Joe Rogan Experience #2163 - Freeway Rick Ross

Freeway Rick Ross returns to the podcast nearly a decade after his first appearance, recounting how Rogan's offhand suggestion to sell a T-shirt pulled him out of homelessness after prison. He details building a crack-cocaine empire that moved up to $3 million a day in mid-1980s South Central, his 20-year prison sentence, and learning to read and lawyer himself out via a three-strikes technicality. The conversation digs into how his suppliers were unknowingly part of the Iran-Contra drug-trafficking operation, with the CIA later interviewing him in his cell. Ross and Rogan dwell on drug policy, the absurdity of marijuana's federal status, homelessness, prison profiteering, and second chances. Ross also vents about the rapper who took his name and won a $1 million judgment against him on a technicality.

• Rogan telling Ross to make a T-shirt led to a PayPal/bank windfall of about $188,000 that changed his life and paid his rent out of homelessness.
  00:02:37
• Ross says partners and John Singleton took his documentary and turned his material into the hit show Snowfall, and he received zero dollars from both.
  00:08:50
• On a wiretapped call a government informant offered Ross 700 kilos; he reflexively said 'how much,' which he believes convicted him despite being out of the game for years.
  01:00:21
• The CIA, the OIG, Congress, and Maxine Waters came to his jail cell to interview him after the Gary Webb story broke.
  01:30:29
• Ross lost his lawsuit over the rapper using his name on a statute-of-limitations technicality and ended up with a roughly $1 million judgment against him for legal fees.
  01:23:45
• Ross estimates roughly $600 million passed through his hands in his two best years alone, with profit of $200K-$300K per million.
  02:13:55

• Ross could not read when he was running his empire and learned to read in prison, eventually reading over 300 books.
  00:05:13
• He won his freedom on the three-strikes rule by understanding that it required an 'intervening arrest,' which his own lawyer told him didn't apply.
  00:05:44
• A former tennis player, Ross applied an athlete's discipline to the drug trade, refusing to drink, smoke, or socialize while working.
  00:30:12
• His cousins tricked him into trying coke, burning through about $99,000 of product in two weeks before he quit using forever.
  00:37:32
• Coca-Cola is one of the largest importers of coca leaves, which are processed to flavor the soda; Coke is Schedule II while marijuana is being moved to Schedule III.
  00:44:17
• The Everglades hosts the world's largest python population, over half a million, none of them native.
  01:06:35
• Rogan describes the Gulf of Tonkin incident as a false-flag fabrication used to start the Vietnam War.
  01:33:34
• Rogan recounts Geraldo Rivera footage of U.S. soldiers guarding Afghan poppy fields, with heroin production reportedly rising up to 96% during the occupation.
  01:36:14
• States that legalized marijuana are now banning federally legal Delta-9 THC because it cuts into their taxable cannabis sales.
  01:43:33
• Ross and Rogan discuss apparent social-media follower suppression; Ross is stuck around 392K despite massive reach and airport recognition.
  02:09:47