I'm looking for everything.

I'm going to, welcome to annew, great moments in weed history.

Well, as you might have guessed from the title, today's episode is going to be very much different than every other episode of this podcast.

For starters, my guest, if that's even the right word, cut things off mid-interview and bailed on me.

Adam Bierman, co-founder and former CEO of a massive and fairly notorious corporate cannabis dispensary chain called Medmen,

was originally pitched to me by his publicist upon publication of his new book,

Weed Empire, how I battled gangsters, investment banks, and the Department of Justice to

build the cannabis industry in America.

Now, to steal a phrase, that's a book title, so full of shit, there's a colon right in the middle of it.

And yet, dear listeners, I assure you, I went into this conversation hoping to engage in a respectful and enlightening exchange of ideas.

Though I will admit that unlike every other guest on this podcast, I do not respect Mr. Beerman.

Quite the opposite and with good reason.

Please note, in fairness to Mr. Beerman, I'm presenting our conversation unedited and in its entirety.

As you'll hear, I gave him plenty of time to tell his own story in his own words,

which included describing his motivation for entering the cannabis industry in 2009 as follows.

I saw their doomsday.

So maybe there's an opportunity inside of here.

So basically the exact definition of a vulture, capitalist, or perhaps even more accurately, a disaster capitalist.

This guy saw financial doom coming for the people who risk arrest and imprisonment to grow and provide a healing plant to those in need and saw it as his signal to move in and capitalize.

And his plan worked, at least for a little while. Despite having no experience whatsoever in the cannabis industry when he started,

and no real love for the plant or the culture,

in less than a decade, Mr. Bierman attracted enough investment

...