every forty two seconds someone is arrested for  executive director of the coalition for medical marijuana new jersey i'm here in the princeton community t v studios today with bill haney and activists for marijuana from philadelphia thank you so much for coming today bill thank you for having me so tell me that's not paying any mind that's not work within let's not do you want this we're just chalk it up and shell shocked like you know go away yeah so it sounds like you had a rough childhood i did pretty much you know what your father available to you  know he was in and out of my life most of my life and it made it difficult for me when i was growing up because i would try to get next ten and for whatever reason there always seemed like he was trying to manipulate the situation to take advantage i did not now that he was trying to exist yeah schizophrenia is a very difficult condition for people to live with and it's difficult for the family members to live with also so now i am a nurse and i work in psychiatric hospitals for about ten years so you know i'm very familiar with mental illness and how how difficult it can be so and but and your mother had epilepsy so yes as a matter of fact she did and your mom wrote this book called the from caesar to me the falling sickness yes and i found she wrote that in and nine hundred seventy five to raise awareness question and challenging the contract because it ended up where there was a breach of contract and mainly because it a fact of as a they did not know how to market her condition they were trying to market the book as a self help book and the book was more motivational than self help you know for me and she describes in here some of her early experiences us to get around and we always relied on public transportation of course mom wasn't allowed to drive because of her condition you know i mean she had to drop grandma seizures all the time and i distinctly remember me and my brother gonna wash your head panton off the foot of the concrete like a basketball not and feeling powerless but not helpless but i knew what i had to do and what me and my brother had to do was try to make her ice comfortable as possible in a situation like that it was that's going to pocketbook under her and let's roll her on her side so that when your saliva can drain out the corner and for mouth and why we're all waiting for the convulsions and the seizure to run its course adults were starting to come towards us because they wanted to try to control the situation like they knew what to do and they all wanted to stick something in her mouth the try to stop her from smug swallowing her tongue which is an old wives tale so me and my brother trying to back these people off so that we can we can move forward which is was challenging in itself because you had people not knowing what's going on and wanting to be part of a situation you know you don't know what to do about and it's very frightening thing to see you know to witness a seizure a grand mal seizure you know the person seems to lose consciousness sometimes you know they go into convulsions times they can lose control of their balance or bla you know like so when you're born into something like this then you just got to do the best you can with what you have to work with you know now your mom she took entire political medicine yes she as a matter of fact mom was tampering with that medication and she would have more frequent seizures you know that was standard treatment back in the day and of course now we know that medical marijuana is very effective for seizures especially seizures that do not respond well was looking at it because a friend of mine had mentioned to me july twenty thirteen to surf the internet and see what i could find and with evidence and association between epilepsy and cannabis had heard of baghdad known about it but never had actual physical documentation and then here i was twenty of jayden david who was six years old and up an upper right hand corner it said that it was updated on that page on december the ten did i didn't get it because of my participation growing up and it was just you know i mean even like when i read this and i just read this about a month ago and the reason i didn't read it is thousand and ten and i think that more and more states are beginning to recognize that epilepsy really can be managed by marijuana there right you know especially when you have somebody somebody dramatic stories you like you mention the charlotte fiji's story but syndrome and they're doing very well out in colorado and it's just just it's a fabulous you know yeah it is it really is that they finally got that type in the form of marijuana that it's appropriate for a for a young of basically a toddler to take you know when no other medical medicine works for them so you know it's just so much more evidence that that marijuana can be you know helpful for seizure disorders  and it's it's a shame that there's even any resistance you would think that there would be no resistance if if if if medicine is not working why would you not try marijuana therapy even back in early days of the drug war all  studies that were conducted for the negative of cannabis marijuana came back positive and they didn't like the results they had or had evidence destroyed in nineteen seventy one drug temporarily supposedly in one nine hundred seventy one this controlled substances act until until the pass until the results of those studies were done and then in one nine hundred seventy two their studies were done by them by governor schaefer and his commission and they said no why should be schedule completely but now it's still a schedule one drug even today forty six years later what's a schedule one drug means that marijuana has no accepted medical uses in the united center and it's unsafe for use even under medical supervision you know even in a hospital but i think nurses that's crazy so what are you so is this is this one of the things that led you to become an activist bill i know you do a great while things i guess i guess it was always  person and always looking for a solution to a problem solving problems is what i got really good at growing up because there was a lot of times when i had to that so i could try to get back my walking stride and i'm standing here and i'm looking and i'm thinking to myself wow what if the pool we could walk on among everybody wants to walk going to moon you know i mean this is only a couple years at that we  they were going to put a special nice playground to bensalem township and one is international was behind it so i lobbied i went to the breakfast meetings ice talked about it i discussed it because i thought how every playground has some form of jumping up around his type of involvement in the playground i thought how cool would it be to be able to have this so anyway ends up being twenty five feet by twenty five feet i put the universe around the moon which was sixty foot diameter and i had one variation for therapy going one way going towards the fence a giant crater in the middle and another variation going another way sort of people that were playing net were not interrupt the people that were working on our therapy and the reason i had it going towards the fence is because as you would walk one and position your feet with the craters for the walking stride you would hear people from a distance that would help motivate you to propel you to move further go to the downs and i want i'm sitting there and i was  and you could break the glass to get it i have one of those right you do have yes you do so what ended up happening ken was may fourteenth of two thousand and one they turn around and they summer and i'm selfish sales are slow then in a fall of two thousand and two i start running around different gas books different websites mentioning the t shirts blah blah blah blah blah  campaign changes now i go to just one website and sit for twenty warehouse i go to four twenty warehouse and there's a banner ad with a woman in pigtails i needed in order to generate the funding to be able to move forward with that so anyway there were clever t shirts and that you made that your company called universal arts and you also put out these flags the american flag love the usa flag you know the one with the fifty stars representing the fifty states that plaid i said this flag is called the state of compassion and this flag represents the medical marijuana states that are the stars represent the states that are lego and of course the bluefield represents the union we're looking at doing is adding my take to the book on what it was like for me rolling up with my parents along with at the time on whether or not they want to extend us more time sativa cross and c m m n j put together a podcast from the steps of the state house and they talk about issues that have to do with current event issues related to marijuana reform so that's that's very exciting so you're involved with that now you're and you're involved with the podcast and and what i'll say well i mean we have what we have to what i've done in the past i mean we had i remember taking a bus ride three years ago in june when we went up to washington d c you know to lobby congress to vote on the halse bill to leave the medical marijuana look back on it today i am president candlelight visuals for deceased patients right not knowing that i'm also doing this for my that the last candlelight vigil that i participated in in philadelphia was this is ironic march the fifth two thousand and twelve and two thousand or patients and that dan in two thousand and four pennsylvania one thousand on board to be a medical marijuana state like you like it was on one march th jersey as a state bill yeah absolutely absolutely it should have been named after really but anyway so and so you're going to continue your work in new jersey and pennsylvania and we want to wish you a great deal of success and your future endeavors with universal arts with a new edition of your mom's book bill and with your with the products you're putting out you're just a wonderful activist and thank you so much for coming to princeton community t v studio bill on and talking about it with us thank you for more information about the coalition for medical marijuana new jersey join us and our free public meetings on the second tuesday of every month at the lawrence township library in mercer county new jersey from seven to nine p m snacks are served  welcome remember every forty two seconds someone is arrested for marijuana every forty two seconds someone is arrested for marijuana every forty two seconds someone is arrested for marijuana  every forty two seconds somebody is arrested for every forty two seconds someone is arrested for marijuana it could be you