WEBVTT - Drugs 0:00:02.160 --> 0:00:07.800 Ephemeral is production of iHeart three D audio. For full exposure, 0:00:08.360 --> 0:00:12.920 listen with that phones. This episode of Ephemeral talks frankly 0:00:13.000 --> 0:00:16.919 about drug history, policy, study, and use. These views do 0:00:16.960 --> 0:00:20.400 not necessarily represent those of iHeartMedia, Protozoa Pictures, or their 0:00:20.440 --> 0:00:24.040 executives and employees, and should not be construed as medical 0:00:24.079 --> 0:00:27.800 advice or encouragement to use any type of psychoactive substance. 0:00:33.720 --> 0:00:40.120 Flow whooa always late, local tests, fired, phone calls, a 0:00:40.240 --> 0:00:45.360 formal morning rund line rund run und doing drugs right 0:00:45.760 --> 0:00:48.760 at your mind? Answer the question, brandom, you're doing drugs? 0:00:49.200 --> 0:00:53.560 This exploration has led into a new and dangerous career. 0:00:54.320 --> 0:00:59.640 Smoking rash, popping Manny's, shooting speed or dropping acid is 0:00:59.720 --> 0:01:02.200 running one out there who still isn't clear about what 0:01:02.280 --> 0:01:07.080 doing drugs does. Okay, last time, this is your brain, 0:01:07.920 --> 0:01:13.200 This is drugs. This is your brain on drugs and 0:01:13.440 --> 0:01:22.160 questions drugs, drugs, drugs. From pot to cot, alcohol to 0:01:22.240 --> 0:01:27.120 adderall crack, cocaine to caffeinated coffee, almost all of us 0:01:27.480 --> 0:01:30.680 use one form of drug or another. And even though 0:01:30.680 --> 0:01:34.360 there's a constant flow of drug commentary coursing through our 0:01:34.440 --> 0:01:38.640 news media and entertainment. It can be an uncomfortable subject 0:01:38.680 --> 0:01:42.399 to talk about, amplified by the fact that rhetoric on 0:01:42.480 --> 0:01:45.840 drugs can be difficult to trust. And that's a shame. 0:01:46.560 --> 0:01:51.440 Oh man, they are so fascinating. Almost every department at 0:01:51.480 --> 0:01:56.200 a university could have an entire course about drugs. If 0:01:56.240 --> 0:01:59.040 you look in the social sciences, you could have of 0:01:59.080 --> 0:02:03.240 course all about drugs, anthropology, in criminology, of political science, 0:02:03.480 --> 0:02:07.200 and in sociology, and in history and in economics, all six. 0:02:07.920 --> 0:02:10.320 In the arts, you could have it in music, you 0:02:10.360 --> 0:02:12.960 could have it in literature, you could have it in 0:02:13.160 --> 0:02:16.280 the visual arts. So you were talking about one of 0:02:16.320 --> 0:02:22.079 the great interdisciplinary subjects that exist out there. Hi, I'm 0:02:22.120 --> 0:02:25.760 Ethan Nadelman. I've devoted most of my adult life to 0:02:25.919 --> 0:02:29.120 working to end the war on drugs. Started off doing 0:02:29.160 --> 0:02:32.400 that as a professor at Princeton and started an organization 0:02:32.480 --> 0:02:35.720 called the Drug Policy Alliance, and gentleman looked up to 0:02:35.800 --> 0:02:39.040 Ethan Nadelman, which became the leading organization of the world 0:02:39.440 --> 0:02:42.720 advocating for an end to the war on drugs. And 0:02:42.720 --> 0:02:46.280 then about four years ago I stopped doing that and 0:02:46.400 --> 0:02:48.400 took a little time off, and now I've started my 0:02:48.400 --> 0:02:55.799 own podcast called Psychoactive. How much do you know about drugs? Well, 0:02:55.840 --> 0:02:58.400 I'll tell you, Alex, I'm no expert on the sort 0:02:58.400 --> 0:03:02.800 of biochemistry farm a college aspects of it, but apart 0:03:02.880 --> 0:03:06.280 from that, I know a lot about drugs. I've been 0:03:06.360 --> 0:03:10.400 reading and studying and talking to people and using drugs 0:03:10.600 --> 0:03:15.560 for most of my adult life. I sometimes joke that 0:03:15.639 --> 0:03:18.600 growing up Jewish, my first taste of alcohol was when 0:03:18.600 --> 0:03:22.800 I was seven days old at my brists. I remember 0:03:22.960 --> 0:03:27.080 being nine ten years old and going to synagogue on Saturday, 0:03:27.280 --> 0:03:29.240 and at the end of services, they would lay out 0:03:29.280 --> 0:03:32.280 the little mona chevits wine and these little tiny plastic cups. 0:03:32.800 --> 0:03:34.560 My friends and I we would have a few of these, 0:03:34.600 --> 0:03:36.000 and we knew if we had four or five of 0:03:36.040 --> 0:03:39.160 them we would feel a little tipsy and maybe fall 0:03:39.200 --> 0:03:41.600 asleep at lunch. And then there was the whole bar 0:03:41.720 --> 0:03:44.040 Mitzvah scene when I was thirteen, where we all started 0:03:44.040 --> 0:03:46.840 getting drunk. We weren't supposed to, but you know, we'd 0:03:46.840 --> 0:03:51.119 be drinking Vika tonics with screwdrivers. In the Jewish community 0:03:51.160 --> 0:03:54.760 in a suburb of New York, basically most people drank, 0:03:55.200 --> 0:03:58.240 but I don't remember anybody who would drink to excess 0:03:59.520 --> 0:04:04.320 the most powerful drug education I remember getting. I must 0:04:04.400 --> 0:04:08.400 have been in junior high school. It was actually an 0:04:08.440 --> 0:04:12.360 anti smoking set. The Surgeon General has determined a cigarette 0:04:12.360 --> 0:04:15.680 smoking is dangerous to your health. They brought in one 0:04:15.720 --> 0:04:20.040 of those fake lungs is a machine, and they connected 0:04:20.080 --> 0:04:22.280 a cigarette to it and showed what happened to the 0:04:22.360 --> 0:04:25.360 stake long when it got all yellow and disgusting. One 0:04:25.400 --> 0:04:28.760 thing about this machine, it will never get heart disease 0:04:28.839 --> 0:04:32.080 or cancer from smoking. But when it came to the 0:04:32.120 --> 0:04:35.120 other anti drug stuff, I gotta admit I don't have 0:04:35.200 --> 0:04:38.480 any recollection if they even did it back in the 0:04:38.600 --> 0:04:42.520 late sixties early seventies. They must have, but I don't recall. 0:04:44.080 --> 0:04:48.200 With marijuana, I remember being about seventeen and seeing a 0:04:48.200 --> 0:04:50.160 bunch of my friends who were getting high and just 0:04:50.200 --> 0:04:54.000 noticing they all kind of fell asleep. So that was 0:04:54.080 --> 0:04:57.560 not that appealing, So it wasn't really I started college, 0:04:57.800 --> 0:05:00.240 and I distinctly remember the first off getting high there. 0:05:01.360 --> 0:05:04.240 I was moving from one apartment to another. The marijuana 0:05:04.320 --> 0:05:07.880 is coming on and we're moving a refrigerator, and you know, 0:05:07.920 --> 0:05:10.720 the whole thing starts to become eighteen year olds laughing 0:05:10.720 --> 0:05:13.800 and almost dropping a refrigerator down a flight of stairs. 0:05:13.839 --> 0:05:16.600 So that was the start, and then I became a 0:05:16.640 --> 0:05:20.480 regular marijuana consumer, but never a daily user. Had a 0:05:20.560 --> 0:05:26.320 kind of almost anti addictive personality where you hear a 0:05:26.320 --> 0:05:29.360 lot in the context of drugs, And indeed, the title 0:05:29.360 --> 0:05:35.599 of Ethan's podcast is psychoactive basically means mind altering. You 0:05:35.640 --> 0:05:38.640 think there's a whole host of drugs. The drug I 0:05:38.720 --> 0:05:41.800 take every day I deal with my cholesterol that's not psychoactive. 0:05:42.520 --> 0:05:47.039 Psychoactive suggests that and somehow it's altering consciousness. Now, that 0:05:47.080 --> 0:05:51.480 could be in obvious ways, like psychedelics or like with cannabis, 0:05:51.640 --> 0:05:54.400 but it could even be true of things like coffee 0:05:54.560 --> 0:05:59.400 and tobacco, where when we consume them we're somewhat aware 0:05:59.400 --> 0:06:02.760 of their subtle psychoactive effects, but we don't really notice 0:06:02.800 --> 0:06:06.839 them until we stopped doing that. The single most common 0:06:06.839 --> 0:06:13.440 one is caffeine. Something like the world consumes caffeine, either 0:06:13.480 --> 0:06:15.680 in the form of coffee or tea or some other 0:06:15.760 --> 0:06:24.719 plant products that contain it. Probably the second most universalist alcohol. Obviously, 0:06:24.720 --> 0:06:27.520 there are prohibitions on it in the Islamic world, but 0:06:27.680 --> 0:06:31.279 generally speaking, it's a fairly universal thing. And if you 0:06:31.320 --> 0:06:36.039 go back historically, you have indigenous groups all around the 0:06:36.080 --> 0:06:39.800 world having no contact with outer societies that somehow figured 0:06:39.839 --> 0:06:42.080 out that that piece of food or that thing, if 0:06:42.160 --> 0:06:45.440 left to ferment and then consumed, would have quite a 0:06:45.480 --> 0:06:51.520 bank Marijuana has a history going back ten thousand years, 0:06:51.520 --> 0:06:58.240 but it's not been as universally used. And then, of 0:06:58.240 --> 0:07:01.920 course tobacco one came out of the Americas and made 0:07:01.920 --> 0:07:03.640 its way to Europe and then to the rest of 0:07:03.640 --> 0:07:07.719 the world, and because it was so remarkably addictive, really 0:07:07.800 --> 0:07:13.239 got a kind of global use. So I would probably 0:07:13.240 --> 0:07:18.680 say caffeine's first alcohol, second tobacco products, third cannabis for 0:07:19.840 --> 0:07:24.920 oi and that heroin morphine other pharmaceutical opioids that are 0:07:24.920 --> 0:07:27.520 made from it would probably be in fifth place. Then 0:07:27.560 --> 0:07:29.160 you work your way down and a whole lot of 0:07:29.160 --> 0:07:31.800 other things that may be used by tens or hundreds 0:07:31.840 --> 0:07:36.240 of millions of people, like cot or cava from South Pacific, 0:07:37.480 --> 0:07:41.560 or beetle nut used in South Asia, so there are 0:07:41.600 --> 0:07:44.720 more localized ones that haven't sort of spread around the world. 0:07:47.280 --> 0:07:51.240 One of the most traditional, if sometimes over exaggerated, applications 0:07:51.240 --> 0:07:57.480 of psychoactive substances is to stimulate one's creative mind. I 0:07:57.520 --> 0:08:00.160 know people who are artists and find the Meryl want 0:08:00.200 --> 0:08:03.960 it really does help them on the creative side. On 0:08:04.040 --> 0:08:05.560 the end they hand. I'll tell you when it comes 0:08:05.600 --> 0:08:08.720 to the intellectual stuff, I'll beginning all these great ideas, 0:08:09.440 --> 0:08:11.640 they don't seem as such value the next day when 0:08:11.680 --> 0:08:15.520 looked at in the light of day when I'm straight interesting. Though, 0:08:15.520 --> 0:08:19.480 with psychedelics, there are insights that I've had on doing 0:08:19.520 --> 0:08:23.560 those the psychedelics that were almost life transformative for me, 0:08:24.040 --> 0:08:26.640 and I'm more likely to remember it coherently in a 0:08:26.680 --> 0:08:29.800 way as well. You think about some of the famous people, 0:08:29.880 --> 0:08:32.360 I mean the Nobel Prize winners, the jobs and others 0:08:32.400 --> 0:08:35.400 who say that but for psychedelics, they never would have 0:08:35.640 --> 0:08:38.520 invented with the invented or discovered what they discovered. And 0:08:38.600 --> 0:08:41.000 you don't hear that as often with marijuana or any 0:08:41.000 --> 0:08:46.280 other drug. You know, there have been indigenous people's using 0:08:46.320 --> 0:08:54.600 these drugs throughout history. Ayahuasca, mushrooms, payot or mescaline, the toura, 0:08:54.960 --> 0:08:57.920 the plant which can be actually deadly poisonous, but in 0:08:58.040 --> 0:09:01.000 minimal doses can be a very high at least psychedelic 0:09:01.080 --> 0:09:06.000 type of drug l s D where the key ingredient 0:09:06.320 --> 0:09:10.200 or good comes from a mold. There are histories in 0:09:10.280 --> 0:09:13.520 Europe of these outbreaks of the town going crazy, and 0:09:13.559 --> 0:09:16.599 it appears to be when this mold took off in 0:09:16.679 --> 0:09:21.440 the local wheat or rye fields. Albert Hoffman sort of 0:09:21.520 --> 0:09:29.480 accidentally invents ls be protectively and then that thing has 0:09:29.520 --> 0:09:33.160 its kind of heyday in the fifties and sixties, first 0:09:33.200 --> 0:09:37.199 among the sort of elite strata, and then Timothy Learry 0:09:37.920 --> 0:09:40.760 turn on tune and drop out, drop out of becomes 0:09:40.800 --> 0:09:45.120 the thing used by millions, drop out of junior executive. 0:09:46.000 --> 0:09:50.439 Many people benefit enormously, other people just do it for yucks, 0:09:51.160 --> 0:09:53.520 and some minority of people get really hurt by this. 0:09:55.280 --> 0:09:57.439 And then you go into the kind of quiet age 0:09:57.440 --> 0:10:02.040 of psychedelics, and I say, now we are in this period, 0:10:02.200 --> 0:10:06.079 an extraordinary period in the history of human beings and drugs, 0:10:06.080 --> 0:10:10.560 where we're having this sort of psychedelic renaissance. Part of 0:10:10.600 --> 0:10:14.040 it is because of the work of organizations like MAPS, 0:10:14.080 --> 0:10:17.760 the Multidiscipinary Association of Psychedelic Studies created by Mike Buddy 0:10:17.800 --> 0:10:21.439 Rick Doblin back in the eighties. Psychedelics, when used wisely, 0:10:21.920 --> 0:10:25.839 have the potential to help heal us help inspire us 0:10:26.320 --> 0:10:29.439 and perhaps even to help save us. Part of it 0:10:29.480 --> 0:10:31.480 because of a range of academics that have just kept 0:10:31.559 --> 0:10:34.040 pushing to get this going. Part of it because Michael 0:10:34.080 --> 0:10:37.240 pollan sort of breakthrough book, Changing Your Mind. What happened 0:10:37.240 --> 0:10:41.080 to psychedelics in the sixties that they became so stigmatized 0:10:41.320 --> 0:10:45.520 that research stopped. Now you have all these companies trying 0:10:45.559 --> 0:10:49.280 to create new psychedelic products. So you have this sort 0:10:49.280 --> 0:10:53.760 of psychedelic renaissance where the media is mostly focused on 0:10:53.800 --> 0:10:58.360 the upside layout the case for legalization of psychedelics and 0:10:58.480 --> 0:11:01.400 and why this is an opportunity of investors. We're used 0:11:01.480 --> 0:11:05.200 numbers of people are having positive experiences where people understand 0:11:05.280 --> 0:11:08.280 the significance of setting like using these drugs in the 0:11:08.400 --> 0:11:12.720 right type of environment. So I think we're probably in 0:11:12.760 --> 0:11:15.920 a period in history where more people are using these 0:11:15.960 --> 0:11:19.880 things than ever before. And I also expect that there's 0:11:19.880 --> 0:11:22.280 gonna be some tragedies. There are going to be some 0:11:22.280 --> 0:11:25.120 people who get hurt. The media is gonna jump on that, 0:11:25.160 --> 0:11:28.800 We're gonna start to see the pendulum swing backward. But 0:11:28.920 --> 0:11:31.680 I think there's a level of consciousness and awareness and 0:11:31.760 --> 0:11:36.680 acceptance and normalization happening both with cannabis and with psychedelics. Now, 0:11:36.800 --> 0:11:43.120 unlike anything we've seen before, medical use of psychoactive drugs 0:11:43.480 --> 0:11:47.320 can be rife with complications. Take for example, the array 0:11:47.320 --> 0:11:52.720 of pharmaceuticals derived from the opium plant. In the United States, 0:11:52.800 --> 0:11:57.520 our medical system prescribes opioids, so most people have had 0:11:57.720 --> 0:12:02.840 some form of opioid in their life. We come out 0:12:02.840 --> 0:12:05.240 of getting our wisdom, teeth removes, we come out of 0:12:05.280 --> 0:12:09.439 some minor surgery, so the doctor may prescribe like an oxycodon. 0:12:10.400 --> 0:12:12.560 Go to place like Japan, I think, where it's very low. 0:12:13.200 --> 0:12:15.640 You go to parts of the developing world where it's 0:12:15.720 --> 0:12:20.360 under prescribed and many people die in pain. Opioids one 0:12:20.360 --> 0:12:24.839 of these things where interestingly, if you have access even 0:12:24.880 --> 0:12:28.200 to heroin, to pharmaceutical grade heroine, and you know the 0:12:28.280 --> 0:12:31.840 dose and you're using the same dose, you can basically 0:12:32.120 --> 0:12:36.960 consume heroin every day of your adult life and live 0:12:37.080 --> 0:12:40.880 to be years old. You can have a job, you 0:12:40.920 --> 0:12:43.800 can have sex with your partner, you can drive a car. 0:12:44.040 --> 0:12:46.800 You can do it all because your body develops a 0:12:46.800 --> 0:12:50.120 certain tolerance. If you stop using it, you'll feel sick 0:12:50.160 --> 0:12:53.240 and feverish or even worse. While your body goes to 0:12:53.360 --> 0:12:56.360 a racking withdrawal of it. But the fact that there is, 0:12:56.480 --> 0:12:59.280 if you have a reliable dose, the worst side effect 0:12:59.280 --> 0:13:06.959 oftentimes it's instipatient. When you combine heroin with alcohol or 0:13:07.240 --> 0:13:11.160 with a benzodiazepine type drug, in modest amounts, it can 0:13:11.200 --> 0:13:14.600 be a really great high. But the problem is if 0:13:14.640 --> 0:13:19.599 you double or triple that dose, you stop breathing. We 0:13:19.720 --> 0:13:22.480 think about people dying give an alcohol overdose, but the 0:13:22.600 --> 0:13:26.240 deadly thing is that alcohol is oftentimes the hidden thing 0:13:26.520 --> 0:13:29.640 that's causing an overdose with another drug where the media 0:13:29.720 --> 0:13:33.319 headline says heroin, but it was actually heroin plus booze. 0:13:34.440 --> 0:13:37.240 And it was only with the recent emergence of ventonyl 0:13:37.920 --> 0:13:41.200 taking the opioid epidemic to a new level of urgency. 0:13:41.600 --> 0:13:45.840 This synthetic opioid that's fifty times more powerful than heroin, 0:13:45.920 --> 0:13:49.600 Graham prograam. That's the first opioid where people just take 0:13:49.640 --> 0:13:52.000 it all by itself and they can just stop breathing. 0:13:56.240 --> 0:13:59.000 You know, with marijuana, you can have fifty times the 0:13:59.000 --> 0:14:01.400 amount you need to get a hundred times and it's 0:14:01.400 --> 0:14:04.760 not going to kill you. It appears that if you're 0:14:04.880 --> 0:14:08.439 on an opioid prescription and you combine it with Marriwana, 0:14:08.960 --> 0:14:12.800 you can cut your prescribed dose in half just by 0:14:12.840 --> 0:14:15.360 having a little bit of marijuana with it, because the 0:14:15.400 --> 0:14:19.760 marijuana potentiates it. There's a bunch of research studies out 0:14:19.760 --> 0:14:22.800 there that showed that in states that are approved medical marijuana, 0:14:23.000 --> 0:14:26.960 they appear to have lower overdose rates than did other 0:14:27.080 --> 0:14:30.800 places because people were either substituting the marijuana for the 0:14:30.800 --> 0:14:33.960 opioids for pain relief, or they were combining it with 0:14:34.040 --> 0:14:36.840 the opioid and therefore taking less of the opioid because 0:14:36.840 --> 0:14:41.520 they didn't need as much. I know, I get totally 0:14:41.520 --> 0:14:43.240 lost on it, but I didn't want to ask about 0:14:43.360 --> 0:14:46.480 opium classic you know, smokable opium, you know, like I 0:14:46.480 --> 0:14:48.560 feel like I see most of like media with like 0:14:48.600 --> 0:14:50.920 opium then and I imagine it was a scene in 0:14:50.960 --> 0:14:54.080 the US at some point, and it's not really anymore. Well, 0:14:54.080 --> 0:14:55.400 I'll tell you. I mean, I feel I've been a 0:14:55.400 --> 0:14:58.880 bit professionally negligent and never having actually smoked opium. I mean, 0:14:59.280 --> 0:15:01.600 it's on my two do list, my bucket list. You know, 0:15:01.720 --> 0:15:03.360 I got to do this if I'm really going to 0:15:03.440 --> 0:15:06.480 be a serious, you know person talking about drugs. But 0:15:06.600 --> 0:15:09.400 by and large. The opium dent was a common thing 0:15:09.680 --> 0:15:12.720 in Asia, and then it came to America when people 0:15:12.760 --> 0:15:15.440 came from China in the middle of late nineteenth century. 0:15:16.040 --> 0:15:19.800 They then became incredibly demonizes. The first opium prohibition laws 0:15:19.960 --> 0:15:22.280 were in the eighteen seventies and eighties in the Data 0:15:22.520 --> 0:15:26.320 and in California, very racist laws, and the fear that 0:15:26.400 --> 0:15:30.000 the Chinese were basically addicting and seducing and turning white 0:15:30.040 --> 0:15:36.720 women into sex slaves. Works wonders. When heroin gets invented, 0:15:36.720 --> 0:15:39.840 actually by Bear Pharmaceutical as a cost sur president, what 0:15:39.960 --> 0:15:41.960 happened was you had a some of the switch going 0:15:42.040 --> 0:15:45.800 on from opium to heroin, and then people begin to 0:15:45.880 --> 0:15:49.520 realize that if you want to smuggle this stuff, it's 0:15:49.560 --> 0:15:53.480 a lot safer to smuggle a white powder like heroin 0:15:53.840 --> 0:15:56.360 than it is to smuggle opium. And if you want 0:15:56.360 --> 0:15:59.720 to consume it, opium gives off a distinct a roma, 0:16:00.320 --> 0:16:03.640 whereas heroin, especially if you're injecting and not smoking, it 0:16:03.960 --> 0:16:06.880 no aroma, so it's easier to hide from the cops. 0:16:07.560 --> 0:16:10.720 It's what we call the perverse consequences of prohibition, where 0:16:10.720 --> 0:16:14.600 when you prohibit a drug like opium or coca or 0:16:14.640 --> 0:16:17.920 some other things like that. People tend to say, Okay, 0:16:18.000 --> 0:16:21.320 let's synthesize it, let's make it easier to smuggle, easier 0:16:21.360 --> 0:16:24.720 to consume discreetly, and we push people away from the 0:16:24.840 --> 0:16:28.680 less dangerous, more natural plant product towards a much more 0:16:28.720 --> 0:16:33.440 compact and potent version. And that brings us to one 0:16:33.440 --> 0:16:37.880 of the most controversial polemics about mind altering substances. That 0:16:38.040 --> 0:16:42.440 for decades, the US and by extension, the world, has 0:16:42.440 --> 0:16:55.800 been waging a war on drugs. America's public enemy Number 0:16:55.840 --> 0:17:01.920 one in the United States is drug abuse. Nixon declared 0:17:02.240 --> 0:17:05.080 a war on drugs fifty years ago. In order to 0:17:05.240 --> 0:17:08.600 fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage 0:17:09.000 --> 0:17:13.320 a new all out offensive. That rhetoric, those ideas, the 0:17:13.480 --> 0:17:17.199 huge growth in the enforcement agencies, and then it kind 0:17:17.200 --> 0:17:20.119 of quieted down during the Jimmy Carter days when you 0:17:20.160 --> 0:17:23.439 actually had a fairly progressive mindset for a few years. 0:17:25.960 --> 0:17:30.320 Then Reagan and that Reagan generation pushed it to the max, 0:17:30.520 --> 0:17:36.080 making a final commitment not to tolerate drugs by anyone, anytime, 0:17:36.480 --> 0:17:39.399 any place. And unfortunately it was very much of a 0:17:39.400 --> 0:17:42.639 bipartisan effort. I mean, Tip O'Neill the very famous influential 0:17:42.680 --> 0:17:46.080 Democratic Speaker of the House, Liberal Democrat Massachusetts. He was 0:17:46.160 --> 0:17:49.240 totally on board the war on drugs too. You know, 0:17:49.280 --> 0:17:53.480 you look a little like Tip O'Neill. Mhm. A lot 0:17:53.520 --> 0:17:57.040 of people say that then under the first George Bush 0:17:57.280 --> 0:17:59.720 took off like crazy. All of us agree that the 0:18:00.160 --> 0:18:04.119 this domestic threat facing our nation today is drugs. The 0:18:04.160 --> 0:18:06.560 first drugs are was a guy named William Bennett say 0:18:06.880 --> 0:18:09.000 the War on drugs was a failure. It was not. 0:18:09.119 --> 0:18:12.360 It was not, It was not who really was masterful 0:18:12.720 --> 0:18:17.360 at advancing a right wing, reactionary political agenda in America 0:18:17.440 --> 0:18:21.120 by playing on the fears around drugs among middle class 0:18:21.240 --> 0:18:24.640 American parents. Talk to your kids about Office of Drugs. 0:18:25.119 --> 0:18:28.840 Help your children to just say no. But you know, 0:18:28.920 --> 0:18:31.040 the truth is you can go back to the refor 0:18:31.160 --> 0:18:35.119 madness days of the third mat Juana, the burning weed, 0:18:35.280 --> 0:18:38.920 with its roots in Hell. In this film you will 0:18:38.920 --> 0:18:41.560 see the ease with which this vicious plan can be 0:18:41.640 --> 0:18:45.760 grown in your neighbor's yard, ruled into harmless looking cigarettes 0:18:46.320 --> 0:18:50.480 hidden in an innocent shoe. Some people say that what 0:18:50.560 --> 0:18:52.720 brought us alcohol prohibition was the War on drugs, but 0:18:52.760 --> 0:18:55.520 it was focused on alcohol Americans praise passing of the 0:18:55.600 --> 0:18:59.280 dry law and then promptly perceived by every possible means 0:18:59.320 --> 0:19:03.399 to repeat eighteenth Amendment. You can go back even further 0:19:03.440 --> 0:19:06.439 in history and see other war on drugs happening in 0:19:06.480 --> 0:19:09.479 other parts of the world. There were times in Europe 0:19:09.560 --> 0:19:14.280 when there were efforts to crack down tobacco. China launched 0:19:14.320 --> 0:19:17.280 its own warrn opium in the nationalist phase in only 0:19:17.320 --> 0:19:20.240 twentieth century. If you look at what's going on the 0:19:20.320 --> 0:19:23.000 Philippines right now, in some other Asian countries, they have 0:19:23.080 --> 0:19:26.679 sometimes vicious wars on drugs. They don't exceed ours in 0:19:26.800 --> 0:19:30.200 terms of mass incarceration, but in terms of the brutality 0:19:30.600 --> 0:19:35.480 and authorizing police to conduct extrajudicial killings the President of 0:19:35.600 --> 0:19:38.119 the Philippines do to day. He gave his cops a 0:19:38.280 --> 0:19:42.119 green light to just go and shoot people. So wars 0:19:42.119 --> 0:19:45.600 on drugs are not uniquely American phenomenon, but the United 0:19:45.680 --> 0:19:48.720 States took it the furthest in terms of mass incarceration. 0:19:49.359 --> 0:19:53.880 We also had our kind of prohibitionists abstinence only mentality, 0:19:54.400 --> 0:19:58.399 and we became the chief proselytizer and promoter of global 0:19:58.440 --> 0:20:02.600 drug prohibition from the early twentieth century until the early 0:20:02.680 --> 0:20:06.880 years of the Obama administration. Substance abuse generally legal and illegal. 0:20:07.080 --> 0:20:10.520 There's a problem locking somebody up for twenty years. It 0:20:10.640 --> 0:20:16.320 is probably not the best strategy. Domestically, the issue has 0:20:16.359 --> 0:20:19.240 oftentimes been tied up with race. If you ask why 0:20:19.280 --> 0:20:22.120 are some drugs legal and other drugs illegal, it has 0:20:22.160 --> 0:20:25.840 relatively little to do with the relative dangers of drugs 0:20:26.119 --> 0:20:29.600 and almost everything to do with who use it and 0:20:29.680 --> 0:20:33.760 who is perceived to use particular drugs. So that connection 0:20:33.800 --> 0:20:37.640 in the American consciousness of drugs with black people, brown people, 0:20:37.720 --> 0:20:41.160 especially with Chinese people in the late nineteenth century, that's 0:20:41.160 --> 0:20:45.399 always been a very prominent element. And that same racism 0:20:45.640 --> 0:20:48.840 and discrimination based on ethnicity has played out not just 0:20:48.880 --> 0:20:50.840 in the US but many other countries around the world 0:20:50.880 --> 0:20:55.400 as well. Because most of these drugs were being imported 0:20:55.440 --> 0:20:58.000 from abroad, you saw that become a big issue in 0:20:58.040 --> 0:21:01.440 foreign policy met to cult for example, at one point 0:21:01.560 --> 0:21:05.040 Nixon closed the border. It's become a big issue with 0:21:05.080 --> 0:21:08.600 cocaine coming out of Olivia, Peru, oft times via Colombia 0:21:08.640 --> 0:21:11.160 and in Mexico. So it became a number one issue 0:21:11.160 --> 0:21:14.359 in our relationships with some of those countries. Sometimes there 0:21:14.400 --> 0:21:17.160 were countries like Paraguay where you basically had the narclas 0:21:17.240 --> 0:21:22.080 takeover government. It was a complicated issue in Afghanistan. So 0:21:22.119 --> 0:21:25.280 there's always been that international dimension where to appeal to 0:21:25.320 --> 0:21:27.520 the renter if we've gotta stop drugs from coming into 0:21:27.560 --> 0:21:30.920 this country. When it comes to keeping drugs away from kids, 0:21:31.480 --> 0:21:34.359 people worry about, oh, we legalized marijuana for adults, more 0:21:34.440 --> 0:21:36.760 kids are gonna be using it. But that was bullshit. 0:21:37.240 --> 0:21:39.719 Throughout the last fifty years, if you ask who's had 0:21:39.760 --> 0:21:42.359 the best access to marijuana in America, it's always been 0:21:42.359 --> 0:21:44.760 the kids, the adolescent. Even as marijuana he's went up 0:21:44.800 --> 0:21:46.920 and down, up and down, up and down, always eighty 0:21:47.000 --> 0:21:49.400 percent of high school kids. We're saying marijuana is easy 0:21:49.400 --> 0:21:52.280 to get. And in fact, since we started legalizing marijuana, 0:21:52.359 --> 0:21:55.640 you know, beginning with Colorado Washington in twelve, there's been 0:21:55.880 --> 0:21:58.960 almost no increase in analysts and marijuana use. The big 0:21:59.000 --> 0:22:02.639 increase has been among people in their forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, 0:22:02.640 --> 0:22:05.240 and eighties. The ones who did have access to it, 0:22:05.320 --> 0:22:07.200 the ones who because it was illegal, didn't want to 0:22:07.280 --> 0:22:09.439 use it. We're the ones where that you see a 0:22:09.440 --> 0:22:16.080 double trippling quadrupling abuse. All of this begs the question 0:22:16.720 --> 0:22:19.600 how effective is the war on drugs or has it 0:22:19.680 --> 0:22:24.720 been effective at all? I mean, it's very hard to 0:22:24.760 --> 0:22:29.639 find any examples of success. Fifty years ago when most 0:22:29.800 --> 0:22:33.720 heroin was coming from Turkey through what was called the 0:22:33.720 --> 0:22:36.920 French Connection into the US, and there was a period 0:22:36.960 --> 0:22:38.560 when we were able to crack down on Turkey and 0:22:38.560 --> 0:22:40.639 crack down the French connection, and there was a brief 0:22:40.680 --> 0:22:44.399 shortage of heroin in the US. Or there was another 0:22:44.520 --> 0:22:48.240 moment when there was a laboratory in Mexico brucing FENTONYL 0:22:48.560 --> 0:22:51.080 and d e A, and Mexican police succeeded in shutting 0:22:51.080 --> 0:22:54.240 it down and that cut off the flow of ventinel briefly. 0:22:55.119 --> 0:22:58.120 But apart from a couple of rare examples, there are 0:22:58.359 --> 0:23:01.800 thousands of cases of trying to reproduce their success and 0:23:01.840 --> 0:23:05.800 failing simply because where there is a demand, there's going 0:23:05.840 --> 0:23:08.440 to be suppot and you crack down in one place, 0:23:08.440 --> 0:23:11.960 it's gonna pop up somewhere else. You knock out disproduction area, 0:23:12.080 --> 0:23:14.280 it's gonna pop in another production area. You pop out 0:23:14.320 --> 0:23:16.040 of this drug traffic and you network that's gonna pop 0:23:16.040 --> 0:23:18.520 in another drug trafficking network. You make it harder to 0:23:18.600 --> 0:23:20.760 expert the stuff to us, and Americans are gonna start 0:23:20.800 --> 0:23:22.879 producing and stuff you cracked down on nest labs in 0:23:22.880 --> 0:23:25.960 the US Mexico, that's gonna step up. And of course 0:23:25.960 --> 0:23:30.400 it's ludicrous because our borders are so open that if 0:23:30.440 --> 0:23:32.960 there were a market for heroin in this country of 0:23:33.080 --> 0:23:36.120 ten times what's currently coming in, it would come in. 0:23:36.520 --> 0:23:38.879 There's no way to stop it. Not when you have 0:23:39.119 --> 0:23:42.119 endless numbers of shipping containers and boats and planes and 0:23:42.200 --> 0:23:45.280 you name it, and people coming in. There's no way 0:23:45.480 --> 0:23:47.600 to keep drugs out of the country. But it always 0:23:47.640 --> 0:23:51.480 appealed to politicians sense of playing on people's fears around 0:23:51.480 --> 0:23:54.679 what was coming in from abroad. I just think the 0:23:54.760 --> 0:23:58.040 evidence of the drug war in terms of reducing the 0:23:58.200 --> 0:24:01.040 use of drugs or making them less of available, they've 0:24:01.040 --> 0:24:03.440 made them less available than if they were fully legal. 0:24:03.840 --> 0:24:09.080 But the negative consequences in terms of incarcerations, in terms 0:24:09.080 --> 0:24:11.560 of now maybe one to one and a half trillion 0:24:11.600 --> 0:24:13.880 dollars wasted on the War on drugs over the last 0:24:13.920 --> 0:24:16.600 fifty years, in terms of people using drugs that are 0:24:16.600 --> 0:24:18.720 more dangerous because they come from the black market, in 0:24:18.800 --> 0:24:21.560 terms of violations of civil liberties and human rights in 0:24:21.640 --> 0:24:24.920 terms of empowering gangsters. Never Mind the millions and millions 0:24:24.960 --> 0:24:28.240 and millions of people, disproportionately young men of color, who 0:24:28.280 --> 0:24:30.880 have been locked up and arrested and have their lives derailed. 0:24:31.280 --> 0:24:33.159 Never Mind the hundreds of thousands of people who have 0:24:33.240 --> 0:24:36.600 been fired from their jobs for testing positive for marijuana use, 0:24:36.720 --> 0:24:38.640 even though it was having no impact on their job 0:24:38.680 --> 0:24:44.320 performance at all. America was profoundly irrational around drugs, and 0:24:44.440 --> 0:24:47.520 much the same way we were with alcohol prohibition. We 0:24:47.600 --> 0:24:51.199 understood that these drugs could be problematic and dangerous. We 0:24:51.280 --> 0:24:53.840 then made this silly assumption that if we banned them, 0:24:54.040 --> 0:24:57.640 the problem would go away, maybe reducing the number of consumers, 0:24:58.200 --> 0:25:03.800