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Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is

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Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or

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Speaker 1: learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A

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Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.

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Speaker 1: My name is Matt our Colleaguel is on an adventure,

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Speaker 1: but he will return soon. They call me Ben. We're

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Speaker 1: joined as always with our super producer Paul. Mission Control deconds.

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Speaker 1: Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that

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Speaker 1: makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. Uh, Matt,

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Speaker 1: We've said it before on the show. Regardless of whether

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Speaker 1: or not you live in the United States, yourself, regardless

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Speaker 1: of your personal stance on politics, policy, law enforcement, or

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Speaker 1: even pharmaceutical companies, if you're hearing this, you are being

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Speaker 1: affected by the consequences of a multi generational war. It's

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Speaker 1: not a war on any specific country, any specific person,

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Speaker 1: even specific ideologies. It's a war on a concept, a

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Speaker 1: war on substances that themselves have no goals, belief or ideology.

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Speaker 1: You me, everyone, We're all affected by the war on drugs.

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Speaker 1: But how did we get here? What led us to

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Speaker 1: this point? Where are we collectively now? Where will we

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Speaker 1: be in the future. To answer this question, we wanted

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Speaker 1: to go directly to one of the leaders in this

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Speaker 1: conversation in this field, Ethan Nadelman. Ethan, thank you so

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Speaker 1: much for joining us on the show today. We're we're

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Speaker 1: quite excited to speak with you. Hey, my pleasure, Ben Matt.

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Speaker 1: It's great to see it. Great to meet you, Ben. Oh, yes,

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Speaker 1: so u. Some people may know you from your podcast Psychoactive.

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Speaker 1: Many others will know your face and your voice from

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Speaker 1: a Ted talk that you gave back in the day.

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Speaker 1: That's God. I don't even know how many millions of

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Speaker 1: views at this point, but a vast majority of the people,

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Speaker 1: if they if a little bell rings when they hear

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Speaker 1: Ethan Nadelman, it's because you are the founder of the

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Speaker 1: Drug Policy Alliance. And I just wonder if you could

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Speaker 1: give us maybe a short rundown of who you are,

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Speaker 1: because I feel like I can't introduce you properly. Sure man,

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Speaker 1: happy to do that. Well. So, I basically spent uh

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Speaker 1: most of my adult life working to end the war

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Speaker 1: on drugs, and now I'm gonna be sixty five and

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Speaker 1: in a few months, so and I've been working on

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Speaker 1: this since my twenties. So I mean, basically, the real

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Speaker 1: synopsis of it is, you know, graduate school, I started

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Speaker 1: studying international drug control, got a security clearance from the

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Speaker 1: State Department, real class right report on drug lated and

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Speaker 1: money laundering, interview drug enforcement agents from the US of

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Speaker 1: the countries all around the world. Wrote some books about

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Speaker 1: this issue. Became a professor at Princeton in the late eighties,

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Speaker 1: right when the drug war was going absolutely crazy, like

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Speaker 1: McCarthy ism on steroids, and I sort of stood up

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Speaker 1: and said this is crazy. Got a few fifteen minutes

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Speaker 1: of fame. There was an emerging drug policy reform movement

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Speaker 1: in those days. A few years later, I get a

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Speaker 1: call out of the blue from a philanthropist and financier

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Speaker 1: named George Soros who was interested this issue. We kind

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Speaker 1: of hit it off, so I left Princeton University, started

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Speaker 1: up this institute in ninety four. Eventually in two thousand

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Speaker 1: emerges with another organization becomes the Drug Policy Alliance. I

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Speaker 1: ran that for seventeen years until I stepped down about

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Speaker 1: four years ago. At that point, Drug Policy Alliance was

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Speaker 1: the biggest and leading drug policy reform organization not just

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Speaker 1: in the US but around the world. And during the

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Speaker 1: course of that it meant we got deeply involved in

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Speaker 1: things like ballot initiatives to legalize marijuana first for medical purposes,

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Speaker 1: and then more broadly, we got deeply involved in trying

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Speaker 1: to roll back the role of the drug war in

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Speaker 1: mass incarceration. And our other major priority was making a

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Speaker 1: serious commitment to treating drug use and addiction as a

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Speaker 1: health issue, not a criminal issue, which meant everything to

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Speaker 1: try and reduce the spirit of AIDS through needle exchange programs,

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Speaker 1: to overdose prevention, to introducing Americans to cutting edge ideas

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Speaker 1: that were being implemented in Europe and elsewhere. Wow. Okay,

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Speaker 1: so there was so much there, so many, so many

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Speaker 1: little things that I want to jump on and uh, Ben,

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Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I don't mean to just take over for

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Speaker 1: a second here, but you you throughout the name George Soros,

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Speaker 1: and he's one of these guys that just has so

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Speaker 1: many rumors circulating about him because of his you know,

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Speaker 1: obvious wealth and power. But like, what was that interaction?

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Speaker 1: Like I just I'm so curious personally about that, because

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Speaker 1: I did I didn't know there was a connection there. Yeah, no,

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Speaker 1: I'll tell you, Matt, I mean with with George, Um,

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Speaker 1: when I first got the call in the summer ninety two,

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Speaker 1: almost thirty years ago. Uh. You know, he was a guy,

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Speaker 1: wasn't that well known. He was more thanless for his finance,

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Speaker 1: and but he had been the key philanthropist funding the

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Speaker 1: dissidents and the opposition to socialist dictatorship and former Soviet

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Speaker 1: Union Eastern Europe. And what had happened was Communist had

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Speaker 1: fallen much more quickly than he or anybody expected, and

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Speaker 1: he had been the key private individual helping bring about

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Speaker 1: its downfall. He was very committed to the ideals of

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Speaker 1: an open society, right fighting totalitarianism from the left and

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Speaker 1: the right, and so he then began asking the question, Well,

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Speaker 1: he had always thought that America was the model of

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Speaker 1: what an open society is, but it now seemed, you know,

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Speaker 1: the question was what in America was inconsistent with open

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Speaker 1: society ideals. And basically one of the first things that

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Speaker 1: hit him between the eyes was the war on drugs,

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Speaker 1: And so he reached out. And you know, at that point,

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Speaker 1: I was all I was a young professor at Princeton,

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Speaker 1: but I was already the most prominent person probably in

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Speaker 1: the world speaking out against the drug war and in

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Speaker 1: favor of looking at things like legalization and decriminalization. And

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Speaker 1: so we got together and we hit it off. And

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Speaker 1: it's funny now to think that, you know, he's now

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Speaker 1: identified as his radical left funder um. But in point

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Speaker 1: of fact, when I first met George, I think his

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Speaker 1: politics effect he said, so, they were more most like

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Speaker 1: liberal Republican or what was known in the days as

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Speaker 1: you guys may not know, but Scoop Jackson was a

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Speaker 1: famous Democrat who you know, very anti communist but kind

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Speaker 1: of progressive on social issues. And George really identified as

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Speaker 1: a kind of Scoop Jackson human rights democrat or maybe

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Speaker 1: liberal Republican, uh, very much not identified in the way

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Speaker 1: is now. And so he and I essentially developed a

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Speaker 1: partnership where you know, he agreed to back my starting

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Speaker 1: an organization and funding grants programs and doing all sorts

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Speaker 1: of things like that. And in terms of his current reputation,

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Speaker 1: that really began, i'd say around two thousand and three,

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Speaker 1: when George was simply horrified at the Bush administration's war

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Speaker 1: on Terra and all the implications of this thing. He

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Speaker 1: saw what we were doing with the invasion of Iraq,

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Speaker 1: he saw all the rhetoric around the anti terrorism stuff

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Speaker 1: as really being over the top and not reflective of

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Speaker 1: open society ideals. And it's at that point where he

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Speaker 1: started to get much more politically involved in supporting Democrats.

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Speaker 1: Until that point, he hadn't been much of a player.

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Speaker 1: But if you jump forward now, I mean he's become

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Speaker 1: a bit more progressive in his views. But what's really

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Speaker 1: gone on is the demonization of sorrows by you know,

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Speaker 1: by the right. I mean, it's notable that if you look,

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Speaker 1: it's not just the people on the right in the

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Speaker 1: United States who demonized sorrows. It's pouted right, you know,

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Speaker 1: it's uh, you know, what's his name, the president of Hungary.

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Speaker 1: It's the right wing authoritarian dictators around the world who

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Speaker 1: hate sorrows. Because he's the one supporting the Orange Revolution

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Speaker 1: and the other revolutions and the former Soviet Union. He's

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Speaker 1: the one fighting for freedom. He's the number one funder

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Speaker 1: of human rights in the world. And fortunately for me

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Speaker 1: because I I think our relationship because of his commitment,

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Speaker 1: even though his support for drug policy reform has only

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Speaker 1: represented maybe two percent of the billion dollars a year

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Speaker 1: that he and his foundation are given a way it's

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Speaker 1: always loomed large in his consciousness and especially in the

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Speaker 1: earlier years, I think in the public perceptions of him

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Speaker 1: as well. So I mean I think he's you know,

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Speaker 1: he's now ninety one, he's still going. He's an extraordinary

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Speaker 1: human being who's gonna go down in history, um for

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Speaker 1: you know, really fighting for open society ideals. And you know,

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Speaker 1: why he's been demonized. I think what happened is part

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Speaker 1: of it. Maybe the name Sorrows, you know, it's like

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Speaker 1: a provocative name and everybody can remember it. And I think,

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Speaker 1: you know, sending out, you know, sending out you know,

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Speaker 1: anti sorrow stuff and song and some of us also

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Speaker 1: playing on anti Semitism, you know, the notion of the

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Speaker 1: Jewish capitalist, the Jewish communist. You know, it goes back

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Speaker 1: to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, you know,

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Speaker 1: you know that famous anti Semitic tract of the late

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Speaker 1: nineteenth early twentieth century. So there's some of that going on.

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Speaker 1: It's a shame. It's a shame. But I mean, if

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Speaker 1: you look at the good, what I mean, books are

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Speaker 1: being written about all the good he's done, and it's

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Speaker 1: really extraordinary around the world, and Uh, the coke other's

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Speaker 1: hat um, which is always a good sign to me. Well,

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Speaker 1: you know, I'll tell you Ben, it's a bit complicated

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Speaker 1: because there are issues like ending the drug war and

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Speaker 1: criminal justice reform and some foreign policy issues were actually

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Speaker 1: George and the Koch brothers. Well now it's no longer

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Speaker 1: the brothers. Now it's basically Charles since David died, where

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Speaker 1: they actually see eye to eye on something. So on

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Speaker 1: a lot of the big issues that are opposed to

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Speaker 1: one another. But I'll tell you there was a moment.

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Speaker 1: You know, one of the other famous right wingers is

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Speaker 1: Grover Norquist, you know, the famous anti tax, let's get

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Speaker 1: governments so small we can strangle on a bathtub kind

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Speaker 1: of libertarian approach. But Grover became an ally of mine

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Speaker 1: on ending the drug war because he hates the drug

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Speaker 1: war coming from a libertarian perspective. And I landed up

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Speaker 1: arranging for George Sorrows to speak to Grover Norquist, you know,

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Speaker 1: Wednesday morning breakfast group of you know, leading right wingers

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Speaker 1: in America. So so I'm part of what I've enjoyed

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Speaker 1: has been, you know, this kind of bringing the left

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Speaker 1: and the right to together in behalf of a good cause,

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Speaker 1: like ending the war on drugs. That's a that's an

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Speaker 1: important point too, I think, because it is something that

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Speaker 1: requires massive collective action. You know, growing up at the

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Speaker 1: in the generation of people like Matt or myself, the

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Speaker 1: war on drugs was normalized, right you were born into this, uh,

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Speaker 1: this ongoing conflict with a with a lot of propaganda.

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Speaker 1: You know, we had programs like dare in in public

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Speaker 1: schools and so on. Um, we also had a lot

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Speaker 1: of I think a lot of people in our generation,

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Speaker 1: maybe a lot of people listening today just here the

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Speaker 1: phrase war on drugs and immediately have some kind of

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Speaker 1: vague associations, but don't really understand the genesis of the

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Speaker 1: situation that that the US entered into. Earlier, you said,

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Speaker 1: McCarthy is m on steroids in a specific era of

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Speaker 1: the War on drugs, And that really to me that

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Speaker 1: that so astute Lee nails the situation that so many

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Speaker 1: people grew up in. But I think a lot of

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Speaker 1: people have never investigated the origins of this situation, the

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Speaker 1: genesis of the war on drugs. And could you Ethan

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Speaker 1: tell us in the audience a little bit about how

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Speaker 1: how this all evolved, Like, um, you know, it's a

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Speaker 1: it's a well known historical fact that for a time,

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Speaker 1: things like marijuana or cocaine or opiates were legal, you

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Speaker 1: could buy and over the counter medicinal beverage to you know,

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Speaker 1: call him a child's toothache. And now those same sorts

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Speaker 1: of substances can lead to draconian prison sentences and things

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Speaker 1: like mandatory minimum So, so how did the US evolved

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Speaker 1: from that earlier point to the current day. Sure, well,

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Speaker 1: then I'll try to make it as a thumbnail sketch

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Speaker 1: as much as possible. Basically, if you think about it,

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Speaker 1: as you said, late nineteenth century cocaine, opiates, opium, even

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Speaker 1: heroin that is created in the late eighteen nineties, cannabis,

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Speaker 1: they're basically legal um throughout the United States and many

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Speaker 1: other countries. And then the first prohibitions come about, not

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Speaker 1: because there's new evidence of their harms. I mean that

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Speaker 1: plays a small role. It's more about because the public

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Speaker 1: perceptions of who uses or who is perceived to use

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Speaker 1: these substances. So nobody was going to criminalize, you know,

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Speaker 1: all these over the counter opiates. It was called louder Nam,

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Speaker 1: this liquid opium. So long as most of the consumers

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Speaker 1: were middle class white women, you know, in the eighteen seventies, eighties, nineties,

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Speaker 1: because nobody wanted to put you know, their antio grandma

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Speaker 1: behind bars. But when opius become associated with the Chinese

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Speaker 1: migrants coming in working long hours on the railroads and

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Speaker 1: the minds, what have you, that's when these kind of

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Speaker 1: zema xenophobic races, fears become dominant, you know, in the

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Speaker 1: in the media, and the fear that what were these

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Speaker 1: yellow men, these chinamen gonna do to our precious white women,

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Speaker 1: you know, luring them into opium addiction and turning them

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Speaker 1: into sex slaves and our opium dance. Same thing with cocaine, right,

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Speaker 1: Cocaine widely used coca cola head cocaineidate until nineteen hundreds.

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Speaker 1: So far as we know, the problems with coca cola

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Speaker 1: addiction the eighteen nineties were no worse with cocaine in

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Speaker 1: it than they are now with caffeine in it. Right,

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Speaker 1: But when cocaine gets to be perceived with devian groups,

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Speaker 1: and especially with blacks in the South, and the fear

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Speaker 1: that these black men would snort this white powder and

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Speaker 1: forget their proper place in society and go out and

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Speaker 1: do bad things to our precious white women. That's when

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Speaker 1: you get cocaine prohibitions, and ditto with cannabis. Right, you know,

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Speaker 1: it wasn't a big deal, but when it gets linked

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Speaker 1: in the popular imagination with Mexican Americans, Mexican migrants in

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Speaker 1: the Southwest and the West in this second and third

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Speaker 1: decades of the twentieth century, that's when you get the

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Speaker 1: cannabis prohibitions. So that's you have some kind of early

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Speaker 1: stages of the War on drugs going on. Although back then,

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Speaker 1: of course, the big war on drugs was alcohol, alcohol prohibition,

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Speaker 1: the Temperance Movement, that Eighteenth Amendment banning alcohol in nineteen nineteen,

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Speaker 1: and then the whole revolt against that, leading to the

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Speaker 1: only amendment in American history to be repealed, you know,

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Speaker 1: alcohol prohibition by the twenty first Amendment in nineteen thirty three.

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Speaker 1: So we had these periodic wars on drugs. The one

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Speaker 1: that people oftentimes point to is Richard Nixon declaring fifty

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Speaker 1: years ago drugs being public Enemy number one, and that

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Speaker 1: was you know, there were concerns around heroin, but it

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Speaker 1: was also part of his you know, fears around the

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Speaker 1: hippies and weed and LSD and Timothy Leary and all

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Speaker 1: this sort of stuff. And that was the beginnings of

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Speaker 1: the War on drugs. But then when in the seventies,

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Speaker 1: there's this little period where everybody gets chill. And that's

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Speaker 1: the period when I come of age. Right, I'm only

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Speaker 1: twelve when the sixties end, but I'm graduating college at

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Speaker 1: the end of the seventies. And I remember being in

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Speaker 1: college in late seventies, you know, and I went first

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Speaker 1: to McGill in Montreal, then to Harvard, and you know,

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Speaker 1: it was cool. People would get high. Nobody was all

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Speaker 1: flipped out. Cocaine was kind of around, but it wasn't

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Speaker 1: a big issue. There was this kind of sensible period.

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Speaker 1: Jimmy Carter proposes, you know, a federal law decriminalizing marijuana.

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Speaker 1: People are talking sense. But then what happens is um,

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Speaker 1: you know, an anti parents movement starts up. In the

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Speaker 1: late seventies. There are legitimate concerns about, like one intent,

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Speaker 1: high school kids getting high every day, and nobody likes

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Speaker 1: you know, high school kids waken and bacon. And so

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Speaker 1: you have the beginnings. The Democrats starting getting fearful, and

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Speaker 1: then Reagan comes in and Reagan starts to pick up

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Speaker 1: on the War on drugs and the rhetoric and see

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Speaker 1: the political advantage because and being able to kind of

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Speaker 1: you know, the dog whistles, you know, connecting it with

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Speaker 1: fears around black people and crime without actually sounding out

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Speaker 1: right like a racist. Uh. And then you know the

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Speaker 1: and then Mary and then crack cocaine nineteen eighties, Len Bias,

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Speaker 1: a famous basketball player dies of a cocaine overdose. And

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Speaker 1: then there's a bipartisan like, let's step up the penalties.

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Speaker 1: And that's nineteen eight six is when I really begin

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Speaker 1: to date the modern era of the War on drugs.

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Speaker 1: Penalties for selling or for that, you know, for both.

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Speaker 1: I mean, it's basically what happens is that's when they

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Speaker 1: start to introduce penalties at the federal level, and the

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Speaker 1: states do the same thing of basically saying, cocaine possession

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Speaker 1: can put you into prison. Maybe goog will give you

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Speaker 1: a shot of treatment, but if you don't stop, you're

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Speaker 1: going to prison. And you get penalties for you know,

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Speaker 1: sometimes one but sometimes five years even more for simple

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Speaker 1: cocaine possession of small amounts, and for people selling it,

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Speaker 1: they're introducing penalties of ten twenty years. You know, I mean,

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Speaker 1: it's crazy. By the late nineteen eighties, I mean, it

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Speaker 1: is the number one. Fifty percent of Americans in public

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Speaker 1: opinion polls are saying drugs is the number one threat

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Speaker 1: to America. I mean, it's that sort of craziness and

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Speaker 1: marijuana which everybody getting chill about, and it's getting tied

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Speaker 1: up in the whole war on cocaine. And it's not

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Speaker 1: just older people as younger people. Right in the late seventies,

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Speaker 1: I think fifty percent of all college freshmen were in

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Speaker 1: favor of legalizing marijuana. By the late eighties, it's down

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Speaker 1: to sixteen percent. So, you know, I start teaching at

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Speaker 1: prison in seven and I can't I'm amazed at how

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Speaker 1: conservative my kids are when they're they're taking a seminar

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Speaker 1: with the on drug policy and half of them have

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Speaker 1: never even smoked a joint. I mean, it's a whole

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Speaker 1: transition what goes on. And when I used the phrase

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Speaker 1: McCarthyism on steroids, well you think, like you know, McCarthyism

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Speaker 1: was about the fear of communism, right, the fear of

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Speaker 1: the Russians invading us, the fear of communist spies. But

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Speaker 1: the fact of the matter is the Russians were not

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Speaker 1: lapping at our borders, and there was not a communist

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Speaker 1: spy under every bed. But you could persuade Americans to

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Speaker 1: become hysterical and engage in these witch hunts where people

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Speaker 1: be fired for past associations or not signing up to

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Speaker 1: loyalty host well. War on drugs, yes, there was a

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Speaker 1: real problem with drugs coming from abroad and people getting addicted,

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Speaker 1: and yes there was a problem with drug dealers domestically

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Speaker 1: and of fears around kids. But in point of fact,

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Speaker 1: the realities of the issue, it was not the kind

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Speaker 1: of threat that was being depicted in the popular imagination.

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Speaker 1: And what happened is you had right wing Republicans, most

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Speaker 1: notoriously the first drugs are a guy named William Bennett,

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Speaker 1: you know, under the first President Bush, who see this

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Speaker 1: is a vehicle in which the right wing can play

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Speaker 1: on the fears of middle class American parents and get

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Speaker 1: them to embrace these draconian policies. And the Democrats who

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Speaker 1: don't want to be accused of being soft on crime

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Speaker 1: or soft on drugs, and some of the old timers,

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Speaker 1: most especially a famous Democrat back then, Tip O'Neill, the

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Speaker 1: Massachusetts liberal congressman who was Speaker of the House. You know,

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Speaker 1: they all joined on board. So we get this bipartisan

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Speaker 1: war on drugs, and all of a sudden, America's prison population,

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Speaker 1: which had been sort around the global average back in

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Speaker 1: the seventies, it goes from five thound and people behind

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Speaker 1: bars in nineteen eighty to two point three million by

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Speaker 1: the early two thousands. We four percent of the world's population.

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Speaker 1: We've got twenty or twenty percent of the world's incarcerated population.

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Speaker 1: We're locking up black people in a way that makes

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Speaker 1: South Africa nder Aparthi look like nothing. We're competing with

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Speaker 1: the Soviet goologs when it comes to rates of incarceration

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Speaker 1: of black people. Right, So we embrace this policy of

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Speaker 1: of of drug testing the entire society, trying trying to

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Speaker 1: use drug testing in schools, in the workplace, firing people

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Speaker 1: not for being high on job, but just for having

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Speaker 1: spoke to join over the weekend. We're locking up people ruthlessly.

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Speaker 1: We're treating drug dealers as if they were rapists and murderers.

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Speaker 1: So that's the war on drugs that you know, And

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Speaker 1: that's the thing I've been spending much of my life

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Speaker 1: trying to repeal and roll back ever since. And and

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Speaker 1: you've spoken with some very interesting people for your show

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Speaker 1: Psychoactive on this very topic. And you know, I don't

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Speaker 1: want to focus too hard in on the war on

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Speaker 1: drugs because there's so many things we could discuss here. Abou.

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Speaker 1: I think maybe maybe your discussion with Larry Krasner, the

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Speaker 1: the d A. I think he's the d A in Philadelphia,

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Speaker 1: But is that correct? Right? You guys had he had

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Speaker 1: some interesting things to say, and you guys actually had

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Speaker 1: some background, um just about how as a district attorney

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Speaker 1: you can help to shape how some of these laws,

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Speaker 1: even if they're on the books, how they're actually enforced.

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Speaker 1: Can you just tell me a little bit about what

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Speaker 1: you guys discussed when it comes to are the current

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Speaker 1: you know, how some of these drug laws are enforced?

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Speaker 1: Right now? Yeah? Well, I mean I'll tell you that.

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Speaker 1: You know, we oftentimes people say, you know, follow the money, now,

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Speaker 1: explain the drug war. And you know there's some truth

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Speaker 1: to that. I mean, private prison corporations and you know,

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Speaker 1: prison guards unions are fighting for their jobs, and and

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Speaker 1: you know, police departments wanting more money and all this

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Speaker 1: sort of stuff. But actually the most venal element of

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Speaker 1: the war on drugs has oftentimes been the prosecutors, the

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Speaker 1: district attorneys, the U S attorneys at the federal and

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Speaker 1: state and local prosecutors. And that's not about money. That's

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Speaker 1: about power, you know, and that's about power in terms of,

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Speaker 1: you know, the more the tougher the laws are, the

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Speaker 1: more you can coerce low level you know, people who

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Speaker 1: are picked up on drug possession or low level dealing

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Speaker 1: to plead guilty, sometimes even if they're not right. I mean,

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Speaker 1: the more also in terms of that inner person relationship

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Speaker 1: between the prosecutor and the defense attorney. I mean, it

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Speaker 1: just grossly shifts the balance of power. A lot of

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Speaker 1: prosecutors want to run for public office, and so you know,

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Speaker 1: getting on the whole drug war bandwagon is great for them,

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Speaker 1: and so they have really been some of the most

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Speaker 1: unaccountable champions of the war on drugs, Worse than the

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Speaker 1: police chiefs, worse than any right wing drudges, works than

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Speaker 1: you name it, right, and Larry Krasner, the Philadelphia d A,

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Speaker 1: is really one of the leaders in a new wave

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Speaker 1: of progressive prosecutors, basically saying the drug war is both

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Speaker 1: filling our jails and prisons with tons of low level

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Speaker 1: people engaged in low level crimes of you know, drug

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Speaker 1: selling doesn't make any sense. We need to treat the

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Speaker 1: drug issue primarily as a health issue. Law enforcement is

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Speaker 1: not to keep part of the solution. And so Larry

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Speaker 1: Krasner is very bravely been doing this in Philadelphia, and

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Speaker 1: I was delighted because a lot of these progressive, progressive prosecutors,

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Speaker 1: when they start moving forward, you know, if there's all

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Speaker 1: of a sudden a spiking crime, you know, they could

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Speaker 1: get elected out of office. But Krasner, you know, easily

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Speaker 1: won re election in Philadelphia, you know, fairly recently, so

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Speaker 1: you know, he's a good guy. I mean, some of

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Speaker 1: the other guests, like you know, Senator Schumer, he was

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Speaker 1: one of the real drug warriors, but now we see

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Speaker 1: him kind of co sponsoring a marijuana legalization bill, or

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Speaker 1: the head of the National Suit on Drug Abuse who's

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Speaker 1: been there for like eighteen years. Nora volcal I really

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Speaker 1: saw her as kind of a kind of kinder, gentler

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Speaker 1: face of the drug war establishment, you know, who would

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Speaker 1: run away from me, I mean in all our previous encounters,

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Speaker 1: but now she was willing to be on the show.

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Speaker 1: Because things are changing, right, So there is this evolution

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Speaker 1: with good guys like Krasner and other process secutors like him,

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Speaker 1: and police chiefs stepping up and saying we need a

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Speaker 1: different way, and then some of the old bad guys

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Speaker 1: beginning to change their tune because the public is changing.

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Speaker 1: We're going to pause for a word from our sponsors

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Speaker 1: and will return with more from Ethan Nadelman, and we're back.

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Speaker 1: So you have been working tirelessly for for decades to

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00:23:29,000 --> 00:23:35,080
Speaker 1: change these prohibitive, draconian policies. And we do know that

427
00:23:35,119 --> 00:23:40,200
Speaker 1: the conversation has shifted overall, right, at least at least

428
00:23:40,240 --> 00:23:44,639
Speaker 1: for some time and in some parts of the US.

429
00:23:44,680 --> 00:23:47,280
Speaker 1: And one thing that we alluded to at the very

430
00:23:47,320 --> 00:23:52,800
Speaker 1: beginning of our conversation today, UH is the idea that this, ultimately,

431
00:23:53,280 --> 00:23:57,280
Speaker 1: this war on drugs is a war that has serious

432
00:23:57,359 --> 00:24:03,680
Speaker 1: consequences outside of the US. In Psychoactive, you spoke with

433
00:24:04,480 --> 00:24:10,359
Speaker 1: Juan Manuel Santos, former President of Columbia, and that conversation,

434
00:24:10,440 --> 00:24:14,720
Speaker 1: I think is astonishingly eye opening for a lot of

435
00:24:14,760 --> 00:24:19,840
Speaker 1: people who only think of this in domestic terms. What

436
00:24:19,880 --> 00:24:24,280
Speaker 1: do you see other people, residents of other countries, what

437
00:24:24,359 --> 00:24:28,520
Speaker 1: do you see as their perception of the U s

438
00:24:28,600 --> 00:24:31,040
Speaker 1: is war on drugs. Well, I'll tell you it's evolved

439
00:24:31,080 --> 00:24:33,040
Speaker 1: over time. Band. I mean, if you look at the

440
00:24:33,119 --> 00:24:37,240
Speaker 1: United States, you know, we have been the global champion

441
00:24:37,280 --> 00:24:39,879
Speaker 1: of the war on drugs from early in the twentieth

442
00:24:39,920 --> 00:24:44,360
Speaker 1: century until more or less the second term of President Obama.

443
00:24:44,680 --> 00:24:47,080
Speaker 1: You know, it was as if we felt that having

444
00:24:47,560 --> 00:24:50,000
Speaker 1: embraced the war on drugs in our own country, we

445
00:24:50,080 --> 00:24:53,760
Speaker 1: needed to proselytize it to everybody else. And we justify

446
00:24:53,840 --> 00:24:56,320
Speaker 1: it by saying that most of these drugs are being

447
00:24:56,400 --> 00:24:59,920
Speaker 1: exported from abroad, heroin, cocaine, and much of the marijuana,

448
00:25:00,119 --> 00:25:02,280
Speaker 1: even much of the myth amphetamine. So we got to

449
00:25:02,320 --> 00:25:05,720
Speaker 1: crack down, protect our borders, blame foreign countries, you know,

450
00:25:05,840 --> 00:25:07,920
Speaker 1: use carrots and sticks to get them to change their

451
00:25:07,960 --> 00:25:11,080
Speaker 1: ways in terms of drug production and drugs export to

452
00:25:11,119 --> 00:25:14,639
Speaker 1: the United States. But there was another element, some element

453
00:25:14,680 --> 00:25:17,400
Speaker 1: of almost kind of like like it, almost but by

454
00:25:17,560 --> 00:25:21,440
Speaker 1: forcing others to embrace our way of dealing with drugs

455
00:25:21,440 --> 00:25:25,840
Speaker 1: are highly punitive, abstinence only, prohibitionist war on drugs approach,

456
00:25:26,119 --> 00:25:28,879
Speaker 1: it was almost like helping to legitimize our own approach

457
00:25:28,880 --> 00:25:30,359
Speaker 1: in our own eyes. If we get everybody else to

458
00:25:30,400 --> 00:25:33,040
Speaker 1: do it through persistent pressure it would somehow make it

459
00:25:33,200 --> 00:25:36,720
Speaker 1: more legit. And so we played a pivotal role in really,

460
00:25:36,960 --> 00:25:40,800
Speaker 1: you know, you know, making this a global drug prohibition regime,

461
00:25:41,119 --> 00:25:43,320
Speaker 1: where all sorts of countries which had never even heard

462
00:25:43,320 --> 00:25:46,680
Speaker 1: of marijuana or never seen cocaine le ended up prohibiting

463
00:25:46,720 --> 00:25:49,760
Speaker 1: them and criminalizing them, not even barely knowing what they were.

464
00:25:49,920 --> 00:25:52,200
Speaker 1: And then twenty thirty years later, all of a sudden,

465
00:25:52,200 --> 00:25:53,880
Speaker 1: they're having to deal with black markets or their own

466
00:25:53,920 --> 00:25:56,440
Speaker 1: people using these things through a criminal lens rather than

467
00:25:56,480 --> 00:25:59,680
Speaker 1: a regulatory health lens. Right. I remember back when I

468
00:25:59,720 --> 00:26:02,320
Speaker 1: got ow in late eighties, early nineties, I go down

469
00:26:02,320 --> 00:26:06,360
Speaker 1: in Mexico, Colombia, Peru, uh, you know, you name it,

470
00:26:06,680 --> 00:26:09,040
Speaker 1: and these countries they just felt stuck between a rock

471
00:26:09,040 --> 00:26:12,000
Speaker 1: and a hard place. On the one hand, it was

472
00:26:12,119 --> 00:26:16,680
Speaker 1: clear that the illicit drug markets were essentially global commodities

473
00:26:16,720 --> 00:26:21,080
Speaker 1: markets like coffee, like sugar, like tea, like precious metals,

474
00:26:21,119 --> 00:26:23,400
Speaker 1: like you name it, and that so long as there's

475
00:26:23,440 --> 00:26:26,560
Speaker 1: a demand, there's gonna be a supply, and that there's

476
00:26:26,600 --> 00:26:29,119
Speaker 1: no way to stop that. And the notion of putting

477
00:26:29,200 --> 00:26:32,520
Speaker 1: law enforcement officials in charge of trying to stop a

478
00:26:32,600 --> 00:26:36,359
Speaker 1: dynamic global commodities market just made no sense and was

479
00:26:36,400 --> 00:26:40,040
Speaker 1: a recipe for creating huge criminal organizations and vast black

480
00:26:40,080 --> 00:26:43,160
Speaker 1: markets and corruption and violence and all of that. Right

481
00:26:43,640 --> 00:26:46,200
Speaker 1: on the other hand, they had the U. S. Government saying,

482
00:26:46,359 --> 00:26:49,719
Speaker 1: you better do it our way, or we're gonna penalize you.

483
00:26:49,840 --> 00:26:52,439
Speaker 1: We're gonna cut off your exports, We're gonna send you know,

484
00:26:52,640 --> 00:26:55,480
Speaker 1: police and maybe even soldiers. We're gonna hurt you in

485
00:26:55,520 --> 00:26:58,360
Speaker 1: all sorts of ways. So they were really stuck. They

486
00:26:58,359 --> 00:27:01,359
Speaker 1: were stuck, and I think was a pivotal moment that

487
00:27:01,480 --> 00:27:05,040
Speaker 1: happened really um. I think after we won the ballot

488
00:27:05,040 --> 00:27:10,359
Speaker 1: initiatives to legalize marijuana in Colorado in Washington in and

489
00:27:10,400 --> 00:27:13,080
Speaker 1: you know, Obama had previously promised that he wanted to

490
00:27:13,119 --> 00:27:15,960
Speaker 1: really start to roll back the war on drugs, and

491
00:27:16,000 --> 00:27:17,840
Speaker 1: he wasn't willing to do it in the first term

492
00:27:17,880 --> 00:27:20,680
Speaker 1: because they saw it as too politically risky. But once

493
00:27:20,720 --> 00:27:23,600
Speaker 1: we won in Colorado Washington, it puts the federal government

494
00:27:23,600 --> 00:27:26,359
Speaker 1: a tough spot. And at that point, they you know,

495
00:27:26,400 --> 00:27:28,040
Speaker 1: they said, what are we gonna do here? It's illegal

496
00:27:28,080 --> 00:27:31,920
Speaker 1: under federal law, but Colorond Washington legalized, so they said,

497
00:27:32,000 --> 00:27:35,560
Speaker 1: We're gonna let those states implement their legalization and if

498
00:27:35,560 --> 00:27:37,800
Speaker 1: they can make it work, who are we the FEDS

499
00:27:37,840 --> 00:27:41,000
Speaker 1: to object? And at that point that led to a

500
00:27:41,080 --> 00:27:45,040
Speaker 1: series of events where the United States stopped being the

501
00:27:45,040 --> 00:27:48,080
Speaker 1: global champion of the war on drugs. We essentially handed

502
00:27:48,080 --> 00:27:50,359
Speaker 1: off the baton to the Russians, who loved being the

503
00:27:50,720 --> 00:27:53,960
Speaker 1: global champion of the war on drugs. And now Biden,

504
00:27:54,320 --> 00:27:57,000
Speaker 1: who was probably the least good on the drug issue

505
00:27:57,000 --> 00:28:01,120
Speaker 1: among all the Democrats in the primaries back in twenty twenty. Um.

506
00:28:01,240 --> 00:28:03,399
Speaker 1: You know, so he's no great friend of drug policy reform.

507
00:28:03,440 --> 00:28:06,320
Speaker 1: But even under him, we see, you know, at least

508
00:28:06,320 --> 00:28:09,400
Speaker 1: some progress. Where the US is no longer a robust

509
00:28:09,480 --> 00:28:12,680
Speaker 1: global champion of the war on drugs, other countries can

510
00:28:12,720 --> 00:28:15,840
Speaker 1: breathe a bit. The European model, with all of its

511
00:28:15,880 --> 00:28:19,040
Speaker 1: harm reduction approaches treating drugs as a health issue, has

512
00:28:19,119 --> 00:28:21,840
Speaker 1: more chance to flex its muscles and be embraced in

513
00:28:21,880 --> 00:28:25,280
Speaker 1: other countries. So we are fortunately sing an evolution in

514
00:28:25,320 --> 00:28:28,200
Speaker 1: recent years. But I gotta tell you, I'm ashamed. I

515
00:28:28,240 --> 00:28:30,320
Speaker 1: would I would travel around the world and I'd start

516
00:28:30,320 --> 00:28:32,879
Speaker 1: off my speeches by saying, I want to apologize to

517
00:28:32,920 --> 00:28:35,920
Speaker 1: you as an American citizen for the harms that our

518
00:28:35,920 --> 00:28:39,160
Speaker 1: country's war on drugs has done in this country. Well,

519
00:28:39,320 --> 00:28:42,040
Speaker 1: thanks for doing that as our representative. Uh, that's very

520
00:28:42,120 --> 00:28:44,920
Speaker 1: kind of you. UM. I want to talk about where

521
00:28:44,960 --> 00:28:47,440
Speaker 1: the war on terror meets the war on drugs. In

522
00:28:47,520 --> 00:28:51,400
Speaker 1: my mind, I first encountered this with Ben Gosh maybe

523
00:28:51,440 --> 00:28:53,760
Speaker 1: ten years ago when we made a video on this

524
00:28:53,880 --> 00:28:59,200
Speaker 1: been on Afghanistan and the opium trade, and um, there

525
00:28:59,240 --> 00:29:03,520
Speaker 1: were just stories come out about soldiers protecting opium fields

526
00:29:03,600 --> 00:29:06,960
Speaker 1: and we had just learned, you know, we had been

527
00:29:07,040 --> 00:29:10,400
Speaker 1: learning quite a bit at that time, just about the

528
00:29:10,440 --> 00:29:14,520
Speaker 1: military's involvement, you know with both the War on drugs. Uh,

529
00:29:14,560 --> 00:29:17,920
Speaker 1: fighting the war on drugs and perhaps a few key,

530
00:29:18,040 --> 00:29:21,200
Speaker 1: a few small groups of people doing some other things

531
00:29:21,240 --> 00:29:26,920
Speaker 1: with drugs when they're funding, you know, other groups with

532
00:29:27,040 --> 00:29:30,040
Speaker 1: the sale of drugs and things like that. But when

533
00:29:30,080 --> 00:29:33,560
Speaker 1: I think back to that time, I have this very

534
00:29:33,560 --> 00:29:39,120
Speaker 1: clear picture of soldiers protecting poppy fields in the opium

535
00:29:39,160 --> 00:29:41,480
Speaker 1: trade because it was very valuable both to the people

536
00:29:41,720 --> 00:29:45,920
Speaker 1: of Afghanistan and for you know, potentially for the for

537
00:29:45,960 --> 00:29:49,080
Speaker 1: the government and the purposes of the military being active

538
00:29:49,120 --> 00:29:53,200
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan. When you spoke with David Mansfield. My my

539
00:29:53,320 --> 00:29:56,240
Speaker 1: view of that changed quite a bit, um because of

540
00:29:56,280 --> 00:29:59,720
Speaker 1: his experiences. I just wonder what your takeaway from that

541
00:30:00,200 --> 00:30:02,880
Speaker 1: conversation was. Yeah, well, I mean, David Mansfields, you know,

542
00:30:02,920 --> 00:30:06,320
Speaker 1: probably the world's leading expert on drugs in Afghanistan. Um.

543
00:30:06,520 --> 00:30:10,480
Speaker 1: But I'll tell you that it's a complicated story because essentially,

544
00:30:11,200 --> 00:30:15,000
Speaker 1: you know, for the United States, fighting drugs has although

545
00:30:15,040 --> 00:30:18,960
Speaker 1: it's been a huge thing rhetorically, in reality it's always

546
00:30:18,960 --> 00:30:22,120
Speaker 1: been a secondary concern compared to first of all, fighting

547
00:30:22,160 --> 00:30:26,000
Speaker 1: communism from the fifties until you know, the late nineties,

548
00:30:26,040 --> 00:30:28,560
Speaker 1: early two thousands, and then fighting the War on Terra

549
00:30:29,000 --> 00:30:32,280
Speaker 1: after two thousand and one. Right, And so what would

550
00:30:32,280 --> 00:30:35,760
Speaker 1: happen is that if I mean, and there's a wonderful

551
00:30:35,800 --> 00:30:39,280
Speaker 1: book about this by a University Wisconsin professor, Alfred McCoy

552
00:30:39,360 --> 00:30:42,640
Speaker 1: called The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, which sets

553
00:30:42,640 --> 00:30:46,080
Speaker 1: the context for your question about Afghanistan, which is that

554
00:30:46,200 --> 00:30:49,080
Speaker 1: what would happen is go back to Southeast Asia. You know,

555
00:30:49,200 --> 00:30:51,880
Speaker 1: they're the United States was fighting in the sixties and

556
00:30:51,920 --> 00:30:55,560
Speaker 1: early seventies. We were fighting against communist guerrillas in Vietnam

557
00:30:55,600 --> 00:30:58,720
Speaker 1: and Loos and Cambodia, what have you, and many of

558
00:30:58,720 --> 00:31:02,400
Speaker 1: our allies there where these other you know, indigenous you know,

559
00:31:02,560 --> 00:31:06,920
Speaker 1: tribes and other organizations that were anti communist, and sometimes

560
00:31:06,960 --> 00:31:11,280
Speaker 1: the best anti communist fighters, right were the people who

561
00:31:11,280 --> 00:31:14,920
Speaker 1: are also involved in the illicit drug activity. And so

562
00:31:14,960 --> 00:31:18,960
Speaker 1: what happened in Southeast Asia is that you know, the CIA,

563
00:31:19,200 --> 00:31:22,080
Speaker 1: oftentimes sometimes the military more from the CIA, you know,

564
00:31:22,360 --> 00:31:26,160
Speaker 1: they would be shipping weapons up to our anti communist

565
00:31:26,200 --> 00:31:30,040
Speaker 1: allies in parts of Loos, you know, Vietnam, what have you.

566
00:31:30,720 --> 00:31:33,760
Speaker 1: And then when those planes came back filled with opium

567
00:31:33,840 --> 00:31:37,280
Speaker 1: or heroin to Saigon to be exported to the U.

568
00:31:37,360 --> 00:31:39,480
Speaker 1: S and other parts around the world, well, U S

569
00:31:39,520 --> 00:31:42,520
Speaker 1: Intelligence would just turn a blind eye to that, right,

570
00:31:42,560 --> 00:31:46,720
Speaker 1: because the greater objective was fighting communism. Same thing happened

571
00:31:46,800 --> 00:31:51,040
Speaker 1: in you know, Central America, the Countras back in the eighties, right,

572
00:31:51,280 --> 00:31:54,160
Speaker 1: once again fighting the communists. So when our Countra allies

573
00:31:54,200 --> 00:31:56,600
Speaker 1: would get involved in drugs to help fund their activities,

574
00:31:57,000 --> 00:31:59,480
Speaker 1: you know, you know, the CIA, sometimes the d A

575
00:31:59,560 --> 00:32:01,960
Speaker 1: would be going after those guys, and the CIA would

576
00:32:01,960 --> 00:32:04,960
Speaker 1: intervene and say, wait a second, those drug traffickers, they're

577
00:32:04,960 --> 00:32:07,560
Speaker 1: the best allies. We haven't fighting the communists and this

578
00:32:07,560 --> 00:32:10,760
Speaker 1: would even happen exactly, and this would even happen in

579
00:32:10,800 --> 00:32:14,240
Speaker 1: smaller ways going on, and you know, parts of Latin America,

580
00:32:14,720 --> 00:32:18,120
Speaker 1: South America and Afghanistan of course was the great example

581
00:32:18,160 --> 00:32:20,600
Speaker 1: of that, because you know, under the when the Taliban

582
00:32:20,680 --> 00:32:22,680
Speaker 1: were first in power in the late nine is only

583
00:32:22,680 --> 00:32:26,320
Speaker 1: two thousand's our greatest ally and fighting the Communists was

584
00:32:26,440 --> 00:32:30,880
Speaker 1: deeply implicit, you know, implicated in the in the opium

585
00:32:30,880 --> 00:32:33,360
Speaker 1: trade and the heroin trade. The guy who was assassinated

586
00:32:33,360 --> 00:32:36,960
Speaker 1: by the Taliban right before nine eleven, and so it

587
00:32:37,000 --> 00:32:41,120
Speaker 1: was once again kind of saying, hey, we got priorities here. Now.

588
00:32:41,240 --> 00:32:44,760
Speaker 1: Part of when consequence of this is that you would

589
00:32:44,760 --> 00:32:48,920
Speaker 1: have some people United States, especially black politicians Maxine Waters

590
00:32:48,920 --> 00:32:52,360
Speaker 1: from California others, who would say, the reason we have

591
00:32:52,400 --> 00:32:55,480
Speaker 1: a drug problem in America is because of the CIA.

592
00:32:55,680 --> 00:32:59,080
Speaker 1: They're sending crack cocaine into our ghettos, or decades ago,

593
00:32:59,120 --> 00:33:02,200
Speaker 1: they're sending harrow intur ghettos. And what I would point

594
00:33:02,200 --> 00:33:06,320
Speaker 1: out to them is, yes, the CIA is complicit, it

595
00:33:06,520 --> 00:33:10,840
Speaker 1: is true, But even if the CIA had been squeaky clean,

596
00:33:11,640 --> 00:33:14,080
Speaker 1: crack cocaine would have shown up just a few months

597
00:33:14,200 --> 00:33:16,320
Speaker 1: later in Los Angeles and New York. Who would have

598
00:33:16,400 --> 00:33:18,280
Speaker 1: you or Heroin would have shown up this way because

599
00:33:18,400 --> 00:33:21,920
Speaker 1: ultimately these are global commodities markets, and any role the

600
00:33:21,960 --> 00:33:25,080
Speaker 1: CIA is playing with our you know, anti communist or

601
00:33:25,120 --> 00:33:30,000
Speaker 1: anti terrorist allies in in Afghanistan or or Vietnam or

602
00:33:30,080 --> 00:33:33,320
Speaker 1: Mexico through the years, it's it's a tiny it's a

603
00:33:33,440 --> 00:33:36,320
Speaker 1: drop in the ocean compared to the bigger dynamics that

604
00:33:36,400 --> 00:33:39,920
Speaker 1: play here. So it's always been a complicated story. Doesn't

605
00:33:40,000 --> 00:33:43,720
Speaker 1: justify the US being involved and being complicit in drug trafficking,

606
00:33:43,960 --> 00:33:45,840
Speaker 1: but I think it's important to put it into that

607
00:33:45,960 --> 00:33:48,920
Speaker 1: context there. Yeah, I think that's a I think that's

608
00:33:48,960 --> 00:33:52,640
Speaker 1: an important point and one that needs to be brought

609
00:33:52,800 --> 00:33:56,960
Speaker 1: up more often. Uh. The sad reality often seems to

610
00:33:57,000 --> 00:34:01,160
Speaker 1: be that people, whenn't hearing and narrow heard of want

611
00:34:02,040 --> 00:34:05,880
Speaker 1: want an easy cut and dried story of villains and

612
00:34:06,160 --> 00:34:10,840
Speaker 1: heroes rather than the you know, much more realistic story

613
00:34:10,920 --> 00:34:16,279
Speaker 1: of competing and sometimes uh complimentary interest right the the

614
00:34:16,320 --> 00:34:20,080
Speaker 1: old strange bedfellows situations that occur so often in the

615
00:34:20,080 --> 00:34:23,600
Speaker 1: world of geopolitics. This leads us to one of the

616
00:34:23,760 --> 00:34:27,960
Speaker 1: questions I'm very excited to ask you as as the

617
00:34:27,960 --> 00:34:32,360
Speaker 1: world's foremost expert on drug policy. We've entered the realm

618
00:34:32,440 --> 00:34:35,680
Speaker 1: of a little bit of myth busting because we know

619
00:34:35,840 --> 00:34:40,480
Speaker 1: that the story of drugs in the US is often

620
00:34:40,600 --> 00:34:47,200
Speaker 1: riddled with uh alarming accusations, right with conspiracy theories. We've

621
00:34:47,200 --> 00:34:50,880
Speaker 1: already mentioned two of the most popular, the idea that

622
00:34:50,920 --> 00:34:56,759
Speaker 1: the CIA purposely flooded disadvantaged neighborhoods with cocaine, sort of

623
00:34:56,800 --> 00:35:00,759
Speaker 1: steepling their fingers Monty Burn style the whole time. And

624
00:35:01,000 --> 00:35:04,520
Speaker 1: with this in mind, we have to ask, are any

625
00:35:04,520 --> 00:35:10,080
Speaker 1: of the conspiratorial things people here about drugs and prohibition?

626
00:35:10,480 --> 00:35:13,640
Speaker 1: Do any of them, in your opinion have some sand

627
00:35:13,960 --> 00:35:19,560
Speaker 1: I'm thinking particularly about accusations of for profit motivations, which

628
00:35:19,600 --> 00:35:22,680
Speaker 1: you mentioned. Um. I think also one of the big

629
00:35:22,680 --> 00:35:25,560
Speaker 1: ones that we've yet to address is the possible role

630
00:35:25,800 --> 00:35:31,759
Speaker 1: of legal drug manufacturers pharmaceutical companies, you know, the produce

631
00:35:32,680 --> 00:35:37,520
Speaker 1: the Sackler family kind of operations. I guess what I'm asking, Ethan,

632
00:35:37,760 --> 00:35:41,400
Speaker 1: is is any of that real like the accusations that

633
00:35:41,480 --> 00:35:44,200
Speaker 1: Big Pharma is quote unquote doing this. I mean, I'll

634
00:35:44,239 --> 00:35:48,000
Speaker 1: tell you it's complicated, right, So so let's just take

635
00:35:48,120 --> 00:35:50,440
Speaker 1: Big Pharma as one example. And then I'll turn to

636
00:35:50,560 --> 00:35:54,600
Speaker 1: another um. You know, back in the late eighties, an

637
00:35:54,719 --> 00:35:58,520
Speaker 1: organization emerged called the Partnership for a Drug Free America,

638
00:35:58,880 --> 00:36:02,720
Speaker 1: and they were obs st about marijuana use among young people.

639
00:36:03,120 --> 00:36:06,080
Speaker 1: Now interestingly, in the early years they were funded by

640
00:36:06,080 --> 00:36:10,360
Speaker 1: big alcohol, big tobacco, and big pharma. Right now, ultimately

641
00:36:10,400 --> 00:36:13,080
Speaker 1: they were embarrassed and to stop taking money from big

642
00:36:13,120 --> 00:36:15,880
Speaker 1: alcohol and big tobacco. But and the guy who was

643
00:36:15,960 --> 00:36:19,400
Speaker 1: ahead of that organization was a fellow named Jim Burke,

644
00:36:19,880 --> 00:36:22,280
Speaker 1: who had been the head of was ahead of Johnson

645
00:36:22,280 --> 00:36:24,959
Speaker 1: and Johnson, the famous pharma Sula company, who was a hero.

646
00:36:25,200 --> 00:36:27,160
Speaker 1: He was when when they went through a little scandal

647
00:36:27,200 --> 00:36:30,239
Speaker 1: with his tainted Thailand all killing people. The way he

648
00:36:30,320 --> 00:36:33,160
Speaker 1: handled that, his crisis management, that became a role model

649
00:36:33,160 --> 00:36:34,839
Speaker 1: that it would teach on Harvard Business School for how

650
00:36:34,880 --> 00:36:36,880
Speaker 1: to deal with crisis management. So he was one of

651
00:36:36,880 --> 00:36:40,000
Speaker 1: the most powerful people in America and the corporate world

652
00:36:40,080 --> 00:36:42,040
Speaker 1: and in that kind of you know, you know, wasp

653
00:36:42,160 --> 00:36:45,520
Speaker 1: establishment in America. And but he be and but he was,

654
00:36:45,560 --> 00:36:48,040
Speaker 1: you know, anti head of the Partnership Drug for America,

655
00:36:48,080 --> 00:36:50,120
Speaker 1: the chair of it. And it seemed to be all

656
00:36:50,120 --> 00:36:53,840
Speaker 1: about demonizing marijuana. Because you know, if you google, or

657
00:36:53,880 --> 00:36:56,080
Speaker 1: you couldn't google back then late eighties, early nineties, but

658
00:36:56,080 --> 00:36:58,640
Speaker 1: if you looked around on drugs, what would pop up

659
00:36:58,719 --> 00:37:01,880
Speaker 1: is drugs meant heron Cooke came marijuanam F amphetamine LSD.

660
00:37:02,320 --> 00:37:05,480
Speaker 1: But drugs also meant everything big farmer was producing. And

661
00:37:05,520 --> 00:37:08,000
Speaker 1: so they had a kind of marketing issue, which how

662
00:37:08,000 --> 00:37:11,400
Speaker 1: do we distinguish our good drugs are okay drugs from

663
00:37:11,440 --> 00:37:14,640
Speaker 1: those bad drugs. So the Partnership for Drugs Free America

664
00:37:14,719 --> 00:37:18,840
Speaker 1: became entirely focused on marijuana. They entirely ignored the issues

665
00:37:18,880 --> 00:37:22,239
Speaker 1: with pharmaceutical problems. They downplayed the issues with alcohol, at

666
00:37:22,280 --> 00:37:25,680
Speaker 1: least in their earlier years. Right, So you had that part,

667
00:37:25,880 --> 00:37:27,960
Speaker 1: you know, Now, I didn't see them putting big money.

668
00:37:28,000 --> 00:37:29,839
Speaker 1: I mean, and they never actually put big money into

669
00:37:29,840 --> 00:37:33,760
Speaker 1: opposing our marijuana legalization initiatives, but they would get involved

670
00:37:33,760 --> 00:37:35,759
Speaker 1: in trying to figure out, you know, like how do

671
00:37:35,840 --> 00:37:39,400
Speaker 1: we slow the pace of this reform here. Now you

672
00:37:39,440 --> 00:37:43,080
Speaker 1: move forward to the Sackler family and Perdue Pharma, which

673
00:37:43,120 --> 00:37:48,680
Speaker 1: became notorious for its you know, grossly inappropriate promotion of oxycontent.

674
00:37:48,960 --> 00:37:52,520
Speaker 1: Oxycontent was a new formulation of an opioid that was

675
00:37:52,560 --> 00:37:55,680
Speaker 1: a miracle drug for people struggling with pain, but when

676
00:37:55,680 --> 00:37:58,880
Speaker 1: it's marketed to people with chronic pain, created a big problem.

677
00:37:59,080 --> 00:38:01,560
Speaker 1: And I interviewed both the author of the book Empire

678
00:38:01,560 --> 00:38:04,800
Speaker 1: of Pain, Patrick rad and Kief about his book about

679
00:38:04,800 --> 00:38:09,640
Speaker 1: the Sackler family, but also Kate Nicholson, who started an organization,

680
00:38:10,280 --> 00:38:12,640
Speaker 1: you know, to represent the interests of people who are

681
00:38:12,719 --> 00:38:17,319
Speaker 1: using pain medications pharmaceutical opioids responsibly but now can't get

682
00:38:17,360 --> 00:38:20,160
Speaker 1: them anymore because doctors are afraid to prescribe them because

683
00:38:20,200 --> 00:38:23,719
Speaker 1: there's the pendulums swung so far in the direction, and

684
00:38:23,760 --> 00:38:26,360
Speaker 1: so they're What I say is, you know, the Sackler

685
00:38:26,440 --> 00:38:29,600
Speaker 1: family and especially you know the key people involved with

686
00:38:29,640 --> 00:38:34,920
Speaker 1: Perdue Pharma and that organization, they deserve the blame they're getting.

687
00:38:34,960 --> 00:38:38,600
Speaker 1: They deserve to be punished, put out of business, penalized,

688
00:38:38,719 --> 00:38:41,080
Speaker 1: you know, maybe even go to jail. They deserve that

689
00:38:41,160 --> 00:38:44,920
Speaker 1: because of their gross over promotion of this stuff. But

690
00:38:45,000 --> 00:38:48,359
Speaker 1: as you said, Ben, people want to have the easy enemy.

691
00:38:48,440 --> 00:38:52,200
Speaker 1: So all of a sudden, the Sackler's Perdue Pharma represents

692
00:38:52,239 --> 00:38:55,560
Speaker 1: the entire face of the opioid epidemic, But in point

693
00:38:55,560 --> 00:38:57,759
Speaker 1: of fact, they have not been a major part of

694
00:38:57,760 --> 00:39:00,319
Speaker 1: the problem for the last ten or fifteen years. You know,

695
00:39:00,360 --> 00:39:03,200
Speaker 1: the problem then became heroin, and now it's about fentinyl

696
00:39:03,280 --> 00:39:07,920
Speaker 1: being imported illegally from China and Mexico. Um, you know.

697
00:39:08,080 --> 00:39:09,839
Speaker 1: And and then I mean, so there's a kind of

698
00:39:09,920 --> 00:39:14,360
Speaker 1: gross distortion. So the sacklers who deserve of the blame

699
00:39:14,520 --> 00:39:17,799
Speaker 1: or perdue pharma are being given of the blame, and

700
00:39:17,840 --> 00:39:21,080
Speaker 1: that distracts us from what's really going on. And then

701
00:39:21,120 --> 00:39:24,040
Speaker 1: I'll just point out one other example. I mean, there

702
00:39:24,120 --> 00:39:28,920
Speaker 1: is probably no more demonized and appropriately demonized force out

703
00:39:28,960 --> 00:39:33,640
Speaker 1: there in the kind of global capitalist world than big tobacco, right,

704
00:39:33,680 --> 00:39:37,920
Speaker 1: I mean those there's lie cheated, sold their cancer sticks,

705
00:39:37,960 --> 00:39:41,319
Speaker 1: addicted teenagers, came up with more addictive cigarettes. I mean,

706
00:39:41,360 --> 00:39:44,600
Speaker 1: you name it, right, So I mean absolutely a despicable

707
00:39:44,680 --> 00:39:48,040
Speaker 1: business that you know, basically ends up killing their most

708
00:39:48,080 --> 00:39:51,320
Speaker 1: loyal consumers, right, you know, after making a huge amount

709
00:39:51,320 --> 00:39:54,400
Speaker 1: of money from then. But now we're this interesting moment

710
00:39:54,760 --> 00:39:58,040
Speaker 1: where some of the big tobacco companies are getting deeply

711
00:39:58,120 --> 00:40:02,239
Speaker 1: involved in developing e cigarettes and these what are called

712
00:40:02,280 --> 00:40:05,759
Speaker 1: these heat not burned devices. Well, it turns out these

713
00:40:05,800 --> 00:40:10,080
Speaker 1: are ways of consuming nicotine that present a tiny fraction

714
00:40:10,239 --> 00:40:12,680
Speaker 1: of the risks of cigarettes. In fact, if you could

715
00:40:12,760 --> 00:40:17,520
Speaker 1: snap your fingers, you know, and tomorrow the forty million

716
00:40:17,560 --> 00:40:20,759
Speaker 1: Americans who smoke cigarettes, or the billion plus people around

717
00:40:20,800 --> 00:40:24,160
Speaker 1: the world who smoke cigarettes were to suddenly stop smoking cigarettes,

718
00:40:24,160 --> 00:40:26,960
Speaker 1: and every single one of them were to start vaping

719
00:40:27,040 --> 00:40:29,719
Speaker 1: and using e cigarettes or jeweling or whatever, it would

720
00:40:29,719 --> 00:40:32,720
Speaker 1: be one of the greatest advances in public health history,

721
00:40:32,840 --> 00:40:35,080
Speaker 1: in public health in in the history of the world.

722
00:40:35,400 --> 00:40:38,279
Speaker 1: And that would even be true if far more young

723
00:40:38,320 --> 00:40:41,319
Speaker 1: people were vaping. You know, that that that had that

724
00:40:41,400 --> 00:40:45,000
Speaker 1: had been smoking, But most Americans don't know that. So

725
00:40:45,080 --> 00:40:49,040
Speaker 1: big tobacco has become a very complicated figure where they're

726
00:40:49,040 --> 00:40:52,080
Speaker 1: still selling their cancer sticks. They're still making money there,

727
00:40:52,480 --> 00:40:54,600
Speaker 1: but some of them are trying to make a real

728
00:40:54,680 --> 00:41:00,520
Speaker 1: transition to selling nicotine in far, far dramatically less dangerous forms.

729
00:41:00,840 --> 00:41:03,800
Speaker 1: But once again, our need for simple answers and simple

730
00:41:03,920 --> 00:41:06,880
Speaker 1: enemies is standing in the way of an effective public

731
00:41:06,920 --> 00:41:12,520
Speaker 1: health approach. Simple answers and simple enemies. It describes so

732
00:41:12,600 --> 00:41:16,439
Speaker 1: much of what we cover on this show. Um, you're

733
00:41:16,480 --> 00:41:19,040
Speaker 1: making me think about propaganda. I just I I crafted

734
00:41:19,080 --> 00:41:21,840
Speaker 1: this question. I'm gonna ask it the way I wrote it.

735
00:41:21,880 --> 00:41:23,239
Speaker 1: Out just because I was kind of proud of it,

736
00:41:23,280 --> 00:41:26,279
Speaker 1: ethan Um. But it's basically what you've already said. I

737
00:41:26,360 --> 00:41:28,040
Speaker 1: just I want to see if you've got a different

738
00:41:28,040 --> 00:41:30,680
Speaker 1: answer when it comes out this way. Um. While there

739
00:41:30,719 --> 00:41:34,240
Speaker 1: are several ways to affect the laws governing this democratic republic,

740
00:41:34,320 --> 00:41:36,960
Speaker 1: in my opinion, the second most effective maneuver is to

741
00:41:37,040 --> 00:41:39,600
Speaker 1: change the way a majority of the voting populist thinks.

742
00:41:40,640 --> 00:41:44,120
Speaker 1: Uh so, for better or for worse. That means deploying

743
00:41:44,200 --> 00:41:48,000
Speaker 1: some form of propaganda, at least to my mind. Over

744
00:41:48,040 --> 00:41:51,080
Speaker 1: the course of your career, how have you seen propaganda

745
00:41:51,280 --> 00:41:56,880
Speaker 1: most effectively deployed from both sides of the War on drugs? Well,

746
00:41:56,960 --> 00:41:59,520
Speaker 1: that's a great question, matt Um. I mean, when I

747
00:41:59,560 --> 00:42:02,600
Speaker 1: look at the propaganda on the drug wars side, they

748
00:42:02,640 --> 00:42:06,560
Speaker 1: were just extraordinarily successful in the eighties and nineties. I

749
00:42:06,560 --> 00:42:10,240
Speaker 1: mean they managed to take an innocuous substance like marijuana,

750
00:42:10,280 --> 00:42:12,239
Speaker 1: not totally innocuous. I mean, you know, people can get

751
00:42:12,239 --> 00:42:14,120
Speaker 1: addicted to it, people can have problems with it. So

752
00:42:14,200 --> 00:42:17,120
Speaker 1: you know, I I know people have had serious marijuana problems,

753
00:42:17,400 --> 00:42:20,719
Speaker 1: but the vast majority don't, Um, And for the vast

754
00:42:20,760 --> 00:42:23,759
Speaker 1: majority is probably in that positive in their lives, right,

755
00:42:23,800 --> 00:42:27,080
Speaker 1: But somehow Nancy Reagan gets up there with her just

756
00:42:27,160 --> 00:42:30,040
Speaker 1: say no and saying the most dangerous drug user in

757
00:42:30,080 --> 00:42:33,400
Speaker 1: America as a teenage marijuana smoker who's doing well in school,

758
00:42:33,440 --> 00:42:36,640
Speaker 1: basically because they said saying the wrong message to everybody else.

759
00:42:37,040 --> 00:42:41,160
Speaker 1: So they really they're propaganda, the ones who believed in,

760
00:42:41,239 --> 00:42:45,200
Speaker 1: you know, instituting a system of mass incarceration and blaming

761
00:42:45,239 --> 00:42:48,880
Speaker 1: everything on drugs. You know, I mean there's success in

762
00:42:48,920 --> 00:42:51,640
Speaker 1: the eighties and nineties and early two thousands. I mean,

763
00:42:51,680 --> 00:42:53,560
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people are now in their

764
00:42:53,600 --> 00:42:58,960
Speaker 1: teens and twenties don't even appreciate how venal and effective

765
00:42:59,080 --> 00:43:02,799
Speaker 1: that campaign was. I mean it would literally be if

766
00:43:02,840 --> 00:43:06,719
Speaker 1: you took ten scientific questions about drugs, about the relative risks,

767
00:43:06,800 --> 00:43:09,200
Speaker 1: or about what happened or this and that, and you

768
00:43:09,280 --> 00:43:13,080
Speaker 1: asked ordinary Americans, you know, they would get the majority

769
00:43:13,080 --> 00:43:17,880
Speaker 1: of the answers wrong simply because the media was so

770
00:43:17,880 --> 00:43:20,279
Speaker 1: so in the media everybody, I mean, it was just

771
00:43:20,480 --> 00:43:24,560
Speaker 1: everything they believed was basically false, right. I mean, you

772
00:43:24,600 --> 00:43:27,360
Speaker 1: know that that use the drug once you become instantly

773
00:43:27,360 --> 00:43:31,880
Speaker 1: addicted false for that of all people, you know, you know,

774
00:43:31,960 --> 00:43:34,640
Speaker 1: opiates the fact that if you have a legal, secure

775
00:43:34,680 --> 00:43:37,600
Speaker 1: supply of heroin, you can consume that and live to

776
00:43:37,640 --> 00:43:40,120
Speaker 1: be ninety years old and hold a job. Right, it's

777
00:43:40,120 --> 00:43:43,080
Speaker 1: more about black market heroin and adulterated heroin. I mean

778
00:43:43,200 --> 00:43:46,080
Speaker 1: people didn't know that, you know, marijuana does these things

779
00:43:46,080 --> 00:43:48,920
Speaker 1: to your body LSD, you know, harms your chromosomes, m D,

780
00:43:49,040 --> 00:43:51,239
Speaker 1: m A, drained your spinal fluid. I mean, these were

781
00:43:51,280 --> 00:43:54,200
Speaker 1: front page news stories where people would get freaked out

782
00:43:54,200 --> 00:43:58,960
Speaker 1: about this stuff, and it was all bullet or or both.

783
00:43:59,239 --> 00:44:01,840
Speaker 1: You know that aarro want is a stepping stone, you know,

784
00:44:01,960 --> 00:44:04,680
Speaker 1: to to using other getting in trouble with other drugs.

785
00:44:04,719 --> 00:44:07,560
Speaker 1: Well I described that as an ounce of truth embedded

786
00:44:07,560 --> 00:44:10,040
Speaker 1: in a pound of both. Right, and now we're seeing

787
00:44:10,080 --> 00:44:13,560
Speaker 1: the same misinformation around the issues of vaping nicotine as

788
00:44:13,560 --> 00:44:16,600
Speaker 1: opposed to cigarettes, where a majority of Americans believe that

789
00:44:16,680 --> 00:44:20,080
Speaker 1: the cigarettes and vaping is as are more dangerous than

790
00:44:20,120 --> 00:44:24,000
Speaker 1: smoking cigarettes, when it's diametrically opposite in which a majority

791
00:44:24,040 --> 00:44:27,399
Speaker 1: of doctors believe that nicotine is what causes cancer, when

792
00:44:27,480 --> 00:44:30,759
Speaker 1: nicotine doesn't cause cancer. It's the combustible elements of the

793
00:44:30,800 --> 00:44:35,040
Speaker 1: cigarette that cause that cause cancer. Right, So they're propaganda

794
00:44:35,080 --> 00:44:37,839
Speaker 1: both then and now the modern day stuff that we're

795
00:44:37,840 --> 00:44:40,520
Speaker 1: seeing around vaping and even somewhat around the roll of

796
00:44:40,520 --> 00:44:44,959
Speaker 1: opioids and pain management. You know, it's just horrific propaganda

797
00:44:45,040 --> 00:44:47,359
Speaker 1: that helps explain a big part of the American War

798
00:44:47,400 --> 00:44:50,120
Speaker 1: on drugs and why we've had such a problem, not

799
00:44:50,200 --> 00:44:52,680
Speaker 1: just a mass incarceration, but why we have a hundred

800
00:44:52,719 --> 00:44:56,000
Speaker 1: thousand people dying of overdoses today. Now, if you ask

801
00:44:56,080 --> 00:44:59,680
Speaker 1: on our side where we've been most successful, Hey, man,

802
00:44:59,719 --> 00:45:02,480
Speaker 1: we don't through propaganda. We're just all about the evidence

803
00:45:02,520 --> 00:45:06,440
Speaker 1: about the science. But I'll tell you this, UM, I

804
00:45:06,480 --> 00:45:09,880
Speaker 1: think you know there was one of the things we did, UM,

805
00:45:09,960 --> 00:45:12,520
Speaker 1: that I think was very effective was that we were

806
00:45:12,880 --> 00:45:16,440
Speaker 1: we were smart about our messaging. You know, UH already

807
00:45:16,440 --> 00:45:20,000
Speaker 1: almost twenty five years ago, we did some UH focus

808
00:45:20,040 --> 00:45:23,600
Speaker 1: groups in public opinion testing, and we realized that most Americans,

809
00:45:23,800 --> 00:45:27,200
Speaker 1: the word legalized to them meant something being out of control,

810
00:45:27,520 --> 00:45:31,520
Speaker 1: whereas when we meant legalization, we meant regulation. And we

811
00:45:31,600 --> 00:45:34,759
Speaker 1: realized that using the phrase of tax control, regulate, and

812
00:45:34,960 --> 00:45:38,440
Speaker 1: educate was the way to reassure people in the middle

813
00:45:38,600 --> 00:45:43,280
Speaker 1: that what legalization was was a responsible regulatory approach. And then,

814
00:45:43,640 --> 00:45:45,759
Speaker 1: you know, I remember you know, back in this is

815
00:45:45,760 --> 00:45:49,400
Speaker 1: about ten years ago, different groups, my organization, other organizations

816
00:45:49,400 --> 00:45:51,880
Speaker 1: which had sometimes different views about what would be the

817
00:45:51,880 --> 00:45:54,719
Speaker 1: most powerful message. You know, some people said that it's

818
00:45:54,760 --> 00:45:58,520
Speaker 1: about personal freedom. Some people said it's about marijuana being

819
00:45:58,560 --> 00:46:00,800
Speaker 1: safe for than alcohol. Some people said it's about the

820
00:46:00,880 --> 00:46:04,080
Speaker 1: medical value. Right. But what we all agreed on was

821
00:46:04,120 --> 00:46:07,880
Speaker 1: that say whatever you want to say, but come Labor Day,

822
00:46:07,880 --> 00:46:10,440
Speaker 1: two months before election day, when we were gonna have

823
00:46:10,440 --> 00:46:13,439
Speaker 1: an initiative on the ballot, we would all stop our

824
00:46:13,480 --> 00:46:16,880
Speaker 1: own favorite messaging and we would rely on the messaging

825
00:46:16,920 --> 00:46:19,520
Speaker 1: that the polling told us was gonna work best to

826
00:46:19,680 --> 00:46:23,319
Speaker 1: persuade the fearful soccer mom, the person in the middle right,

827
00:46:23,400 --> 00:46:26,879
Speaker 1: the the American parent who maybe used marijuana or they're

828
00:46:26,920 --> 00:46:30,280
Speaker 1: younger who was kind of scared but new marijuana prohibition

829
00:46:30,320 --> 00:46:34,600
Speaker 1: didn't work. And those two messages were, hey, we'd rather

830
00:46:34,640 --> 00:46:38,000
Speaker 1: have the cops focusing on real crime instead of going

831
00:46:38,040 --> 00:46:40,960
Speaker 1: after young people from marijuana. And we'd rather have the

832
00:46:41,000 --> 00:46:43,200
Speaker 1: government taxing and regulating these stuff instead of giving all

833
00:46:43,200 --> 00:46:46,560
Speaker 1: the money to the gangsters. And that message discipline, which

834
00:46:46,640 --> 00:46:49,399
Speaker 1: was you know true in most states, really helped us

835
00:46:49,600 --> 00:46:53,040
Speaker 1: move forward. Now you know, we're this little kind of

836
00:46:53,080 --> 00:46:58,040
Speaker 1: sweet spot right now where there's almost there's remarkably little

837
00:46:58,239 --> 00:47:01,239
Speaker 1: negative stuff coming out about merril juanna. I mean, it's

838
00:47:01,280 --> 00:47:03,040
Speaker 1: almost as if it's you know, with the with the

839
00:47:03,080 --> 00:47:07,320
Speaker 1: mass commercialization, with marijuana emerging in liquid forms and chocolate forms,

840
00:47:07,320 --> 00:47:09,759
Speaker 1: and this and that, and and the medical value being

841
00:47:09,800 --> 00:47:13,120
Speaker 1: more and more appreciated. But we're in this period where

842
00:47:13,160 --> 00:47:15,920
Speaker 1: I see it beginning to swell up now, where we're

843
00:47:15,920 --> 00:47:18,239
Speaker 1: gonna see the pendulum begin to swing, and people are

844
00:47:18,239 --> 00:47:21,400
Speaker 1: gonna start talking about the harms of marijuana again and

845
00:47:21,440 --> 00:47:24,000
Speaker 1: the dangers of marijuana, and bringing back both some of

846
00:47:24,040 --> 00:47:26,759
Speaker 1: the science which is true about some risks of marijuana,

847
00:47:27,000 --> 00:47:29,200
Speaker 1: but also some of the propaganda. It's why I was

848
00:47:29,320 --> 00:47:32,600
Speaker 1: very reassured when just recently the annual Survey of of

849
00:47:32,719 --> 00:47:36,120
Speaker 1: Drug Use came out and it showed that marijuana use

850
00:47:36,160 --> 00:47:39,480
Speaker 1: among adolescents dropped more or last year than almost any

851
00:47:39,560 --> 00:47:43,840
Speaker 1: year in decades. So notwithstanding the broad legalization and commercialization,

852
00:47:44,360 --> 00:47:46,720
Speaker 1: you know, and notwithstanding the fact that marijuana use among

853
00:47:46,719 --> 00:47:50,719
Speaker 1: people my age is increasing dramatically, marijuana use among adolescents

854
00:47:50,800 --> 00:47:54,040
Speaker 1: keeps dropping. So as long as that stays the case,

855
00:47:54,120 --> 00:47:56,520
Speaker 1: I think we're in a sweet spot. But at some point,

856
00:47:56,600 --> 00:48:00,640
Speaker 1: because this goes up and down irrespective of public policy,

857
00:48:01,040 --> 00:48:03,120
Speaker 1: you know, adolescents are gonna get into weed again, and

858
00:48:03,120 --> 00:48:05,520
Speaker 1: we're gonna see an increase, and then we'll see the

859
00:48:05,600 --> 00:48:10,400
Speaker 1: anti drug propaganda reemerging. Yes, save the save the children.

860
00:48:11,200 --> 00:48:13,840
Speaker 1: That's a that's a that's a heck of an effective message.

861
00:48:13,920 --> 00:48:16,000
Speaker 1: Right well, you know right, I mean so often the

862
00:48:16,200 --> 00:48:19,160
Speaker 1: entire war on drugs has been justified as one great

863
00:48:19,200 --> 00:48:22,239
Speaker 1: big child protection act. And now when we look at

864
00:48:22,239 --> 00:48:25,160
Speaker 1: the opposition to eat cigarettes right where, we know that

865
00:48:25,200 --> 00:48:28,320
Speaker 1: you know, smokers in their thirties, forties, fifties, and sixties

866
00:48:28,360 --> 00:48:31,680
Speaker 1: switching to East cigarettes could dramatically you know, cut, you know,

867
00:48:31,760 --> 00:48:35,200
Speaker 1: tobacco related deaths. But hey, what about the kids. They've

868
00:48:35,239 --> 00:48:37,200
Speaker 1: been jeweling, they've been doing this stuff. And even though

869
00:48:37,239 --> 00:48:40,319
Speaker 1: the risk to them are dramatically, dramatically less than the

870
00:48:40,360 --> 00:48:43,840
Speaker 1: harms to adult smokers, Hey man, it's all about the kids.

871
00:48:44,120 --> 00:48:46,840
Speaker 1: If a million adults got to die prematurely so that

872
00:48:46,920 --> 00:48:49,320
Speaker 1: we can keep a bunch of kids from vaping, hey,

873
00:48:49,360 --> 00:48:52,000
Speaker 1: that's a price worth pay it. So we're seeing the

874
00:48:52,000 --> 00:48:56,320
Speaker 1: old drug war rhetoric now connecting to this issues around tobacco, vaping,

875
00:48:56,360 --> 00:48:59,480
Speaker 1: and cigarettes. And with that, we're gonna take a quick

876
00:48:59,520 --> 00:49:01,560
Speaker 1: moment to hear word from our sponsor. But we'll be

877
00:49:01,680 --> 00:49:12,120
Speaker 1: right back with Ethan Naedelman and we've returned. I'd like

878
00:49:12,200 --> 00:49:16,840
Speaker 1: to talk of briefly about this is something that that

879
00:49:16,960 --> 00:49:21,759
Speaker 1: I personally take as good news. We're talking about evolving policy.

880
00:49:22,560 --> 00:49:24,880
Speaker 1: One of the things that we've mentioned in the past

881
00:49:25,040 --> 00:49:30,040
Speaker 1: on this show is that a clear um, a clear

882
00:49:30,160 --> 00:49:35,600
Speaker 1: and delitarious effect of prohibitive drug policies is that they

883
00:49:35,640 --> 00:49:40,800
Speaker 1: can stymy research into possible benefits of a substance or

884
00:49:40,880 --> 00:49:45,640
Speaker 1: even just learning more about something. And that that applies

885
00:49:45,680 --> 00:49:49,680
Speaker 1: to marijuana for a long time, but it also applies

886
00:49:50,120 --> 00:49:54,960
Speaker 1: to psilocybin to cite of these these psychoactive, hallucin genic

887
00:49:55,120 --> 00:50:00,279
Speaker 1: rather substances. And in the past few weeks or you know,

888
00:50:00,320 --> 00:50:02,680
Speaker 1: in the past few years. But I was just reading

889
00:50:02,719 --> 00:50:05,160
Speaker 1: the news a few weeks ago up to a few

890
00:50:05,200 --> 00:50:09,040
Speaker 1: days ago, it seems that there has been a lot

891
00:50:09,360 --> 00:50:14,799
Speaker 1: of progress in the research front on the possible benefits,

892
00:50:15,960 --> 00:50:20,680
Speaker 1: the possible benefits of psychoactive substances. And this is this

893
00:50:20,760 --> 00:50:23,840
Speaker 1: is pretty solid methodology. It appears to me. I'm not

894
00:50:23,880 --> 00:50:27,120
Speaker 1: the expert. I wasn't involved in the studies. Um Uh,

895
00:50:27,440 --> 00:50:29,960
Speaker 1: you know, I I have an I understand what they're

896
00:50:29,960 --> 00:50:36,319
Speaker 1: talking about. Yes, perhaps, yes, that's that's the most diplomatic way,

897
00:50:36,360 --> 00:50:38,960
Speaker 1: thank you. Um But I wanted to I wanted to

898
00:50:39,000 --> 00:50:44,680
Speaker 1: ask you, uh specifically about this because I know there's

899
00:50:44,760 --> 00:50:47,920
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of people struggle to find

900
00:50:48,040 --> 00:50:52,279
Speaker 1: optimism in in the like the situation that we have

901
00:50:52,360 --> 00:50:55,040
Speaker 1: been in as a nation for so long. There are

902
00:50:55,040 --> 00:50:57,080
Speaker 1: a lot of there, there are a lot of dangerous

903
00:50:57,120 --> 00:51:00,680
Speaker 1: and terrible things that have happened as a result of

904
00:51:00,760 --> 00:51:06,600
Speaker 1: prohibitive policies. So what do we see is the future

905
00:51:07,200 --> 00:51:11,600
Speaker 1: of psychedelics? I'm asking specifically because I just read that

906
00:51:12,560 --> 00:51:16,319
Speaker 1: someone in New York has filed a bill to legalize

907
00:51:16,960 --> 00:51:20,840
Speaker 1: medical psilocybin. Do you think these kinds of things will pass?

908
00:51:21,000 --> 00:51:25,080
Speaker 1: Will will psilocybin become kind of like will it assume

909
00:51:25,160 --> 00:51:28,399
Speaker 1: the role that marijuana currently has in the future, will

910
00:51:28,520 --> 00:51:31,160
Speaker 1: not quite marijuana? Ben It's a great question. I mean,

911
00:51:31,200 --> 00:51:35,400
Speaker 1: there is truly a psychedelic renaissance going on right now,

912
00:51:35,960 --> 00:51:39,680
Speaker 1: and most of these substances psilocybin also mescaline. I mean,

913
00:51:39,719 --> 00:51:42,839
Speaker 1: psilocybin is the key ingredient mushrooms. Mescaline is the key

914
00:51:42,920 --> 00:51:47,080
Speaker 1: ingredient in peyote and the san pedro plant. Then there's LSD.

915
00:51:47,200 --> 00:51:49,520
Speaker 1: Then there's M D M a ecstasy, which is not

916
00:51:49,640 --> 00:51:52,239
Speaker 1: really a psychedelic, but you know sometimes people group it

917
00:51:52,280 --> 00:51:54,640
Speaker 1: in that category. And then there's five M E O

918
00:51:54,760 --> 00:51:57,800
Speaker 1: D M T, which is what they call the toad medicine. Uh,

919
00:51:57,840 --> 00:52:00,319
Speaker 1: you know, it's another powerful thing. So those just some

920
00:52:00,360 --> 00:52:03,680
Speaker 1: of the examples. Um So, there's an incredible, really a

921
00:52:03,719 --> 00:52:06,680
Speaker 1: psychedelic renaissance going on right now, and I'm just blown

922
00:52:06,719 --> 00:52:08,319
Speaker 1: away by it. I was just at a couple of

923
00:52:08,360 --> 00:52:11,840
Speaker 1: conferences on psychedelics and business and then psychedelics and the

924
00:52:11,880 --> 00:52:13,920
Speaker 1: movements in both in Miami and New York in the

925
00:52:13,960 --> 00:52:17,439
Speaker 1: recent months. And even though these drugs are and what's

926
00:52:17,440 --> 00:52:21,080
Speaker 1: called Schedule one in most cases, I'm not ketamine kena

927
00:52:21,080 --> 00:52:23,799
Speaker 1: means the one legal sort of psychedelic that we have

928
00:52:23,880 --> 00:52:27,239
Speaker 1: ketamine clinics popping up and it's legally regulated, and so

929
00:52:27,320 --> 00:52:30,879
Speaker 1: that's the one short acting quasi psychedelic that's out there.

930
00:52:31,560 --> 00:52:35,000
Speaker 1: But you know, Schedule one, what that means is that

931
00:52:35,080 --> 00:52:38,120
Speaker 1: the government has said that there's no legitimate medical uses

932
00:52:38,120 --> 00:52:40,759
Speaker 1: and great harm associated with this drug, and you know,

933
00:52:40,920 --> 00:52:44,600
Speaker 1: ridiculously marijuana remains in Schedule one. So it points out

934
00:52:44,640 --> 00:52:47,759
Speaker 1: what a farce the entire scheduling system is and how

935
00:52:47,880 --> 00:52:50,520
Speaker 1: highly politicized it is. I mean that, you know, and

936
00:52:50,560 --> 00:52:53,239
Speaker 1: I think in a way that farce helped us in

937
00:52:53,239 --> 00:52:56,520
Speaker 1: our marijuana legalization efforts because you know, we're here, we're

938
00:52:56,560 --> 00:52:59,080
Speaker 1: within these ballot initiative on medical marijuana back in the

939
00:52:59,160 --> 00:53:01,520
Speaker 1: nineties and two those ends, and the government saying there's

940
00:53:01,560 --> 00:53:05,040
Speaker 1: no such thing as medical marijuana. And you know, over

941
00:53:05,120 --> 00:53:08,520
Speaker 1: third of Americans know people personally are using marijuana medically.

942
00:53:08,560 --> 00:53:10,920
Speaker 1: So the fact that the government was lying helped to

943
00:53:11,000 --> 00:53:14,279
Speaker 1: delegitimize their case and helped us, i think, ultimately move

944
00:53:14,360 --> 00:53:18,360
Speaker 1: forward with legalizing marijuana winning support. Now with the psychedelics,

945
00:53:18,680 --> 00:53:23,000
Speaker 1: it is technically possible to do research on Schedule one drugs.

946
00:53:23,080 --> 00:53:26,200
Speaker 1: I mean, there's even been research giving heroin to human

947
00:53:26,239 --> 00:53:28,920
Speaker 1: subjects going on in the past at Columbia and Johns

948
00:53:28,960 --> 00:53:32,320
Speaker 1: Hopkins and at Wayne State in Michigan, So it's possible.

949
00:53:32,560 --> 00:53:35,040
Speaker 1: And which you've now seen happening is more and more

950
00:53:35,120 --> 00:53:38,279
Speaker 1: private companies or in a key case, an organization called

951
00:53:38,320 --> 00:53:43,200
Speaker 1: MAPS Multidisplay Associated psycholic studies that have been moving forward

952
00:53:43,320 --> 00:53:46,000
Speaker 1: with the f d A getting permission to do these

953
00:53:46,080 --> 00:53:49,200
Speaker 1: research studies, right. And so we're now seeing that m

954
00:53:49,280 --> 00:53:51,680
Speaker 1: d m A is probably going to be approved by

955
00:53:51,719 --> 00:53:55,840
Speaker 1: the f d A forward treatment of PTSD at roughly

956
00:53:55,880 --> 00:53:59,080
Speaker 1: two years from now. And we're also seeing that psilocybin,

957
00:53:59,239 --> 00:54:02,280
Speaker 1: the ingredient of ushrooms, is probably going to be approved

958
00:54:02,320 --> 00:54:05,600
Speaker 1: by the fd f DA for treatment of attractable depression

959
00:54:05,960 --> 00:54:08,799
Speaker 1: maybe a year or two after that, right, So that's

960
00:54:08,800 --> 00:54:11,920
Speaker 1: going to cause them to be rescheduled. Um, So we

961
00:54:12,040 --> 00:54:15,520
Speaker 1: are seeing some evolution. And meanwhile, there are dozens of

962
00:54:15,560 --> 00:54:19,600
Speaker 1: studies mostly funded now more with private investment capital than

963
00:54:19,600 --> 00:54:22,920
Speaker 1: with foundation support, you know, that are moving forward, especially

964
00:54:22,960 --> 00:54:25,440
Speaker 1: in the US and Canada, a few in Europe. Right.

965
00:54:25,680 --> 00:54:29,320
Speaker 1: And finally, just a few months ago, the National Institute

966
00:54:29,360 --> 00:54:31,800
Speaker 1: on Drug Abuse for the first time in like forty

967
00:54:31,840 --> 00:54:36,600
Speaker 1: or fifty years, just approved a grant to Johns Hopkins

968
00:54:36,960 --> 00:54:40,040
Speaker 1: for a study giving psilocybin and seeing if it helps

969
00:54:40,080 --> 00:54:42,920
Speaker 1: people stop smoking. So I think we're gonna see more

970
00:54:43,000 --> 00:54:45,960
Speaker 1: federal funding in this area as well. So, on the

971
00:54:46,000 --> 00:54:49,799
Speaker 1: one hand, there's this kind of medicalization approach that's going

972
00:54:49,840 --> 00:54:52,520
Speaker 1: through the f d A or its European equivalents that

973
00:54:53,000 --> 00:54:55,520
Speaker 1: is really showing this incredible promise. And there are you know,

974
00:54:55,560 --> 00:54:57,360
Speaker 1: you look at that some of these companies out The

975
00:54:57,400 --> 00:55:00,920
Speaker 1: company doing the psilocybin research, Compass, has a stock market

976
00:55:01,000 --> 00:55:03,400
Speaker 1: valuation of like a billion and a half dollars, and

977
00:55:03,440 --> 00:55:05,719
Speaker 1: one of the major investment funds you know, also been

978
00:55:05,760 --> 00:55:08,319
Speaker 1: a half dollars. And another company that's doing setting up

979
00:55:08,360 --> 00:55:10,799
Speaker 1: retreats and clinics, you know, is valued at a half

980
00:55:10,840 --> 00:55:14,000
Speaker 1: a billion dollars. So this is a rapidly growing area,

981
00:55:14,120 --> 00:55:17,440
Speaker 1: both of small start up firms and of companies going public.

982
00:55:18,000 --> 00:55:20,520
Speaker 1: And I think this is going to continue. I mean,

983
00:55:20,520 --> 00:55:23,279
Speaker 1: there'll be mistakes made and there'll be some pushback, but

984
00:55:23,360 --> 00:55:27,000
Speaker 1: the media coverage is fantastic. Then there's that second track

985
00:55:27,120 --> 00:55:31,080
Speaker 1: that you mentioned, the decriminalization track, right, that's what was

986
00:55:31,160 --> 00:55:36,680
Speaker 1: started when Denver decriminalized uh, you know, psilocybmin possession. I

987
00:55:36,680 --> 00:55:39,080
Speaker 1: think it was a few years ago, and then the

988
00:55:39,080 --> 00:55:41,680
Speaker 1: city of Oakland did the same thing, and more recently

989
00:55:41,719 --> 00:55:44,120
Speaker 1: Detroit did it in the most recent election, and then

990
00:55:44,200 --> 00:55:50,080
Speaker 1: Oregon remarkably last year past two major ballot initiatives. One

991
00:55:50,200 --> 00:55:52,800
Speaker 1: was one that my organization Drug Policy Alliance under the

992
00:55:52,880 --> 00:55:56,719
Speaker 1: leadership of my successors, you know, had were introduced, and

993
00:55:56,719 --> 00:55:59,919
Speaker 1: that was to decriminalize possession of all drugs, including haron coke,

994
00:56:00,080 --> 00:56:02,320
Speaker 1: m f amphetamine, where people essentially would not go to

995
00:56:02,400 --> 00:56:05,319
Speaker 1: jail for possession of small amounts. But the other one

996
00:56:05,880 --> 00:56:11,200
Speaker 1: was a psychedelics initiative that basically said possession is decriminalized

997
00:56:11,480 --> 00:56:14,279
Speaker 1: and that the state of Oregon should move forward with

998
00:56:14,400 --> 00:56:19,319
Speaker 1: allowing people to be prescribed psilocybin or or psilocybin not

999
00:56:19,480 --> 00:56:22,919
Speaker 1: just for serious illness, but even for general mental health

1000
00:56:22,960 --> 00:56:26,080
Speaker 1: and well being. And so what we're gonna see now

1001
00:56:26,200 --> 00:56:30,520
Speaker 1: is more of that psychedelics reform moving forward through ballot

1002
00:56:30,560 --> 00:56:34,120
Speaker 1: initiatives in other states. It might be Washington, California, Colorado,

1003
00:56:34,360 --> 00:56:36,920
Speaker 1: you name it. You know, typically the western states go first,

1004
00:56:37,440 --> 00:56:39,600
Speaker 1: or it might be legislation like the one in New

1005
00:56:39,640 --> 00:56:42,400
Speaker 1: York that you mentioned, you know, where it's beginning to

1006
00:56:42,440 --> 00:56:47,360
Speaker 1: move forward. So these two tracks, the decriminalization and the

1007
00:56:47,480 --> 00:56:52,319
Speaker 1: legitimization of regulated you know, access to these drugs in

1008
00:56:52,400 --> 00:56:56,080
Speaker 1: a quasi medical environment and clinics, and on the other hand,

1009
00:56:56,160 --> 00:57:00,480
Speaker 1: the medical, very medical environment. I mean, there's amazing momentum

1010
00:57:00,520 --> 00:57:03,759
Speaker 1: behind these things. I cannot claim much credit because you know, I,

1011
00:57:03,800 --> 00:57:06,239
Speaker 1: although personally psychologics have played a very important role in

1012
00:57:06,280 --> 00:57:09,200
Speaker 1: my own life, in my organization, we were only involved

1013
00:57:09,239 --> 00:57:11,760
Speaker 1: at the edges of this, and far more credit goes

1014
00:57:11,800 --> 00:57:15,160
Speaker 1: to you know, Rick Doblin, who founded the Multidistroyer Associated

1015
00:57:15,200 --> 00:57:18,840
Speaker 1: Psychologic Studies MAPS back in the eighties and has led

1016
00:57:18,880 --> 00:57:23,040
Speaker 1: this effort, and to other researchers, you know at major universities,

1017
00:57:23,080 --> 00:57:25,480
Speaker 1: and now to some of the investors who are obviously

1018
00:57:25,480 --> 00:57:27,800
Speaker 1: trying to make money but taking some real risk to

1019
00:57:27,840 --> 00:57:30,560
Speaker 1: get this stuff moving forward. And of course the philanthropists

1020
00:57:30,760 --> 00:57:34,560
Speaker 1: like Soros. Actually, so you know, you know, it's funny

1021
00:57:34,600 --> 00:57:36,560
Speaker 1: when I talked to George about the psycholic stuff a

1022
00:57:36,600 --> 00:57:39,400
Speaker 1: long time ago, and then I gotta tell you just

1023
00:57:39,440 --> 00:57:43,200
Speaker 1: a funny story here. So back um uh it must

1024
00:57:43,240 --> 00:57:46,800
Speaker 1: have been twenty fifteen, I think it was, And I

1025
00:57:46,960 --> 00:57:51,800
Speaker 1: organized a fundraising dinner um at Soros's apartment, right, and

1026
00:57:51,840 --> 00:57:54,120
Speaker 1: I had there, you know, some of our biggest donors.

1027
00:57:54,120 --> 00:57:56,520
Speaker 1: One of them was Sean Parker, you know from Facebook

1028
00:57:56,520 --> 00:57:58,600
Speaker 1: fame and all that. And another one was a guy

1029
00:57:58,640 --> 00:58:01,280
Speaker 1: named John Morrigan, a very tradercial guy in Florida who

1030
00:58:01,280 --> 00:58:04,440
Speaker 1: has been a big Democratic Party contributor, and then one

1031
00:58:04,440 --> 00:58:07,680
Speaker 1: of Soros's sons was there, and some other major people

1032
00:58:07,680 --> 00:58:11,160
Speaker 1: from investment banks and things like that, and and there

1033
00:58:11,240 --> 00:58:15,560
Speaker 1: was this lull in the conversation and and so just

1034
00:58:15,600 --> 00:58:16,880
Speaker 1: for the hell of it, I don't know what gut

1035
00:58:16,960 --> 00:58:20,040
Speaker 1: into me. I said to them, you'll never guess where

1036
00:58:20,080 --> 00:58:22,760
Speaker 1: I was last week? And they said where? I said,

1037
00:58:22,800 --> 00:58:26,680
Speaker 1: the World Ayahuasca Congress, an Ebisa, And they said the

1038
00:58:26,720 --> 00:58:30,320
Speaker 1: World what Congress? To Iyah? Who the Iyah? What right?

1039
00:58:30,640 --> 00:58:32,080
Speaker 1: And you know, they had no idea what I was

1040
00:58:32,120 --> 00:58:35,040
Speaker 1: talking about. And at that point, George's son jumps jumps

1041
00:58:35,040 --> 00:58:36,920
Speaker 1: in and he goes, you know that, or actually calls

1042
00:58:36,960 --> 00:58:39,360
Speaker 1: him George, you know, you have no idea how many

1043
00:58:39,400 --> 00:58:44,320
Speaker 1: ayahuasca sessions are happening in Brooklyn and Manhattan every weekend? Right,

1044
00:58:44,560 --> 00:58:47,280
Speaker 1: So George, you know, he and the key staff were

1045
00:58:47,320 --> 00:58:50,040
Speaker 1: never much into this. But fortunately one of the key

1046
00:58:50,120 --> 00:58:52,720
Speaker 1: people working within the foundation a good friend of mine,

1047
00:58:52,760 --> 00:58:56,720
Speaker 1: Kasha Milanowska. She's been sympathetic to this. So we've begun

1048
00:58:56,800 --> 00:58:59,680
Speaker 1: to see a limited amount of funding coming out of

1049
00:58:59,680 --> 00:59:03,400
Speaker 1: sorows this foundation, very very small um for cyclost reform.

1050
00:59:03,440 --> 00:59:06,040
Speaker 1: I'm not even sure George knows about it. Um, but

1051
00:59:06,120 --> 00:59:09,200
Speaker 1: it's uh, but it's definitely helping, you know, and from

1052
00:59:09,200 --> 00:59:11,440
Speaker 1: their angle, it's putting the money in on the social

1053
00:59:11,520 --> 00:59:14,200
Speaker 1: justice side, right, So it's about the role of indigenous

1054
00:59:14,240 --> 00:59:17,360
Speaker 1: people and making sure they're protected. It's about trying to

1055
00:59:17,400 --> 00:59:20,320
Speaker 1: introduce some racial justice elements in the psycholics world. So

1056
00:59:20,400 --> 00:59:23,320
Speaker 1: that's really the focus of his foundation on this stuff.

1057
00:59:23,360 --> 00:59:26,840
Speaker 1: But it's it's tiny compared to everything else. I wonder

1058
00:59:26,880 --> 00:59:31,640
Speaker 1: how many of those stories you have just weird connections

1059
00:59:31,720 --> 00:59:35,080
Speaker 1: and then drugs and somewhere I'm mad. I gotta tell

1060
00:59:35,080 --> 00:59:37,240
Speaker 1: you it's true. I mean also, you know, from from

1061
00:59:37,280 --> 00:59:40,200
Speaker 1: the left wing to the right wing and foreign presidents

1062
00:59:40,200 --> 00:59:43,760
Speaker 1: and dignitaries and media. It's funny, it's true. These stories

1063
00:59:43,840 --> 00:59:46,040
Speaker 1: keep pouring out, and uh, you know when the when

1064
00:59:46,080 --> 00:59:47,720
Speaker 1: they I'll write a book about it. I guess is

1065
00:59:47,840 --> 00:59:51,120
Speaker 1: the common expression that when gives about this. I'll tell you.

1066
00:59:51,200 --> 00:59:54,640
Speaker 1: One of the joys about doing this podcast, Psychoactive is

1067
00:59:54,680 --> 00:59:56,680
Speaker 1: that in each of the episodes I get to tell

1068
00:59:56,720 --> 00:59:59,320
Speaker 1: some of these stories, you know, because I'm having guests

1069
00:59:59,320 --> 01:00:02,360
Speaker 1: on and you know, I'll have somebody who wrote a

1070
01:00:02,680 --> 01:00:04,880
Speaker 1: Pulitzer Prize winning book about the drug war within the

1071
01:00:04,880 --> 01:00:07,400
Speaker 1: black community, and I can share my experiences with Jesse

1072
01:00:07,600 --> 01:00:10,439
Speaker 1: Jackson and Charlie Rankling others or or you know. Ben

1073
01:00:10,480 --> 01:00:13,200
Speaker 1: mentioned having the former Colombian president who won the Nobel

1074
01:00:13,240 --> 01:00:15,560
Speaker 1: Peace Prize, one Milo Santos, but I've known him for

1075
01:00:15,600 --> 01:00:18,000
Speaker 1: a decade and can tell some of those stories and

1076
01:00:18,040 --> 01:00:20,200
Speaker 1: so that that's that's one of the joys for me

1077
01:00:20,240 --> 01:00:23,000
Speaker 1: of doing the podcast. And this is one of the

1078
01:00:23,040 --> 01:00:27,280
Speaker 1: reasons that it was so important for us to to

1079
01:00:27,560 --> 01:00:30,800
Speaker 1: have you on the show today. And and first, Uh,

1080
01:00:30,960 --> 01:00:33,800
Speaker 1: as we said the very beginning, thank you so much

1081
01:00:34,040 --> 01:00:39,080
Speaker 1: for joining us, because we want our our fellow listeners

1082
01:00:39,760 --> 01:00:44,520
Speaker 1: to learn more about these incredibly important issues, to learn

1083
01:00:44,520 --> 01:00:48,240
Speaker 1: the context, to learn the present, and to learn the future,

1084
01:00:48,880 --> 01:00:53,280
Speaker 1: and to hopefully, and I will make this call to action,

1085
01:00:53,440 --> 01:00:58,920
Speaker 1: hopefully to join in creating that future because as you,

1086
01:00:59,040 --> 01:01:03,280
Speaker 1: as you point out, it does it's this is uh,

1087
01:01:03,320 --> 01:01:06,000
Speaker 1: this is such a complex situation. There are a lot

1088
01:01:06,040 --> 01:01:11,200
Speaker 1: of factors involved, and I think everybody can agree that

1089
01:01:11,360 --> 01:01:14,439
Speaker 1: as a society, the US could do a lot better.

1090
01:01:14,920 --> 01:01:18,920
Speaker 1: It's uh, the way a corporate America would would probably

1091
01:01:18,920 --> 01:01:23,200
Speaker 1: phrase it is there are areas of opportunity. Well, Ben,

1092
01:01:23,240 --> 01:01:25,320
Speaker 1: I'll tell you something. I mean, given especially the name

1093
01:01:25,360 --> 01:01:27,640
Speaker 1: of your podcast here, stuff they don't want you to know.

1094
01:01:28,320 --> 01:01:30,640
Speaker 1: You know. My one sort of parting piece of advice

1095
01:01:30,680 --> 01:01:33,960
Speaker 1: for your listeners is, whenever you see a new drug scare,

1096
01:01:34,800 --> 01:01:37,600
Speaker 1: look again, because the odds are it's wrong. Now in

1097
01:01:37,600 --> 01:01:40,960
Speaker 1: the case of fentanyl and the overdoses, it's right. Fentanyl

1098
01:01:41,080 --> 01:01:43,120
Speaker 1: is deadly and you've got to be careful and not

1099
01:01:43,160 --> 01:01:45,680
Speaker 1: be mucking around. And it's even showing up in cocaine

1100
01:01:45,720 --> 01:01:48,360
Speaker 1: and other drugs like that. So there's some truth to

1101
01:01:48,440 --> 01:01:50,720
Speaker 1: it there, right, and so you do need to be aware.

1102
01:01:50,760 --> 01:01:53,040
Speaker 1: And it's a shame that government's been lying and deceiving

1103
01:01:53,120 --> 01:01:55,800
Speaker 1: so much that people do sometimes fail to appreciate that.

1104
01:01:56,280 --> 01:01:58,280
Speaker 1: On the other hand, when you see the stuff now

1105
01:01:58,360 --> 01:02:01,160
Speaker 1: being said about opioids, and when you see the stuff

1106
01:02:01,160 --> 01:02:04,840
Speaker 1: being said about vaping of nicotine, you know that stuff

1107
01:02:04,880 --> 01:02:09,360
Speaker 1: oftentimes is grossly exaggerated and oftentimes factually and accurate. And

1108
01:02:09,400 --> 01:02:12,400
Speaker 1: the fact that the mainstream media, including the New York

1109
01:02:12,440 --> 01:02:14,880
Speaker 1: Times and others, are buying into this stuff. The fact

1110
01:02:14,960 --> 01:02:17,360
Speaker 1: that some of the worst defenders sometimes are not right

1111
01:02:17,400 --> 01:02:21,000
Speaker 1: wing nutheads but but left wing progressive politicians who have

1112
01:02:21,320 --> 01:02:23,560
Speaker 1: generally been good about ending the war on drugs, but

1113
01:02:23,640 --> 01:02:26,480
Speaker 1: they jump on the bandwagon when it comes to new

1114
01:02:26,520 --> 01:02:29,320
Speaker 1: things around opioids or vaping. So I would just you know,

1115
01:02:29,400 --> 01:02:33,000
Speaker 1: partning words was, you know, look carefully, if you're curious,

1116
01:02:33,160 --> 01:02:35,960
Speaker 1: look at the evidence, and don't buy the initial boat.

1117
01:02:36,400 --> 01:02:39,080
Speaker 1: Because the willingness of even smart people or people who

1118
01:02:39,120 --> 01:02:41,840
Speaker 1: think they're smart and educated and have wisdom and are

1119
01:02:41,880 --> 01:02:46,520
Speaker 1: progressive to buy into mainstream boat is unlimited. But because

1120
01:02:46,600 --> 01:02:50,400
Speaker 1: we see ourselves as enlightened and progressive, oftentimes we think

1121
01:02:50,400 --> 01:02:55,280
Speaker 1: we're immune to that. But oftentimes we're not very well said. Yeah,

1122
01:02:55,520 --> 01:02:57,600
Speaker 1: and uh, we do have to we do have to

1123
01:02:57,600 --> 01:03:01,440
Speaker 1: do a little bit of disclosure. I think, Matt, we

1124
01:03:01,560 --> 01:03:05,920
Speaker 1: are both big, big fans of Psychoactive. I I am

1125
01:03:06,000 --> 01:03:12,560
Speaker 1: tremendously impressed. I have learned so much just from tuning

1126
01:03:12,680 --> 01:03:16,240
Speaker 1: in and that you are also instrumental in this show.

1127
01:03:16,680 --> 01:03:20,120
Speaker 1: This is a this is a Matt Frederick production. What

1128
01:03:20,400 --> 01:03:25,560
Speaker 1: I've never heard of this show before. I just today, Uh, Matt,

1129
01:03:25,800 --> 01:03:27,880
Speaker 1: I was so psyched when you came to the launch

1130
01:03:27,920 --> 01:03:30,640
Speaker 1: party for Psychoactive in New York and this summer, and

1131
01:03:30,960 --> 01:03:34,160
Speaker 1: the look in your eyes and your enthusiasm when you

1132
01:03:34,200 --> 01:03:36,960
Speaker 1: were meeting some of these characters I and I loved it.

1133
01:03:37,040 --> 01:03:39,080
Speaker 1: I loved it. No, it's true. Yeah, we were on

1134
01:03:39,120 --> 01:03:42,880
Speaker 1: a rooftop in New York City, and the it is

1135
01:03:42,920 --> 01:03:46,760
Speaker 1: they were characters in your life, but they're also highly

1136
01:03:46,800 --> 01:03:52,240
Speaker 1: influential people, mostly in the field of education. The people

1137
01:03:52,240 --> 01:03:55,680
Speaker 1: that I was speaking with, they were like professors who've

1138
01:03:55,720 --> 01:03:59,040
Speaker 1: been working for ages just studying some of these topics,

1139
01:03:59,280 --> 01:04:02,280
Speaker 1: and people who've been working their entire lives, you know,

1140
01:04:02,400 --> 01:04:04,760
Speaker 1: to advocate for some of the same things you're advocating for,

1141
01:04:04,880 --> 01:04:08,280
Speaker 1: ethan Um. It was very moving to be there. And yes,

1142
01:04:08,280 --> 01:04:11,000
Speaker 1: I am an executive producer on the show, but I

1143
01:04:11,040 --> 01:04:14,040
Speaker 1: would just say everybody, if you get a chance, please

1144
01:04:14,120 --> 01:04:18,680
Speaker 1: listen some of the some of the most interesting informative

1145
01:04:18,680 --> 01:04:23,080
Speaker 1: conversations around the topic of drug drugs exist in that show.

1146
01:04:23,320 --> 01:04:27,240
Speaker 1: And I'm very uncomfortable with drugs personally, and I don't

1147
01:04:27,360 --> 01:04:30,720
Speaker 1: use many, if at all. I have a vape uh

1148
01:04:30,720 --> 01:04:32,640
Speaker 1: and I drink some alcohol every once in a while.

1149
01:04:32,880 --> 01:04:36,640
Speaker 1: But it's it's really changed the way I view the

1150
01:04:36,680 --> 01:04:39,520
Speaker 1: topic entirely. So thank you for making the show, ethan

1151
01:04:39,560 --> 01:04:41,680
Speaker 1: and please check it out everybody, And I should just

1152
01:04:41,720 --> 01:04:43,600
Speaker 1: call you many people have asked me do I get

1153
01:04:43,680 --> 01:04:46,200
Speaker 1: high when I record the show? And the truth is

1154
01:04:46,240 --> 01:04:49,040
Speaker 1: I don't smoke merril Wana because I find that if

1155
01:04:49,080 --> 01:04:51,560
Speaker 1: I use merril Wana it's hard to stay focused and

1156
01:04:51,640 --> 01:04:54,040
Speaker 1: remember what the previous question I asked was. So I

1157
01:04:54,080 --> 01:04:57,120
Speaker 1: never get high before. But I just recorded an episode

1158
01:04:57,240 --> 01:05:00,280
Speaker 1: about this drug Creatum, which is sold legally in most

1159
01:05:00,360 --> 01:05:04,000
Speaker 1: days in America. And in this case, I went out yesterday,

1160
01:05:04,040 --> 01:05:06,560
Speaker 1: I bought some creative and I drank a glass of

1161
01:05:06,600 --> 01:05:10,200
Speaker 1: creative while I was interviewing my guest about this subject.

1162
01:05:10,280 --> 01:05:12,640
Speaker 1: So that was a bit of a new experience. So

1163
01:05:12,680 --> 01:05:17,240
Speaker 1: that's the new thing. You just do whatever. It's got

1164
01:05:17,240 --> 01:05:19,520
Speaker 1: to be a mild one because I'm not gonna you know,

1165
01:05:19,640 --> 01:05:21,640
Speaker 1: I was thinking I should I probably should start micro

1166
01:05:21,720 --> 01:05:24,000
Speaker 1: dosing before I do an episode on micro doos, saying,

1167
01:05:24,000 --> 01:05:26,160
Speaker 1: but I keep forgetting to micro dos. So, you know,

1168
01:05:27,800 --> 01:05:31,160
Speaker 1: so another thing I enjoyed. I I fully agree with

1169
01:05:31,240 --> 01:05:36,480
Speaker 1: Matt's point about the tremendously important educational nature, but I

1170
01:05:36,560 --> 01:05:41,480
Speaker 1: also I have to have to confirm what you said

1171
01:05:41,520 --> 01:05:44,560
Speaker 1: earlier about these stories just come out of me. That's

1172
01:05:44,560 --> 01:05:47,840
Speaker 1: something I really enjoy in Psychoactive. And there was a

1173
01:05:47,920 --> 01:05:50,880
Speaker 1: rolling stone interview. I think it was rolling Stone that

1174
01:05:50,920 --> 01:05:54,040
Speaker 1: you did where where, he said, when the laws had

1175
01:05:54,160 --> 01:05:58,280
Speaker 1: changed in New York, you and a friend like decided, Okay,

1176
01:05:58,320 --> 01:06:00,880
Speaker 1: we're gonna smoke a joint on this street. And there's

1177
01:06:00,920 --> 01:06:05,480
Speaker 1: there's a cop across the street. Then exactly, I'm walking

1178
01:06:05,480 --> 01:06:07,800
Speaker 1: with a friend. It's like the day or two after

1179
01:06:08,000 --> 01:06:10,160
Speaker 1: the New York law had passed. It's the first law

1180
01:06:10,200 --> 01:06:12,400
Speaker 1: in the country which allows people to smoke a joint

1181
01:06:12,400 --> 01:06:15,080
Speaker 1: in public. So we're in Central Park and we can't

1182
01:06:15,080 --> 01:06:17,120
Speaker 1: smoke in Central Park because you're not allowed to smoke

1183
01:06:17,200 --> 01:06:19,720
Speaker 1: tobacco in Central Park. So I said, let's go outside.

1184
01:06:19,720 --> 01:06:21,880
Speaker 1: So we walk outside. It's on Fifth Avenue, around a

1185
01:06:21,960 --> 01:06:25,600
Speaker 1: hundred street, right and and and so there we're on

1186
01:06:25,640 --> 01:06:28,680
Speaker 1: a sidewalk. It's legal. And I'm across the street from

1187
01:06:28,720 --> 01:06:31,040
Speaker 1: Mount SIDEI Hospital, which is actually where I was born,

1188
01:06:31,440 --> 01:06:34,080
Speaker 1: and there's a police car across the street. And I

1189
01:06:34,120 --> 01:06:36,000
Speaker 1: started to my friend, goes Ethan, what are you doing?

1190
01:06:36,040 --> 01:06:39,160
Speaker 1: I said, this is a cop car. I said, Poward,

1191
01:06:39,400 --> 01:06:42,640
Speaker 1: this is the meeting of freedom. And in fact, even

1192
01:06:42,680 --> 01:06:44,680
Speaker 1: if we were not two old white guys with two

1193
01:06:44,720 --> 01:06:47,960
Speaker 1: young black men, we could still do it. So I

1194
01:06:48,280 --> 01:06:50,760
Speaker 1: feel very proud of that moment. It really brought home

1195
01:06:50,760 --> 01:06:53,040
Speaker 1: to me the kind of personal element of the freedom

1196
01:06:53,080 --> 01:06:54,680
Speaker 1: that we're fighting for and trying to end the war

1197
01:06:54,760 --> 01:06:58,240
Speaker 1: on drugs. There you have it, everyone, check out Psychoactive.

1198
01:06:58,960 --> 01:07:05,360
Speaker 1: This has been Ethan Nate. Yeah, I'm sorry, I feel

1199
01:07:05,640 --> 01:07:08,000
Speaker 1: you know. My only regret here is that we do

1200
01:07:08,200 --> 01:07:12,080
Speaker 1: eventually have to end this episode. But that's not the

1201
01:07:12,240 --> 01:07:16,360
Speaker 1: end of the story. This story does continue in Psychoactive. UM.

1202
01:07:16,440 --> 01:07:22,040
Speaker 1: I would also like to highlight, uh, for anybody interested in, UM,

1203
01:07:22,080 --> 01:07:26,480
Speaker 1: how is it phrase the internationalization of criminal law enforcement. UH.

1204
01:07:26,880 --> 01:07:30,520
Speaker 1: Do check out the books that you have, You've you've

1205
01:07:30,560 --> 01:07:36,960
Speaker 1: created cops across borders, policing the globe. The information that

1206
01:07:37,240 --> 01:07:42,600
Speaker 1: will empower people in this in this ongoing conversation. It's

1207
01:07:42,680 --> 01:07:46,840
Speaker 1: out there, it's available. UH. And to your point, yes,

1208
01:07:46,960 --> 01:07:51,840
Speaker 1: there there are entities that consider that information the stuff

1209
01:07:51,840 --> 01:07:54,480
Speaker 1: they don't want you to know, which means that wherever,

1210
01:07:54,640 --> 01:08:00,400
Speaker 1: wherever you fall personally, you should know. It's so exactly. Guys,

1211
01:08:00,400 --> 01:08:03,200
Speaker 1: thanks so much for the opportunity to be honest with you.

1212
01:08:03,320 --> 01:08:05,760
Speaker 1: I I love doing it, man. I appreciate your work

1213
01:08:05,800 --> 01:08:08,760
Speaker 1: on Psychoactive, and I appreciate this podcast so Ben great

1214
01:08:08,760 --> 01:08:11,640
Speaker 1: to meet you as well. We cannot we cannot wait

1215
01:08:11,680 --> 01:08:14,000
Speaker 1: for the next episodes. You want to thank you for

1216
01:08:14,080 --> 01:08:17,519
Speaker 1: your time. And at this point, folks, we also want

1217
01:08:17,600 --> 01:08:21,439
Speaker 1: to pass the mic to you. What do you think

1218
01:08:21,880 --> 01:08:25,000
Speaker 1: is the future of drug policy, not just in the US,

1219
01:08:25,080 --> 01:08:27,080
Speaker 1: but in the world. What do you think of the

1220
01:08:27,640 --> 01:08:31,640
Speaker 1: what we called the long tail consequences of some of

1221
01:08:31,680 --> 01:08:35,920
Speaker 1: these prohibitive policies. Let us know. We try to be

1222
01:08:36,000 --> 01:08:38,840
Speaker 1: easy to find online. If you don't sip the social needs,

1223
01:08:38,880 --> 01:08:40,719
Speaker 1: you can give us a call at our phone number

1224
01:08:40,760 --> 01:08:43,320
Speaker 1: one eight three three st d w y t K.

1225
01:08:43,880 --> 01:08:46,240
Speaker 1: And if you want to send us an email, we

1226
01:08:46,280 --> 01:08:48,360
Speaker 1: read every single one we get. We can't wait to

1227
01:08:48,400 --> 01:08:49,920
Speaker 1: hear from you. All you have to do is drop

1228
01:08:50,000 --> 01:08:53,519
Speaker 1: us alive. We are conspiracy at i heart radio dot

1229
01:08:53,560 --> 01:09:13,680
Speaker 1: com m H. Stuff they don't want you to know

1230
01:09:13,920 --> 01:09:16,920
Speaker 1: is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts

1231
01:09:16,920 --> 01:09:19,120
Speaker 1: from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,

1232
01:09:19,240 --> 01:09:22,080
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.