 1: You know. Jamie Fox came with me. H Kar Anthony
Speaker 1: Towns pulled up with me. Bundby pulled up with me.
Speaker 1: A lot of friends put up with me. My sign
Speaker 1: to Mika Mallory, and they stood with me because this
Speaker 1: wasn't a situation where there's people showing up for somebody
Speaker 1: that they didn't know, because they felt that that this
Speaker 1: is the right thing to do. This is my real twin.
Speaker 1: This is the only person I can set on my twin,
Speaker 1: my real friends. So this is my real pain that
Speaker 1: I that I was displaying to the world. And you
Speaker 1: know from from uh bon Jovi making that song saying
Speaker 1: that you know my hearing me speak, you know, touched
Speaker 1: him and and and and to say that I am
Speaker 1: faced all part to be the biggest civil rights movement ever,
Speaker 1: eighteen countries, all fifty states at one time. I'm honored
Speaker 1: to say that I was able to to be a
Speaker 1: part of that for my brother and and we was
Speaker 1: able to get justice. But and a lot has changed,
Speaker 1: but the world still hasn't changed because it's been a
Speaker 1: thousand murders by police and students by police since George Floyd.
Speaker 1: So it was just something that I felt I needed
Speaker 1: to do. I didn't ask to be in a position,
Speaker 1: but you know, like I said, it was my real pain.
Speaker 1: I think I would have done that for any one
Speaker 1: of my brothers, and you know, I'm glad I did it.
Speaker 1: I don't regret anything. I put a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: on the line. You know, a lot of people didn't
Speaker 1: agree with what I was doing and what I was saying,
Speaker 1: but I was comfortable with it because I'm one person
Speaker 1: that know. You know, I I stand on something that
Speaker 1: says love for all who have love for all. I've
Speaker 1: told every race in this world, somebody from every race
Speaker 1: in this world, and I love them, and they told
Speaker 1: me the same, So I can stand on that. So
Speaker 1: I know it's not rocket science. I know it's just
Speaker 1: treat people how you want to be treated. But a
Speaker 1: lot of people make it seem like it's harder than that.
Speaker 1: And for me, if I have a chance to stand
Speaker 1: up for somebody I love, or put myself on harms
Speaker 1: with for somebody I love when I know I'm doing
Speaker 1: the right thing and my heart is in the right
Speaker 1: place and I'm being righteous. I do it any time,
Speaker 1: I never regret it. Let's take a break here and
Speaker 1: go to an ad. One of the things that really
Speaker 1: stood out for mealso with the George Floyd thing was
Speaker 1: here you have this cop with his you know, knee
Speaker 1: on his neck and George Floyd going, I can't breathe,
Speaker 1: and you got one of the other cops, the younger cops,
Speaker 1: you know, saying to the bystanders and young people there. Oh,
Speaker 1: it just goes to show don't do drugs. Don't do drugs,
Speaker 1: you know. And then the defense when they were trying
Speaker 1: to defend those cops in court, they were making the case, oh,
Speaker 1: it's because George Floyd was on drugs, right, which is
Speaker 1: just what they did with Trayvon Martin, right. And that's
Speaker 1: what they did with Michael Brown and Ferguson, what they
Speaker 1: did with Acon McDonald in Chicago, and then what they
Speaker 1: did with Filandel Casteele also in Minneapolis, right, or you know,
Speaker 1: Terrence Scrutcher and Tulsa. I mean, it's just the repeated
Speaker 1: thing where you try to say that because you're on
Speaker 1: drug ugs. Somehow that justified the cops doing to you
Speaker 1: what they did. And the video shows one thing. Georgie
Speaker 1: was a gentle giant as as you see. As soon
Speaker 1: as they was getting ready to come from he submitted
Speaker 1: and sat down. He he he wasn't fighting back. He
Speaker 1: would never fight back. But at the same time, no
Speaker 1: man wants to be wrong or hand or wrong when
Speaker 1: when when when they're when they're complying, and he was complying,
Speaker 1: you know. But it was easy to see that it
Speaker 1: was something happened before that, and that officer definitely had
Speaker 1: been dead with my brother. And for that, for the
Speaker 1: for the e m s to pull up and it's
Speaker 1: actual sheriffs and sheriff uniforms with guns get out the
Speaker 1: ms all that was kind of spooky to me. M
Speaker 1: M yeah, I've never I've never seen it. I've never
Speaker 1: seen the e m s pull up and it's actually
Speaker 1: sharfs get out, pull out through the stretcher and actually
Speaker 1: put the body on the street. I've never seen sheriffs
Speaker 1: do that. Everyone. Wow. Well, the fact that it was
Speaker 1: on video, though, I mean, that obviously transformed things, transformed
Speaker 1: the country in a huge way. But you know, when
Speaker 1: I think about, you know, the drug connection to all
Speaker 1: this stuff, you know what I kind of flashed back
Speaker 1: to was the story of Lenn Bias. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: you were you know, you were just uh what a
Speaker 1: you know, a young kid back then. But I mean
Speaker 1: I remember Lynn Bias. Yeah, and I was then. I
Speaker 1: was finishing on my graduate work study on the whole
Speaker 1: drug issue and about to start becoming a professor. But
Speaker 1: I remember Lynn Bias. And for our audience, you know,
Speaker 1: Lynn Bias was a remarkable college basketball player, black man.
Speaker 1: He gets drafted second in the draft by the Boston Celtics,
Speaker 1: and the next day he's out celebrating and snorting some
Speaker 1: cocaine and has in arrhythmia and dies, you know, of
Speaker 1: of a heart thing, you know, maybe an underlying condition whatever.
Speaker 1: And the response right of the society, I mean, it
Speaker 1: was this huge grief. But the very next thing that
Speaker 1: happened was a few weeks later, members of Congress get
Speaker 1: together and they passed one of the most draconian drug
Speaker 1: laws ever passed mandatory minimum of twenty years for drug offenses. Right.
Speaker 1: That results that helped with the results, you know, in
Speaker 1: the incarceration of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Americans,
Speaker 1: mostly young black men. And what do they call the law,
Speaker 1: the len Bias law, you know, and it's just and
Speaker 1: then you know, if you even think about some of
Speaker 1: the other deaths, not all the deaths were about oh
Speaker 1: that person was on drugs. You think about how how
Speaker 1: Brianna Taylor got killed in Louisville, Right, it was a
Speaker 1: drug grade, right, and she got shot, or you know,
Speaker 1: years ago Katherine Johnson, ninety two year old woman in Atlanta.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean. I mean the drug enforcement thing.
Speaker 1: And so what you see is this kind of you know,
Speaker 1: interplay on the one hand between the fears, the sensationalism
Speaker 1: around black people using drugs, and on the other hand,
Speaker 1: the justification of this drug war, which has led to,
Speaker 1: you know, the United States having the highest incarceration rate,
Speaker 1: you know, in the history of democratic societies, and a
Speaker 1: history of incarcerating black men that grossly exceeds anything apart
Speaker 1: South Africa. Every day you write all the set up,
Speaker 1: they put the cocaine and drugs in the neighborhoods, then
Speaker 1: arresting for it and make it illegal, then arresting for
Speaker 1: them put him in jail for the rest of life.
Speaker 1: When I was growing up in middle school, at one point,
Speaker 1: cocaine was big, and there's a lot of my friends,
Speaker 1: close friends selling. Um. I remember one point, you were
Speaker 1: getting a year for every graham of cocaine, not ounce,
Speaker 1: every graham of cocaine. You know, it is, guy's getting
Speaker 1: caught with ten ounces of cocaine twenty hours and thirty
Speaker 1: six ounces, and they're getting a year for each graham.
Speaker 1: That didn't make any sense at all. Hey, I'm telling you.
Speaker 1: In New York, some of my first advocacy was around
Speaker 1: trying to reform the draconian Rockefeller drug laws in New York.
Speaker 1: When I first started working on this in you know,
Speaker 1: in the mid nineties, four percent of all the people
Speaker 1: locked up in New York State prisons on a drug
Speaker 1: charge were black or brown, even though black and brown
Speaker 1: people were no more likely or maybe a little more
Speaker 1: likely than white people to be selling in those drugs,
Speaker 1: you know. So, I mean, it seems to me that
Speaker 1: you're among a whole group of athletes, former athletes, current
Speaker 1: athletes who really beginning to speak out about this issue
Speaker 1: in a serious way, especially with cannabis. Yeah. Well, let
Speaker 1: me ask you when it comes to the issues around race.
Speaker 1: I mean, how do you think this all plays out
Speaker 1: in professional sports? I was looking at the stats recently,
Speaker 1: and you see the NBA, it's three fours black. It's
Speaker 1: only you know, seventeen percent white, and probably more than
Speaker 1: half those whites are not American, They're from abroad. Right.
Speaker 1: You look at the NFL, it's sixty percent black and
Speaker 1: maybe a quarter white. Right. Baseball, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: sixty percent white and then a third Hispanic and less
Speaker 1: than ten percent black. And so, I mean, do you
Speaker 1: think that is there ways in which these policies are tougher?
Speaker 1: Is the one reason the NBA took so long to,
Speaker 1: you know, to kind of relax it's marijuana policy because
Speaker 1: it's more, you know, that's primarily black athletes. Is that
Speaker 1: a factor here? That that's one? But just think about
Speaker 1: this and and and you gotta think about two. Everything
Speaker 1: that's going on today and how how how blacks are
Speaker 1: speaking up and how things that has been unfair for years.
Speaker 1: People are starting to understand that that people are just
Speaker 1: not complaining. This has been going on for a long time.
Speaker 1: We've been been treated and treated a certain way and
Speaker 1: treated less than for a long time, perfect example, the
Speaker 1: Malice in the Palace. If that had if that was
Speaker 1: us and that happened today, just tell people what malice
Speaker 1: in the Palace are because they won't know on this okay,
Speaker 1: what malice is. The Palace is probably the biggest brawl
Speaker 1: ever in NBA history. It started on the court between
Speaker 1: two rival teams. I was on the Indiana Pacers and
Speaker 1: we were playing in Detroit against the Detroit Pistons. Um
Speaker 1: It was a big rivalry and then we were winning
Speaker 1: the game. It was a big game to see what
Speaker 1: team was gonna be the championship contender. We end up
Speaker 1: blowing him out. RNA Tests wanted to get give back
Speaker 1: a file to Ben Wallace from the previous year in
Speaker 1: the Eastern Conference Finals, which didn't make any sense because
Speaker 1: we were winning by fifteen points. If forty five seconds
Speaker 1: left in the game, the game was over. Rahn decides
Speaker 1: to go file him anyway. Ben pushes him in the face.
Speaker 1: It starts a big old scuffle between both teams. No
Speaker 1: punches are thrown, but it's a lot of pushing going on.
Speaker 1: The referees do a bad job of getting being off
Speaker 1: the court with Ben instigates the fight for another fifteen
Speaker 1: twenty minutes to the point where the fans are so
Speaker 1: riled up that a fan throws a beer on run
Speaker 1: our test it lands and runa test face RHNA tests
Speaker 1: darts off in the stands after the guy, and our
Speaker 1: whole team goes and it turns into a big old
Speaker 1: brow where we get get to fight in the stands
Speaker 1: and we all get suspended, and wrong get suspended you know,
Speaker 1: for the whole season. I end up losing three million dollars.
Speaker 1: But to what I was I was trying to say
Speaker 1: is if that happened today, I wouldn't we wouldn't have
Speaker 1: got suspended three million dollars. I wouldn't have got suspended
Speaker 1: thirty games that wrong would it got suspended for the
Speaker 1: rest of the season because we were at work. We
Speaker 1: were we were at work playing in the NBA. We
Speaker 1: were fighting fans because things were thrown at us. If
Speaker 1: you if in any state or in any place in
Speaker 1: the world, ethan, if a beer is thrown in your face,
Speaker 1: that's a so But when you deal it. But when
Speaker 1: you're dealing with rich black athletes, you just have to
Speaker 1: take Yeah, today, but everything going on today and how
Speaker 1: and how we're speaking of now, if that happened today,
Speaker 1: it would be a totally different situation. Now, it's good
Speaker 1: that things have change, it, but I think about, you know,
Speaker 1: you have brawls and hockey all the time, right, you know,
Speaker 1: and you don't have and that's mostly white guys, and
Speaker 1: you don't have penalties like you've had in basketball. And
Speaker 1: then I see, you know, people make a fair point
Speaker 1: that when you looked at like, you know, for example,
Speaker 1: what happened with some of the you know, the the
Speaker 1: violence and other stuff that happened around the George Floyd
Speaker 1: you know stuff and all of that. But then people
Speaker 1: compared the police crackdown on that, which could be pretty
Speaker 1: onerous with what happened when you had mostly white people
Speaker 1: protesting against the you know, the vaccine and the mask
Speaker 1: restrictions and all the the COVID stuff. And what's the
Speaker 1: saying is there some equality going on here or is
Speaker 1: it simply the fact that when we see black people,
Speaker 1: you know, getting violent or acting out, we're gonna crack down,
Speaker 1: whether it's in sports or in borders. This xiety we're
Speaker 1: there's basically a higher tolerance of white people acting out
Speaker 1: and getting violent, whether in sports or in broader society
Speaker 1: in the very similar ways. I mean, you agree with
Speaker 1: that analysis. That's a great analysis. You're exactly right. And
Speaker 1: it should never be a time whether Indiana Pacers are
Speaker 1: playing basketball, a cop Rolls should run on the court
Speaker 1: and to spray Reggie Miller saying and saying you do
Speaker 1: not know that Reggie Millers on the Indiana Pacers. That
Speaker 1: should never happen in the arena. Everybody that anybody that
Speaker 1: works for the Pistons, uhh, that's involved the organization, all
Speaker 1: should know Reggie Millers in that arena for for cops,
Speaker 1: for for two cops to be there. Your job is
Speaker 1: to protect the players and to make sure that this
Speaker 1: is the event is safe. And you don't know Reggie
Speaker 1: Miller's on the team and you're about to Mason in
Speaker 1: front of the world. That says a lot about that night.
Speaker 1: But that's why I was glad we was able to
Speaker 1: put that documentary out because a lot of things we
Speaker 1: couldn't say and show came to light. And if that
Speaker 1: happened today, I think it would have been better taking
Speaker 1: care of and better defended. Yeah, honey, look, it's it's
Speaker 1: a long history we're talking about here. Because if you
Speaker 1: look at the origins of the drug prohibition laws, I mean,
Speaker 1: when it came to opium and the opius, it was
Speaker 1: about anti Chinese prejudice. When it came to cannabis, it
Speaker 1: was actually about prejudice against you know, Mexican Americans and
Speaker 1: Mexican migrants. When it came to cocaine, it was about
Speaker 1: black people using cocaine and Louisiana and out in the South,
Speaker 1: and white people being a phrase or what a what
Speaker 1: a negro crazed on cocaine was gonna do to our
Speaker 1: precious white women, right, and about their becoming you know, violent.
Speaker 1: So there's this there's this long history going back there
Speaker 1: that continues to be part of the culture and mine.
Speaker 1: You're not just in the US, I mean you talk
Speaker 1: you look at even at the United Kingdom, right where
Speaker 1: they don't have pop shooting people in the same way,
Speaker 1: but they got a surprising large number of people dying
Speaker 1: in custody, oftentimes black people as well, getting disproportionately arrested.
Speaker 1: You know, you see the same thing playing out. I mean,
Speaker 1: US is special, but this is a phenomenon that goes
Speaker 1: even more broadly beyond that. So I mean, for me,
Speaker 1: I'm happy to see the activism around athletes and others
Speaker 1: around cannabis reform and not testing for this stuff, branching
Speaker 1: in other areas like broader civil rights, like broader racial justice,
Speaker 1: you know, because I think that's, you know, it's that's
Speaker 1: the way this thing is going to open up and
Speaker 1: really can gain some not just traction a momentum, but
Speaker 1: some real staying power, you know. So listen, staff, I
Speaker 1: gotta ask you to ask questions before you go, and
Speaker 1: they're both going to be outside what we've been talking about.
Speaker 1: The thing that's booming more quickly than anything else in
Speaker 1: the drug area right now is psychedelics. People using psychedelics,
Speaker 1: investing in psychedelics, you know. And and this is an
Speaker 1: issue where you still see very few black people involved,
Speaker 1: right You see more and more black people getting involved
Speaker 1: in the cannabis industry now. Is not just Al Harrington,
Speaker 1: it's other famous you know, celebrities and others, and just
Speaker 1: simple black entrepreneurs. But the psychedelics, not much going on
Speaker 1: in terms of hearing about black people using it or
Speaker 1: black people investing in it. Is that strange? Have you
Speaker 1: thought about it? Is that gonna change in some way?
Speaker 1: What do you think, well, I can give you one
Speaker 1: reason now, because I don't even know what it is. See,
Speaker 1: let's say that half of the black people not involved
Speaker 1: in it, because we don't even know what psychedelics is.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about psilocybin, mushrooms, magic mushrooms, I'm talking about
Speaker 1: talking about talking Okay, I'm talking about mescaline sometimes LSD
Speaker 1: and also m D M a ecstasy which isn't really
Speaker 1: a psychedelic. But there's all this medical evidence now about
Speaker 1: people getting tremendous benefits and dealing with depression and anxiety
Speaker 1: and addiction and a whole range of other things. There's
Speaker 1: now startup companies that are worth a billion dollars. I mean,
Speaker 1: what's happening in the psychelics area has happen like what
Speaker 1: happened to cannabis area, you know, both in terms of
Speaker 1: use and in terms of the markets. Different in some respects.
Speaker 1: But when I went to a psycholics conference in Miami
Speaker 1: last month, like, there's almost no black people there. There's
Speaker 1: a few, right, But I'm just saying there's something there.
Speaker 1: So tell me about you and and and magic mushrooms.
Speaker 1: I'm Black people don't like hallucinate, but I know what.
Speaker 1: The mushrooms are becoming big around cannabis users because that's
Speaker 1: on the that's on learned the positive side of mushrooms
Speaker 1: as well. I know one guy, his daughter was going
Speaker 1: through a phase, but she wouldn't talk, she wouldn't say
Speaker 1: anything to him, you know, And just one day he
Speaker 1: took a small piece and gave it to his daughter.
Speaker 1: He said, the conversation he had with his daughter for
Speaker 1: the for the next two days had them both in tears.
Speaker 1: And she she said things to him that she never
Speaker 1: would probably would have got out if he would have
Speaker 1: gave it the mushroom, you know, take ten minutes, lady,
Speaker 1: she she was a different person. So I know what
Speaker 1: that did for him, and I know what that did
Speaker 1: for his daughter in a relationship, and I know that
Speaker 1: means more than him than anything. So that was one
Speaker 1: positive effect of it, you know. And and like I said,
Speaker 1: I know a lot of people that's in the cannabis
Speaker 1: space are starting to get involved with things like mushrooms
Speaker 1: because they're starting to see the positive effects of it.
Speaker 1: And some people like the way that uh it brings
Speaker 1: them down and gives them a relaxation more than cannabis
Speaker 1: who listens. Stack, I really appreciate your taking the time
Speaker 1: to be on the show with me. I understand you're
Speaker 1: you're getting married pretty soon, so Marcel's tough on that.
Speaker 1: I respect the work that you're doing with the podcast,
Speaker 1: the way you're speaking out in the cannabis issue, the
Speaker 1: way you're getting involved in the racial justice session around
Speaker 1: George Floyd. So so just thanks ever so much for
Speaker 1: doing what you're doing. More power to you. Please keep
Speaker 1: it up and God bless all right, my man, any time,
Speaker 1: Thanks for having We love to hear from our listeners.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to share your own stories, comments and ideas,
Speaker 1: then leave us a message at one eight three three
Speaker 1: seven seven nine sixty that's eight three three psycho zero,
Speaker 1: or you can email us at Psychoactive at protozoa dot
Speaker 1: com or find me on Twitter at Ethan natal Man.
Speaker 1: You can also find contact information in our show notes.
Speaker 1: Psychoactive is a production of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures.
Speaker 1: It's hosted by me Ethan Nadelman. It's produced by Noham
Speaker 1: Osband and Josh Stain. The executive producers are Dylan Golden,
Speaker 1: Ari Handel, Elizabeth Geese, This and Darren Aronofsky from Protozoa Pictures,
Speaker 1: Alex Williams and Matt Frederick from My Heart Radio, and
Speaker 1: me Ethan Edelman. Our music is by Ari Blucien and
Speaker 1: a special thanks to ab Brio, s f Bianca Grimshaw,
Speaker 1: and Robert Deep. Join me next week for a conversation
Speaker 1: with Simon Schnapper, founder of the Jails fun which invests
Speaker 1: in psychedelic startups. He's been one of the principal people
Speaker 1: teaching me about the rapidly evolving business of psychedelics. A
Speaker 1: family member maybe a year ago, he's like, I read
Speaker 1: this thing and the the paper. Is this this ecstasy
Speaker 1: and and helping vets? And I go yeah, And he's like,
Speaker 1: is that what you do? And I'm like, that's exactly
Speaker 1: what I'm doing. And he's like, uh, I always thought
Speaker 1: you were just a drug dealer. Um, so now you're
Speaker 1: legited the eyes of the family. Yes, yes, indeed, subscribe
Speaker 1: to Collective now see it, don't miss it.