KCBS Radio In Depth

They say that here in the US, states are the laboratories of democracy and it’s true: Each and every day we’re running state-sized experiments on ourselves, whether we’re testing out a new tax policy, new reforms to education, or new environmental controls.  Well at the beginning of this year, California launched one off those experiments on a grand scale when it legalized the recreational use of marijuana.  On this edition of In Depth we’re going to finish up our two part series examining marijuana’s impact in California as we near the end of our first year of legal recreational sales.  Last week we discussed how the brand new marijuana industry is fairing as businesses scramble to adapt to a range of new regulations and taxes.  This week though we’re going to look at some of the social consequences of legalization.  First we’ll be looking at what legalization has meant for the criminal justice system, and then we’ll examine what impact it’s had on our kids.  Guest:  Josh Meisel, a professor of sociology and a co-director of the Humboldt Institute for Interdisciplinary Marijuana Research.  Up next we're going to take a look at how marijuana has impacted teens here in California.  Guest:  Danielle Ramo, adjunct associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry at UC San Francisco and the director of research operations at Hope Lab in San Francisco.

We're creeping up now on just one year since recreational marijuana became legal in California. A momentous change after decades of prohibition, legalization was accompanied with great expectations including the promise of fewer drug incarcerations, the eradication of an illicit black market, and the creation of a brand new stream of tax revenue from the legal market. But the legalization roll out has not been without its growing pains. For the next two weeks on In Depth, we're going to be examining the first year of legal recreational marijuana in California both the highs, and the lows. Next week we'll discuss some of the social consequences that legalization has had in the state, but this week we'll be focusing first on how the marijuana industry itself has been fairing as it undergoes a huge transition. Guest: David Downs the California Bureau Chief for Leafly.com, a Cannabis information website. Guest: Ryan Stoa, an associate Professor of Law at Concordia University school of Law in Boise Idaho who studies marijuana agriculture. His new book Craft Weed: Family Farming and the Future of the Marijuana Industry posits that the future of the marijuana industry might just look a little bit like the high end wine industry.

KCBS reporters have been on the scene of the deadly Camp Fire in Butte County to capture the stories of survivors, telling their tales of harrowing escapes, frustrating evacuations and of community members coming together in a time of crisis. On this episode of In Depth, guest host Keith Menconi takes a look at what made the fires in Northern and Southern California so devastating, how we can respond as a state, and the path to healing ahead for survivors. "Probably the level of devastation and the fact that it goes on for miles and miles," KCBS reporter Holly Quan described what stood out to her while covering the Camp Fire in Butte County. "There are towns and cities that we've covered, fires in Redding, in Yosemite, in obviously the Wine Country Fires, but as I talked to one city councilman he says nowhere have you seen an entire city wiped off the map. I mean, it really does look like, people have said it looks like a bomb went off. When you go into Paradise, you look around and it's like a black and white apocalyptic movie." The lasting impact, as best as Holly can surmise? "I think this is going to be a disaster that stays with us for quite a while, it's going to be I think quite some time before they make Paradise safe enough for people to go in. What happens when people actually go in and see what's left of their homes? Then you have to do the debris removal, mitigating any type of toxins before they're able to rebuild. And the town itself, their government infrastructure has to decide how they want to rebuild." How should Paradise--or, other communities damaged by fire--rebuild in this era of fire threat? Widening and updating road networks could be key. "When we rebuild this time around," said In Depth guest J. Keith Gilless, Dean Emeritus of the College of Natural Resources at UC Berkeley. "The general design consideration, how wide a road should be, how far vegetation should be managed away from them, think about the beautiful roads near me here on the peninsula where we planted eucalyptus at the turn of the century, creating beautiful roads but hemmed in by trees very close by, so there's some things we did historically that we don't want to repeat. We designed road networks in some cases with turns in them that were fine for the sort of vehicles that were traveling on them at the time but which will not accommodate a modern urban fire truck. And you want your public safety people to rapidly access every place they're trying to protect."

It was an historic night for female candidates in this past week's midterm elections, taking a record number of seats in the House of Representatives and also gaining important offices on the state level in California. These gains come after a year of energetic campaigning and organizing among women candidates, arguably encouraged to a large extent by the #MeToo movement--taking on sexual harassment and abuse. It was just over a year ago that an open letter, signed by many women in politics, uncovered a culture of rampant abuse in California's capitol. It launched a movement that came to be the We Said Enough campaign, and over the last year we've seen not only a handful of high profile resignations by lawmakers accused of sexual misconduct but also some serious reform efforts aimed at beefing up investigations into abuse allegations. On this edition of In Depth, guest host Keith Menconi speaks to some of the key leaders of We Said Enough, Adama Iwu and Christine Pelosi, to hear from them what they believe the movement has achieved so far and also now that the midterms have come and gone, what sorts of changes we should expect to see in politics with more women in power. Ms. Iwu is co-founder and president of We Said Enough, and was featured on the cover of Time Magazine after the letter was published. "As soon as the letter came out, Iwu said, "I think those of who had signed it realized immediately what this was and mostly because reporters from all over the world started reaching out to those of us in the core group but also every single woman who signed that letter was getting multiple calls from reporters asking you know, who, what, where, when and why and what did they know and when did they know it and that type of thing. And that was a lot to deal with. And we were clear that we didn't want to name names, that wasn't what we wanted. We weren't after one or two people you know just kind of going away. We really wanted wholesale culture change and when legislators began resigning I think that was when we really realized that this was real. And we also realized that it was real because we were seeing this happening in other places around the country as well." "It was a tremendous victory for women activists all over the country who for two years have been building a message around protecting healthcare, about defending women's rights and about advancing our values," said Pelosi of Tuesday's election results. She is legal counsel for We Said Enough and Democratic Women's Caucus Chair. "Some of those women went on to become candidates, first time candidates, which was very exciting to see."

We're in the home stretch now for the 2018 midterm season. Here in California, voters have been asked to answer some pretty big questions for the state--from how to deal with the soaring cost of living to how to best address the state's education achievement gap. And, to meet those big questions, we've also seen some big spending and heated campaigning. With just a few days left now before it all comes to a close, we examine the election on this weekend's In Depth with guest host Keith Menconi, joined by two experts in politics: Reed Galen, a political consultant who has worked on high profile national and state political campaigns and chief strategist of the Serve America Movement and Michael Semler, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus in the Political Science Department of California State University, Sacramento. What are these two experts anxious to see on Tuesday? "I think what will be interesting to see is California is always sort of a blue wave, it's been dominated by Democrats in its politics for years. And so whether or not the supposed enthusiasm that Democrats are showing elsewhere leads to enthusiasm on the left in California, given that you know you have a governor's race where it looks like Gavin Newsom's going to win, two Democrats running in the United States Senate race, and local hotly contested congressional races," opined Galen. "So, that's what I'm looking for, whether or not you know the measures and the candidates that are really on the left are a beneficiary of what seems to be a national movement." "I'd second what Reed is examining," added Semler. "Because what's happening in California is really a reflection of what's happening in the United States. This looks like it could be a national campaign and referendum on Donald Trump and the question is how far does that extend and whether it really exists here in California, whether there is an enthusiasm gap or division between what we see in polls and what actually happens on election day."

Cal Fire Chief Ken Pimlott joins KCBS Radio reporter and guest In Depth host Jenna Lane for a discussion about his decades-long career in firefighting--a look back at how his career started, plus how firefighting has changed over the years. "You know, a number of things have changed. The basics of firefighting have not changed. How you put fires out, but the conditions have changed," he explained. "The risks to firefighters have really increased." And, as Pimlott pointed out to Lane, the risks to firefighters aren't just physical but mental as well. "And they may not occur overnight but they accumulate over years. And we're really seeing the effects of that and now when you have a fire season it really is year-round." As a result of back-to-back firefighters, deployments in some cases were back to back, Pimlott pointed out. Pimlott also addressed funding and investigations during his In Depth appearance. "The support for our fire prevention and law enforcement program is absolutely there. We have the resources to get that done, understanding that in the North Bay fires, we had over thirty fires we were investigation as part of this complex of fires. And it wasn't just in the North Bay." Investigators, said Pimlott, were essentially broken up into "teams" to address what were "complex" investigations. "It takes time and it takes painstaking work and it really is a process of eliminating what didn't start the fires, you can narrow these causes down." The cause of the Tubbs Fire, it should be noted--certainly one of the more remarkably deadly and destructive of the 2017 Wine County wildfires--has not yet been determined. "In some cases you can't determine a cause because it's just, you know, these are fire scenes that are burning haphazardly. I think we look at every fire as important, whether it's a small fire that burned a few acres or a fire like the Tubbs Fire that burned thousands of acres and took so many structures and lives. They're all important because the losses that are involved are the same no matter what scale you are at but it's also important to determine the cause so that we can help prevent fires in the future. If we identify certain causes then we can work to prevent that down the road. And, then the investigations themselves are used by others, district attorneys and insurance companies and other entities to look for their own needs."