Speaker 1: Hi. I'm Ethan Natalman and this is Psychoactive, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. Psychoactive is the
Speaker 1: show where we talk about all things drugs. But any
Speaker 1: views expressed here do not represent those of I Heeart Media,
Speaker 1: Protozoa Pictures, or their executives and employees. Indeed, Heed, as
Speaker 1: an inveterate contrarian, I can tell you they may not
Speaker 1: even represent my own and nothing contained in this show
Speaker 1: should be used as medical advice or encouragement to use
Speaker 1: any type of drug. In this episode will also be
Speaker 1: talking about sex and sexual assault. I have a feeling
Speaker 1: that today's podcast is going to be particularly interesting and
Speaker 1: maybe pushing boundaries and and maybe pushing buttons. Uh. My
Speaker 1: guest today is Dan Savage. Thirty years ago, Dan started
Speaker 1: writing a column my sex and relationships for the alternative
Speaker 1: newspaper in Seattle called The Stranger and that thing or
Speaker 1: less thirty years has become syndicated all around the United States.
Speaker 1: And then since then he's also started his own podcast,
Speaker 1: which is called Savage Love Cast. So, Dan, thanks so
Speaker 1: much for joining me. I'm really looking forward to this conversation.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me. I'm excited to have this
Speaker 1: conversation too. Yeah, So listen, let me first ask you.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think you and I are going to
Speaker 1: land up agreeing on a lot of stuff, So I'm
Speaker 1: going to try to probably tie some issues as well
Speaker 1: and see what we can mudge out some disagreements here.
Speaker 1: But tell me, I mean, basically, what's your frame of
Speaker 1: mind when you're thinking about drugs and sex? If I
Speaker 1: just put those two words together, you know, I'm not
Speaker 1: opposed to mixing them. There's a lot of people out there,
Speaker 1: particularly with the conversation we've been having about consent and
Speaker 1: informed consent and meaningful consent, who are arguing that any
Speaker 1: impairment at all means to consent wasn't real, authentic, genuine,
Speaker 1: freely given. And I disagree you. Sex makes us all nervous.
Speaker 1: There's a reason why a lot of people need to
Speaker 1: have a little bit of social lubricant of whatever form
Speaker 1: before they head out in search of sex. Some people
Speaker 1: need to medicate a bit with alcohol or other drugs
Speaker 1: to find the courage to ask for what they want.
Speaker 1: It's a slippery slope, though, because you can wind up
Speaker 1: in a place where you're not thinking straight, you're not
Speaker 1: reading another person's cues correctly. Uh, you're so nervous and
Speaker 1: and repressed that you have to not just lubricate yourself
Speaker 1: a bit socially, but flood the zone to such an
Speaker 1: extent that you go a little crazy or aren't advocating
Speaker 1: for yourself in the moment an effective way, and you
Speaker 1: could end up being traumatized or harmed or traumatized or
Speaker 1: harms someone else. So it's a it's a weird place,
Speaker 1: you know. They're these two pressures um insects with with
Speaker 1: mixing sex and drug sex and alcohol where it can
Speaker 1: make sex and that kind of connection possible can help
Speaker 1: believe be at our anxiety or on going order asking
Speaker 1: for it, but too much can magnify the harm potentially
Speaker 1: that non consensual sex are just sex. It leads you
Speaker 1: feeling violated, even if you know the person who violated
Speaker 1: you was you when it's over, and so you have
Speaker 1: to approach it cautiously and carefully, which is not how
Speaker 1: everyone does it. Okay, So I told you I might
Speaker 1: dredge up some stuff from things you've written or said
Speaker 1: in the past. Okay, So okay, Well, I gotta say
Speaker 1: something first. I've been writing for thirty years. Like, sometimes
Speaker 1: you write something, you think some more, you write some more,
Speaker 1: you think differently, and then people will bring something up,
Speaker 1: especially in the Internet age, because everything you've ever written
Speaker 1: is on websites that you know have ads for movies
Speaker 1: that came out this week. So everything you've ever written
Speaker 1: with like you published it yesterday. Man, I can relate.
Speaker 1: I started writing this stuff in eighties seven, and I
Speaker 1: look at some of the framing, the language I used
Speaker 1: back in the eighties. But let me tell you, let
Speaker 1: me let me see how you respond to the dance
Speaker 1: Savage of two thousand and three. Okay, you've got it
Speaker 1: on your Savage log column. Somebody wrote to you about
Speaker 1: uh female college sophomore's boyfriend. She was in a relationship,
Speaker 1: but then she found out that he had also been
Speaker 1: screwing some other women and using cocaine, and you right
Speaker 1: back to where he goes. First, of all, coke is
Speaker 1: not a date rape drug. Date rate drugs has commonly
Speaker 1: understood her substances that render a girl helpless. Practically, comment
Speaker 1: tose obliterator will in any ability to resist. If anything,
Speaker 1: Cocaine would have to be considered the opposite of a
Speaker 1: date rate drug, being pressured into having sex that you
Speaker 1: regret the next morning does not mean that you were raped.
Speaker 1: Being seduced does not mean that you were raped. Nor
Speaker 1: does consenting to sex when you were drunk or high.
Speaker 1: So what do you think we just stand viol those
Speaker 1: words or pull back from some of them in this
Speaker 1: new context. I would pull back from some of them
Speaker 1: in this new context. Yet I wouldn't pull back as
Speaker 1: far as others might. Certainly, now there's this awareness that
Speaker 1: I have this awareness. I've thought through this about coercion,
Speaker 1: but also about the way men are socialized and the
Speaker 1: way women are socialized, and that women will often go
Speaker 1: along with what a man seems to want in the
Speaker 1: moment for fear of violence, to to de escalate the situation.
Speaker 1: A lot of women will consent to sex, whether they're
Speaker 1: drunk or high or not, because they fear that the
Speaker 1: guy that they're with may do something worse than have
Speaker 1: sex with them that they don't want or aren't enjoying
Speaker 1: if they say no. And men, I think have to
Speaker 1: be hyper conscious of that going into any sexual interactions
Speaker 1: with women. Thank God, I'm gay, sometimes they think not
Speaker 1: that this cad play out in same sex relationships as well.
Speaker 1: Men have to control for that and in some ways
Speaker 1: overcompensate for that. You may get the yes that you
Speaker 1: hope to get, you need to verify that that was
Speaker 1: an authentic yes, and that that wasn't yes because you
Speaker 1: scare me. And what you don't want to do is
Speaker 1: get into situation where you get unenthusiastic consent or inauthentic
Speaker 1: consent or panicked consent, or consent that was granted reluctantly
Speaker 1: because the woman felt coerced by the circumstances into having sex.
Speaker 1: And I don't think most men want to have that
Speaker 1: kind of sex. I don't think most men want to
Speaker 1: have sex where you know, technically it seemed to be consensual,
Speaker 1: but the woman felt violated afterwards. Uh, most men aren't monsters.
Speaker 1: Other men who are monsters at least have some sort
Speaker 1: of self preservation instinct these days around not wanting to
Speaker 1: get into a ME two situation like that, And we'll
Speaker 1: go to greater lengths. So I think that two thousand
Speaker 1: three column was a little, which is almost twenty years old,
Speaker 1: a little too glib with those distinctions. I was being
Speaker 1: a little too technical in a way that gave men
Speaker 1: advantage or license that men don't deserve and shouldn't take.
Speaker 1: So there's you know, this phrase kem sex right, you know,
Speaker 1: And I came across some of the fellow named David
Speaker 1: Stewart who said he coined the term, and it refers
Speaker 1: specifically to gay men in the use of particular drugs
Speaker 1: crystal math, g H, b gb L, casinoe, things like that,
Speaker 1: UM and other people to find it more broadly. But
Speaker 1: here's the question I want to ask you, right, So,
Speaker 1: so when people are entering, especially younger people, entering a
Speaker 1: situation where drugs and sex, like, we're gonna talk a
Speaker 1: lot on this show about drugs, set and setting, right,
Speaker 1: the basic idea that how drugs impact you have as
Speaker 1: much to do with the set in the setting as
Speaker 1: they do with the drugs themselves. And obviously the same
Speaker 1: it is going to be true with issues around sex
Speaker 1: and possibly issues around consent. So somebody's going to a party,
Speaker 1: a club, whatever, it's one where sexual contact is understood
Speaker 1: to be part of what's the scene. Somebody's taking drugs
Speaker 1: because they want to release some of those inhibitions, they
Speaker 1: want to explore some aspects of their sexuality or whatever
Speaker 1: in that context, and in that context, they are way
Speaker 1: out there and doing all sorts of ship that they
Speaker 1: may love in the moment but feel bad about the
Speaker 1: next day, and that's on them, okay, And that's I
Speaker 1: think a real risk of this actually repressive culture is
Speaker 1: that some people the only way they can give themselves
Speaker 1: permission to do what they want to do is to
Speaker 1: put themselves in a situation where they don't feel there
Speaker 1: in control. You know, they basically self medicate the shame
Speaker 1: and inhibition away, and then when the drugs wear off,
Speaker 1: when the shame and inhibition come rolling back in like
Speaker 1: the tide, you can end up feeling awful about yourself
Speaker 1: about what you did, about the people that you did
Speaker 1: those things with, or did those things to you, Which
Speaker 1: is why I think. You know, I'm very opposed to
Speaker 1: crystal math. I think it's a terrible drug. You know.
Speaker 1: I'm gay, and I've certainly had my fund and my
Speaker 1: crazy experiences. I've never participated in chem sex sessions where
Speaker 1: chem sex parties I would experience them as to humanizing
Speaker 1: in a way that I don't think that I would
Speaker 1: have a good time. But I've had friends who enjoyed
Speaker 1: that scene. I've had friends who were destroyed by that scene.
Speaker 1: I've also had friends who were destroyed by just sex
Speaker 1: without chems. So everything is a hammer. Basically, you can
Speaker 1: build something or you can beat your brains out with it.
Speaker 1: Chem sex. I think it's a particularly dangerous. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it was a time, must have been early
Speaker 1: two thousands and meth amptheta mean was taken off in
Speaker 1: the kind of gay club scene in New York and
Speaker 1: there was a sort of split I think in the
Speaker 1: gay community. And I remember being invited to give a
Speaker 1: talk at Gay Men's Health Crisis where they were fighting
Speaker 1: over the issue could there be such a thing as
Speaker 1: safe sex with meth amptheta mean? Could there be such
Speaker 1: a thing as harm reduction with meth amphetamine? Both of
Speaker 1: us know a phone name. I think it was Peter
Speaker 1: Staley who was like putting out, you know, ads on
Speaker 1: New York City corners condemning meth and you know that,
Speaker 1: really making a campaign, and it was weird. It was
Speaker 1: obviously trying to discourage young gay men from doing this stuff,
Speaker 1: but it was feeding into a stigmatization, demonization campaign as well.
Speaker 1: So if you had a friend of yours, a younger
Speaker 1: friend coming and saying Dan like, you know, I really
Speaker 1: want to try this. I have a few friends who
Speaker 1: have done it and hasn't been a problem so far. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: it's weird. I remember Peter Staley to do that ad
Speaker 1: campaign about math. You know, Peter and I had kind
Speaker 1: of a run in about um prep because I predicted
Speaker 1: and I think I've been vindicated by the warding in
Speaker 1: the data. Like just explained to our our listeners what
Speaker 1: PREP pre exposure prophylaxics. It's a drug that gay men
Speaker 1: and other men who have sex with men can take
Speaker 1: so that basically prevents HIV infection. HIV negative men on
Speaker 1: PREP and HIV positive men who have access to drugs
Speaker 1: and care who have undetectable viral loads are not capable
Speaker 1: of passing on HIV, which is why we've seen just
Speaker 1: a rapid plummeting and HIV infections. But PREP doesn't protect
Speaker 1: you from the other sexually transmitted infections, and so of
Speaker 1: course it led to a huge spike and syphilis and
Speaker 1: gnaria and chlamydia among gay men who stopped using condoms
Speaker 1: because now they were on prep. Um. Anyway, you go
Speaker 1: back to Peter and meth and there in the harm
Speaker 1: reduction movement, which really started around HIV and condoms. That's
Speaker 1: when that idea kind of got injected, uh into the
Speaker 1: gay health discourse. There seemed to be a lot of
Speaker 1: permission seeking flying under the banner of harm reduction or
Speaker 1: being wandered through harm reduction, because people would argue that,
Speaker 1: you know, gay men were shamed for being gay, therefore
Speaker 1: you shouldn't shame gay men for using math and staying
Speaker 1: up for four days and having sex with you know,
Speaker 1: eighty people at a never ending party where nobody ever
Speaker 1: stepped out to have food or a glass of water
Speaker 1: and never slept, and you were participating in the shaming
Speaker 1: of other gay men. If you said that sounds like
Speaker 1: a bad idea. That sounds like an unsustainable sexual lifestyle,
Speaker 1: if I could use that word, certainly an unsustainable sexual ecosystem,
Speaker 1: and not an environment where people are going to be,
Speaker 1: you know, exercising their best judgment. And you don't always
Speaker 1: want to exercise your best judgment when you're having sex.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you do want to take risks. We're wired for risk.
Speaker 1: Risk is sexually arousing. Risk is exciting. Remember like Clinton
Speaker 1: getting those blow jobs from Mirk Clominsky off the Oval
Speaker 1: office and people are like, why would he do that,
Speaker 1: it's so dangerous. Exactly why he did it because it
Speaker 1: was so dangerous. The truth is, risk is arousing, and
Speaker 1: we all want a certain amount of risk in our
Speaker 1: sex lives. It's why I'm always in the position of
Speaker 1: advising people have been together ten twenty years who say
Speaker 1: there's no passion, the spark has gone. Sex is and
Speaker 1: exciting to engineer risk, to take risks together as a couple,
Speaker 1: because at the beginning of the relationship, you're the adventure.
Speaker 1: There on their the adventure you're on. They're like taking
Speaker 1: a chance on you. They don't know if you're an
Speaker 1: X murder or Jeffrey Dahmer or not, and vice versa.
Speaker 1: And so getting naked with somebody for the first couple
Speaker 1: of dozen times is scary in this reptile brain way
Speaker 1: that getting naked with somebody that you've been with for
Speaker 1: ten years never can be We'll be talking more after
Speaker 1: we hear this. Add It's funny, Well, you would say
Speaker 1: to a long term couple, try out some danger and risk.
Speaker 1: I would probably say try out some drugs. Oh, the
Speaker 1: drugs are something I recommend to long term couples frequently,
Speaker 1: And so which ones are you recommending? Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I think ecstasy saved my marriage. Terry and I were
Speaker 1: at a real low point and we got a cabin
Speaker 1: on the Pacific coast and took a weekend away and
Speaker 1: did he on Saturday, and we're really able to reconnect
Speaker 1: in what wasn't the drug talking. The drug was allowing
Speaker 1: us to talk, uh, in an authentic way. And I
Speaker 1: think ecstasy saved my marriage. I recommended m d m
Speaker 1: A to couples. Well, Dan, let let me stop with
Speaker 1: you with the m d m A thing, because I say,
Speaker 1: in my marriage, m d m A did not save
Speaker 1: our marriage, but I think it helped us come to
Speaker 1: a softer landing where we then became very good friends
Speaker 1: thereafter and continue to be so and co raised her
Speaker 1: daughter and things like that. I could see m DA
Speaker 1: doing that too. Yeah, but but I mean, you can't
Speaker 1: take it every day, so obviously want is to bring
Speaker 1: those lessons into your life going forward. How did you
Speaker 1: and Terry take that experience and bring it forward in
Speaker 1: a way that didn't just wear off after a few
Speaker 1: weeks or months. It just surfaced a lot of love
Speaker 1: that had and buried under a lot of resentment. And
Speaker 1: score keeping, and our personal lives are very complicated. We're
Speaker 1: polly amorous and have other boyfriends, and that requires a
Speaker 1: lot of sort of tense negotiation and scheduling, as all
Speaker 1: the Polly people will tell you, And we had sort
Speaker 1: of lost sight of not just each other, but the
Speaker 1: fact that being with him allowed me to have my
Speaker 1: boyfriend too, and being with me allowed him to have
Speaker 1: his boyfriend who and being with me men he didn't
Speaker 1: have to choose, and being with him and I didn't
Speaker 1: have to choose, and neither of us wanted to choose.
Speaker 1: And we were able to talk about that in a
Speaker 1: way that that became sort of a focal point of
Speaker 1: our affection and regard for each other, that this thing
Speaker 1: that we've been fighting about was actually a thing that
Speaker 1: had value, and that was a demonstration of our love
Speaker 1: for each other that we were in negotiation about these
Speaker 1: things that we had managed for years to find a
Speaker 1: way to not finesse but allow, you know, the conversation
Speaker 1: we had on e really land in a place where
Speaker 1: we said, we're gonna love and support and leave each other,
Speaker 1: or we're gonna love and support and let each other.
Speaker 1: And we weren't able to have that conversation in the
Speaker 1: way that we did before we took E, and you know,
Speaker 1: had this wave of the surfacing of the love that
Speaker 1: was there. It wasn't like the E was creating feelings
Speaker 1: of love. It was unleashing them and unburying them. And
Speaker 1: I really, honestly, you know, we didn't do it in
Speaker 1: a controlled clinical setting. We didn't have a couple's counselor
Speaker 1: at our elbows. We weren't in a therapist office. We
Speaker 1: were on the ocean on a beach, just the two
Speaker 1: of us, um with some m d m A that
Speaker 1: we acquired the traditional way or the you know, I
Speaker 1: guess you could say getting it from a couple of
Speaker 1: scounsel was the traditional way before it was criminalized, because
Speaker 1: it had been used in couples counseling up until the seventies.
Speaker 1: But we had to get it from you know, friends
Speaker 1: who can access those things, and it really helped us.
Speaker 1: Did you continue to use it to reconnect, to re
Speaker 1: reprocess these issues thereafter? We haven't. And you know, we
Speaker 1: had used you once when we first met each other
Speaker 1: twenty six almost seven years ago, recreationally, and we have
Speaker 1: it in the house and we've talked about it, but
Speaker 1: we haven't done it again. But we keep saying to
Speaker 1: each other like we're gonna get away for a weekend
Speaker 1: and and do you again. It almost feels like a
Speaker 1: tune up. But this was probably two years ago, year
Speaker 1: and a half ago. Oh is that recently? Yeah? And
Speaker 1: I've always said to when drugs come up in my
Speaker 1: talks at colleges that I guess, except for work, I
Speaker 1: don't have a very addictive personality. And whenever I found
Speaker 1: a drug that I really enjoyed, my responses and oh,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do that every day. My response is I'm
Speaker 1: going to put that on the shelf so that when
Speaker 1: I do want to do that again, it has as
Speaker 1: big an impact as it did today or last night.
Speaker 1: And so you know that E worked for us so
Speaker 1: well that weekend doesn't mean we've done the every weekend since.
Speaker 1: To tolerate each other, yea, well it when worked out.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, look from I think about the
Speaker 1: role for me in my life, I mean, I'm sort
Speaker 1: of your basic, you know, heterosexual serial monogamist, and for me,
Speaker 1: N d m A has played a role beginning in
Speaker 1: my thirties until maybe ten years ago when it stopped
Speaker 1: really working for me. It's really in processing issues in
Speaker 1: a relationship. You know. It is the way of kind
Speaker 1: of clearing out talking basically what you're talking about. And
Speaker 1: it wasn't obviously every week thing. It was a kind
Speaker 1: of once a year sort of thing um to really
Speaker 1: process those kinds of issues. And isn't it interesting how
Speaker 1: people will take E and then say very loving things,
Speaker 1: and then someone will dismiss them and say it's just
Speaker 1: the drug talking. It's almost as if we're afraid of
Speaker 1: the enormity of the affection and feelings of love that
Speaker 1: he can surface that our response to them, and not
Speaker 1: just individually, but I think culturally because you see this
Speaker 1: in sort of writing about E or representations of taking
Speaker 1: E in films, is this rush to dismiss whatever was
Speaker 1: that are done us as a lot? Well, you know,
Speaker 1: I think there has to be some element of consciousness
Speaker 1: around it though, because people ask me about ecstasy E
Speaker 1: and I'll say, I say, look, it's a drug. It's
Speaker 1: not a sex drug. It's more a hug drug. Oh god, yeah, No,
Speaker 1: it's not a sex drug. It's more of an No,
Speaker 1: it doesn't it's you know, you may get aroused, but
Speaker 1: it's not You're not gonna be orgasming in that way,
Speaker 1: and that it's also I also say, it's a drug
Speaker 1: that will make you feel warmly towards strangers, lovingly towards friends,
Speaker 1: and profoundly in love with your lover. But what I
Speaker 1: also know is at the times I did, I knew
Speaker 1: right from the beginning that it could wear off and
Speaker 1: that there could be a tendency even among people have
Speaker 1: done it, and it felt these incredible feelings of love
Speaker 1: for those things to fade and say it's just the drugs.
Speaker 1: And so part of I remember the first time sort
Speaker 1: of sitting looking at my life at the time while
Speaker 1: we're on it and just looking at the eye and saying,
Speaker 1: this is going to fade. Let's think about how we
Speaker 1: come back, you know, during the week and the months ahead,
Speaker 1: where we try to bring up this feeling again without
Speaker 1: the drug, because we know that you know, all drugs
Speaker 1: basically trigger alter states of consciousness. You know that can
Speaker 1: be triggered without those drugs. The question is learning how
Speaker 1: to teach yourself to trigger those things. So and I
Speaker 1: think it's easier to trigger those things if you've experienced
Speaker 1: them as intensely as he can help you experience him
Speaker 1: like like I love my husband. Uh I certainly when
Speaker 1: it's just you know, he and I in the couch
Speaker 1: watching TV in a very similar physical position as we
Speaker 1: were on that deck, and you know, on the coast
Speaker 1: of Washington, like I'll feel that I love him. I
Speaker 1: don't feel this like, oh my god, I'm turning inside out.
Speaker 1: I love him, right, But that turning inside out feeling
Speaker 1: from two years ago helps me identify that feeling even
Speaker 1: when you know life and stress and family ship has
Speaker 1: buried it. I think it's more easily surfaced. That's the
Speaker 1: word I always come to that, like he helped us
Speaker 1: surface a bunch of stuff that just the the accrual
Speaker 1: of time and conflict. Life is a grind and and
Speaker 1: one of the traps of people who are an open
Speaker 1: relationships or polyamorous relationships can fall into is that you're
Speaker 1: a spouse or your committed partner. Your primary partner is
Speaker 1: the one you have to talk with about the rent
Speaker 1: and putting a new roof on the house, and conflicts
Speaker 1: about kids and deal with a family crisis, and the
Speaker 1: boyfriend is who you turn to for fun, and you
Speaker 1: have to make a really conscious effort not to just
Speaker 1: have all the fun with the secondary partners and all
Speaker 1: the grind with the primary partner. That makes sense. What
Speaker 1: about psychedelics as they played a role in your life?
Speaker 1: I took acid in college and it was uh okay
Speaker 1: and not very strong. My then best friend and I
Speaker 1: were like wandering around this huge performance arts center looking
Speaker 1: at the woodwork and it was kind of like moving
Speaker 1: and I saw like lizard patterns, very like an Escher
Speaker 1: print in the floor. And then like twenty years later,
Speaker 1: I was in a gay bar and somebody offered me
Speaker 1: acid and I took it, expecting that sort of slightly
Speaker 1: visually enhanced to experience. And then an hour later they
Speaker 1: asked me if I was feeling anything, and I said no.
Speaker 1: When they asked me if I wanted another hit, and
Speaker 1: I took it and the first hit hadn't hit yet,
Speaker 1: and then the first hit hit, and then the second
Speaker 1: hit hit, and nobody told me that in the intervening
Speaker 1: twenty years the power of acid had increased by some
Speaker 1: exponential effect. And I saw that place that people don't
Speaker 1: come back from. So I am afraid of acid and
Speaker 1: kind of don't want to ever do it again. After
Speaker 1: what about mushrooms or ayahuasca. Also, I was in a
Speaker 1: gay bar on Halloween in drag judging a costume contest,
Speaker 1: and then everybody in the bar found out I was
Speaker 1: tripping my head off on acid and was fucking with
Speaker 1: me all night. But I couldn't leave because I didn't
Speaker 1: trust that the sidewalk was actually not the ocean. So
Speaker 1: you basically violated harm reduction one O one principles in
Speaker 1: terms of where and how you did that stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was very uninformed about acid the second time I
Speaker 1: did it and not prepared for that. I've done mushrooms
Speaker 1: a couple of times. Um did mushrooms last pretty recently
Speaker 1: with my husband's boyfriend. We had some mushroom tea together
Speaker 1: and watched cats uh huh, which I think is the
Speaker 1: only way to watch cats uh, but not the only
Speaker 1: thing to do while on mushrooms. But for you and
Speaker 1: mushrooms and sex has not been a thing. No, no,
Speaker 1: And like a little bit of pot and sex, sometimes
Speaker 1: a little bit of alcohol and sex. But I'm a
Speaker 1: I'm grateful. I'm a sober sex kind of person. I'm
Speaker 1: not like strictly always, but I've seen a lot of
Speaker 1: gay men self medicate with alcohol and drugs so that
Speaker 1: they can have sex without being paralyzed by shame, without
Speaker 1: feeling guilty or conflicted, and it can create a really
Speaker 1: powerful association. I think it can carve a deep groove
Speaker 1: in someone. That's often what I see going on with
Speaker 1: the people that I have known, And that's an important distinction.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna say my friends who got into keem sex,
Speaker 1: because I have very few friends who got into keem sex,
Speaker 1: because I didn't know anybody who got into kem sex
Speaker 1: who came back from it in one piece. Some didn't
Speaker 1: come back from it at all, some died, but nobody
Speaker 1: emerged from a couple of years in kem sex whole
Speaker 1: enough to have a friendship with. I think it's very
Speaker 1: deeply damaging. There. There's some things I don't think harm
Speaker 1: reduction applies to, Like the harm reduction doesn't apply to
Speaker 1: Russian Roulette with five bullets in the gun, and that's
Speaker 1: keem secks. Well, I mean, you're more of an expert
Speaker 1: on these angles than I am. But I do know
Speaker 1: people who would say, you know that anything can potentially
Speaker 1: have a harm reduction approach to it, and that there's
Speaker 1: understanding that there are ways to use some of these
Speaker 1: substances which can enhance sexual intensity, etcetera um, and to
Speaker 1: dabble in these things without going whole more into them.
Speaker 1: And there's sometimes a bias in what we hear about
Speaker 1: stories because the people who screw up on drugs are
Speaker 1: the ones we always hear about, whereas the people who
Speaker 1: use it with some responsibility control are the ones that
Speaker 1: keep it quiet, don't talk about it is so stigmatized
Speaker 1: in the eyes of everybody else they don't want to
Speaker 1: be disapproved to even though they're used to doing it
Speaker 1: in a you know, blah blah blah blah blah. It's
Speaker 1: funny you should throw that at me, because I've always
Speaker 1: said that about three ways and open relationships, particularly for
Speaker 1: straight people. Straight people would always say, like, three ways
Speaker 1: always mean the relationship collapses. It's always the end, and
Speaker 1: open relationships always fail, and no, it's those are the
Speaker 1: ones you heard about. If your parents had a three
Speaker 1: way or your dad cheated and your parents got divorced,
Speaker 1: you heard about it. If they didn't get divorced, you
Speaker 1: didn't hear about it. So you knew lots of couples,
Speaker 1: straight couples who were successfully open or successfully sexually adventurous
Speaker 1: without the relationship following your part. You just didn't know
Speaker 1: you knew them exactly. Maybe it's the same thing for
Speaker 1: me and people who can have one weekend a year
Speaker 1: where they do a bunch of math. And I draw
Speaker 1: a distinction between ketamine math and what's the other one?
Speaker 1: Uh h b HB Yeah, yeah, although you know there's
Speaker 1: an argument for low do sam fetamine that's also is
Speaker 1: different between KIM six oftentimes evolves very high dose stuff
Speaker 1: and you know, a lot of times with drugs, it's
Speaker 1: all about the yeah, no, you're not going there, Okay,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't want to push in it. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm not. I'm not going to push drugs on you
Speaker 1: or tell you to give it a try. Um, but
Speaker 1: I did math ones well, I'm talking also not about
Speaker 1: meth amphetamine in the you know, heavy form, you know
Speaker 1: the way, the way same which ways in which you know,
Speaker 1: millions of young adolescent boys are prescribed you know riddle
Speaker 1: in which is basically an amphetamine type drug, and if
Speaker 1: you were to snort or inject that, it would be
Speaker 1: like meth amphetamine. And conversely, if you were to take
Speaker 1: mess amphetamine in a small pill form, it would be
Speaker 1: more like the riddle and the kids are taking And
Speaker 1: there may well be an argument that, um, you know,
Speaker 1: taking in a very low dose, perhaps combined with cannabis,
Speaker 1: might actually be a positive thing. Only one of your
Speaker 1: teeth will fall out. Well, speaking from personal experience, no
Speaker 1: teeth fell out, and it's got its benefits, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: I actually did do math one time, and this is
Speaker 1: like I think this was literally a plot line on
Speaker 1: Girls on HBO. I had done a little bit of
Speaker 1: cocaine in college. I just moved to Seattle. I was
Speaker 1: twenty five or went four years old, and I was
Speaker 1: offered a white powdery substance to snort by somebody that
Speaker 1: I was having a three way with and I did
Speaker 1: it and then he told me it was math. Because
Speaker 1: I was like, wow, that is some shitty tasting cocaine.
Speaker 1: Because I had done a bunch of coking college A
Speaker 1: bunch relative for me, a bunch. I've done it like
Speaker 1: probably a dozen times. Uh, And I was not happy
Speaker 1: about it, and I was up for two days and
Speaker 1: I felt like ship and I didn't do that much.
Speaker 1: Uh huh. You know that's a data point. That's not
Speaker 1: a trend, and that's an anecdote, not data. But it
Speaker 1: just confirmed for me that math wasn't for me, and
Speaker 1: and I had a deep and I had better understanding
Speaker 1: about the guys. I'd seem destroyed by it because I
Speaker 1: couldn't imagine putting that in my body on a regular basis. No, right,
Speaker 1: But it actually the truth is day and it really
Speaker 1: does come down to the dose and with the way
Speaker 1: you consume it and consuming it orally is opposed to
Speaker 1: storting or injecting it and the dose level being substantially different.
Speaker 1: And that's true. We really all drugs in a way.
Speaker 1: I was just gonna say, like one cocktail versus thirty
Speaker 1: exactly exactly. Alcohol poisoning can kill you. But like you
Speaker 1: brought it up in the context of these chem sex parties,
Speaker 1: Now that's true. That yeah, I don't think there's a
Speaker 1: lot of moderation at chem sex parties. Okay, well let's
Speaker 1: shift over. So for me, when I think about sex
Speaker 1: and drugs, the psychedelics actually do have their upsides. I mean,
Speaker 1: there was Timothy Leary. He used to write about, you know,
Speaker 1: being with women who are having hundreds of orgasms, and
Speaker 1: and there's a whole sort of it's it's not just him.
Speaker 1: There's a whole kind of world in which and then
Speaker 1: even in my own personal experience, there's been ways in
Speaker 1: which not in the thick of the experience, but maybe
Speaker 1: it's the very beginning or the end where it does
Speaker 1: have his positive size. But the real one, I think
Speaker 1: is marijuana. I mean marijuana in the same way to
Speaker 1: enhance his music taste, other things can enhance um, you know,
Speaker 1: sexual and I think as much as it does for men,
Speaker 1: probably even more so for women generally speaking, I think
Speaker 1: so too, And that's come up on my show a lot,
Speaker 1: and I've recommended it to women in place of a
Speaker 1: couple of glasses of chardonnay that a lot of females
Speaker 1: sex advice Calum Mr Writers have recommended to women. And
Speaker 1: I've gotten tons of, you know, anecdotes, not data, feedback
Speaker 1: from my listeners who have experimented with pot. They found
Speaker 1: it disinhibiting. And you know, I don't want to make
Speaker 1: when you start making generalizations about men and women, you're
Speaker 1: making generalizations about three point five billion people, and four
Speaker 1: billion people and four billion other people will be hundreds
Speaker 1: of millions of exceptions. Women have more shame and inhibition
Speaker 1: heaped up on them, and it's so constant that it
Speaker 1: can be a lot harder for a woman to know
Speaker 1: whether what she's doing is what she wants to be doing.
Speaker 1: The example I always cite is that Fifty Shades of
Speaker 1: Gray phenomenon. It wasn't a bunch of sixteen year old
Speaker 1: girls buying that book and suddenly getting into S and
Speaker 1: M or realizing that power play turned them on. It
Speaker 1: was a bunch of middle aged housewives who were suddenly
Speaker 1: getting into that book and realizing because they finally had
Speaker 1: permission to fantasize about that from an external force, which
Speaker 1: was the best seller list. Pot can be that permission
Speaker 1: for some women to really tap into what turns them on.
Speaker 1: And it does seem to have UH when applied topically,
Speaker 1: an effect UH in the genitals for some women. There
Speaker 1: are like some THHC lubes out there that I've gotten
Speaker 1: a lot of positive feedback on. I hate to like
Speaker 1: sound like a wellness industry crank or hack, but the
Speaker 1: studies aren't done until there's some anecdotal screaming and yelling
Speaker 1: about the d I Y effects that people are creating,
Speaker 1: right because there's actually there's very little and certainly on
Speaker 1: topicals and like CBD, th HC, things like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe it's just the feeling of being naughty that you're
Speaker 1: like applying this, like previously bidden the legal sub constitute
Speaker 1: genitaly in a form of a loube and just the
Speaker 1: act of it is exciting enough that it's a placebo
Speaker 1: that I've had to say, a cultural placebo test right here.
Speaker 1: But I think there's another variable two which is related
Speaker 1: to what you're saying, which is I think that in
Speaker 1: a way, marijuana can help the chatter in the brain
Speaker 1: that can stand between um, a woman and attaining or
Speaker 1: achieving a better orgasm. Right, it's that kind of in
Speaker 1: the same way that you can focus more intensely on
Speaker 1: music or on touch or things like that. It enables,
Speaker 1: I think, both for men and women, but maybe even
Speaker 1: more so for women to just quiet that stuff so
Speaker 1: that you're fully focused in the moment on the experience.
Speaker 1: In Macbeth, talking about alcoholic character says, you know, booze
Speaker 1: basically inspires the desire and pieas the performance. I'm paraphrasing,
Speaker 1: perhaps badly. Uh So we know that, least in men,
Speaker 1: we've like acknowledged for hundreds of years that alcohol can
Speaker 1: have a deflating effect. Well, the clitterists is an erectile
Speaker 1: tissue two with two erectile chambers and a glands, just
Speaker 1: like a penis. And it stands to reason that alcohol
Speaker 1: that can like make it hard for a guy to
Speaker 1: get it up, can make it hard for a woman
Speaker 1: to become fully aroused, whereas pot doesn't interfere with that
Speaker 1: ability for most men. So it stands to reason, you know,
Speaker 1: women and basically have everything that men have, just the
Speaker 1: packages assembled in a very different way. A penis is
Speaker 1: a giant clint actually in some sex differentiation, although a
Speaker 1: fewer nerve innings. Unfortunately, Well that's why you have to
Speaker 1: prostate and other conversations. Let's take a break here and
Speaker 1: go to an ad M. I'll tell you a funny story.
Speaker 1: You know, must have been early two thousands, and you know,
Speaker 1: as part of our my organization's efforts to kind of
Speaker 1: change public opinion around marijuana, marijuana legalization, and one of
Speaker 1: the things we saw was a significant gender gap. The
Speaker 1: numbers were like men and of women favored legalizing marijuana.
Speaker 1: And so I was trying to figure out what to
Speaker 1: do about that, and so I began to bounce the
Speaker 1: idea about the benefits of marijuana use among older people,
Speaker 1: especially women, right, And I bounced this afo my board
Speaker 1: members and other friends, and all the women I were
Speaker 1: talking to are most of them were saying, ethan great idea, fantastic,
Speaker 1: And it was all about you know, we knew that
Speaker 1: the public would would whereas they we get freaked out
Speaker 1: about marijuana kids. You talk about drugs and older people,
Speaker 1: and people are a lot more tolerant. Right. The notion
Speaker 1: that hey, viagra worked from my husband, but marijuana is
Speaker 1: the real magic for me by people is focused on
Speaker 1: people in long term relationships. You know, it seems like
Speaker 1: a whole way to appreciate these kind of health and wellness,
Speaker 1: sexual benefits of these things. And so I was getting
Speaker 1: all excited about doing this campaign. And then I ran
Speaker 1: into a couple of problems. Where is the older people
Speaker 1: I talked to oftentimes loved the idea. My younger staff,
Speaker 1: my communication staff, they were totally opposed. And the reason was,
Speaker 1: I think, because the thought about sex and older people
Speaker 1: hit the yuck factor and they just didn't want to
Speaker 1: run with it. And I just basically hadn't let go
Speaker 1: of the thing. They didn't want to think about their
Speaker 1: parents fucking exactly exactly who wants to go there? So
Speaker 1: I think that stuff is really evolved. I mean, now
Speaker 1: that you see that his marijuana is becoming increasingly legalized,
Speaker 1: there's very little increase in adolescent use, but there's a
Speaker 1: tripling or quadrupling of use among elderly people. And I
Speaker 1: think some fair bit of it has to do with
Speaker 1: long term married couples invigorating and keeping alive their relationship.
Speaker 1: I've seen that too, and I think that's really positive.
Speaker 1: And pot, as you know from your years of advocacy,
Speaker 1: is so much less harmful than alcohol. Pot doesn't make
Speaker 1: you aggressive or impair your judgment in the same way
Speaker 1: that alcohol does, or in any way comparable to what
Speaker 1: alcohol does people, and that's a terrible combo impaired judgment
Speaker 1: and aggression, you know. I remember when I was a
Speaker 1: little kid, my dad, who was a Chicago cop, would
Speaker 1: talk about having to arrest the hippies who were stund
Speaker 1: for pod and the attitude among the police him and
Speaker 1: all of his partners, even though they cracked heads at
Speaker 1: the six eight Democratic Convention in Grant Park, was that
Speaker 1: it wasn't the pod heads that were problems, that they'd
Speaker 1: rather arrest potheads because they were easier to arrest, because
Speaker 1: they weren't a gro they weren't out of control crazy.
Speaker 1: Even though the pot propaganda, particularly at that time in
Speaker 1: the late sixties early seventies, was all that pot made
Speaker 1: people crazy. Read again, pot makes you impotent, and the
Speaker 1: opposite was true. It's alcohol that makes you fucking piece
Speaker 1: of ship in big doses, in big doses. But too
Speaker 1: much alcohol you want to get in a fight. Too
Speaker 1: much pot you want to get in a seven eleven
Speaker 1: candy ale and give me the stone or over the
Speaker 1: boozer any day. You know, let's shift gears. I mean,
Speaker 1: in my advocacy around UH drug policy reform, you know,
Speaker 1: there were tremendous analogies um to the fights around gay rights.
Speaker 1: And I often times, especially on the marijuana piece of
Speaker 1: drug policy reform, that the gay rights movement really felt
Speaker 1: like something of an elder sibling, somebody who was paving
Speaker 1: the way. And for all sorts of reasons, all these
Speaker 1: powerful and oologies between that struggle, um, ranging from the
Speaker 1: stigmatization on the one hand, two elements of personal autonomy
Speaker 1: on the others, And I wonder how much that's been
Speaker 1: part of your thinking around these issues. I certainly think
Speaker 1: there's a parallel there. And remember, the gay rights movement
Speaker 1: was the offspring of the women's rights movement, which was
Speaker 1: the offspring of the civil rights movement. Each inspired the other.
Speaker 1: And I do remember years ago when normal adopted coming
Speaker 1: out as a metaphor, what they were importuning people who
Speaker 1: smoked pot recreationally to start doing because the public image
Speaker 1: of the pothead and the reality of the pot user
Speaker 1: were in such conflict, and so many more people used
Speaker 1: pot responsibly um and recreationally than anybody who made policy
Speaker 1: was aware. Era most voters were aware, and so the
Speaker 1: pot community borrowed the coming out metaphor. Some gay people
Speaker 1: were offended. Some gay people lived to be offended. I'm
Speaker 1: not one of those gay people. I was defended at all.
Speaker 1: Lots of different people have borrowed the coming out metaphor.
Speaker 1: I'm offended when the ex gay is borrowed the coming
Speaker 1: out metaphor and then come out as X gay and
Speaker 1: argue that no one should be gay and the gay
Speaker 1: people shouldn't have rights because they're not sucking picks anymore
Speaker 1: fun those guys. That's an abuse of the coming out metaphor.
Speaker 1: But I think the pot folks adopting it was an
Speaker 1: affirmation of of our of the you know, the secret
Speaker 1: weapon of like the gays, you know, we were randomly
Speaker 1: distributed throughout the population and embedded in every family. It's
Speaker 1: not a perfect analogy, but if race worked the same way,
Speaker 1: we would live in a very different world. If you
Speaker 1: found out you're going to meet your kid was black
Speaker 1: when your kid turned fifteen or thirteen, George Zimmerman would
Speaker 1: be on death row. Yeah, well, let me ask, because
Speaker 1: let me push you a bit, because I've seen some
Speaker 1: things where maybe we can find some room to disagree
Speaker 1: on something here, which is that I also think there's
Speaker 1: an element of identity, right So for me and trying
Speaker 1: to build a drug policy reform movement, it was I
Speaker 1: saw myself in following the footsteps and standing on the
Speaker 1: show holders of civil rights and women's rights and gay
Speaker 1: rights and other fights against discriminating minority groups that were
Speaker 1: discriminated against. And it raised questions about to what extent
Speaker 1: one's use of illicit drugs created a sense of identity
Speaker 1: in a way. And there's even a phrase I would
Speaker 1: sometimes use that I didn't I don't like the sound
Speaker 1: of it, So I never used it a lot. But
Speaker 1: it was druggism, just not unlike racism. Right that people
Speaker 1: have negative they stigmatized, they demonized, they have negative views
Speaker 1: of people who use people because of the drugs they use, right,
Speaker 1: um and often and and and that that's and then
Speaker 1: in some respects, that prejudice almost became the one acceptable prejudice,
Speaker 1: not just among conservatives, but even among liberals, where we
Speaker 1: would accept a criminalization of people based upon the substance
Speaker 1: they were putting in their body when we were when
Speaker 1: when liberals were abandoning this on all other fronts. Are
Speaker 1: you with me on this? I'm with you. This is
Speaker 1: not an area of disagreement necessarily. Uh and and Druggism
Speaker 1: of course, that kind of describe military attitude grew out
Speaker 1: of the drug War and a hundred years of propaganda
Speaker 1: stigmatizing drug use and people who use drugs, even as
Speaker 1: the whole country swelled alcohol and smoked cigarettes. I think
Speaker 1: cigarette is the worst and most destructive drug. You know
Speaker 1: that that that that's always for me a big hang up.
Speaker 1: Like the point of smoking a joint isn't to smoke,
Speaker 1: it's to stop smoking. The joint and get onto the freedoms. Right.
Speaker 1: But I saw you say someplace like, you know, listen
Speaker 1: to the difference here though, is that if you're gay,
Speaker 1: lesbian or whatever, you know, even if you stop fucking,
Speaker 1: you're still gay or lesbian. It is it is a
Speaker 1: core identity. Where is if you're a drug user and
Speaker 1: you stop using, you're no longer a drug user. I mean,
Speaker 1: put aside the whole twelve step always an addicting and
Speaker 1: put that on the side. But I don't think. I
Speaker 1: don't think drug user is a analogous to a sexual orientation,
Speaker 1: is it. Well, let let me press you on this,
Speaker 1: right because and it also raises the issue of how
Speaker 1: much stigmatization plays a role. Right. So for me, if
Speaker 1: I think out in my own evolution from being a
Speaker 1: kid who was totally you know, stupid on issues about
Speaker 1: about homosexuality and what have you, and then my evolution was, well,
Speaker 1: what this fight is basically about is getting to the
Speaker 1: point where one sexuality is you know, no different thing
Speaker 1: about that. Then we think about left handedness versus right handedness.
Speaker 1: I mean, roughly the same percent of the population are
Speaker 1: probably gay or left handed, but we don't even think
Speaker 1: about left handedness. There's no negative thing a touched to
Speaker 1: it at all anymore anymore exactly. And the question is, is
Speaker 1: is I you know now in terms of as as
Speaker 1: being gay or lesbian or even other parts of l
Speaker 1: g B t Q become more normalized hopefully, does that
Speaker 1: sense of identity connection to that identity become increasingly diminished. Well,
Speaker 1: some people argue are arguing that it already has. Um.
Speaker 1: The world is some parts of the world are less
Speaker 1: hostile place. We've seen other parts of the world become
Speaker 1: more hostile to queer people in reaction to the parts
Speaker 1: of the world where there's less hostility. Um, you have
Speaker 1: countries like Russia trying to assert its moral superiority over
Speaker 1: the decadent West by killing gay people and queer people
Speaker 1: and trans people and persecuting them in ways that they
Speaker 1: weren't persecuting them twenty years ago. So individual results may
Speaker 1: very check your geolocation before you make statements about like
Speaker 1: how you know much better everything is for queers. The difference,
Speaker 1: I think though, is the overwhelming majority of people are
Speaker 1: straight like and all queer people are going to face
Speaker 1: the heterosexual and cis gender assumption. And it's not an
Speaker 1: irrational assumption when something's correct at the time. That's an
Speaker 1: assumption that human beings are gonna make. Even gay human
Speaker 1: beings are going to make those kinds of assumptions when
Speaker 1: they're correct ninety seven percent of the time. So all
Speaker 1: gay people, all queer people going forward, are still going
Speaker 1: to have to come out, are still going to have
Speaker 1: to push away the assumption that was made about their
Speaker 1: sexual orientation or gender identity and assert themselves as gay, lesbian, buyer,
Speaker 1: trans in a way that a straight person doesn't have
Speaker 1: to assert themselves is straight because the default identity that
Speaker 1: the presumed identity assumption fit And wasn't you know, a
Speaker 1: hair shirt like it was for us. And when it
Speaker 1: comes to drug use, don't we all use drugs? When
Speaker 1: I go to the pot shop, it is literally three
Speaker 1: blocks away from my house in the city, where I
Speaker 1: used to smoke a little weed on my back porch
Speaker 1: and worry about a neighbor calling the cops and the
Speaker 1: cops coming, which was in a rational worry. I'm a
Speaker 1: white guy in a white neighborhood predominantly, and the cops
Speaker 1: are not going to come arrest me in my porch.
Speaker 1: But it's still played in the back of my mind
Speaker 1: because I have worst case scenario disorder. And now I
Speaker 1: walked to the pot shop. I don't see twenty one
Speaker 1: year olds in there. I see people my age in there.
Speaker 1: You know, I mean your your state. Washington State was
Speaker 1: the first state to legalize marijuana. Now a third of
Speaker 1: the states that a little more had done so. But
Speaker 1: you know, we're basically talking about two countries out of
Speaker 1: two hundred, and we're talking about the Russias and others
Speaker 1: of the world, which demonizes not just gays and lesbians,
Speaker 1: but also demonizes users of other drugs. And there are
Speaker 1: ways in which alcohol is to other drugs, the way
Speaker 1: being straight is to other types of sexuality or sexual identity. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. I think that's true. And the other thing
Speaker 1: I remember because there was this period in the early
Speaker 1: two thousands when all of a sudden, basically the anti
Speaker 1: retroviral drugs that come along, and the people have been
Speaker 1: leaders in the HIV AIDS struggle, they were all looking
Speaker 1: for something new, and many of them ended up working
Speaker 1: for me on drug policy reform. They it was another
Speaker 1: social justice issue. It was where there were these ongoing issues,
Speaker 1: and so I would push this analogy between gay rights
Speaker 1: and drug post reform, between issues of personal autonomy on
Speaker 1: these things identity, And I know it made some of
Speaker 1: my gay colleagues uncomfortable, right that that this was something
Speaker 1: that somehow identity as a drug consumer was not of
Speaker 1: the same level. And then I would kind of point out,
Speaker 1: I'd say, you know, think about it this way. If
Speaker 1: you're gay, to get criminalized, your moralists have to be
Speaker 1: caught in the act. Right legally speaking, twenty years ago,
Speaker 1: with drugs, you didn't need to be caught in the
Speaker 1: act of consuming. You just needed to be caught in possession.
Speaker 1: With drugs, you could be drug tested for what you
Speaker 1: did two days ago, four days of six days ago,
Speaker 1: but you cannot be gay tested in the workplace, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know, we keep getting to my brother and I
Speaker 1: call it when we're in violent agreement instead of violent disagreement.
Speaker 1: We keep landing in a place of violent agreement. Gay
Speaker 1: people who can't see the parallel, you know, it's not
Speaker 1: it's never exact, but the parallel between being you know,
Speaker 1: we used to get thrown in jail for what we
Speaker 1: put in our mouths. That there are people in jail
Speaker 1: for what for a substance they wanted to consume for you,
Speaker 1: you know, for some guy, poor motherfucker arrested in a
Speaker 1: park in l A thirty years ago it was semen.
Speaker 1: And if some buddies getting arrested and thrown in jail
Speaker 1: right now because they want to put a joint between
Speaker 1: their lips, there's a parallel. I don't think it's around identity.
Speaker 1: I think it's around behavior, desire, you know, the desired effect, right,
Speaker 1: but also the ecstasy maybe like the ecstasy of sucking
Speaker 1: something dude on in the park X to see like
Speaker 1: that human desire for that kind of transcendence and sexuality
Speaker 1: and sexual acts are one way to transcend death, transcend
Speaker 1: the moment. Drugs are another way. You know. It reminds
Speaker 1: me of gay people who can't see that anti choice
Speaker 1: laws that criminalize women's control of their own reproductive systems
Speaker 1: are in the same basket with laws that criminalized our
Speaker 1: expression of sexual desire. To telling people what they can
Speaker 1: and can't do with their body, it's the state taking
Speaker 1: control of your body. Uh. And some years ago, one
Speaker 1: of our first allies in Congress, who is Barney Frank, right,
Speaker 1: the first openly gay member of Congress, and we're talking
Speaker 1: about marijuana reform or talking a little bitout gay rights.
Speaker 1: And as I'm leaving, I say, you know, Barney, I
Speaker 1: mean gay rights, drug reform. I mean, it really boils
Speaker 1: down the same principle that nobody deserves to be punished
Speaker 1: what they put in their body, whether it's a cock
Speaker 1: or a joint. And how did he react. He smiled,
Speaker 1: He got it, you know, because I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: he's a smart guy, and it was it was obvious.
Speaker 1: You can always find the tiny percentage of gay land
Speaker 1: that's offended by anything. There's been some writing comparing the
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen pandemic to the HIV AIDS pandemic, and there
Speaker 1: are eerie parallels. I lived through the HIV AIDS pandemic
Speaker 1: I came out, or the crisis. You know, it's still
Speaker 1: with a million people died of AIDS last year. I
Speaker 1: came out in eighty and then AIDS came out in
Speaker 1: and you know, people talking about you know, antibodies and
Speaker 1: whether they're negative or positive, and risk and harm reduction
Speaker 1: and how to have sex in a pandemic, like, all
Speaker 1: of these things have been terribly triggering for me in
Speaker 1: a not in a trauma sense, just like throwing me
Speaker 1: back into moments of well, I guess in a trauma sense,
Speaker 1: fear and panic around HIV and yet some gay people.
Speaker 1: And I've noticed that when I like see gay people
Speaker 1: being very angry about these comparisons, I'll go and look
Speaker 1: at their social media profiles and their thirty mm and
Speaker 1: then you see gay guys like me. You see Andrew Sullivan,
Speaker 1: who's very controversial, has written some very moving things about
Speaker 1: his experiences as an HIV positive man in the pandemic
Speaker 1: then compared to the pandemic now and drawing those parallels.
Speaker 1: And he's also reading some very good stuff about drugs
Speaker 1: actually as well. Yeah, do you see older gay men
Speaker 1: and gay people who lived through it get it, and
Speaker 1: the gay people taking offense that anyone would compare. You know,
Speaker 1: the whole government kicked into action about this pandemic in
Speaker 1: a way they didn't about HV. Yeah, that's absolutely true.
Speaker 1: The response was very different. A lot of these echoes
Speaker 1: are there, though, and they're very evocative for those of
Speaker 1: us who lived through the AIDS crisis. You know, it's funny,
Speaker 1: I feel little bit like we're talking like to you know,
Speaker 1: the Yiddish expression is all the cocker's, you know, old farts,
Speaker 1: you know, but I mean, I mean the senses. There
Speaker 1: is this thing. It's like I look at my I
Speaker 1: would look at my younger staff, and they were in
Speaker 1: first grade when marijuana was getting legalized. It maybe not
Speaker 1: even born when marian's getting legalized for medical purposes, and
Speaker 1: they were in middle school or something when marijuana was
Speaker 1: getting legalized in Washington, Colorado, and they have no idea
Speaker 1: of the struggles that went on before that, right, And
Speaker 1: the same thing on harm reduction type stuff. And obviously
Speaker 1: you must feel the same thing about gay rights, where younger,
Speaker 1: you know, LGBT people have no idea what the stigmatization
Speaker 1: demonization was like before. And it's the same way in
Speaker 1: which older civil rights leaders sometimes go, oh, young people
Speaker 1: don't get what it was like before or what happened.
Speaker 1: You know what I've said to some of my younger
Speaker 1: gay friends. You know, at the Pride parade, the P
Speaker 1: flag will come down the street, parents and friends of
Speaker 1: lesbians and gays. I don't think it'd stands for that anymore,
Speaker 1: because it's not just lesbians and gays anymore. And I'll
Speaker 1: point out to them that P flag comes down the
Speaker 1: street now, and nobody cries when p flag came down
Speaker 1: the street. When I was twenty and at your eighteen
Speaker 1: and at my first Pride parade, people bald because it
Speaker 1: was the exception to have parents that loved you. It
Speaker 1: was the exception to have parents that hadn't rejected you.
Speaker 1: And to see parents marching with their gay kids, to
Speaker 1: see parents who loved their gay kids was just gutting
Speaker 1: because for most people in the crowd, they didn't have that.
Speaker 1: And I point that out to young, my young gay friends,
Speaker 1: like when I've been to Pride pards with them, You're
Speaker 1: not crying. Please be aware of what that means, because
Speaker 1: I can't even talk about people like I'm crying right now.
Speaker 1: I can't even talk about people like without getting weepy,
Speaker 1: because you know, when I came out to my mom,
Speaker 1: who I loved and who loved me, I had a
Speaker 1: friend waiting on my porch because there was no cell phones,
Speaker 1: there was no texting people in an emergency. I had
Speaker 1: a friend waiting on my porch whose apartment I could
Speaker 1: go live in with him on his couch if I
Speaker 1: got thrown out that night. And now people come out
Speaker 1: to their parents and it's just it's exceptional when the
Speaker 1: parents reject them. It's shocking, like news stories get written
Speaker 1: about that. No, it isn't that great that they take
Speaker 1: it for granted because now they're fighting too. Like it
Speaker 1: means we won, It means that we've been this our
Speaker 1: generation has been the toorious. It means we won. And
Speaker 1: when you win movements, what do they do? They move
Speaker 1: on to what hasn't been one yet. That's what they're
Speaker 1: supposed to do. You know, during the marriage equality fight
Speaker 1: that I was very involved in, you know, people would say, oh,
Speaker 1: the gay rights movement was supposed to be about liberation
Speaker 1: and sexual freedom and not marriage. And I would say
Speaker 1: to them, Okay, well we have secured the right to
Speaker 1: suck a million decks and wear an appalling outfit to
Speaker 1: the bride bread without getting arrested. Yeah, yeah, job done.
Speaker 1: But the movement has moved on to what we don't
Speaker 1: have yet, which is marriage. Yeah, exactly. And you know
Speaker 1: it's it's I mean, I look at it with the
Speaker 1: marijuana legalization victories. I mean, you know, until almost yes year,
Speaker 1: there's still seven hundred thousand people in America being arrested
Speaker 1: for marijuana, mostly possession and disproportionate young men of color
Speaker 1: and all that. Now that we're legalizing, the stories that
Speaker 1: bring me to the same tears that you had when
Speaker 1: that flag was waving was when I hear about people
Speaker 1: who are being suddenly lead out of jail or dismissed
Speaker 1: from court or having the records expunged because now they're free.
Speaker 1: And my own personal experience that literally, I mean, we're
Speaker 1: having this conversation now in early May. Literally just a
Speaker 1: few days ago, I went with an old buddy, right,
Speaker 1: and we were taking a walk in Central Park and
Speaker 1: New York has just changed the law so that you
Speaker 1: can smoke a joint openly anywhere you can smoke a cigarette.
Speaker 1: First day in the country to do that. Right now,
Speaker 1: you're not allowed to smoke a cigarette in Central Park,
Speaker 1: which means you can't smoke a joint. So we walked
Speaker 1: outside Central Park. We're sitting on a bench on Fifth Avenue, right,
Speaker 1: and I said, let's light up, and there's a cop
Speaker 1: sitting across the street in his car. And my friend
Speaker 1: goes Ethan, there's a cop there. We can't I said, Howard,
Speaker 1: this is the meaning of freedom. We can light up
Speaker 1: this joint with a police officer sitting in the car
Speaker 1: across the street and we are totally legal. And that
Speaker 1: feeling that, you know, what we were fundamentally fighting for
Speaker 1: was freedom right is something that I hope people just
Speaker 1: keep hanging on to. That. There was a citizen initiative
Speaker 1: in Seattle to make marijuana crimes the lowest law enforcement priority.
Speaker 1: So if the police were arresting more people for pot
Speaker 1: than for jaywalking, the police were breaking the law. And
Speaker 1: it got onto the ballot and every city council member,
Speaker 1: the mayor, the governor was a Democrat. I think at
Speaker 1: the time, the entire political stalishment said vote no. It
Speaker 1: passed by. It was really the trial balloon for decriminalization
Speaker 1: in Washington State. That's really true. Well, remember who was
Speaker 1: It was a young guy named Dominic Holden, right, who
Speaker 1: was your colleague at the newspaper The Stranger and my
Speaker 1: ally and the policy reform movement, and he pioneered this idea.
Speaker 1: We were already moving forward a medical marri Wanna that
Speaker 1: was changing one element of it. The racial justice piece
Speaker 1: had not yet really emerged. And here out of Seattle
Speaker 1: comes as beautiful measures basically saying to the cops, we
Speaker 1: can't force you but we're telling you this should now
Speaker 1: be the lowest priority of enforcement. It was a big breakthrough.
Speaker 1: And then when it was on the ballot statewide to decriminalize,
Speaker 1: to to legalize relates, almost every I think political elected
Speaker 1: official in Blue Washington said vote now, and overwhelmingly people
Speaker 1: voted yes. And I was just thinking about that when
Speaker 1: I was sixty two passed and came into effect, because
Speaker 1: you know that I've mentioned earlier, like having into my
Speaker 1: backyard and worried, like what if a neighbor smells this
Speaker 1: and calls the cops and their board and they want
Speaker 1: to like make it seem like marijuana enforcement isn't just
Speaker 1: something that they do to black kids, and so they
Speaker 1: make a point of driving into my neighbor restue me.
Speaker 1: And I would have those anxieties. And it was the
Speaker 1: feeling of like smoking pot in public after that past
Speaker 1: and just feeling free was tremendous. I gotta say that
Speaker 1: I think one of the missing and I've argued this,
Speaker 1: I've written things about this. I get so angry at
Speaker 1: elected officials when they say it's no longer a crime,
Speaker 1: it's not not a crime to possess pot. Now, therefore,
Speaker 1: these people with records for possession. These records should be cleared.
Speaker 1: It's not a crime to sell it anymore either, And
Speaker 1: yet there are people in jail for selling it still
Speaker 1: who sold it when it was a crime, just like
Speaker 1: there are people in jailford possessing it when it was
Speaker 1: a on. And we need to the movement and you know,
Speaker 1: you hear more about this now and I think they're
Speaker 1: doing this. New York needs to argue for expunging the
Speaker 1: records of people who had dealing convictions. I mean, Dan,
Speaker 1: you know, the fact of the matter is when that initiative,
Speaker 1: I mean, my organization was not involved in drafting the
Speaker 1: initiative in Washington State that year. But the fact of
Speaker 1: the matter is the first generation typically are the first
Speaker 1: generation of these new laws are typically more restrictive because
Speaker 1: public opinion is not advanced as far. So we could
Speaker 1: not put those expungement provisions because that might have been
Speaker 1: a no go for people who otherwise vote for it.
Speaker 1: There were provisions about continuing to allow drug testing, which
Speaker 1: were now able to really restrict. In the later laws,
Speaker 1: there were issues about where the tax revenue went. So
Speaker 1: I think it's it's the issue where the old, older
Speaker 1: generation of these laws are the pioneering ones, but they
Speaker 1: only can go so far because the public has only
Speaker 1: gone so far. Now, in two thirds of the public,
Speaker 1: um is in favor. Um, you can push it a
Speaker 1: lot further. So listen, last day, so I'll talk to
Speaker 1: you about So. I mean you you and your husband
Speaker 1: have a kid who's went now in his early twenties. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you've had to talk not just about sex, but
Speaker 1: about drugs with him growing up. So how did that
Speaker 1: conversation evolve? Um? Uh, if I can ask, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: this is something I can't talk about. My son doesn't
Speaker 1: like me to talk about him. Yeah, ten years ago
Speaker 1: he told us he was off the record, and I
Speaker 1: I have to respect that. Yeah. Yeah, Yeah. My daughter
Speaker 1: is saying the same thing about a bunch of things.
Speaker 1: But she does understand the basic ideas that that essentially
Speaker 1: harm reduction visa v. Drug education really models on sex education, right.
Speaker 1: It's accepting the fact that people are going to do something,
Speaker 1: engage in sex, engage in drug use, and that one
Speaker 1: way or another you have to keep them safe. And
Speaker 1: the other point I'd make is that you know, young
Speaker 1: people typically lose their quote unquote drug virginity before they
Speaker 1: use their sexual virginity right, they get drunk, they get high,
Speaker 1: they do this, they use their friends real and oftentimes
Speaker 1: before they ever get laid, you know, And so that
Speaker 1: we better have that same sort of pragmatic advice going forward.
Speaker 1: We certainly had conversations with him, they didn't always have
Speaker 1: the impact that we hoped that they would have. Um,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of addiction in my biological family and
Speaker 1: my you know, bio grandparents. Our son has adopted. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of addiction issues in his biological family, UM
Speaker 1: that he's had to be careful about and I've had
Speaker 1: to be careful about because of the hereditary component for addiction,
Speaker 1: the propensity for addiction. And so those weren't always easy conversations. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean have you had I mean I think we
Speaker 1: also didn't talk about is a issue of drug addiction
Speaker 1: and sex addiction and uh, I mean you obviously have
Speaker 1: had to give a lot of advice on your columns
Speaker 1: about sex addiction. And yeah, I don't. I don't think
Speaker 1: sex addiction is real. I think there's compulsive sexuality is
Speaker 1: sort of like overlaps d behavior and sexualities also sells
Speaker 1: destructiveness around sexuality that can attach to it very easily
Speaker 1: because we live in a sex negative, kink shaming, homophobic culture,
Speaker 1: and some people are so packed with self loathing about
Speaker 1: their desires that they will then punish themselves with those
Speaker 1: desires how they act on those desires. They believe that
Speaker 1: they deserve destruction for you know, who they are sexually,
Speaker 1: and they will throw themselves on those rocks, which is possible,
Speaker 1: particularly if you're gay. You know, you can fund yourself
Speaker 1: to death of your game. Um, you know everything that
Speaker 1: the excesses of gay male culture that sometimes straight people
Speaker 1: assume is something we all do that that's not about
Speaker 1: being gay, that's about being a man. If there was
Speaker 1: a you know, a bath house in every city in
Speaker 1: the country where women showed up wanting to have anonymous
Speaker 1: sexual intercourse with heterosexual men that they would never see again,
Speaker 1: straight men would go there in droves. A bath house
Speaker 1: is a whorehouse staff by volunteers, as I've frequently parously said,
Speaker 1: And there's no parallel in in gay land or in
Speaker 1: straight land. And we can't we can't discount the zap
Speaker 1: that can be placed on people's heads about who they
Speaker 1: are sexually and not just gay people, like there's a
Speaker 1: lot of straight people struggle with shame as well, postically
Speaker 1: people from religious backgrounds, but almost everyone who is head
Speaker 1: link the sex addiction models sex addiction therapy. It's a
Speaker 1: way of secularizing a religious argument about sex and sexuality.
Speaker 1: And most of the people pushing it are religious, and
Speaker 1: most of the organizations pushing it are religious, and they
Speaker 1: want people to feel conflict about their desires. And you know,
Speaker 1: you see guys who are like looking at a little
Speaker 1: porn and the only way that they can get out
Speaker 1: of trouble with the wife and the congregation is to
Speaker 1: claim that they're addicted to porn. The evils of porn,
Speaker 1: And now we have a movement to ban porn and
Speaker 1: declare porn of public health menace because it's so addictive
Speaker 1: and destructive and it's just not There's some people who
Speaker 1: will spend twelve hours in front of a computer masturbating
Speaker 1: until their bloody. That person has a problem. Porn is
Speaker 1: what they're punishing themselves with. But porn is a neutral
Speaker 1: actor because millions of other people at the same time
Speaker 1: can like enjoy a little porn and push away from
Speaker 1: the computer. The problem isn't the porn, Well, you know,
Speaker 1: I like, well, so where you started in this by
Speaker 1: saying that you essentially reject the term sex addiction, and
Speaker 1: you know, there's a whole way of thinking about drugs
Speaker 1: which also rejects the term drug addiction. I mean, first
Speaker 1: of all, because so many people use it to mean
Speaker 1: so many different things. But beyond that that, when we're
Speaker 1: talking about whether it's sex, or whether we're talking about
Speaker 1: drugs or all host of things, is the quality and
Speaker 1: nature of that relationship, the difference between healthy relationships and
Speaker 1: unhealthy relationships, the difference between use and abuse. And we
Speaker 1: have to be very clear about that. There's difference between
Speaker 1: use and abuse. And when it comes to the sex
Speaker 1: addiction model, like, very often what people mean by sex
Speaker 1: addiction is someone is having more sex than I think
Speaker 1: that they should have or should want to have, or
Speaker 1: a different kind of sex than I think anybody should
Speaker 1: want to have. And it's about a moral judgment and
Speaker 1: shame and not about harm necessarily. It's possible to have
Speaker 1: tons of gay sex. It's possible to have multiple partners.
Speaker 1: It's possible to you know, be straight and swingers or
Speaker 1: you know, a serial monogamist or whatever and be healthy.
Speaker 1: It's not one woman, one man marriage, heterosexual missionary in
Speaker 1: the dark for life to be healthy, although anybody that
Speaker 1: deviates in the lightest way from that standard is in
Speaker 1: danger of being labeled a sex addict. Well, and there's
Speaker 1: also an analogy they already drug use, which is that
Speaker 1: one can use some drugs every single day, but if
Speaker 1: it's not causing a problem in your life, it's not
Speaker 1: really an addiction. One can use a multiplicity of different
Speaker 1: drugs for long periods of time for different reasons, and
Speaker 1: once again, it's not an addiction unless it's really causing problems.
Speaker 1: But can you acknowledge that there's a potential health consequence
Speaker 1: there to the to to do that kind of habitual
Speaker 1: regular use. I can acknowledge. I have written, very controversially
Speaker 1: for like the gays, that it is possible to suck
Speaker 1: too much dick, that the more men that you're having
Speaker 1: sex with, the more risk you're running, not just for
Speaker 1: s t I S, but for like Jeffrey Dahmer's and
Speaker 1: John Wayne Gacy's and Andrew Cananon's like the more people
Speaker 1: that you have sex with who don't care about you,
Speaker 1: they just care about the sex, the likely you're out
Speaker 1: to wind up in bed with someone who is going
Speaker 1: to harm you, right, not maybe not murder your neat you.
Speaker 1: But and the same thing is true in that relationship
Speaker 1: with a drug, I mean nicotine itself. You can be
Speaker 1: taking it every day all your life in a relatively
Speaker 1: safe way. It's not really gonna harm you. You're smoking
Speaker 1: a pack of cigarettes every day, there's a very good
Speaker 1: chance it's going to kill you. Right. Alcohol you can
Speaker 1: have the occasional drink, and there might be slight risk
Speaker 1: associated with that, especially with older women and such, but
Speaker 1: by and large, if you're drinking a pint a day
Speaker 1: or a cord a day, that could destroy your liver
Speaker 1: and kill you. With cocaine, you can play with it,
Speaker 1: but in the wrong amounts that can kill you. With opioids,
Speaker 1: it can become a lifelong medication for some people and
Speaker 1: actually enhance the quality of your life, especially if you're
Speaker 1: using it in a control of responsible way. But if
Speaker 1: you're injecting ship of unknown potency and purity, you know
Speaker 1: that's going to be a problem. Um psychedelics, you know
Speaker 1: where the benefits so much exceed the downside for so
Speaker 1: many people, But you do it in a stupid context.
Speaker 1: You know, to go back to where you start off,
Speaker 1: you know, not such a good idea. You can land
Speaker 1: up in trouble there. So it's just, I mean, the
Speaker 1: aggravating thing is there's no clear line that we can't draw,
Speaker 1: like a definite line. There are guys out there who
Speaker 1: can like drink or use a little bit of drugs,
Speaker 1: or drink more or use more drugs than someone else
Speaker 1: can drink or use drugs and still be healthy and functional,
Speaker 1: and they're fine. But there's a point at which we
Speaker 1: all recognize, like twelve drinks in a night, every night,
Speaker 1: do you have a problem? Six? Maybe you have a
Speaker 1: problem too, you don't have a problem. Then it's our
Speaker 1: inability to draw a clear line because individual results may vary.
Speaker 1: That make these conversations so not unproductive or unsatisfying, just
Speaker 1: we can never resolve them. We can never come up
Speaker 1: with recommended daily dose of anything. You kept breaking up
Speaker 1: dosage because an individual's body, their tolerance levels, what works
Speaker 1: for them. But but you know, at a certain point,
Speaker 1: we can, you know, we we reckon. We can't see
Speaker 1: where the line is, but we can see when someone's
Speaker 1: gone so far past it that it's definitely a problem. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when it comes to sex, when it comes to food,
Speaker 1: when it comes to drugs, when it comes to twitter,
Speaker 1: when it comes to almost everything. We can see when
Speaker 1: it's a problem, but we can't see quite the point
Speaker 1: of tips over into the problem. That's true. I mean,
Speaker 1: now you see as the COVID restrictions are lifting, Uh,
Speaker 1: do you think we're going to have this explosion of
Speaker 1: reckless sex and drug use coming up ahead and next
Speaker 1: year or two. Well, I was talking about Nicholas Kostoka's
Speaker 1: book last week where he's predicting that there will be
Speaker 1: uh an explosion of hedonism I labeled at the horring twenties.
Speaker 1: We'll see we're also in the midst. Other social scientists
Speaker 1: have documented a kind of a sex recession where more
Speaker 1: and more people are making their sexual debuts, as they're called.
Speaker 1: We are all debutantes. It's guys think about later in life.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of people who have had no sex
Speaker 1: partner in the last year on average, and that's the
Speaker 1: pre COVID years, uh than ever before. And so we'll see.
Speaker 1: I know people are desperate to get out there and
Speaker 1: drink strangers spit. But we'll see where the intersection of
Speaker 1: this excer session and this, this pent up demand comes.
Speaker 1: On that note, I just want to thank you. I
Speaker 1: love talking with you, man. This is so much fun.
Speaker 1: And hopefully we meet in person one of these days.
Speaker 1: You're welcome, and I'm glad I didn't have too many
Speaker 1: more quotes from my old columns thrown at me. I'm
Speaker 1: sure you have more. I did have a few more,
Speaker 1: but I said I'll leave him there, you know. Psychoactive
Speaker 1: is a production of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures.
Speaker 1: It's hosted by me Ethan Naedelman. It's produced by Katcha
Speaker 1: Kumkova and Ben Cabrick. The executive producers are Dylan Golden,
Speaker 1: Ari Handel, Elizabeth Geesus and Darren Aronovski for Protozoa Pictures,
Speaker 1: Alice Williams and Matt Frederick for I Heart Radio and
Speaker 1: me Ethan Nadelman. Our music is by Ari Belusian and
Speaker 1: especial thanks to Abiv Brio, Sef Bianca Grimshaw and Robert Beatty.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to share your own stories, comments, or ideas,
Speaker 1: please leave us a message at eight three three seven
Speaker 1: of the nine sixty. That's one eight three three Psycho zero.
Speaker 1: You can also email us as psychoactive at protozoa dot
Speaker 1: com or find me on Twitter at ethan Natalman. And
Speaker 1: if you couldn't keep track of all this, find the
Speaker 1: information in the show notes. Tune in next time. From
Speaker 1: my conversation with Melissa Moore, my former colleague at Drug
Speaker 1: Policy Alliance, who led the successful effort to legalize marijuana
Speaker 1: in New York State, all the evidence showed that if
Speaker 1: you would randomly stop a hundred black kids under brown
Speaker 1: kids that are white kids in almost any city in America,
Speaker 1: virtually the same percent of them would have marijuana in
Speaker 1: their pocket, but the black kids were two to ten
Speaker 1: times more likely to get busted than the white kids.
Speaker 1: That's right. And you know, the data that we have
Speaker 1: from the Department of Health in New York City in particular,
Speaker 1: shows that young white people in New York City actually
Speaker 1: use cannabis at eificantly higher rates than black and Latin
Speaker 1: X young people in the city. And yet what we
Speaker 1: see is the enforcement is pretty much the exact inverse
Speaker 1: of that. Subscribe to cycoactive now see it, an't miss it.