SH:
Welcome, Senator Leach.
DL:
Well, thank you so much for having me today.
SH:
First thing we need to do is thank you for this bill. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Less Stark, director of the Keystone Cannabis Coalition, said that if it passes, it could become the gold standard of legalization bill for the free world. Is that the goal? To set the gold standard?
DL:
Well, first we like to say it's not just the free world. We're hoping it also that also applies the dictatorships and military juntas. But beyond that, I will tell you that we took this very seriously. We spent a long time for the better part of a year reaching out to experts, reaching out to people who did this sort of thing before and other states either well or not well, what lessons they learned - traveled all across the country, meeting with people, tried to bring stakeholders in to get their views. And it's very difficult because it's not like there's a clear path to perfection. In fact, perfection is very elusive, but in terms of a quality bill, there are a lot of important values. You want to have a represented inequality bill. Unfortunately, some of those values are in competition with each other, and it's like squeezing a balloon. You solve a problem and then another one pops up, you know? And so there were times we had to sort of, you know, try to find the sweet spot between different competing interests. And you know, we did our best to do that. But we think that our bill is A. Ambitious, B. Fair in the sense that it contains a lot of social justice components which are important given the suffering that particularly poor and minority communities have endured under Prohibition, and we think, creates a protocol that allow the industry to thrive, will be user friendly for consumers and enable us to, you know, 10-20 years from now, have something that really we can all be proud of.
SH:
Well, you know, I think most people in agreement that it's one of the best crafted bills. But of course we have to start with where the most complaints are coming.
PB:
So yeah, absolutely.
SH:
You have people that want to know that I want to know that right now and I know you like to get right into the fisticuffs part of it right away. So let's start with the home grow. A lot of people are squawking about the $50 fee to get into that. Why is that in there?
DL:
Well, all right. First of all, I want to just say, as a general matter that not everything in the bill is how I would do things if I were a dictator. If I were a dictator, things would be very different. I mean, for example, both of you would be in prison long ago, but I would say that, you know, there were efforts. You know, when we met about this bill, everyone - members and staff who met about the bill - we had many sessions where we would just scream at each other and argue about these things and try to come up with the best thing. And so let me explain the protocol about home grow. First of all, home grow is one of the heaviest lifts politically in terms of the components of this bill. We wanted home grow in the medical bill. We had to give that up. There was too much opposition to that. Similarly, for reasons that, are you and I may agree with or disagree with, there are people who just find homegrown, even if they're willing to support the concept of legalization, home grows a bridge too far. So I had to try to make it as palatable as I could to people who had concerns in order for us to have any chance of it passing. As this ends, if we get home grow in some form in the bill that passes, it will be a minor miracle, okay? And so I didn't want to be too in your face with the home grow. Okay? I wanted to be like, “We understand your concerns, blah, blah, blah.”
PB:
I see that you have a really good limit on the home grow. I noticed that.
DL:
Well, home grow is ten, and you know that's significant. Now, I would also note that if you're a medical patient and if it's a strain, if you can grow home grow that replaces your medicine, your $50 per year will save you thousands of dollars per year. So I mean, I think that's a reasonable investment. The other thing people are complaining about online and so forth is that the bill contemplates allowing inspections.
PB:
Yes, absolutely.
SH:
Yeah, that’s the other sticking point.
DL:
Right. Now let me talk about the inspection thing. First of all, the inspections would not be done by the police. They would be done by the Department of Agriculture. There are far less intimidating group of people. They also have responsibility for inspecting hundreds of other facilities, including poultry farms and, you know, alfalfa fields and processing plants and stuff. So they're way understaffed, they're not going to be going to people's houses just randomly and saying for no reason, “Oh, you know, this guy John Smith has a grow permit, so let's just check it out - make sure he's got 10 plants” or whatever. The likelihood is that they're only going to go when they hear that someone is committing a major problem. And this goes to the concerns the other side raised, which is that where the people who are reluctant raises the other side's different. They said someone gets a home grow permits so they can grow weed in their house, or their garage or whatever it is, but instead of growing 10 plants, they grow 200, and they wind up to supplying themselves as a black market dealer without a conventional license to grow and distribute and all that. And they said the only way we can be sure that that's not gonna happen is if we have the possibility of spot inspections.
PB:
So it's a deterrent, you know.
DL:
It's more of a deterrent than anything else because they like again, given the history of the Department of Agriculture, this is not gonna be a massive, “Let's just bust through the doors and search everyone who's growing six plants at home.” It's gonna be really, and probably, if they get evidence that someone is growing 200 plants or doing something really illegal, The Department of Agriculture probably isn't going to take care of that. They're gonna turn that over to the police, and then the police will get a warrant and take care of it.
PB:
Exactly. And you know, that's actually one of the things I found very interesting about this was that, in implementing this bill, you actually have given the control to the Department of Agriculture rather than the Department of Health. What was kind of thinking in that and why did that happen?
DL:
Well, I mean, because we're just trying to be consistent with other parts of the law. The Department of Health was relevant to the medical program because it's medicine. But recreational use, I know we're supposed to say adult-use, but I'm gonna pretend this is a safe space.
PB:
Adult-use is a better way.
DL:
I know. It's just harder. It's like one of those things - It's awkward to say over and over again, but okay, adult-use. The thing about adult-use is it's not medicine and there is no real Department of Health component. It is a commodity that's grown in the ground and, you know, bears fruit. It's agriculture, so we're just trying to be consistent with the law. One of the big values - I talked about values earlier. One of the main values we had in writing the bill was no stigma. So we're not validating anything that stigmatizes kind of this beyond what it should be stigmatized as an intoxicant. So in other words, we have to deal with things like DUI and other things. But, you know, like for example, on the medical program, you know, you can't grow. You can't have a dispensary within 500 feet of a church, presumably because people can't pray knowing that there's a dispensary two blocks away. Meanwhile, you can have a CBS in a church and a CBS sells opioids. That's nothing but irrational stigmatization. So we're not buying into that. This is a plant that grows, and we're gonna treat it like other plants that grow and that was the theory behind it. Also none of these 500 or 5,000 feet away from this or that. None of that crap. And that's the other reason we also have, like, Cannabis Lounges because you can go to an alcohol lounge. They call them bars - and you can drink responsibly in an alcohol lounge. There's no reason you shouldn’t be able to do that with cannabis, and that's one of the reasons we insisted on putting cannabis lounges in there.
SH:
We're definitely gonna get to that. Just a couple more points on the home grow before we leave that topic. So give us a definition of home. Does that include the property that the home is on?
PB:
And the reason we ask that question is because in the micro grower tier of your of your law here, what we see is that you have a provision in here that says that your micro grow has to be in the actual home of the place that the grower lives in. You know, I don't know if you've ever been to one of these types of grows, but 150 plants in your personal house is kind of crazy. So, you know, most of these people with these types of licenses will have greenhouses on their home property and things like that. Could you see a redefining of the word home, perhaps in this bill?
DL:
Yeah. And keep in mind, just so people know, when you pass a complicated bill, the bill may be 30 pages long, 40 pages long. Then it gets to the regulatory process. The regulations might be 200, 300, 400 pages long. In other words, the vast majority of these finer details are worked out in the regulatory process by the department that oversees the program.
PB:
Which actually gives us another question. You know with the Department of Health, we had a regulatory body, an advisory board. Do you see the creation of some sort of a regulatory body here? I mean, I know we have the Department of Agriculture, but do you see the creation of another type of advisory board, perhaps for this in the future?
DL:
That may be and keep in mind, the other thing people should know is - this bill - I’d love it to pass word for word. You know, in the legislative process, things get chopped up and changed a bit. We're gonna fight for the important things. But, I mean, we're gonna have pushback on some of this. So, you know, everyone should be aware of that. The advisory board - the problem was with medical. When you're dealing with medicine, people are much more sort of persnickety about what the regs say in terms of many details. On the adult-use side, there will be a lot of regulations, but I think the Department of Agriculture might be better equipped to do it internally, than the Department of Health was because when they got the bill, none of them had any experience with cannabis. And now you know there's a lot of plagiarizing you can do from other states, and other resources and we may or may not need an advisory board. Keep in mind the advisory board survived the initial temporary regulation process and, you know, still meets to deal with things like adding conditions and other things like that. One of the things we want to deal with is, in order to answer your question, is we want to meet the Department of Agriculture people and see what their expertise is and their level of comfort is. We have not been able to do that so recently because the administration would not let us meet with them prior to them endorsing the concept of adult-use cannabis. You see what I’m saying? Because they didn't want to look like they were tacitly supporting something when they had not announced it. Now they have announced it. It was only a couple weeks ago, so we're still setting things up. But now I think, we’ll have a clearer path to deal with some of the people in the department and try to figure out what the best way to go about it is. I mean, I don't know much about agriculture. I represent a suburban district. I grow a few tomato plants. I think I have the biggest farm in my in my district. So I don't know much about those issues, so I'm gonna hopefully get good input from the department that that will guide us in terms of the best way to draft the regs.
SH:
One last detail about the home grow - is that one permit per house or one permit per person? What is you have three or four people living in the house?
DL:
It'll be per house. I mean, one of the things that I guess the people who are reluctant or would be concerned about, based on my discussions with them, is that you know, someone could just rent a house and, like have 18 people move into it right? And then you can grow 1,800 plants. You know, at a certain point, it becomes silly. So, you know, the home grow is meant to be for personal consumption. And, you know, I think you can treat it like craft beer. You can brew your own beer, you can’t sell it, you can have friends over to drink with you, but you but you can't sell it. And it's gonna be the same thing here.
PB:
That's extremely logical. We appreciate you explaining that to us. I think that kind of takes care of our home grow portion of things. Can we move a little bit into what we've seen here in the business aspect of things? One of the big things that popped out that I heard a lot of people talking about was the 17.5% tax that's at point of sale. Can we get into a little bit about that? I noticed that, even after I did the math, it seems as though your products will be cheaper than they are currently in the medical program, even with the 17.5% tax. So I guess my question is, how did you guys come up with that? Did you anticipate that?
DL:
I'm not sure they'll be cheaper. And again, I'm not an economist or I'm not an expert. I try to learn as much as I can, but I'm not an expert in the economics of cannabis. So that's number one. Number two - we were told when we met with experts that you gotta have a tax rate that's, you know, high enough that you're getting revenue that you need, but low enough that it does not engender a robust black market. Everyone had a different opinion, but, like, the number was about 20%. Like, don't go too much above 20 because then the black market's gonna take over. So we decided, after yelling and screaming, you know, to go come close to 20 without going over. That may change. We want medical to be - well, we want several things for medical because a robust medical program is important. We want that to remain for a variety of reasons. Among the things we want to do is obviously a lower tax rate from medical. Also, there's obviously some strains in medical that would not be attractive in an adult-use capacity.
PB:
Yeah, CBD strains, things like that.
DL:
Yes, non-intoxicating strains, although I wonder if people will be smoking like CBD joints the way they drink O’Doul’s beer.
PB:
We already are.
DL:
There you go.
PB:
But that's more of the hemp industry, you know. So here's my question about that. Just just in concern of that tax rate because we wouldn't want to drill you too hard on that. I think that's a great number. It's enacted at the point of sale between dispensaries and patients. There will be a lot of business - millions of dollars moving between processors and dispensaries and growers. Does this tax apply to them at that point of sale? Or do you have another plan for that?
DL:
Well, no, I mean our our theory is that it's built into the price. In other words, the dispensary can't eat, you know like they're gonna have to, you know, reflect the total price of the product we're selling. That's gonna have to go up and down the market.
PB:
So, let the market control that then?
DL:
Yeah, well, I want to make a point about that, but the other thing about that is that obviously there will still be taxes collected from those businesses. Income taxes and business privilege taxes and other sorts of taxes as well. What you're talking about in terms of having a tax at every stage is like a value added tax on. We got a bunch of people who told us that was a bad idea for reasons I didn't fully understand that. And don't can't repeat now, but if this was considered the best way to do it. Although we will be capturing taxes at every step of the way. Let me just say this about the free market and all that, and this is weird for me because I'm like a pretty liberal Democrat. I don't go out and give a lot of speeches about the joys of the market. But in this context, we wanted to leave as many things as we reasonably could, and we just we argued about what they were worth to the market because frankly, if we put it in the bill, we're just pulling it out of the air. And we don't know what the demand is gonna be exactly. We don't know what types of strains and this and that and what geographical differences they're going to be. So, like at the end of the day, you know, if you want to open a pizza shop, if you're good, you'll do well. If you're not, there's other pizza shops and, it seems like the same thing should apply to the industry. That's why we don't have a limit on licenses. If we put a limit on the number of licenses, which include micro grows because we want Social Justice components, we would just be making up a number, and who knows if that's the right number? So we feel the first couple years, may be a little rocky in terms of a mass explosion of people in the business - some will make it some won't. And then it'll stabilize in like, five, six or seven years.
PB:
Just like in California. Just like we saw in Colorado.
DL:
Exactly. And that's just like we see in other industries.
SH:
I sure appreciate that you say you want to keep the medical program and keep it robust and so wanted to ask you why was the seed to sale, tracking system and testing protocols not required on the adult-use side?
DL:
So, OK, when we talk to people, there's a few issues. Part of it is economic, part of it is stigmatization. Like the seed to sale to me on the adult-use side is a stigma. We don't be no track every potato we use to make vodka, right? So the big reason for seed to sale in medical is cause diversion is a huge concern. But in adult-use, if you're not diverting it to kids, who cares? Diversion is a much less of an issue. So we don't have to track everything and it's a major burden on businesses to have to, you know, do all of that. And I don't see the benefit of it. Our philosophy on the consumer and their relationship with the businesses is there's one - we have one guiding lode star in this program, which is an accurate label. So a dispensary has to have a label on every product which says, you know, how much THC how much CBD, whatever mold testing is, and it has to be accurate and there will be spot inspections and if you sell something with an inaccurate label, there will be severe penalties. How you get that label to be accurate, you know, whether you do testing, whether you require your grower to do testing, whether you know all of that other sort of thing, that's up to you and you can negotiate the best protocol at the most economical protocol that makes you feel comfortable that you're not going to get busted for selling something that's misleading. So we leave it so that we say we want consumers to be protected. We want them to know what they're getting. How you do that is up to you, and as long as you're accurate, you could do it any way you want. That is more of a free market approach. And say, It's like I don't know why you have to track every plant in the context of adult-use. It's never made sense to me. The only argument I heard - and we did hear arguments - but the only argument I heard that made any sense to me was in case there's a recall. But again, you could do recalls by brand and by strain. If there's a problem with lettuce, we don't track every plant we just say, you know, Dole lettuce is, you know, is being recalled.
PB:
Well, you know, one of the main things you brought up - one of the points that you just brought up that I think is just extremely important to touch on very quickly is how big of a factor of social justice was in coming up with a lot of this. You know, you keep mentioning that, and one of the main things that sticks out to me is the low barriers to entry here. You know, you've really given Pennsylvanians a chance to kind of enter the industry at their own pace and at their own level, and, you know, kind of compete with it. Some of these larger corporations came in and completely dominated the medical industry.
DL:
I agree. We didn't want that again. There are reasons we had to make barriers to entry on the medical side high for both political and, you know, medical. But in terms of adult-use that is not necessary. And we wanted, you know, again, if I don’t know you're listeners are hip to all the history, but, well, I'm sure it's a hippest audience on radio. There's a book called Chasing the Scream if anyone's interested in detailed recounts of this. But at the end of the day, there was a guy named Harry Anslinger who basically decided to demonize cannabis and lied about it. And this was It's a program based, born of, based on and nurtured and sustained by racism. Whether it's Anslinger, John Ehrlichman, Nixon's guy. And you know, a disparity in sentencing and arrest and all that prohibition is a racist policy, and so we feel that people of color and poorer people should have the opportunity to at least have some of the benefits of the industry - not just not being input, you know, in the criminal justice system anymore, but economically. So my dream, is you know, and again the market will decide all this because some people will try to grow it and they'll suck at it, you know? But my dream, is that - Oh, and by the way, some of the growers that we have now, I'm not gonna mention any names - The big people that spend a lot of money seemed to suck at it. So you know, that's up and down the chain. But, you know, I'm fine with Budweiser. But I also want, you know, I want craft beers, I want IPAs, I want all that sort of thing too. And so then the consumer has the best, the greatest choice.
PB:
We've also noticed that you've come down greatly on the punishments for violations and things like that. You're actually not packing jails with cannabis offenders, even if you know they happen to make a mistake during implementation of this program, your penalties are actually completely reasonable and fair. You know, we’re not seeing a lot of jail time, we don't see people locked up for years, you know?
DL:
Yeah. I mean, look, we have a massive over incarceration problem which the war on drugs has contributed greatly to. My view - this is a broader issue - but my philosophy has always been, but like jail, prison should mostly be for people who, like, hit other people over their head and take stuff or people who eat other people or people. There's other remedies and so we have automatic, well not technically automatic, but the burden is on the DA, it’s not on the people who are convicted. We have quasi automatic expungement of cannabis offenses.
PB:
Which we love.
DL:
People need to understand, because there's been some confusion on some of the editorials or whatever, if you rob a bank and when you're arrested, you also have weed on you, you still have to serve your time for robbing the bank. Okay, that that's not expunged. But it's not an impediment to getting a job in the industry. And so that's that's a big part of it.
PB:
That's helping a lot of people.
DL:
By the way, that's going to be another area of pushback, of course, as it has been in other states.
SH:
That's a whole another podcast. We're gonna try to focus on the positive aspects. I do love the social justice aspects, opening the jails, expunging the records, giving them access, the little barriers of entry, the grants and interest free loans, education. These are wonderful, wonderful things. To me, one of the most exciting aspects is just the number of jobs that are going to be created by small entrepreneurs and I thought we might dive into that a little bit. Do you have any estimates on the number of jobs this might create?
DL:
No. You know what? I don't off the top of my head, but I just read something, I think yesterday about Illinois had put out an estimate of jobs, and keep in mind that's, their estimate. I think it was like 63,000 or so. But anyway, it's just within the last day or two. But Illinois is a demographically similar state to ours. Beyond that, you know, that's just counts cannabis jobs. That doesn't count all the other ancillary jobs again. And if you guys you guys go to Vegas for, like MJBIZ, send me an email, you know I'll be there for a week, so let me know when you'll be there. But you know, you've been on the exhibit floor. It's not just, you know, the people who touch the plan or people who make Vape pens. It's everything from marketing to advertising to packaging to signage. I mean, the clippers to soil strains - everything - like there's thousands of booths at MJBIZ that are servicing the cannabis industry. You know, whenever I go and speak publicly, there's always some person that’s like they should, you know, open a Dorito Stand and I get it. All right? Yeah, but I mean, it's like, frankly, that's, a flippant way of saying that there's gonna be a lot of businesses that are created and sustained and grow as a result of cannabis being legal. The only business that won't is the private prison industry, which, frankly, you know, we'd like to see them go away entirely.
SH:
Exactly. Well,I think it's real exciting for people to know that, you know, about one out of every three women I meet says that they want to become a chef and start making infused food. And that's allowed under this bill. You've got use lounges. You've got delivery licenses. Somebody can start their own Uber Weed company.
DL:
Yeah, absolutely.
SH:
All three of those things right there, you know, kind of very close to the plant if not touching the plant. But really, this is, you said there's no limit on the number of permits. Anybody that qualifies could get out there and start a business like this.
DL:
Right. And like everything else, some will fail, and people should understand that it's a competitive business. I was out in California where they were doing the thing where were taking micro growers and dispensaries were taking some other product and testing it and seeing if they wanted to buy it. It's hard to grow good - I'm not an expert on this - but I'm told it's very hard to grow cannabis. And so people need to be aware that it's like any other business, there's no magic to it. I have a good friend who's running, Chris Visco, who runs three dispensaries or TerraVida. And she's killing it in a way that other dispensaries are not. And I said, you know, “What's the secret? And she said, “The secret is that cannabis is not magic. Cannabis is like selling shoes.” It's like, you’ve got to get out there, you’ve got to market. You've got to go to conferences, trade shows, you gotta get out there. It's not like you just, like hang a marijuana leaf on a window and thousands of people will come. You know, it's a competitive business. When I was in Vegas last year, there was I don't know, I don't know what their limits are or whatever, but there was a dispensary like on every block, some had two and like, I don't know how they all sustain themselves. Maybe it's, you know, the tourism industry.
PB:
Yeah, it’s definitely the tourism. I research that a little bit. It's definitely tourism.
DL:
Yeah, so you know. But, I mean, that's the market there. They have that many people willing to buy, then you'll have thousands of dispensaries. If it's less, I mean, you know, then you'll have fewer.
SH:
Let's talk about the kind of feedback that you are getting. Of course you're getting the praise for people like us and I know you said you mentioned you're getting pushback from the private prison industry. Where else are getting both praise or push back?
DL:
Ironically, I get pushback from the extremes on both sides of the issue. The people who the people who have reefer madness on a continuous loop in their living room who, you know, think of cannabis as jazz cabbage or whatever it is, or the devil's alfalfa. It's like it is those people obviously who are not happy with the bill. But there's also the purists. And I say this with love, but, you know, this is that this is not the only issue that I've dealt with purists on. Purists are I understand their purity of heart. But there is no such thing as a pure bill. No major important piece of legislation is ever pure. There's always compromises you have to make on the way. Now, at a certain point, you have to compromise so much that it's not worth it anymore. But we're not gonna be anywhere near that, like when I did medical people, were like no home grow. That's it. Pull the bill. I mean, think of what a tragedy that would have been.
PB:
Yeah, that would have been terrible. It actually would’ve been terrible. People would've been up in arms about that. So I guess we want to thank you for your time and we have one last question for you here, and it kind of relates to that, You know, what do you need from us to help, kind of smooth this through? What can people do to help defeat the opposition to this? What do you need from us?
DL:
This is really important, because if this was a secret ballot, it would cast tomorrow. But it's not a secret ballot, so politicians are timid creatures and they need to be nurtured and they need to know people have their back. So for everyone out there, particularly I'm not trying to be partisan. But we need some Republicans because that really helps. One Republican is worth four Democrats right now in terms of the bang for the buck and moving the bill forward. So, go to your legislator, Democrat or Republican and meet with them and convince them and bring other people and have other meetings and just stalk them essentially. And here's a tip. When you meet with a legislator and they're like, You know what? I'm for this. I agree with you. Whatever. Don't just say thank you, because often legislators say that they say the same thing to the opposite side, alright? Then hoping they never have to vote on it. This is what you do. If you go meet with the Legislature and they're supportive, say, “Do you mind if I take a picture with you now and tweet that you just endorse the marijuana bill?”
PB:
Oh, make it count, make it count.
DL:
If they won't let you do that, then they're not being straight with you.
SH:
You know, I don't know if you're aware Daylin, but the there is a large component of the cannabis industry that is very pro-Trump, and that's that's surprised me at first, but then not so much anymore. So I would think that if we could get those people especially to go to their Republican legislators, that might have a little bit more push.
DL:
Oh, yeah, No. If your name is Moon Flower and, you know, you you wear flowers in your hair and whatever, that's great. I love that, but you may not have a lot of juice with, like, you know, some hard core conservative. So, yeah, people like to agree with people who they think are like them. So get some Trump supporters who will, I mean, frankly - Donald Trump. I'm not a fan of Donald Trump's, but one thing I would say about Donald Trump is that I don't think he cares one way or another. Yeah, I think he cares about money and you know, if anything, he would like to invest in it. So like John Boehner did. Yeah, but if you're a Trump supporter, you go and talk about how the government should stay out of our lives and not arrest people for smoking a plant and how the government should stay out of the way of entrepreneurs who want to make a living and all that sort of thing. I always say there's three types of conservatives. There's economic conservatives who should be with us because this is an economic bonanza. There are libertarian conservatives who should be with us because they're against government controlling their lives. And then there are social conservatives who live in terror, that someone's having fun somewhere. They're not with us, but the others are. So you get some Trump supporters out there to convince their Republican legislators. Have them wear their Maga hats to the - you know what? I just had a brilliant idea. Someone should make - this is gonna make someone a lot of money. I never make any money on this. Someone should print up Maga hats with marijuana leaves on them.
SH:
There you go.
PB:
I'm on it. I'm on it. Thank you.
SH:
Senator Leach, I want to give you one last chance to anything we did not cover in this discussion here that you want to make sure we touch on.
DL:
No, only that there is no downside to this. Prohibition is one of the single dumbest policies in American history and evil policies. And, you know, we will be doing a great service to individuals, to our economy, to our whole culture, if we eliminate it as soon as possible. This will pass - 100% guarantee this will pass. The question is when. And my job and your job is to make that day come sooner because every day where a prohibition still in effect, is an injustice.
SH:
Senator Leach, it has been great having you here.
PB:
Yes, definitely. We really want to thank you for the hard work you’ve put in.
DL:
definitely. Well, thanks, guysny, anytime. You know I'm a lonely man seeking human contact.
DL:
Oh, All right, guys, thanks so much.