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Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American politics and now the Joe Biden presidency.

We will be looking at how a 78-year-old president will change America, and we'll be asking if normalcy, which is what he promised to bring,

has returned to American politics.

The answer, of course, is no.

I'm joined today by Madeline Kensns, who is staff writer at National Review, and we're

going to be talking about her excellent cover piece in the latest Spectator US edition,

which is called Big Dope on the cover, and we've subtitled it the alarming power of the cannabis industry and

Maddie essentially your thesis I think can be summed up in this sentence where you say a fog of

madness a stinky green cloud is now descending on America give us a little bit about your thesis

and tell us what you discovered while researching

this piece. Sure. So actually, I should note that I live in New York and since I've done this

piece, I can't help notice this pungent smell everywhere I go. And now everywhere I go, I want to run up

to people and tell them everything I know, which is just really alarming and disturbing.

Of course, I don't do that because that would be socially weird. But basically, what it is,

is there's a problem right now in America in that there's no serious discussion about the downsides of legalising marijuana. So I don't really get into the policy aspect, but it is fair to say

that there's this out of control industry, which is putting profit before everything else.

And unfortunately, there's no politicians holding them to account. Now, it's a really interesting

...