Episode 91 - How To Change Minds That Change Laws -- Graham Boyd

Five US states are voting to legalize this November. In this exclusive interview, Graham Boyd -- lawyer, strategist, and brilliant behind-the-scenes progressive operative -- tells us how he convinced voters in 12 previous ballot initiatives to vote YES. (Hint: Not by telling them that marijuana is great!)

In 1996 California voters defied conventional wisdom by legalizing cannabis for medical conditions. Few people thought this ballot initiative would succeed -- it was opposed by almost every "expert" and politician on earth. It likely wouldn’t have succeeded without the bucks of the philanthropists Peter Lewis and George Soros and the brains of Graham Boyd. 

By polling and interviewing thousands of people, Graham determined that the standard messages activists had been feeding voters -- that MJ wasn’t as bad as what they’d been taught -- was not going get the undecided to vote YES on legalization. 

Cut to 2010. Colorado and Washington are voting to legalize. In the run up to those ballot initiatives Boyd unearthed another factor that could persuade people who were on the fence. “We learned that people form their opinions about marijuana from their own life experiences rather than what some expert tells them,” he told me from his office in Santa Cruz, CA. “If you had positive experiences with marijuana when you were younger, that’s what you know to be true. But if your Uncle Bob spent his adult life on the sofa watching TV and smoking weed, it doesn’t matter how many studies you line up, the truth for you is probably that Uncle Bob smoked too much weed and that’s why he failed in life.”

As it turned out, this type of thinking was especially true for a huge group, mostly politically moderate women. They just didn’t like cannabis. They didn’t hate it but if they had a magic wand they would make it go away. At the same time, they also felt that locking people in prison for carrying a few joints was a terrible idea. The campaign messages ended up something like: “It’s not that I like marijuana, but what we’re doing now isn’t working.” 

Activists hated that messaging but it changed the fortunes of legalization efforts in Colorado, Washington and a dozen 12 subsequent ballot initiatives, all architected by Boyd. “We learned that you can give that big group in the middle information and reassurance that moves them to be more strongly supportive,” he said. 

Laws don’t change spontaneously. Change requires big bucks, big data and big brains to know what do with it. This interview dives deep into how to keep the wheels of change advancing, especially since voters in conservative states like Montana, Mississippi and South Dakota are voting on legalizing in 2020.

In hindsight, changing marijuana laws was a snap compared to Boyd’s new project: convincing Oregon voters to approve a program to license psychedelic assisted therapy, primarily with psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms. “Believe me,” he says, “the vast majority of Oregon voters have never heard the word “psilocybin” or that it can be useful to treat depression or PTSD or end of life depression. If we can communicate that it is safe and can help people with terminal illnesses spend the last year of their lives happy rather than depressed, that’s a compelling message.”

Listen in to this exclusive interview with one of the great change agents of this movement. 

And follow this link to learn more about the work the Psychedelic Science Funder’s Collaborative is doing to make change happen.

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