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1.	MR. ROBERT: No, Your Honor.
2.	MS. GOULD:  No, Your Honor.
3.	THE COURT:  All right. Thank you for your 
4.	testimony.
5.	  May this witness be excused?
6.	MR. ROBERT: Yes, Your Honor.
7.	MS. GOULD:  Yes, Your Honor.
8.	THE COURT: Thank you for your testimony, Miss
9.	 Dibble. And thank you, Miss Robbins.
10.	MS: ROBBINS: Thank you.
11.	THE COURT:  You may call your next witness.
12.	MR. ROBERT: Danuel Quaintance. Your Honor.
13.	THE COURT: Mr. Quaintance, please come forward and
14.	 be sworn.
15.	                   DANUEL QUAINTANCE 
16.	      after having been first duly sworn under oath,
17.	      was questioned and testified as follows:
18.	                   DIRECT EXAMINATION
19.	BY MR. ROBERT:
20.	 Q.  Tell us your name, please.
21.	 A.   Danuel Quaintance.
22.	 Q.   Mr. Quaintance, where do you live?
23.	 A.   Pima, Arizona.
24.	 Q.   You're the, you're one of the defendant's in this 
25.	case; is that right?

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1.	A.   Yes, sir.
2.	Q.   What do you do for a living?
3.	A.   I am on SSDI  I.
4.	Q.   And that's Social Security disability income?
5.	A.   Yes, sir.
6.	Q.   How long have you been on SSDI?
7.	A.    Since about '91, '91.
8.	Q.    Tell us what the nature of your disability is?
9.	A.     I have chronic pancreatitis.
10.	Q.    Was that diagnosed by a medical doctor?
11.	A.    Yes, sir.
12.	Q.    And, again, I'm sorry, just to be clear, when was
13.	 that diagnosis made initially?
14.	A.    I was in -- well, I had to quit working in September
15.	of '90, I believe it was.  It didn't finally get diagnosed
16.	until about '92 or '3 probably.
17.	Q.   All right.  Tell us a little bit about your
18.	educational background?
19.	A.  I completed high school.  I went through - - junior
20.	 high and on up or - -
21.	 Q.  Just did you graduate from high school?
22.	 A.  Yes,  I graduated high school.  I was actually going
23.	to, about to drop out in the eleventh grade.  I didn't have
24.	very good attendance.  And that summer is like the first time
25.	I was actually introduced to marijuana, and it was just
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1.	something new there for me that gave me some inspiration, that
2.	my senior year, when the school season began the next year I
3.	went and I signed up for day school and night school, and I
4.	held a job at a drive-in.  I completed and graduated with my
5.	class that I would have graduated with normally.
6.	 Q.  So let me understand, during your junior year did you
7.	basically drop out?
8.	 A.  Yeah, I went probably 15 days of the whole year, and
9.	that probably wasn't that many hours during those days.
10.	 Q.  And you indicated that you had an experience with
11.	 marijuana which led to you finishing all that work on time to
12.	graduate on time?
13.	 A.  It gave me focus.
14.	 Q.  Okay.
15.	 A.  And then I went in the service, and while I was in
16.	 the service I had 36 weeks of training [in fixed plant] multiplex
17.	equipment, which is multiplexing 600 telephone conversations
18.	on[to] one microwave frequency.  And from there I received some
19.	chemical warfare equipment training through chemical,
20.	biological, nuclear - -
21.	 Q.  What branch of the service were you in?
22.	 A.  I was in the Army Chemical Corps.  And that, during
23.	the training we were exposed to radiation and used [a] dosiometer
24.	to find hot spots, [take Geiger] counter[s] out, and come back.  And,
25.	basically, if our patch was enough color, then we had found

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1.	the hot spot.
2.	       And we worked in fatigues, regular fatigues, and
3.	decontamination of ponchos and gas mask.  So we received a
4.	pretty good exposure to Agent Orange, because we were doing
5.	decontamination.  I was in Germany, where we were
6.	[doing] decontamination [of] equipment from Nam.
7.	 Q.  During what years were you doing this kind of work?
8.	 A.  From '70 to the end of  '72.
9.	 Q.  All right.  And during what years was your service?
10.	  A. '70 to '72.
11.	 Q.  Okay.  So you were in for two years?
12.	  A.  Yes.
13.	 Q.  Or three?
14.	 A. Two years.  '70, I went in early in '70 and got out
15.	in the late part of '72.
16.	 Q.  All right.  During the time in your service were you
17.	using marijuana?
18.	 A.  I had a bit.  When I was in Germany there was a lot
19.	of  hashishes from the different countries.  I was quite
20.	familiar with the varieties of Afghanistan, which is a black
21.	hashish, kind of a religious thing over there.  You could tell
22.	it was black Afghanistan.  [Because] you would have an elephant gold
23.	seal stamped into the patty, or whatever.  It was about 10
24.	cents a gram.  Blond Lebanonese.
25.	   Q.  You said just a moment ago religious, and I want to
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1.	go back to your initial experience that you described for the
2.	Court.  Was your initial experience something that caused you
3.	to come to any philosophical conclusions about marijuana?
4.	A.  Whenever, I actually have come and gone through
5.	cannabis several times.  And my eleventh grade I was a little,
6.	you know, drinking alcohol and stuff too by that time, and
7.	that is what probably got me out of focus there.  And cannabis
8.	helped bring me back in focus. And when I was like out of
9.	focus there in Germany for a while, and cannabis helped bring
10.	me back in again.  And I was just, you know, never a party
11.	thing, with me it was more of a solitude thing.  You would
12.	smoke it, you achieve a different state of feeling.  It's a
13.	comfort that comes over you, you know, it's not a high-type of
14.	a feeling in my mind.  I have never experienced what people
15.	would call a high, I guess stoned, where you just wanted to
16.	kick back and zombi out, or whatever.  I get active and my
17.	mind becomes creative and see things basically.
18.	Q.  All right.
19.	         THE COURT:  Could you speak into the microphone a
20.	little more, Mr. Quaintance?  I'm having difficulty hearing
21.	you?  Thank you.
22.	Q.  This is during a time when a lot of people were
23.	probably experimenting with cannabis, but you were, and most
24.	of them were doing it probably for entertainment or
25.	recreation?

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1.	A.  I can possibly be considered in that category as
2.	well, at that time in my earlier days.  But I mean, to me,
3.	now,  I've learned a much greater level of that, that, in fact,
4.	actually I believe cannabis itself is the converter.  That
5.	it's - - a lot of people don't recognize that, but it is kind
6.	of a religious thing that happens in the Zoroastrian
7.	teachings, that cannabis is the teacher.  And it's the feeling
8.	that comes over you and it makes you, it causes you - - in
9.	fact, there's a verse that it ["ask no wily] questions but it
10.	questions [you] direct,["] and which means it makes you ponder the
11.	thought to seek your own answers.
12.	Q.  Okay.  Well, let's carry this through, at least as
13.	far as we can chronologically.  And now you're in Germany and
14.	it's a time in which you're probably - - you haven't found
15.	those things, you haven't - -
16.	A.  I never recognized that I had those things yet.
17.	Q.  All right.  Hadn't done the research yet?
18.	A.  I hadn't done any research at all.
19.	Q.  But you felt that there was something there?
20.	A.  Oh, I've always felt there was.
21.	Q.  What - - how did you take that from where you were
22.	then, in the early '70s, to the next step when you began to
23.	research some of the historical foundations of where you are
24.	now?
25.	A.  Well, it wasn't really until the '90s when I, 1991 or
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1.	so when I had - - in '84 I had a pancreatic shutdown, and I
2.	used it probably medicinally more so than anything.  At that
3.	time I still hadn't had a profound vision.  I went back to
4.	work.  And then in '90 I had a pancreatic major attack, and
5.	that's when I had to quit working.  And I was laying on the
6.	couch, praying for an end, it was just so miserable, intense
7.	pains that I was going through. And I would wake up in the
8.	middle of the night and I would have verses and books of the 
9.	Bible - -
10.	Q.  I'm sorry, go ahead.
11.	A.  I would have verses and books of the Bible, and I
12.	mean I'd just wake up and I'd open up and here would be
13.	something about cannabis right there, or not necessarily
14.	cannabis always, but something maybe about the language, how
15.	there's like a hidden language inside the Bible that a lot of
16.	people don't understand, like fruits.
17.	Q.  Okay.  Let's take this in smaller bites.  First I
18.	want to go back to 1984, because you talked about a medical
19.	incident that happened then.  You also had a legal incident in
20.	'84, didn't you?
21.	A.  '84, yes, sir.
22.	Q.  Tell us a little bit about that, please.
23.	A.  Well, in '84 our house was invaded for cannabis, and
24.	I, we got six months probation on it.  And the probation
25.	officer either instructed us that we would take, have to be

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1.	taking UAs, and it wasn't a court order that we were supposed
2.	to be taking them.  And I didn't think it was right, but I had
3.	informed the probation officer that if he was going to be
4.	making us, make me take UAs particularly, he might as well
5.	just put me back in jail for the period because I was an adult
6.	and it was my intention to stay with what I felt was within my
7.	right.  I was harming nobody.
8.	Q.  All right.  At that time, in 1984, why did you
9.	believe that it was within your right, even though it was
10.	against the civil law?
11.	A.  I was injuring no persons, I mean, this is like it's
12.	a plant that, within my liberty of conscience, it was my
13.	conscience was dictating what I would do within my own body,
14.	is what's going into me, and nothing was coming out of me that
15.	was injurious to any other persons.
16.	Q.  I want to go back now to a thing that you said a
17.	moment ago, in '91, when you had the second major medical
18.	incident, that you were lying on the couch and praying.  And
19.	so  let's talk a little bit about to whom you were praying at
20.	that time?
21.	 A.  I guess the creative energy of all life.
22.	 Q.  But you looked to the Bible?
23.	 A.  Well, I was Christian, I have a Christian background.
24.	I was raised in [Free] Methodist tradition and I was a member - -
25.	in the Methodist I was a member of the Methodist youth
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1.	fellowship, and I was actually president of that for a couple
2.	of years, and gave sermons.  So I was pretty familiar with the
3.	Bible.  And even at that time I had some different
4.	interpretations of some of the texts than some of the other 
5.	people had revealed, or whatever.
6.	Q.  And at what age were you involved in that
7.	organization?
8.	A.  That was 16, 17, a couple of years, right in that 
9.	area there, probably.
10.	Q.  So you were pretty heavily involved in that church?
11.	A.  Yes.
12.	 Q.  When was  - -
13.	 A.  I was, also at that time I was Eagle Scout, Order of
14.	the Arrow[ it's an] Honorary [Campers] Society.  And I was junior
15.	assistant scout master, I had gone through actually [since] 12 years
16.	[old], before being an assistant scout master; leadership
17.	of people basically.
18.	 Q.  Did there come a time that you started to question
19.	the teaching of your church, not this church, but the church
20.	that you were in?
21.	 A.  Well, the [Free] Methodist church, yes, they're a fairly
22.	unstructured group, but I seen adults that were not the most
23.	moralistic acting people, and stuff.  And it wasn't a lot of
24.	guidance, I would say, from - - There was not a lot of
25.	substance in it, you know, there was more reading from a book

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1.	and, like I said, some of the verses that I was reading, I
2.	seen a different content in that than a lot of other people
3.	see.
4.	 Q.  Did that belief that there was a different content
5.	than what other folks [may] believe lead you away from
6.	the [Free] Methodist Church?
7.	A.  [Free] Methodist, yes.
8.	Q.  At what age?
9.	 A.  It was probably shortly thereafter, 17 or 18 I was - -
10.	there was not much substance there.  And like I say, that
11.	junior year I kind of turned to the bottle a little bit.
12.	Q.  All right.  Where, when you started to lose
13.	connection with the [Free] Methodist Church, where did you go for
14.	a spiritual home?
15.	A. probably within myself.  I've always been monastic.
16.	Q.  And tell us what you mean by that.
17.	A.  Within myself, because I don't go out, and I've never
18.	joined with any other groups of people, or anything like
19.	that.  I feel better to be able to communicate with all the
20.	different groups of people than to try to side or single with
21.	any single group.
22.	Q.  There are various ways of being monastic, Christian,
23.	Judaic, Islam, Eastern religious such as Buddhism, Hinduism;
24.	in what way did you choose to be monastic at that time?
25.	A.  Well, my life, my spiritual life was within me and my
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1.	own self.  I didn't - - wasn't out showing off.
2.	Q.  Okay.  But I mean I guess my question is, what was
3.	your belief system at that time, when you parted with the
4.	[Free] Methodist Church?
5.	A.  I, I'm having a hard time understanding.  It's just
6.	like it's so natural to me, I don't know that there's a way to
7.	explain a belief system that, you know, I believe in a karmic,
8.	I would say type, of a system where that you get what you
9.	give.  If you give out bad things to people you create
10.	thoughts in those other person's minds.  And the more minds
11.	that think negatively of you, the more of that negative energy
12.	that is being directed coming your way.  And the more positive
13.	people are thinking of you, the  greater number of those people
14.	that are thinking of you positive because of the way you touch
15.	them, the greater good comes to you.
16.	Q.   Good thoughts, good words, good deeds?
17.	A.   Good thoughts, good words, good deeds, yes.
18.	Q.  I guess - - let me ask it this way.  Was there, for
19.	example, if a person got completely fed up with their
20.	Christian institutional church but wanted to continue to be
21.	Christian in their doctrine, they might go, be monastic with
22.	the Bible, in other words, follow those teaching and study in
23.	that way.  Was there a doctrine or book, or a  -- and that is
24.	what I mean by belief system, that you were connected with at
25.	that time?

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1.	A.  Well, originally I was like in the Bible.  And when I
2.	was going through this discovery process, basically, you know
3.	waking up in the middle of the night with verses and stuff,
4.	and it led me that there was, that this book itself was only
5.	written in 1609,  that there were older books, older texts from
6.	which it was written.
7.	Q.  What book was written in 1609?
8.	A.  The King James Version of the Bible.  And so I
9.	started seeking an [etymological] and a scholarly study of the
10.	history of the Bible and what it was composed of, where it was
11.	written.  And looking at some of the older Bibles, because
12.	there's been several Bibles written prior to that one, from
13.	which it was made, ultimately I've discovered that the Bible
14.	itself, the Zoroastrian text, like they - - they're all pretty
15.	much transliterations of the Qumran tablets that have been
16.	discovered there in the  Middle East.
17.	Q.  What do you mean by transliterations?
18.	A.  [There are] persons that are familiar with the language
19.	of, like, cuneiform.  There's, I actually have a book myself
20.	which is [for] translating the character from that language of
21.	cuneiform tablets to the [Avestan] and to Sanskrit.  And then
22.	from that you would have to use like a dictionary, translate,
23.	transliterate from the Sanskrit on into the English language,
24.	if that's the language we were wanting to transliterate into,
25.	you might say.
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1.	Q.  And am I to understand that you translated texts from
2.	those ancient languages?
3.	A.  I have done some, yes. When I have a question,
4.	specifically with that, the hemp, haoma issue, I constantly
5.	attempt to prove myself. You know, is this real?  Is this the
6.	ultimate truth?  And that's what I find, no matter which way I
7.	go.  And it's so difficult to try to convince people of this
8.	truth, they want to see a mountain of evidence, and I continue
9.	to explore to try to find that mountain of evidence to show
10.	them.
11.	Q.  All right. Well, let's back up, because I want to
12.	get to the point at which you begin to develop your
13.	philosophies, your religious beliefs.  But, so you, you're
14.	starting with the Bible and you're going back, and back, and
15.	back, and tell us, just briefly give us, if you can, an
16.	overview of the text that that progression, regression in
17.	time, took you through?
18.	A.  Well, I was seeking - -
19.	       THE COURT:  Excuse me. I think we'll probably have
20.	to break now.  We'll go to our 11:00 o'clock hearing next.
21.	       Counsel, before you leave, I did receive an e-mail
22.	that we may have some time tomorrow morning. Before you go
23.	check out of your hotels, let me ask you about that.  I don't
24.	know how much time you're going to need, I mean if tomorrow
25.	morning will help, if tomorrow morning will resolve, you know,

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1.	get us through the testimony, then I do have tomorrow morning
2.	available.
3.	         MR. MARTINEZ:  I think that could help, Your Honor,
4.	we can get it done by tomorrow morning.
5.	         MR. ROBERT:  I think so too.  If we had a couple of
6.	hours it would probably get us to the end of what we need to 
7.	do.      
8.	         MR. MARTINEZ: We're still going to try to finish
9.	today, if we possibly can, Your Honor.
10.	         THE COURT:  All right.
11.	          MS. SEDILLO:  I have a scheduling before Judge Conway
12.	scheduled tomorrow in Las Cruces, and I would need to take a
13.	look at that to see where we're at.  I think my client is
14.	close to time served, so I would need to take a look at that.
15.	          THE COURT:  All right.
16.	          MR. ALMANZA:  I have a hearing, Your Honor, in Silver
17.	city, Your Honor, but I can probably get of that moved.
18.	          THE COURT:  Okay.
19.	         Well, I guess I'll leave it to you then.  I do have
20.	tomorrow morning open, so if we can get everybody's schedule
21.	working, we'll just go ahead and continue tomorrow morning.
22.	           MR. ROBERT:  Thank you.
23.	           THE COURT:  All right. We'll take about a
24.	five-minute recess and then reconvene on the U.S.A. versus
25.	Mora matter.
Page 185 image link
1.	(Court stood in recess.)
2.	                       AFTERNOON SESSION
3.	           THE COURT: We're back on the record in U.S.A. versus
4.	Quaintance, 05-6538.  Are we all ready to proceed?
5.	           MR. MARTINEZ:  Yes, Your Honor.
6.	           MR. ROBERT:  Yes, Your Honor.
7.	                 CONTINUED DIRECT EXAMINATION
8.	BY MR. ROBERT:
9.	Q.  Mr. Quaintance, before we broke we were talking about
10.	the steps along your path from where you started in your
11.	religious life; what you told us was the [Free] Methodist Church
12.	to where you are now.  And if I'm not mistaken, I think where
13.	we left off was, in discussing what happened, I think you said
14.	in '91, when you were having a medical crisis and you
15.	consulted the Bible and then you worked your way back, and
16.	let's take it from there. You were seeking older texts?
17.	A.   Yes, to find more relevance.  I was seeking the 
18.	ultimate truth, because it's, in the King James version of the
19.	Bible there is so many interpretations from numerous groups, I
20.	have not only been in the [Free] Methodist, I've also attended
21.	church in the Baptist and Presbyterians, I've gone into other
22.	ones just to see the differences, and there was really not a
23.	lot of difference, they all used the King James version of the
24.	Bible. It's Primarily a little different interpretations, a
25.	lot of people have different interpretations of the versions.

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1.	there, and I was seeking a more ultimate answer.  It's like
2.	there's a story, there's an underlying mystery in there that
3.	needs to be solved.
4.	Q.  In where?
5.	A.  In the King James version of the Bible.  And I was
6.	seeking to solve that mystery as, well, not being guided as
7.	well, it felt to me.  I was woken up, and different point on
8.	it taking me to different passages.
9.	Q.  When you say you'd be taking to different passages,
10.	I'm not sure I understand what you mean.
11.	A.  Well, in the Bible, on one of the  most significant
12.	ones that I hit on right off, the early start of was Ezekiel
13.	47:12, which is, in Ezekiel 47:12 it talks about on either
14.	side of the river shall grow a tree of fruit and its seeds
15.	shall be your meat and its leaf your medicine.  And to me, the
16.	only plant that I was aware of that had those significant
17.	properties was the cannabis plant that had both the seed that
18.	was a nutritious seed of meat, basically, and the medicinal
19.	properties to the leaf.
20.	Q.  Now, I never heard, before I talked to you and Mr.
21.	[Senger], that there was any sort of nutritional value to the
22.	seed of the cannabis plant. Tell us a little bit about that,
23.	please.
24.	A.  Well, the nutritional aspects of the cannabis seed,
25.	you have essential fatty acids that, essential meaning that
Page 187 image link
1.	your diet requires them, and there's only a few places that
2.	you can get them, it doesn't break down. A lot of times in
3.	your nutrition you can eat anything and it's converted to the
4.	chemicals your body needs, but essential fatty acids, you have
5.	to get it from certain food substances. And only chicken or
6.	poultry and fish, cannabis or hemp seed, are about the highest
7.	in those [naturally]; cannabis and flax seed are the two 
8.	highest of the Omega 3 [and] six essential fatty acids.
9.	Q. Where did you learn about these things?
10.	A.  Research.
11.	Q.  All right.
12.	A.  Well, Dr. Roberta Hamilton, we had a monastery over
13.	in England and he was a friend with Dr. Roberta Hamilton, a
14.	professor at UCLA, and she is a nutritional expert and done a
15.	lot of study with the hemp seed, and she kind of advised me
16.	that if I want to - - well, actually I was laying down sick one
17.	day, and when she called and Mary told her, "Well, Dan is down
18.	sick," and she was, "Well, has he got the flu or something?"
19.	She said, "No, he's dying, you know, from this pancreatic
20.	cancer."  She said, "Oh, he needs to get on these hemp seeds
21.	or this flax [] seed oil.  If you mix flax seed oil with 
22.	cottage cheese [it] form[s] a long-strand molecule that will wrap
23.	around the antioxidant coating, from, which we get from
24.	hydrogenated vegetable fats.  At the turn of the century we,
25.	to make fat, fat products last longer on the shelf they used a

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1.	hydrogenated vegetable process, heating the oil to over 600
2.	degrees and converted the sis fatty acids to trans acids []
3.	putting an antioxidant coating on the [molecules] so they wouldn't
4.	oxidize or spoil. But our body, it works by using oxygen to
5.	burn the fats and things we eat, and that the calories burn,
6.	makes the calories of energy in our system. We can't digest
7.	those things, and that's what causes a lot of cancers and
8.	tumors, and stuff like that, in people nowadays.  But this
9.	flax seed oil or hemp seed oil, mixed with cottage cheese will
10.	form a long-strand molecule that will wrap around those
11.	antioxidant molecules and dissolve them and allow you to
12.	disseminate them by normal processes of the body.
13.	Q. All right.  Okay. So let's go back to where I jumped 
14.	off, which is you're looking at that verse in the Bible that
15.	talks about the tree on both sides of the river.
16.	A.  Uh-huh.
17.	Q.  All right.  Where did you go from there in terms of
18.	your research into the spiritual texts?
19.	A.  In the texts themselves, going back, I learned that
20.	really there was like - - I went back into the Genesis and
21.	started reading it over again, I'd read it a couple of times
22.	before; but in Genesis I learned that the rivers, the names of
23.	the rivers were[,] like using [etymological] breakdown and they
24.	were actually like compounding of the languages, and stuff,
25.	sort of like the tower of Babel. And so I felt that really to
Page 189 image link
1.	learn deeper into these secrets or mysteries I would need to
2.	learn the [etymology] or roots of the words themselves, from where
3.	they came from.  And it took me all the way back into 
4.	cuneiform tablets.  And I learned, of course, that the text of
5.	the Avest[an] and the text of the King James version, they're
6.	all based, really, upon those cuneiform tablets being
7.	translated, or transliterated, from those cuneiforms into the
8.	modern language of whichever language the person is going to
9.	be reading them in. But they pretty much have a lot of the
10.	same message.
11.	           In the end time there will be [, even in] Native American
12.	religions, just about every religion out there, the promise of
13.	many[, in end] times is an unending supply of food, or the return of the
14.	original food.  It's pretty much a universal promise amongst
15.	all religions, that "My people will never have to go hungry
16.	again."  And, of course, this hemp seed is a nutritional
17.	plant, to the point that one acre can produce enough food for
18.	10 persons.  It has every single thing in one cup of hemp
19.	seeds that a person needs for their daily adult requirements
20.	[in their] diet.
21.	Q.  All right.  And so that's related to the religious
22.	text because of those end time[s] prophecies?
23.	A.  Yes, most definitely.
24.	Q   All right. Well, where, specifically, and when I say
25.	where I'm talking about what writing, did your analysis of

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1.	these things take you through?
2.	A.  Well, I ended up going back, and I found, to me, the
3.	most convincing of all the texts that I could find would have
4.	been the [Hom Yasht] 9 through 11 because of the linguistic link
5.	into the Yasna [and the] Chinese language, which has a direct phonics
6.	translation of the terms of the Avesta in that region.
7.	Q.  Okay.  Let me stop you there, because you're saying
8.	some things that I didn't understand the first time I heard
9.	them, and so we're going to need to take them – What's the
10.	[9] through 11, the [Yasna]
11.	A.  Yeah, the 9 though 11, [Yasna],  [Y A S N A] (note: asked for spelling)
12.	and it's the Hom Yasht, H-O-M, which would be Y-A-S-H-T.
13.	Q.  What is Hom Yasht.
14.	A.  The Hom Yasht is transliterated into English, would
15.	be the marijuana, hemp or marijuana praise.  It's, Hom is a
16.	[Pahlavi] word for the Avestan word haoma, which Avestan is a
17.	pretty much extinct [language].  A lot of people are still
18.	trying to find the category of whether, where is, where did
19.	this language develop.  Some people bring it closer to the
20.	Tamali's language, which I've done a lot of research in there
21.	as well, and there's a lot of reference to Hom. [Homa is]
22.	the Arabic word of it.  And, like I say, the Hom Yasht, that's
23.	the only place [that it's] called Hom, is right in the title of it.
24.	The rest of it, all the way through it, it uses the word
25.	[Haoma]
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1.	Q.  All right.  Hom Yasht is a part of what bigger piece
2.	of work?
3.	A.  That's the Ya[s]nas or the [Yasht], that the Ya[s]na, there's
4.	like 27.
5.	Q.  And, I'm sorry, and of what larger work are the Ya[s]na
6.	a part of?
7.	A.  Avesta.
8.	Q.  Okay. And what is the Avesta?
9.	A.  The Avesta is a compilation of all of these different
10.	tablets, writings of the law, that have been carved. It's
11.	Zoroastrian sacred text, you would basically say.  They're
12.	fragments transposed from clay tablets.  The Gathas were
13.	actually hymns, which is an oral tradition of the, they claim
14.	is the very oldest, which being the very oldest doesn't make
15.	them the most accurate.  But when you're telling a story in
16.	ear-to-ear, going around the room, by the time it gets to the
17.	last person in the room it's quite different than when it
18.	began back here.  And being oral tradition like that, it is
19.	susceptible to some modifications, glorification, maybe, you
20.	know, a little bit of loss, that other translations actually
21.	are coming from clay tablets that were written-down fragments.
22.	And the [Vendidad] is attributed to Zarathrusta or the last
23.	Zarathrusta, actually.  There's 13 Zarathrustas, which
24.	Zarathrusta is, zara is like where our modern word czar comes
25.	from, it's great or magnificent, and aster is brightness or

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1.	wisdom. [astar] goes back to Istar.  And he is - - I have a book
2.	which a lot of the modern days Zoroastrians are not privy to;
3.	it's from 1882, it's 124-year-old book, [T]he [S]pirit of the
4.	 Zoroastrian [R]eligion, which gives a lot of us knowledge. And
5.	they speak of some ancient manuscripts in Russia that gives me
6.	a little bit more knowledge than some of the ones that are out
7.	there today have.
8.	Q.  Who is the author of this 124-year-old book?
9.	A.  It was done by -- the -- it's not an author, actually
10.	it's a book about a lecture given by Colonel [Olcott], [to] the
11.	[Parsi] Society of Bombay, India, about their religion,
12.	telling them about the ancient history of their religion and
13.	how it's lost its significance, there's not too many people
14.	left that really knew that much about it.  It's kind of an
15.	empty shell of religion at that time.
16.	Q.  What was?
17.	A.  The Zoroastrian religion.  There wasn't very many
18.	[Ervads] or [Mobads] around that really knew much more than just
19.	recycle of the words of the chants or text. You know, they
20.	didn't really have the feeling of the body to where they could
21.	experience and do things of supernatural powers of some of the
22.	earlier ones, and the religion were [Magi], you know, there are
23.	[Magi] in religion.
24.	Q.  Magi as in the [Magi] of the Christian traditions?
25.	A.  That's a Christian tradition, actually, yes, because
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1.	those are the ones that came and gave Jesus the gifts.  And I
2.	believe those were the gifts of healing.  He actually did an
3.	awful lot of healing on his term here on earth because he knew
4.	the secrets of like, we know that cannabis is good for
5.	glaucoma.  He made people to be able to see, the blind to see,
6.	the lame to walk.  It was good for MS patients suffering MS.
7.	And a lot of the miracles Jesus performed could be attributed
8.	to cannabis today, the medical movement and what they're
9.	attributing its ability to do.
10.	Q.  Okay.  The time frame that you described as the
11.	Zoroastrian practices as being sort of in abeyance, is that
12.	back in the time when this Colonel [Olcott] gave his lecture,
13.	you're talking about in the mid 1800's
14.	A.  No, it's, the Zoroastrian religion expands for
15.	thousands of years, several thousand years BC to 600 or later,
16.	actually all the way to the present times, that they
17.	discovered some archeological ruins in Turkmenistan, that
18.	there are some temples there and they have some pots, and they
19.	have all the [strainer]-type thing, it's like a hole in the 
20.	bottom where they would pour the pounded haoma liquid through
21.	it and separate out the milk from the fiber for their soma or
22.	their meal, basically.  They found those artifact in this
23.	archeological dig, they're dating them between 2000 and 3000.
24.	Q. BC?
25.	A.  BC.  And they chemically analyzed the contents of

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1.	these and they were, they found [ephedra,] [they found] poppy, they found
2.	cannabis, and they found some imprints of cannabis seed that
3.	some scholars are saying it was probably more of a millet seed
4.	because of the smallness of them, the cannabis seeds are
5.	actually, there's a grade, the dimensions or si[z]e, from the
6.	si[z]e of a millet, perhaps all the way up. But it's actually
7.	the text of the Yas[na] and stuff, especially 9-11, which
8.	would be definitive, those other substitutes did not [fit].
9.	Q.  Okay.  I want to come back to that in a little bit,
10.	but I want to talk about the idea that there is a dispute
11.	among people who are knowledgeable about Zoroastrianism, as to
12.	what haoma is, is that –
13.	A.  It has been for a couple hundred years, it's been a
14.	curiosity among scholars.  For several hundred years now
15.	they've been tackling that problem, Harvard, itself. I wrote
16.	using linguistic archeology, was what I [defined] it as, going
17.	through the words and leading myself back there.  I was able
18.	to write an article where I said it could be nothing but
19.	cannabis, in '96.  In '98 Harvard tackled the problem, they
20.	called it the [Haoma-Soma] problem, and back in the '9[9], I
21.	guess it was.  And then in 2003 is when they revealed this
22.	archeological discovery that confirmed that very likely it was
23.	cannabis, according to Sardinni, he believed it was.
24.	Q.  Who?
25.	A.  Sardinni, he's a Russian archeologist.
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1.	Q.  How do you spell the last name?
2.	A.   Oh, S-A-R-D-I-N-N-I, I believe it is.  Sardinni.
3.	Q.   Sardinni.  You've mentioned soma a couple of times,
4.	and we've already heard haoma described; what is soma?
5.	A.  Soma is, soma is in the, you know, there's a little
6.	over 100 hymns composed to it, it is a deity as well.
7.	Q.  What is the Rigaveda?
8.	A.  Pardon?
9.	Q.  What is the Rigveda?
10.	A.   Rigveda, it's the holy books of the Hindu religion
11.	in India.  And they're linguistically connected, actually they
12.	believe these people came from possibly up around where the
13.	[Sythians] were in the northern plains, just above India in the 
14.	[Turkmenistan] region, southern part of Russia area.  And one
15.	group went to the west over towards Iran, and the other group
16.	went south down into India, the ones going into India carried
17.	with them the soma, and were mainly the Hindus, and the other
18.	ones that went to the west into Iran and Iraq were the 
19.	Zoroastrians.  And the ones going south called it soma, the
20.	ones going east called it haoma; soma is a Sanskrit word.
21.	Q.  Okay.  So basically your research led you to the
22.	conclusion that the two are the same?
23.	A.  Place[?] somebody -- it's actually, I believe that
24.	haoma is  probably the older version of it.
25.	Q.  All right.  Well, you told us that there was an

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1.	archeological find in which there was evidence of, not just
2.	cannabis, but also ephedra and poppies, which, of course, is
3.	the main component of opium?
4.	A.  Yes.
5.	Q.  So I can see where that might lead to disagreement as
6.	to what haoma actually is.
7.	A.  It's, in the text, in the [Vendidad], especially in
8.	Fargar[d] 20 where they're speaking of the healing medicines and
9.	stuff, it makes a connection between gao[kerena] the mythical
10.	tree of life, which is similar to the Christian tree of life,
11.	where all things came from it, is connected right there.  It
12.	says the gao[kerena] is the white [Hom], is the yellow haoma, the
13.	plant of immortality.  So it's a tree, basically, it's
14.	connecting a tree to whatever [H]aoma is. And there are several
15.	other place that refers to it as a tree as well.  In the [hom yasht]
16.	it has spots of trees, where it's mentioned as a tree.  And
17.	the poppy is not a tree, it's a long, far cry from a tree, and
18.	ephedra is a far cry from a tree.
19.	Q.  Well, isn't cannabis a far cry –
20.	A.  No, it is not.  The cannabis plant actually can grow
21.	to about 25 foot in a single season.  And in the Bible,
22.	there's verses in the Bible that it speaks of, ["]and the tree of 
23.	the field shall lift it's hands and clap in joy["].  And the
24.	cannabis plants, people refer to them as the number of fingers
25.	that the leaves have, finger leaf it has on it.
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1.	Q.  Is that by the number –
2.	A.  Well, it goes in an odd number.  It begins with
3.	three, then five, then seven, up to 13, I've seen the leafs on
4.	it when they grow.  And number one, fields are normally
5.	considered annual, annual crops, and there's not to many
6.	trees that are grown in fields, most of the trees are grown in
7.	an orchard, or grove, or referred to as that because it's not
8.	an annual crop.  The field are annuals and the cannabis plant
9.	grows, when they grew hemp here in America prior to the '50s,
10.	up to the mid '50s, I believe it was, you were still able to
11.	pay your taxes with the cannabis, hemp plant.  But it's, it
12.	was grow[n] real close together and it was more of like a
13.	cane, it grew up real straight because -- it depends on how
14.	it's grown how it's going to end up.  If you want it for seeds
15.	you would [seed] it with a greater distance between[,] where it
16.	could spread out and bush and have lots of bud [shoots] out of
17.	it that are loaded with the seeds, which they grew seed crops
18.	in Kentucky, and they grew hemp fiber up in the northern
19.	states real close together.  They will grow up to 12 to 18
20.	feet in a single season with just one seed [head] on top of it.
21.	Q.  All right.  So it is, can it at least be called a
22.	tree?
23.	A.  Pardon?
24.	Q.  It is, then it resembles a tree?
25.	A.  Yeah, it has branches.  I have some older writings

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1.	where, it must have been from the 1700s, where a person spoke
2.	about going out where he planted these trees of the hemp
3.	alongside of his riverway or waterway through a canal, and he
4.	would go out and climb up on the branches of it.
5.	Q.  You've told me in the past about perhaps the
6.	confusion about the language from which some of the original
7.	words derived, and that leading to some confusion about
8.	whether haoma is, in fact, cannabis or some other plant. Tell
9.	me a little about that.
10.	A.  Well, hayo -- the reason why I say I believe it's 
11.	actually not, it's not an Indio-Iranian, Indio-Arabic or
12.	Indio-European language, it's actually is a [Sino-] Tibetan
13.	root because it has, like I said, phonetic origin.  The
14.	Chinese has a word hao [ma] as a word haoma, and that is, when
15.	you're doing [etymology] and linguistically connecting words
16.	it's one person says it,  another person writes it down, they
17.	may not spell it the way you said it.  Another person comes
18.	along and reads the way it's spelled and they pronounce it
19.	different based upon that spelling, and that's how you kind of
20.	get a changing of words going throughout history or over a
21.	period of time.
22.	       And the word hao in Chinese is good, and ma is hemp,
23.	and there's a symbol for it where it's two leaves that appear
24.	to be cannabis [leafs] that are underneath the shelf that looks
25.	like, that actually, by itself, in the Chinese language,
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1.	symbolizes a shed or cave.  And then there's like a little
2.	slice coming down from the top that, it symbolizes the [rain].
3.	So these plants that are underneath the shelf are being kept
4.	dry, they're put away and stored, and that symbol is ["ma"] for
5.	hemp, it means hemp.
6.	Q.  All right.  So –
7.	A.  There's other connections as well.  In the Buddhist
8.	Tibetan dictionary the language is, Sanskrit is a monosyllabic
9.	language,  so each part -- soma would not be soma, together it
10.	would be so ma, separated.  When you put those into their
11.	Tibetan dictionary that the Buddhist put together there it
12.	comes up with hemp, is the word, right direct hemp.
13.	Q.  All right.  So as a part of the research that you
14.	did,  you're studying Sanskrit and ancient Sino-Tibetan
15.	languages?
16.	A.  Yes.  And the [huo ma];  that's why I believe, you know,
17.	in the Zoroastrian religion it's a fire-based religion.  The
18.	cannabis, hemp plant itself, when you taste it, when you make
19.	this drink, the [huo]ma, it has a hot, spicy, fiery flavor to 
20.	it.  It's hard to define whether it's like radish or jalapeno,
21.	cinnamon.  It kind of, you question what is that flavor.  And,
22.	but it's hot and spicy basically.  And the word [huo] is used
23.	today still medicinally in Chinese medicine.  You can find it
24.	on the Internet, just [huo ma][ren], and it gives you the symbol
25.	of fire, it gives you the symbol of the shed with the leaves

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1.	under it, ma, and then it looks like ["C"] is the symbol of
2.	[ren], being the seed, which is ["]Fire Hemp Seed["].
3.	Q.  Okay.  When you talk about that it reminds me of some
4.	questioning yesterday, and I expect we'll hear more about it
5.	when Dr. Bagli testifies, but I guess that there is, at least
6.	his side of Zoroastrianism, which, as you say, is
7.	a fire-based thing, abhors smoke for some reason, which is
8.	obviously inconsistent with your beliefs.
9.	A.  Yes.
10.	Q.   Are you familiar with that disagreement?
11.	A.   Yes, it's -- there's quite a few different sects
12.	among Zoroastrians, and there's, I would say that, oh -- now
13.	my mind is going to -- I know this guy so well, too.
14.	Q.  I'm sorry, which guy?
15.	A.  There's one who's written, and he's written for 40
16.	years, and Mr. Bagli is quite familiar with him because
17.	they've intercommunicated, in fact, actually he's quoted some
18.	of his work, and I have my papers, I've got his papers in
19.	there,  it's just slipping my mind for some reason.  My book,
20.	the Church of Cognizance book [Jaffrey], [Ali] [Jaffrey].
21.	Q.  Is this the book you're talking about?
22.	A.  Yes, that's the book.
23.	Q.  Would you like to refer to it or do you not need it
24.	now?
25.	A.  That was good, I got to a point that's lack of deity,
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1.	I'm having a hard time focusing being over six months away
2.	from my deity.  [Ali][Jaffrey] is the name.  And he's written
3.	on the religion for over 40 years,  and he says it can't be
4.	anything but the cannabis plant as well.  So he concurs with
5.	me that, [Jaffrey],  I mean Bagli, and then he seems to me to be
6.	kind of confused because one part he's talking about that it
7.	is the haoma plant, you know, or haoma is essential in some of
8.	their ceremonies,  and then other parts he says that they don't
9.	do it any more.  The religion truly is all about purity. And
10.	the cannabis, the [THC],  that's where the [THC][] part of the
11.	plant comes in,  because cannabis is a [gram] positive
12.	antibiotic and anything that penicillin will kill, THC will
13.	kill, it kills streptococcus, which is responsible for
14.	pneumonia, scarlet fever, different diseases like this. And
15.	the antibacterial, the [Scythians] were some of the first wrote
16.	about the [Scythians] going into the tent and doing a
17.	purification ceremony by throwing the seeds of the cannabis
18.	plant on fire or coals,  that a lot of people don't understand
19.	what that ceremony was about.  It was a ceremony after you
20.	took care of your dead, and that when you're around a dead
21.	body there's a chance that you could get bacteria and you can
22.	get very sick from it,  a lot of people died, and it probably
23.	took them awhile to make that connection or realize that.
24.	There's two groups left down in Mexico that have that same
25.	basic thing, they live in high cliffs on some plateaus, so

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1.	when the inquisition comes through[,] the Conquistadors,  or
2.	whatever, they weren't able to go up and successfully move
3.	them out of Mexico.  And so they still survive there and they
4.	still practice the ceremony, or very similar to the [Scythians].
5.	Q.  Using cannabis?
6.	A.   Use cannabis, yeah, in those, one, in one it's the
7.	[Santa][Rosa] and the other one it's the Rosa Maria, is the name
8.	they go by.
9.	Q.   Okay.  Well, let then me go back to what sort of the
10.	original, what I am wondering is, and it sounds like Dr. Bagli
11.	is going to say smoke is bad, we don't believe in smoke as a
12.	general proposition; so is it bad?
13.	A.  It's [a] purifier and your body has to be purified, you
14.	don't just have an outside to your body, you don't just have a
15.	spiritual side to your body,  you have a physical epidermis,
16.	you have an alimentary tract, you have [a] respiratory tract. And
17.	to purify that respiratory tract, smoke inhalation, like if
18.	you're in one of those tents you're going to be breathing
19.	those fumes in, you'd be purifying your respiratory tract,
20.	when you take a sip of the drink you're going to be purifying
21.	your alimentary tract.  And if you were to rub the oil on your
22.	skin or bathed in this oil, it will [get] [subcutaneously]. This THC,
23.	itself, is an oil-soluble substance, and so the oil is what
24.	will purify it, and subdermally on your skin, and allow it to
25.	take care of [subcutanal] bacteria.
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1.	Q.  Okay,  let's forget -- smoking isn't necessarily a
2.	purifier, I mean --
3.	A. Yes.
4.	Q.  - - people that smoke cigarettes end up destroying
5.	their lungs with that smoke.
6.	A.  Exactly.  It's the THC is kind of [protective], in
7.	fact,  there was just some recent release, the person who had
8.	said that, who did the studies that maybe Congress used in
9.	some of its determinations that cannabis caused cancer of the
10.	lungs, and possibly even worse than cigarettes, has now
11.	changed his stance on that.  And, because they discovered,
12.	along with Dr. Robert [Melamede] at the University of Colorado up
13.	there, that THC kills those cancer cells and allows new cells
14.	to regenerate.  What cancer is, is basically it's a cell that
15.	refuses to die and it just morphs out into a [patch].
16.	Q.  Okay.  And then that gets a little beyond the scope
17.	of where we are, but I guess what I'm trying to do is to
18.	square or at least discuss the differences in opinion about
19.	what the religion says or - -
20.	A.  Well, we believe in full-body purification.  I don't
21.	know where their purification is in chants.  They've got like,
22.	they've got a more modern religion where they don't believe
23.	that they even need to have haoma in it any more.  They
24.	believe they can receive their purification sort of similar to
25.	the modern Shinto.

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1.	Q. What's that?
2.	A.  It's a Japanese religion, and [McArthur] in, during
3.	the war he forbade the practice of it, burned all their books.
4.	But nowadays [they're] back into practice, you can get [online] and 
5.	see the Shinto priest in all of their decorative garments and
6.	they go up the path with a cannabis plant to the holy shrine.
7.	And in their healing they use what they call a [Gohi] stick,
8.	which is fibers hanging off the end of the stick have fibers,
9.	and the person that's sitting, laying on a table, and they
10.	shake that [Gohi] stick up and down over the top of the body
11.	and they say a little prayer, and it's sprinkling the purity
12.	of the cannabis plant out on the body and it's supposed to
13.	remove that illness from them.  In our religion we're familiar
14.	that the THC itself is the purifier that will remove that
15.	illness.
16.	Q.  So it's just a difference of opinion?
17.	A.  Yes.
18.	Q.   And your own opinion is based on what, your research?
19.	A.  A lot of research, and my own work, but what it's
20.	done for my life, the people I have observed it in.
21.	Q.  Your beliefs in this regard, Mr. Quaintance, are they
22.	unique or is there a community of other folks that base their
23.	religion of Zoroastrianism, that also believe as you?
24.	A.  Oh, yeah.  There's over in Iran and Iraq, and India,
25.	there's still the cannabis plant.  There's groups that for the
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1.	last several generations they have been trying to eliminate
2.	it, before members, some people can become member states of
3.	the UN and stuff, they have to get the cannabis out because
4.	it's such a controversial issue to, and to not disturb other
5.	people and get along you should have to give up a little bit
6.	of your religion, and then we'll give up a little bit of our
7.	religion and then maybe we can find a medium ground where we
8.	can all be happy.  But it's actually causing a lot of conflict
9.	in the Middle East, some people are not wanting to give that 
10.	religion up.
11.	Q.  Well, a little conflict right here in this courtroom,
12.	I guess.  That brings me to something I wanted to ask you
13.	about, and this is based on something that Mr. Martinez has
14.	said a couple of times during the course of this case,  You
15.	decided at, early on, when Judge, Magistrate Judge Martinez
16.	set conditions of your release, one of which is you can't use
17.	cannabis, you can't use sacrament, and you accepted that?
18.	A.  Yes, sir.
19.	Q.  Have you used cannabis at all since that time?
20.	A.  No, sir, I give urinalysis test once to three times
21.	a week.
22.	Q.  After a period of time during which - -
23.	A.  It took six weeks for it to clear our system to where
24.	we were coming back negative on it.
25.	Q.  All right.  Mr. Martinez has suggested on occasion

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1.	that you're basically a religious fraud because you kicked
2.	your deity to the curb as soon as the Court required you to do
3.	that, would you comment on that, please?
4.	A.  Well, we can stay in jail without our deity and 
5.	without our children, or without any other support system
6.	around.  My ability to get back into, at least do research,
7.	and since that's the part to me too, I'm constantly searching
8.	throughout, like I said, it feels like I have to have a
9.	mountain of evidence to try to convince people of the
10.	righteousness of this narrow path I'm trying to follow here
11.	and, or, you know, I can be in there without it or I can be
12.	out here without it.  Out here without it seems to be a lot
13.	better trade-off.
14.	Q.  Okay.  Well, how do you manage spiritually, having
15.	been denied that which you believe is not only your conduit to
16.	God, but is, in fact, God?
17.	A.  Well, I'm not totally separated from it because I,
18.	the human body itself produces it with your diet.  With what
19.	you eat,  your body produces [cannabinoids], we have receptors all
20.	throughout.  It probably is, it's responsible for the
21.	homeostatic [balance] of our body.  It, actually it's the
22.	[cannabinoid] receptor itself is over 600 million years old, it
23.	was developed before we had sight, sound, hearing, anything,
24.	what defines us as a personal living organism, cannabis is the
25.	receptor that the parent, that family tree coming out from
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1.	that point.
2.	Q.  All right.  Well, since we seem to be at this point,
3.	I want to talk about, now, a notion that I haven't been able
4.	to understand.  And that's probably because of the traditional
5.	background in which I was raised.  Cannabis is a sacrament
6.	based on your understanding of the ancient texts?
7.	A.  Not only based, but on my understanding the glossary
8.	of the Avesta.org listed as a deity, a plant, and a 
9.	sacrament.  The word haoma has those three connotations.
10.	Q.  Okay.  And then I want to talk about those things,
11.	and it's plain, obviously, we all understand that; a
12.	sacrament, we may not all agree but we can understand it?
13.	A.  Uh-huh.
14.	Q.   And again, I think you testified that it's not just
15.	your research but your personal experience that gives you that
16.	insight as well.  I want to talk about that again in a moment,
17.	but I can't grasp the notion of a plant as a deity.  People in
18.	the, in this culture, see a God who is often represented as a
19.	man to whom a person, a consciousness, a being which is
20.	typically understood as having at least a metaphorical body,
21.	but an intelligence, a brain, a consciousness, and it's hard
22.	for me to attribute those qualities to a plant.  Could you
23.	help me and the Court understand?
24.	A.  Actually, see, when I was in the Christian field of
25.	working with that Bible, and everything, there was one lesson

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1.	that I grabbed from it was when the Messiah returns few will
2.	recognize him and most will shut the door in his face and say,
3.	"You're not here." "So if you reject me, so shall I reject 
4.	you."  And that could be the consequence of what's happening
5.	right now, that a lot of people are rejecting the actual
6.	Messiah.   I feel myself, I'm, a conduit, I sacrifice myself.
7.	That plant has no voices, the spiritual deity has no voice but
8.	to come speak through some other person that has a voice, to
9.	be able to try to bring that message back.  I feel that it's,
10.	it's a savior, it's, you know, it's where salvation will be
11.	found.  In fact, Revelations 22:2, "And its leaf shall be for
12.	the healing of nations."
13.	Q.  Okay, that's fine.  I can see it as a healer too,
14.	because, you know, but particularly in older societies?
15.	A. Of the nations, though.
16.	Q.   Well, okay. That's a different concept.  But I guess
17.	the more elemental problem that I'm having is the idea that a
18.	plant has the power that we attribute to a supreme being, an
19.	omnipotence?
20.	A.  An omnipotence, well, and omni presence.  And it is in
21.	everything.  The cannabinoid receptor in that of the - - well,
22.	modern science has got to the point that it checked, using the
23.	[Mitochondrial] cells and finding the parent key to everything that
24.	is, and finding that there is actually this parent key which
25.	goes back to the branch of evolution, which is the branch
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1.	where we both have the common [momma] of being plants, animals
2.	and insects, everything goes back to that point,  about six
3.	hundred million years ago.  And for me it's the plant having
4.	also the connection that's where our voice, our speech, our
5.	eyes, is in every person in this room has cannabinoid
6.	receptors [and] their bodies produce it without putting extra
7.	in. Some people have a lower amount of that, some people have
8.	a greater amount of that.  Some people can get a connection
9.	with themselves without any [exocannabinoids], as Mike said on
10.	the stand the other day, being in supplemental amount.
11.	Q.  And that does distinguish from those that are already
12.	in our bodies naturally?
13.	A.  They attach to the exact same receptors in our body
14.	to perform every function.  The hippocampus of the brain has
15.	the greatest number of receptors for it, and that's the 
16.	section of our brain associated with creativity.
17.	Q.  Okay.
18.	A.  And which is in the mind of the creator, to be more
19.	creative.
20.	Q.  And that leads me to another concept that you've
21.	expressed to me, which is haoma as teacher.
22.	A.  Yes, that's exactly why.
23.	Q.  Is that basically that notion?
24.	A.  That is that notion, it stimulates the creativity.
25.	It causes you to ponder. ["]I ask [no wily] questions but I

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1.	question you direct.["]
2.	Q.  Where does that come from?
3.	A.   That comes from the [Yasna] 9:26.
4.	Q.   All right, I'm sorry.
5.	A.   There was a problem in the very early days, because
6.	when, I can't say exactly how far back it goes but I would,
7.	there's evidence of we [using] hemp back to 27,000 BC, and
8.	that was like at least 17,000 years before there was any
9.	irrigation ditch or agriculture, or anything like that.  It
10.	had to be a plant which could grow [without] that, which none of
11.	our modern plants today can grow without irrigation,
12.	agricultural ditches, there's an agricultural system put in
13.	place;  millet grasses and stuff later on come [in].  So it was
14.	cannabis prior to that.  And we, as a ritual, in the beginning
15.	was to cut these bundle -- cut these buds off that were full
16.	of seed, tie them into bundles, put them on the stands in
17.	front of the fire.  Mother is explaining to the kid[s], because
18.	this is the woman's job, the woman was more of the priest in
19.	the early days, if you want to try to make the comparison of
20.	where that is, and she would be explaining that you have to
21.	have this plant so far from the fire, otherwise the seed will
22.	bake, basically, and not be saved in the pristine state where
23.	they give you all the health that you need, or they might
24.	crack open and might even spoil.  And you have to get it
25.	properly dry.  So she's explaining this to the kids.
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1.	Q.  All right.  So that's part of the ancient ritual 
2.	developing - -
3.	A.  The ancient ritual that, before you put it [up],
4.	because if you didn't do this right and you put it away, it
5.	would get moldy or it would get a urine smell to it, which is
6.	the [odor] of decomposition.
7.	Q.  Where I started from was, [haoma] as, cannabis as
8.	teacher.  And I wanted to learn, if you could spend a minute
9.	or so to talk about how that concept relates to your first
10.	experience with cannabis.
11.	A.   It caused me to sit back and contemplate where I was 
12.	headed, you know, what had I been doing, and had I dropped out
13.	of school in the 11th grade and not got any education.  And it 
14.	put me back on [the] right course, that very first experience with
15.	it.
16.	Q.  Now at the that that happened you were in the 11th
17.	grade, you didn't have a notion that this was part of a 
18.	religious process?
19.	A.  Not at all, no, not at all.  That's why myself,
20.	personally, today I believe that cannabis is a converter.
21.	There's a lot of people out there that are on a religious path
22.	without even being aware that they are, and when they finally
23.	find that religious path is when they've got to the point
24.	where they give up all other substances that they might be
25.	using as a partying tool, you know.  It becomes no longer a

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1.	party but a religious aspect that they rely on in their life.
2.	Q.  What is the policy of the Church of Cognizance on use
3.	of, first of all, other intoxicants?
4.	A.   ["] All other []toxicants go hand in hand with the sharp
5.	edge of the [bloody], spear, [but haoma] goes hand in hand with
6.	friendship [and] [connects] with the body to heal.["]
7.	Q.  Okay.  The sharp edge of the [bloody], spear, that
8.	sounds like a quote; where does that - -
9.	A.  That is out of the Avesta.
10.	Q.   And you're talking about, it says toxicants, so I
11.	suppose that means the same thing that we would characterize
12.	as intoxicants?
13.	A.   Yes, exactly.
14.	Q.  And that includes?
15.	A.  All substances that could be intoxicating; it could
16.	be alcohol, it could be, especially in this day and age the
17.	greatest problem we see is methamphetamines.  I've seen coke
18.	destroy people in the '70s.   I had a friend that was using
19.	cannabis and he was doing very good in his life, he
20.	accumulated houses and apartment buildings, and he had a wife
21.	and the borders were shut down by operation, government
22.	operation shut down the borders, they sprayed paraquat, and
23.	the price jumped from about $10 overnight to 35, $10 an ounce
24.	to $35 a quarter.  And at that same time cocaine just flooded 
25.	the street.   And he got on cocaine and he lost all
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1.	everything, he lost everything he had, including his family.
2.	We seen it destroy lots of people.
3.	Q.  What about you?
4.	A.  Me? No.
5.	Q.   Well, did you ever have - -
6.	A.    I've used other substances, yes, I have quite a bit
7.	of experience with other substances, but I had ran through
8.	those while I was in the military.   I had done
9.	methamphetamines, and it was, basically destroyed my mind and
10.	ability to even think.  I would have delusional thoughts and
11.	thinking people were ripping me off or doing things they
12.	weren't doing.
13.	Q.  What brought you back?
14.	A.    Cannabis.
15.	Q.   Since that time have you used any other substance?
16.	A.    No.
17.	Q.    Do you drink?
18.	A.    Well, I have drank on a couple of different
19.	occasions, that's one of my greatest fallbacks I have. I
20.	don't drink any more, I would not have my wife.
21.	Q.  Since when do you not drink?
22.	A.   I haven't drank in over ten years
23.	Q.   You've referred to this at various times during your
24.	testimony, but I just want to briefly touch on another notion
25.	that you expressed to me, and that is cannabis as healer. And

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