March 22, 2023 • 37 mins
Season One of The War on Drugs concludes with the story of a single addict’s journey, Morgan Godvin. Her story illustrates the disastrous consequences of America’s decision to treat addiction as a crime. Morgan spent five years addicted to heroin and four years incarcerated as a direct result of her addiction. She lost her mom and four close friends to overdose. And yet, Morgan’s story is ultimately one of hope—one that takes her from addiction to advocacy. Told by Morgan herself and set in an immersive audio soundscape, Morgan’s journey lays bare how our nation’s 50-year War on Drugs has destroyed millions of lives. It also suggests a better path forward where solutions to America’s overdose crisis are not found by punishing those in need of help, but in harm reduction policies that treat addiction as the medical and mental health crisis it is.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
I'm Greg Glot and this is the War on Drugs.
Here we go, episode ten. We are reaching the end
of our war on drugs journey Man, final chapter of
season one. Yeah, yeah, we're getting down to that last
little piece man, that the last little piece of blunt
left man is the roach. Yeah, but sometimes it is
(00:28):
the most potent part, and it's the most hard hitting part.
And I think that's what this episode is today. What
a beautiful metaphor, Clayton, you ever, Hey, hey, sometimes things
just come together nice. But I think at this point
in our journey Man, we gotta ask, and I think
you're the right person asked this question too. How long
are we going to continue to keep treating addicts like criminals.
(00:51):
I always like to have an answer for you, Clayton,
if you ask me statistics and this or that, or
what's legal? What's the schedule one drug? I'll give it
to you. But it's got to the point where that's
what I expect from you. I expect nothing less. Well,
you should really lower your expectations at this point with me, Man,
I mean, I wish I had a good answer. Um.
I think we're getting closer, but I don't think we're
(01:11):
there yet. I think more and more people are understanding addiction.
But man, the war on drugs, it's not just the incarceration,
it's not just the civil fortune, it's not all these
things that we've talked about, the policies. It really is
the social fabric of our country and how it hasn't
been ingrained because we've just been hit with this propaganda
(01:32):
machine for you know, over one hundred years now, and
that's really really hard. It's gonna take a long time.
But hopefully podcasts like this more people speaking, you know,
people like Morgan Godman our guests today, you know, kind
of telling her story and understanding the tragedy of the
drug war and how it touches on some of the things.
Hopefully that'll help, you know, maybe maybe it's not just
one answer. But I think Morgan actually she shows us
(01:55):
from the top to the bottom, or should I say
the bottom to the top, how this were on drugs,
like affects people and everything that we've talked about in
previous episodes I think are highlighted and illustrated in her story.
So today we're gonna do something a little different, you know.
I know, most of the time, as us and the
guests and we're jumping in there and stuff. But today
(02:17):
we're just gonna get out the way. Man. We're gonna
get out the way, because this is a story that
you need to hear, uninterrupted, unfiltered, and from the mouth
of the person who lived it. Yeah, bad news you
don't get to hear Clayton's smooth, soulful voice. Good news,
you don't have to hear my nasally deviated, septing voice
for the next thirty minutes. So, and we're going to
steal an idea from Jason Flom, who you may remember
(02:39):
from one of our quick fixes. He's, you know, the
has his own podcast, Wrongful Convictions, where he does amazing
work helping get people exonerated. He has a thing on
there called closing Arguments where he allows for the experts
and guests that he's brought on to kind of have
that final word. And we're going to kind of take
that and expand on it and give that final word
to Morgan for the next you know, thirty thirty five
minutes for y'all to kind of hear her journey, because
(03:01):
I think that's gonna be the best way to really
hear this and really wrap up this season with a
real life example of you know, tragedy and triumph. So yeah,
we'll let Morgan take it away. I always felt like
(03:28):
a fairly upstanding citizen, and it wasn't always easy to
maintain that. During heroin addiction. There was times when I
had no money and I would think, well, should I shoplift?
Should I steal? I just couldn't do it. I watched
some of my friends go there, and I knew it
wasn't for me. I would pick up an extra shift
at the Dominoes and I would make it, and I
always made it, and I never turned to other forms
(03:50):
of crime, and it didn't matter. The first time I
tried to kill myself, I was eleven years old. Is
a painfully awkward and shy child. Had I came of
age now, I would have probably been diagnosed as being
on the spectrum definitely neurodivergen. I don't care to label
(04:11):
it anymore because I'm grown and my life is fine.
Definitely had social issues, severe social issues, severe mental health issues.
There was violence in my household, just you know, the
standard round the mill stuff. I had a middle class background,
but then was cast into sudden poverty at the age
of sixteen, my mom had a gambling addiction and was
caught embezzling and her house was foreclose. By the time
(04:34):
I was sixteen, I had found the drug subculture. We
had ecstasy pills, then cocaine, and then this girl who
had broken her leg riding horses had forty miligram oxycon
bills and she said, I'll trade you two of mine
for two years ecstasy. I'm like, yeah, sure, and we
do the trade. That is the first time I tried
(04:54):
to oxycotton, and I just crushed it up with the
coating on and all I didn't no better, snored it,
and I remember thinking, why did I ever do cocaine?
This is so much better. Come to find out, oxyconton
was actually really expensive and so we couldn't afford to
do it that much. I was already working as a
pizza delivery driver. This was right after I turned eighteen
years old. And my friend Justin's we went to high
(05:16):
school together, and I meet him and he sells oxyconton.
That's like how he makes his living. Justin was like, yo,
that's a lot of money that you just spent, and like,
I'm here to make money, but you're my actual friend,
you know, there's an alternative, right, And he showed us
how to smoke heroin on foil and I was like, oh,
my god, and my own my mind exploded. When I
(05:40):
was sixteen and there was no food in the house,
I dropped out of high school to go work full
time at McDonald's because I had to eat, and so
life was pretty miserable, and so drugs were an escape
for that day. And they were pretty fun, you know what.
They worked quite well in the beginning and for a
long time. Honestly, drugs work. That's why people doing them,
and it gave me something to look forward to. People
(06:03):
are medicating emotional pain they've learned maladaptive coping mechanisms. Most often,
addiction is a response to childhood trauma are sometimes adult trauma,
but especially adverse childhood experiences. Then the societal response to
that is traumatizing you further and then sitting and scratching
our heads like, well, why isn't it working? That pain
(06:27):
existential dread, physical pain, emotional pain. That's why people are using.
We try to punish the hurt out of people. You
cannot punish the hurt out of people. I worked in
the hood as close as you know, portlandis has a hood.
I'm in my Dominance uniform. I remember my boss needed
(06:49):
to cut one of the delivery drivers and I volunteered,
and I regretted that for the rest of my life.
Then my friend Tim, who works at the bar two
streets down, he texts me. He says, I'm so sick.
I'm sick at work. Please come. I don't get off
until two am. He's a bartender, can you get me
through my shift? And I was like okay. And there
(07:11):
I am in my Domino's uniform, sitting in my car
and the parking lot of this really grungy dive bar,
cooking a shot and I have these big over the
ear headphones on because I'm watching How I Met Your
Mother on my phone, and so I gets stuck in
my dash and I'm just like cooking Dana Da And
then I just remember and I looked to my left
(07:35):
and it's a thick and Portland police officer and I
know right then I am going to jail. And the
police support's funny because I had like drawn up the
heroine in the syringe as he was knocking on my
door and he's like step out of the car. I
squirted it on the ground and he tried to arrest
me for obstruction of evidence for that, and the DA
declined to prosecute. But then I had a Graham or
(07:58):
just let's send a Graham hidden in my car, like
it was about eighty dollars worth of heroin, twenty four
hours worth of heroin, and so that's what they gave
me the felony four. I just want to clarify, being
addicted to heroin is synonymous with being a hardened criminal
(08:18):
in the eyes of the law. No one was accusing
me of being a drug dealer at that time. All
they were accusing me of was simple drug possession and
that's all that it takes in the United States to
be considered a hardened criminal. But it's Portland, right, so progressive.
So they put me into the kinder, gentler to alternative
(08:39):
to incarceration drug court. I ended up going to jail
over and over and over because I couldn't stop doing heroin.
But I did everything else that they asked me to do.
I would go to my groups, I would meet with
my po I would pee in their cup and it
would be positive for her. But I'm like, but hey,
look I'm engaging. I'm here, but I was still using
(09:00):
That didn't work for them. They didn't like that. So
call it which you want to call it. Drug court
is just an extension of the war on drugs. I mean,
I'm jumping through their hoops because at the time I
hadn't yet been convicted of the felony. He was still pending. Right,
it was deferred. So as long as you jump through
all our hoops for a year and a half and
we'll dismiss it. So I'm jumping through their hoops. I'd
(09:25):
done twenty eight days in impatient with my car parked
out front of the treatment center. I'm out in Washington County.
I get pulled over, he said, wavering within the lane,
which is a fun one that they love to use,
like suspicion of d y. The officer asked me to
search my car. No, sir, I did not consent to searches.
Over and over starts threatening me, says he's going to
(09:47):
do the field sobriety test. I said, go right ahead,
and then he just starts screaming at me. What the
fuck is that? What's that handed to me now? And
I'm like, what, I don't know? What he's talking about,
and I'm like picking up random bits of detritus, like
is it this? What do you want, dude? What do
you want? And he makes it sound like it's a weapon.
He was talking about pieces of trash and I picked
(10:09):
up like the first thing, it was like a receipt.
He was like no. I picked up the next thing
and he was like no, And I picked up the
next thing. He goes that, he takes it out, He
opens my door, snatches me up and pulls me out
of the car, shoves me against the car and pats
me down, and I'm like, what is going on? And
he said that piece of plastic tested positive for heroin
(10:30):
residue and that I was under arrest for felony drug possession.
I was like, dude, I picked my car up from
treatment today, that that car has been sitting in the
treatment center parking lot since before. What do you mean
I'm under arrest for residue? And it's actually super common.
There's just thousands of Americans have gotten felony convictions for
(10:53):
residue amounts not visible to the naked eye, on detritus,
on trash. I am really emboldened. I go in and
I said this was an illegal search for it the
Poison Street. There's no way that any of this is valid.
I declined the search, and he pulls up the police
report and it says, here, can we search your car?
(11:16):
And then it says miss Godwin, Yeah, sure, go ahead,
and I fucking excuse me, and I'm like, pull the
dash camp footage. They're lying. I did not consent to
that search. In fact, I repeatedly declined, and he goes, oh, well,
the Washington County sheriff Department doesn't actually have dash camps
or body cameras. And my lawyer had to sit me
(11:38):
down and said, hey, listen, you were just arrested for
drug possession a few months ago. You are literally in
drug court. Do you know how this looks. It is
going to be your word a junkie for saccap and
a court a law who you think is going to
win that, and then if you lose that at trial,
it's going to be so much worse for you. I
can probably get you a plea deal that has no
(11:59):
jail time but a felony conviction or a felony conviction,
and I got both those felonies back to back. We'll
be right back with the War on drug Hi. I'm
(12:25):
Jason Flom, CEO and founder of Lava for Good podcasts,
Home to Bone Valley, Wrongful Conviction, The War on Drugs,
and many other great podcasts. Today we're asking you, our listeners,
to take part in the survey. Your feedback is going
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You're complete and candidate answers will help us continue to
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(12:48):
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for your support. The War on Drugs PO guests is
sponsored by Stand Together. Stand Together is a philanthropic community
that partners with America's boldest change makers to tackle the
root causes of our country's biggest problems. Christina Dent is
(13:10):
one of many entrepreneurs partnering with Stand Together to end
the War on Drugs, the root cause of so many
problems and communities across the country. As a foster mom,
she came into contact with the War on Drugs when
she saw how it was ripping apart the family she
worked with. She witnessed how kids were affected, and her
mothers wanted something better for their families, but didn't have
the tools to get there themselves. Christina Dent started a
(13:32):
nonprofit called Ended for Good because she knew there was
a better solution to help these families. She's working to
end the war on drugs in Mississippi and build consensus
around the state to help families struggling with substance abuse
problems find a different path forward than the one they've
been given. Stand Together has many more stories like this one,
as it partners with thousands of change makers who were
(13:52):
driving solutions in education, healthcare, poverty, and the criminal justice system.
To learn more about Stand Together their partners, or how
you can partner will Stand Together, go to Stand Together
dot org. The definition of addiction is continuing to use
drugs despite negative consequences. Therefore, laying on additional negative consequences
(14:20):
does not work. Addiction itself, outside of the sphere of
criminal law, is already using despite negative consequences. It's causing
issues at work, it's causing issues in my relationship I
use anyway, that's addiction. But then the just system coming
in and say, well, how about if we make it worse,
will that make it better, and surprisingly, no, no, it
(14:42):
does not. I had gotten a founy conviction while receiving
federal financial aid, so that torched my ability to continue
going to school. I got fired from my job. I
got an automatic six month license suspension, which was standard
practice if he were with drugs in your car. But
that took away my livelihood as I was a pizza
(15:04):
delivery driver. For the first time in my life, I
found myself unemployed. So I'm like living in my car,
staying and broken down RV's with my friends. I just
descended into the bowels of addiction and the underworld at
that time, those things that kept me one foot in
addiction and one foot out because I still saw a
better way for myself. I lost that one foot out,
(15:27):
so I jumped in both feet in addiction because what
was the point. I just remember this one time, I
lined up three syringes as much heroin as each could hold,
and I re lined them up in a row, didn't
even bother trying to find a vein, stuck them right
(15:48):
in my hip, injected one after the other, and I
went to lay down on my bed and I really
hoped I wouldn't wake up, but damn if I always
woke up. I just didn't care whether I lived or died.
I was so suicidal. And then I had some inner
voice shine through and say, hey, this isn't actually life
(16:11):
you want for yourself, This isn't actually you you want better.
I was frustricted with my own lack of self control.
I did not want to keep using as if there
I was of two minds, a fractured mind warring, and
so I wanted to remove that element of self control.
And I wanted someone to make me take my medicine
(16:34):
for seven days, because the issue with the suboxin is
I would take it a day or two and then
I would say, you know, I'll square this. I'm gonna
do heroin, and I would stop taking it. And I'd
never taken it multiple days in a row. I was
never stabilized on this medicine, and I just concocted this
grand plan of well, in jail, don't make me take it.
As long as I can get that those seven days stabilized.
I think from there I'll be good. And so my
(16:57):
next drug court check in, I walked in with my
sabo oxen and a letter from my doctor to the
courts imploring them to keep me on it because it
was important life saving medication and my written prescription. And
I walked up to the podium and I asked Judge
Ryant to take me into custody because I needed a
fresh start. I needed to be stabilized on my medication.
I volunteered for Joe. I had some notion that jail
(17:20):
was there to help us. Even after all the life
I'd lived and being persecuted by the police, prosecuted, I
still was raised with this the authorities there to protect
us military brat mentality, and that really permeated deep into
my subconscious You asked me, now, why would I volunteer
for jails. It sounds ridiculous. I was obviously incredibly naive
(17:40):
and stupid, but at the time, you know, the system
was leaning hard on me, and I thought, okay, what
if I lean in? And I get into the Multnoma
County jail that night, and I asked the nurse for
my suboxon and she laughs in my face and tells
me that they do not prescribe that medication. And I
kicked cole Turkey and an open dorm with seventy seven
(18:02):
women staring at me while I puked into a trash
can with fluorescent lights that never turned off, and for
seven days of agony, I had to remind myself that
I chose that that I did that to myself. This
was about six eight months after that day, I volunteered
for jail. My mom died. She was a Air Force
(18:27):
veteran one hundred percent disabled from her service, and she
took prescription medication, but she took too many morphine pills
one night. Whether on purpose or because she had a migraine,
I will never know. I was supposed to be the
one that died. I'm a suicidal junkie. But I found
her and how to call the police, and that meant
(18:50):
that I got life insurance, her military life insurance, real clever.
She'd put it into a stipend for me so that
I didn't get it in a batch. So I got
like one lump sum thirty thousand dollars. And I thought,
if I could just buy enough heroine, that all my
problems would be complete. Like I really only thought, for
you know, since the time I was like nineteen twenty,
(19:11):
that my only problem in life was that I didn't
have enough heroine. And if I could just have enough
everything would be complete. I was just doing more and
more heroine, burning through the thirty thousand dollars, realizing, holy shit,
I'm going to run out of money within a couple
of weeks. And it was right in that period that
my friend Justin texted me, the one who first showed
(19:31):
me how to smoke heroin of foil that first time
I overdose. He'd saved me from several other overdoses. Later,
he texted me looking for a Graham, and he'd left
his wallet at my mom's house the day before she died.
When he came over and I'm like, yeah, dude, I
can sell you a Graham out of my bag, and
I have your wallet. I can finally give you back
your wallet. I was so proud of myself because my
mom had died, I was addicted to heroin, and I
(19:52):
had kept his wallet safe and I knew where it was.
I had moved into a trap house, and I still
had saved his wallet. When you're addicted to heroin, you
will find these little semblances of normality to latch onto,
these little moments of responsibility, And so I was so
proud of myself for having saved his wallet and so
I said, yeah, I would sell him the gram out
of my bag. He came. I sold it to him
(20:14):
and then I'm like, oh, let me grab your wallet.
He's like, nah, no, I'll get it next time. I
gotta go. I was like okay. Then next night he
texted me again looking for two grams. And I'm sitting there,
I'm waiting for Justin to come, and the door just
flies open and it's the swat table and they just
(20:36):
stick guns in my face and are screaming at me,
and I think, oh, man, my roommate's in trouble because
he's the one that sells heroin. And then they read
the warrant and it was in my name, what me? What?
I wasn't like selling to support my habit. I didn't shower,
I didn't leave my house. I didn't need nothing. Come
(20:58):
to find out that Justin had not texted me that day.
Was the police pretending to be my dead best friend.
I was only informed of that while being put in
handcuffs and being told that I was being arrested for
drug delivery resulting in death for the overdose death of
Justin DeLong, a charge that carries a twenty year mandatory
minimum sentence. Justin had died the night before the night
(21:21):
that I sold him a Graham. He went home and
overdosed alone in his bedroom. Justin was one of my
closest friends, closest and oldest friends, and I knew his sister,
I knew his family. I was in between panicked and ashamed,
so I didn't attend the funeral service. His family did
not want to see me go to prison. They testified
(21:43):
on my behalf at my sentencing. They had watched him
struggle with addiction, and they thought that the prosecution was
cruel because that Justin had been so abused by the
system while he lived. They were really clear that they
didn't blame me, and that if I held any guilt,
that I needed to forgive myself. That was a terrible
(22:03):
period in my life. And then I find myself in jail,
and of course you know, I'm detoxing cold turkey because
despite the fact that jail has been promore friend, they
never prescribe it. But that is not when I got clean.
Wish it was. Wish I could say it was not.
My mom had died six months before, my friend Justin
had died three months before that, and I was literally
being prosecuted with his death, which really complicates how to grieve.
(22:26):
I will say, there's so much heroine in jail. There's
much more heroine in women's jail than men's jail because
women have an easier time smuggling in the drug and
so there is a lot of drugs that come into
County jail, and I saw absolutely no point and not
using them. Jail is miserable. My life was objectively miserable,
(22:47):
and so I saw it escape anywhere that I could.
I was having issues with self control and I was
still using. So I went to court and I asked
the judge to transfer me to Columbia County Jail, which
I had been to and knew, who had far fewer
drugs because it's so small. There's a lotless traffic coming in.
There's only ten women in the norm, and there I
(23:07):
found an environment that promoted my sobriety and my self
worth because the deputies were kind and they called me
by my name and not a number, and they were
just so respectful. That promoted this mutual respect and kindness
like I have never seen in a jail or prison
before or after. And I really credit them with like
(23:29):
setting me on the course to true recovery and like
achieving success because they were the first ones who told
me that I could and that I wasn't just a
piece of shit because I did drugs. And I thought, oh,
that's right, I'm better than this and I can achieve
more than I've been achieving. And I never used her again.
(23:58):
We'll be right back with the war on drugs. Pot
guess I realized, like, Okay, this really bad thing happened.
Maybe I can channel this suffering into something positive. And
I know that sounds wild because I've talked about people
dying and my mom overdose from morphine, justin overdose, but
(24:18):
I just I couldn't let it all be meaningless. There
was so much hurt that I lived and somehow survived.
I couldn't let it be meaningless, and so I got out.
I still had twelve thousand dollars left in my bank
account for my mom's life insurance, so I was able
to pay cash for my first quarter tuition at Portland
State University, and I decided I was majoring in public health.
(24:39):
Even though I didn't really know what that meant, I
knew it had something to do with the opioid crisis
and that I wanted to channel my suffering. Then the
dean of the School of Public Health, doctor David Beingsburg,
found me. I don't know. I signed up for like
a coffee with him, and he was like, you're special,
You're going places, and no one had ever told me
that before. Born State didn't help me at all with
(25:02):
the transition. I'd never heard of Google Docs. I annoyed,
would any of my classmates were talking about I felt
like I came from Mars. They're talking about like memes
and music videos and I didn't have the Internet for
four years. I annoyed. I just felt it goes from Mars.
But then the dean dean is sitting there and like,
how can I help you? What do you need and
introducing me to people, and then he invited me to
speak on a local news town hall and that changed
(25:24):
my life. We started a group I was like perfectly
involved in that justice involved student group. There there was
a few, but because of the nature of criminalization and
shame and stigma, very few people would I self identify,
so it's hard to find even the few that did
exist because I was the only one shouting it from
the mountaintops. I was sent to prison for my best
(25:47):
friend's overdose. But then I realized the more I told
my story, people would come up to me and be like,
I have a felony too. I was giving people permission.
It's okay to talk about this. This isn't your fault,
like this city is broken, not you. You are not
a bad person because you did a bad thing, and
especially not just because you did drugs. I just would
(26:09):
tell my story with anyone who would listen. And so
in twenty nineteen, they said, hey, they're looking at a
measure to decriminalize drugs and organ I jumped at it
because doing nothing, literally not responding at all to substance use,
would be superior to what we are doing now. So
(26:33):
Measure one ten, passed by an overwhelming majority the voters
in November twenty twenty, now possession of small quantities of drugs.
So for heroin, it's one grammar less is a class
A violation akin to a traffic citation. It comes with
one hundred dollar fine that can be waived if you
complete a screening just essentially, do you have a substance
(26:55):
use disorder or not? Type screening that will connect you
to services. What it does is it stops the harm.
So no longer are we making people worse. We're not
getting people fired from their jobs. We're not making them
homeless because they choose to use drugs. So the harm
has stopped. The healing phase is much more complex after
(27:16):
we decriminalize drugs. The organ Health Authority was tasked with
creating the Oversight and Accountability Council that was written into
the measure as a bunch of people with lived experience
who were going to drive the ship, unheard of in government.
I applied and because I was so heavily criminalized for
my drug possession and then got out of prison to
(27:36):
major in public health and become a drug policy researcher,
I was appointed. Successfully. I am a council member. Only
Measure one to end oversight in Accountability councils called the OEC,
and we meet several times a week, usually trying to
get this money out to fund the behavioral health resource
networks in every single county in the state. We're currently
(27:57):
trying to get two hundred and seventy million dollars out
the door. I did the math. I approved thirty six
million dollars to go out. It's just like, who am
I to be, like, Yes, here's thirty six million dollars.
It goes to harm reduction, so that can include syringe exchange,
n locks, one distribution, some wound care, and drug checking.
(28:20):
We fund intensive outpatient less intensive outpatient vastly trying to
ramp up medications for opioduce disorder. So we're funding methode
sbox and clinics getting method on in sbox and into
the jails. We're also paying for peer venturing, which is huge,
and housing. So the point of everything that we're paying
for as we are giving people better options, and with
(28:42):
better options come better choices. Why do we have mass
incarceration at the same time as the worst overdose crisis
in human history. That's because everything we're doing is making
it worse. We are doing everything so wrong, okay, and
so even our best public health messaging does not reach
(29:05):
people we have pushed into stigmatize them so badly, and
then so we push them really far away, and we
put all these barriers in between productive, normal society and
their drug use, and we make it almost insurmountable for
them to come back. Oh, okay, you don't want to
be living in a tent smoking fatable anymore. Well, too bad,
you have seven felony convictions, outstanding court fees, you know, like,
(29:27):
oh you can't get housing, Oh no, you can't get
this job. And it's like people who need more help
because they've been struggling with addiction and I just mean
the actual psychological effects of addiction. That's a person who
needs more help. But because of our criminal justice system,
they get infinitely more barriers. And then we wonder why
people don't get better. See, when people are presented with
(29:49):
better options, they make better choices, and as you restrict
their options, the choice is worse. There's nothing about using
drugs that inherently makes your criminal. It's not like using
oxyquotum comes with that. A side effect on the label
is shoplifting, as if every other facet of your character
decays and you only become a drug user, which is
(30:11):
synonymous with you know, sinner criminal. Okay, that is not real.
Drugs do not making me a criminal or engage in
criminal conduct. But a funny thing happens is if you
believe that it's true, and then you create laws that
respond as if drug use were criminal, that actually promotes
people into criminal activity. That really destroys hope for the future,
(30:36):
and everyone needs hope for the future. I remember one
of the times in treatment I was writing hip hop
songs to myself and there's this line. It's always told
I had so much potential, but now that shit is
inconsequence because I already had felonies and there was just
no hope held the whole world in my palm, mailted
(31:00):
down into the spoon, shot in my arms, something like that,
and that is really illustrative for how I felt about
what my future would hold. And as I sit before
you today, I have changed organ law multiple times. I
regularly work with my United States senator try to change
federal law. It doesn't work. How so far it hasn't worked,
(31:21):
but that's because our senate has great lund. I have
a career that I didn't know existed, founded around the
fact that I have been to prison okay, and that
I was addicted to heroin. Those are my primary too
job qualifications. I have been able to channel all of
the hurt and the harm and the suffering that I
(31:42):
lifted through that was imposed on us, that we got
ourselves into both types, and I try to create a
better world for the people that came after me already.
I know, in this state of organ no other Oregonian
will experience what my friends and I did. Every single
friend I lost to overdose to heroin overdose was incarcerated repeatedly.
(32:04):
What are we doing? If we're not doing this to
save lives? What are we doing? My success was entirely
despite the War on drugs. In fact, the War on
drugs tried to crush me. I am the exception, I
am not the rule, and that is the problem. Wow,
(32:32):
So we're back that last line, I'm the exception, not
the rule, and I think we've seen the rule play
out in the War on drugs when you look at
the numbers, and I hope that we've put some faces
to this war and the casualties of this war and
what it normally does. It's amazing that we were able
(32:52):
to see Morgan face to face because there's a very
strong likelihood, you know, there's a lot of different ways
that could have gone where or we would have never
known her and she just would have been in another
casualty of this war. And I think it makes a
lot of sense now if you've kind of gone on
this journey with us, why we saved Morgan for last
because it touches on everything everything we talked about throughout
(33:13):
this entire series. I think she just had a no
story there. Now. I thought it was so profound that
she said, every single one of my friends that died
of an overdose was incarcerated multiple times. And so our
government who says that the entire purpose of this war
on drugs is to get people, is to remove the
scores of drugs and get people clean in our country,
(33:36):
because that's good for our country, and that's a good
goal for everyone to have. It actually like exacerbates the problem.
And you have these people here under your control, and
we actually put them in a worse spot. And she
just keeps saying, what are we doing? And sometimes when
I'm doing my work, I say that to myself quite
a bit as well. It's just like, what the fuck
are we doing? Guys. That's just what stuck with me
(34:00):
in that episode and properly throughout this entire series. Yeah,
and this has been a hell of a journey that
I've been on with you, you know, just to this episode,
ten man, this is the last episode. We started this
thing a little while ago, and I just hope that
everybody that came along with us on the journey learned
as much as I felt like I learned or was
(34:23):
able to get a little more understanding into why things
are the way they are and that they really don't
have to be that way. You know, we might need
to come back. We might need to come back. We're
doing because we might need to bring a season two
back around just to like, you know what I mean,
we got to keep applying pressure. I can't ease up.
You can't ease up. We did a half court press.
(34:44):
We might as well go full court press. Force some turnovers,
you know what I'm saying. Season two more solutions. Yeah,
that's what I'm guaranteeing. And they're and they're out there.
The playbook is there, Like we actually do have the playbook,
and I want, you know, season two to, like you said,
like expose a lot of these success stories, like the
(35:05):
solutions that we're seeing. You know, we touched on a
little bit of you know, places like you know, Switzerland
where they're you know, actually treating this as a health
issue and some of the other places what Portugal's doing.
And maybe we can find in the budget to allow
you know, Clayton and I just go on like a
European vacation for a few months and recording out there
and we'll see that works. Yeah, Bali, Hawaii, everywhere. The
(35:30):
Maldives have an eximate drug program. Yeah, their forfeiture laws
are a little suspect, but we're gonna get there. Their
banking systems solid though. Yeah, we're gonna have to go
down yeah, um yeah. But there is actually like these
glimmers of hope and solutions and people doing things from
a big, you know, from a countrywide standpoint, and then
(35:51):
just communities figuring this out. And like we talked about
like just being just being a human being and showing
empathy towards someone and like the successes that can come
from that. And so I'd love to show a lot
more of that to kind of outweigh that playbook. Now
that we've brought kind of a lot of the problems,
and now let's season two. Let's bring a lot more
of the solutions. Yes, I'm with it. Make sure you
(36:15):
followed the War on Drugs podcast so you don't miss
any new episodes or any of our quick fixed bonus content.
Thank you for listening. Executive producers for War on Drugs
are Jason Flam and Kevin Wurtis. Senior producer is Michael Epstein.
This episode was edited by Julia Dewin, Michael Epstein, and
Nick Massetti. Associate producer, Sound design and mix and mastering
(36:38):
by Nick Massetti. Additional production by Jeff Cleburne and Anna mcintee.
Be sure to followed the show on Instagram, Twitter, and
Facebook at Lava for Good. You can follow Greg on
Twitter at Greg Gloude and you can follow Clayton English
on Instagram at Clayton English. The War on Drugs is
a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association The
(36:59):
Signal Company Number One. I'm your host, Clayton English, and
I'm Greg Glad and thanks for listening to the War
on Drugs podcast. M
I'm Greg Glot and this is the War on Drugs.
Here we go, episode ten. We are reaching the end
of our war on drugs journey Man, final chapter of
season one. Yeah, yeah, we're getting down to that last
little piece man, that the last little piece of blunt
left man is the roach. Yeah, but sometimes it is
(00:28):
the most potent part, and it's the most hard hitting part.
And I think that's what this episode is today. What
a beautiful metaphor, Clayton, you ever, Hey, hey, sometimes things
just come together nice. But I think at this point
in our journey Man, we gotta ask, and I think
you're the right person asked this question too. How long
are we going to continue to keep treating addicts like criminals.
(00:51):
I always like to have an answer for you, Clayton,
if you ask me statistics and this or that, or
what's legal? What's the schedule one drug? I'll give it
to you. But it's got to the point where that's
what I expect from you. I expect nothing less. Well,
you should really lower your expectations at this point with me, Man,
I mean, I wish I had a good answer. Um.
I think we're getting closer, but I don't think we're
(01:11):
there yet. I think more and more people are understanding addiction.
But man, the war on drugs, it's not just the incarceration,
it's not just the civil fortune, it's not all these
things that we've talked about, the policies. It really is
the social fabric of our country and how it hasn't
been ingrained because we've just been hit with this propaganda
(01:32):
machine for you know, over one hundred years now, and
that's really really hard. It's gonna take a long time.
But hopefully podcasts like this more people speaking, you know,
people like Morgan Godman our guests today, you know, kind
of telling her story and understanding the tragedy of the
drug war and how it touches on some of the things.
Hopefully that'll help, you know, maybe maybe it's not just
one answer. But I think Morgan actually she shows us
(01:55):
from the top to the bottom, or should I say
the bottom to the top, how this were on drugs,
like affects people and everything that we've talked about in
previous episodes I think are highlighted and illustrated in her story.
So today we're gonna do something a little different, you know.
I know, most of the time, as us and the
guests and we're jumping in there and stuff. But today
(02:17):
we're just gonna get out the way. Man. We're gonna
get out the way, because this is a story that
you need to hear, uninterrupted, unfiltered, and from the mouth
of the person who lived it. Yeah, bad news you
don't get to hear Clayton's smooth, soulful voice. Good news,
you don't have to hear my nasally deviated, septing voice
for the next thirty minutes. So, and we're going to
steal an idea from Jason Flom, who you may remember
(02:39):
from one of our quick fixes. He's, you know, the
has his own podcast, Wrongful Convictions, where he does amazing
work helping get people exonerated. He has a thing on
there called closing Arguments where he allows for the experts
and guests that he's brought on to kind of have
that final word. And we're going to kind of take
that and expand on it and give that final word
to Morgan for the next you know, thirty thirty five
minutes for y'all to kind of hear her journey, because
(03:01):
I think that's gonna be the best way to really
hear this and really wrap up this season with a
real life example of you know, tragedy and triumph. So yeah,
we'll let Morgan take it away. I always felt like
(03:28):
a fairly upstanding citizen, and it wasn't always easy to
maintain that. During heroin addiction. There was times when I
had no money and I would think, well, should I shoplift?
Should I steal? I just couldn't do it. I watched
some of my friends go there, and I knew it
wasn't for me. I would pick up an extra shift
at the Dominoes and I would make it, and I
always made it, and I never turned to other forms
(03:50):
of crime, and it didn't matter. The first time I
tried to kill myself, I was eleven years old. Is
a painfully awkward and shy child. Had I came of
age now, I would have probably been diagnosed as being
on the spectrum definitely neurodivergen. I don't care to label
(04:11):
it anymore because I'm grown and my life is fine.
Definitely had social issues, severe social issues, severe mental health issues.
There was violence in my household, just you know, the
standard round the mill stuff. I had a middle class background,
but then was cast into sudden poverty at the age
of sixteen, my mom had a gambling addiction and was
caught embezzling and her house was foreclose. By the time
(04:34):
I was sixteen, I had found the drug subculture. We
had ecstasy pills, then cocaine, and then this girl who
had broken her leg riding horses had forty miligram oxycon
bills and she said, I'll trade you two of mine
for two years ecstasy. I'm like, yeah, sure, and we
do the trade. That is the first time I tried
(04:54):
to oxycotton, and I just crushed it up with the
coating on and all I didn't no better, snored it,
and I remember thinking, why did I ever do cocaine?
This is so much better. Come to find out, oxyconton
was actually really expensive and so we couldn't afford to
do it that much. I was already working as a
pizza delivery driver. This was right after I turned eighteen
years old. And my friend Justin's we went to high
(05:16):
school together, and I meet him and he sells oxyconton.
That's like how he makes his living. Justin was like, yo,
that's a lot of money that you just spent, and like,
I'm here to make money, but you're my actual friend,
you know, there's an alternative, right, And he showed us
how to smoke heroin on foil and I was like, oh,
my god, and my own my mind exploded. When I
(05:40):
was sixteen and there was no food in the house,
I dropped out of high school to go work full
time at McDonald's because I had to eat, and so
life was pretty miserable, and so drugs were an escape
for that day. And they were pretty fun, you know what.
They worked quite well in the beginning and for a
long time. Honestly, drugs work. That's why people doing them,
and it gave me something to look forward to. People
(06:03):
are medicating emotional pain they've learned maladaptive coping mechanisms. Most often,
addiction is a response to childhood trauma are sometimes adult trauma,
but especially adverse childhood experiences. Then the societal response to
that is traumatizing you further and then sitting and scratching
our heads like, well, why isn't it working? That pain
(06:27):
existential dread, physical pain, emotional pain. That's why people are using.
We try to punish the hurt out of people. You
cannot punish the hurt out of people. I worked in
the hood as close as you know, portlandis has a hood.
I'm in my Dominance uniform. I remember my boss needed
(06:49):
to cut one of the delivery drivers and I volunteered,
and I regretted that for the rest of my life.
Then my friend Tim, who works at the bar two
streets down, he texts me. He says, I'm so sick.
I'm sick at work. Please come. I don't get off
until two am. He's a bartender, can you get me
through my shift? And I was like okay. And there
(07:11):
I am in my Domino's uniform, sitting in my car
and the parking lot of this really grungy dive bar,
cooking a shot and I have these big over the
ear headphones on because I'm watching How I Met Your
Mother on my phone, and so I gets stuck in
my dash and I'm just like cooking Dana Da And
then I just remember and I looked to my left
(07:35):
and it's a thick and Portland police officer and I
know right then I am going to jail. And the
police support's funny because I had like drawn up the
heroine in the syringe as he was knocking on my
door and he's like step out of the car. I
squirted it on the ground and he tried to arrest
me for obstruction of evidence for that, and the DA
declined to prosecute. But then I had a Graham or
(07:58):
just let's send a Graham hidden in my car, like
it was about eighty dollars worth of heroin, twenty four
hours worth of heroin, and so that's what they gave
me the felony four. I just want to clarify, being
addicted to heroin is synonymous with being a hardened criminal
(08:18):
in the eyes of the law. No one was accusing
me of being a drug dealer at that time. All
they were accusing me of was simple drug possession and
that's all that it takes in the United States to
be considered a hardened criminal. But it's Portland, right, so progressive.
So they put me into the kinder, gentler to alternative
(08:39):
to incarceration drug court. I ended up going to jail
over and over and over because I couldn't stop doing heroin.
But I did everything else that they asked me to do.
I would go to my groups, I would meet with
my po I would pee in their cup and it
would be positive for her. But I'm like, but hey,
look I'm engaging. I'm here, but I was still using
(09:00):
That didn't work for them. They didn't like that. So
call it which you want to call it. Drug court
is just an extension of the war on drugs. I mean,
I'm jumping through their hoops because at the time I
hadn't yet been convicted of the felony. He was still pending. Right,
it was deferred. So as long as you jump through
all our hoops for a year and a half and
we'll dismiss it. So I'm jumping through their hoops. I'd
(09:25):
done twenty eight days in impatient with my car parked
out front of the treatment center. I'm out in Washington County.
I get pulled over, he said, wavering within the lane,
which is a fun one that they love to use,
like suspicion of d y. The officer asked me to
search my car. No, sir, I did not consent to searches.
Over and over starts threatening me, says he's going to
(09:47):
do the field sobriety test. I said, go right ahead,
and then he just starts screaming at me. What the
fuck is that? What's that handed to me now? And
I'm like, what, I don't know? What he's talking about,
and I'm like picking up random bits of detritus, like
is it this? What do you want, dude? What do
you want? And he makes it sound like it's a weapon.
He was talking about pieces of trash and I picked
(10:09):
up like the first thing, it was like a receipt.
He was like no. I picked up the next thing
and he was like no, And I picked up the
next thing. He goes that, he takes it out, He
opens my door, snatches me up and pulls me out
of the car, shoves me against the car and pats
me down, and I'm like, what is going on? And
he said that piece of plastic tested positive for heroin
(10:30):
residue and that I was under arrest for felony drug possession.
I was like, dude, I picked my car up from
treatment today, that that car has been sitting in the
treatment center parking lot since before. What do you mean
I'm under arrest for residue? And it's actually super common.
There's just thousands of Americans have gotten felony convictions for
(10:53):
residue amounts not visible to the naked eye, on detritus,
on trash. I am really emboldened. I go in and
I said this was an illegal search for it the
Poison Street. There's no way that any of this is valid.
I declined the search, and he pulls up the police
report and it says, here, can we search your car?
(11:16):
And then it says miss Godwin, Yeah, sure, go ahead,
and I fucking excuse me, and I'm like, pull the
dash camp footage. They're lying. I did not consent to
that search. In fact, I repeatedly declined, and he goes, oh, well,
the Washington County sheriff Department doesn't actually have dash camps
or body cameras. And my lawyer had to sit me
(11:38):
down and said, hey, listen, you were just arrested for
drug possession a few months ago. You are literally in
drug court. Do you know how this looks. It is
going to be your word a junkie for saccap and
a court a law who you think is going to
win that, and then if you lose that at trial,
it's going to be so much worse for you. I
can probably get you a plea deal that has no
(11:59):
jail time but a felony conviction or a felony conviction,
and I got both those felonies back to back. We'll
be right back with the War on drug Hi. I'm
(12:25):
Jason Flom, CEO and founder of Lava for Good podcasts,
Home to Bone Valley, Wrongful Conviction, The War on Drugs,
and many other great podcasts. Today we're asking you, our listeners,
to take part in the survey. Your feedback is going
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You're complete and candidate answers will help us continue to
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(12:48):
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Good dot com slash survey and participate today. Thank you
for your support. The War on Drugs PO guests is
sponsored by Stand Together. Stand Together is a philanthropic community
that partners with America's boldest change makers to tackle the
root causes of our country's biggest problems. Christina Dent is
(13:10):
one of many entrepreneurs partnering with Stand Together to end
the War on Drugs, the root cause of so many
problems and communities across the country. As a foster mom,
she came into contact with the War on Drugs when
she saw how it was ripping apart the family she
worked with. She witnessed how kids were affected, and her
mothers wanted something better for their families, but didn't have
the tools to get there themselves. Christina Dent started a
(13:32):
nonprofit called Ended for Good because she knew there was
a better solution to help these families. She's working to
end the war on drugs in Mississippi and build consensus
around the state to help families struggling with substance abuse
problems find a different path forward than the one they've
been given. Stand Together has many more stories like this one,
as it partners with thousands of change makers who were
(13:52):
driving solutions in education, healthcare, poverty, and the criminal justice system.
To learn more about Stand Together their partners, or how
you can partner will Stand Together, go to Stand Together
dot org. The definition of addiction is continuing to use
drugs despite negative consequences. Therefore, laying on additional negative consequences
(14:20):
does not work. Addiction itself, outside of the sphere of
criminal law, is already using despite negative consequences. It's causing
issues at work, it's causing issues in my relationship I
use anyway, that's addiction. But then the just system coming
in and say, well, how about if we make it worse,
will that make it better, and surprisingly, no, no, it
(14:42):
does not. I had gotten a founy conviction while receiving
federal financial aid, so that torched my ability to continue
going to school. I got fired from my job. I
got an automatic six month license suspension, which was standard
practice if he were with drugs in your car. But
that took away my livelihood as I was a pizza
(15:04):
delivery driver. For the first time in my life, I
found myself unemployed. So I'm like living in my car,
staying and broken down RV's with my friends. I just
descended into the bowels of addiction and the underworld at
that time, those things that kept me one foot in
addiction and one foot out because I still saw a
better way for myself. I lost that one foot out,
(15:27):
so I jumped in both feet in addiction because what
was the point. I just remember this one time, I
lined up three syringes as much heroin as each could hold,
and I re lined them up in a row, didn't
even bother trying to find a vein, stuck them right
(15:48):
in my hip, injected one after the other, and I
went to lay down on my bed and I really
hoped I wouldn't wake up, but damn if I always
woke up. I just didn't care whether I lived or died.
I was so suicidal. And then I had some inner
voice shine through and say, hey, this isn't actually life
(16:11):
you want for yourself, This isn't actually you you want better.
I was frustricted with my own lack of self control.
I did not want to keep using as if there
I was of two minds, a fractured mind warring, and
so I wanted to remove that element of self control.
And I wanted someone to make me take my medicine
(16:34):
for seven days, because the issue with the suboxin is
I would take it a day or two and then
I would say, you know, I'll square this. I'm gonna
do heroin, and I would stop taking it. And I'd
never taken it multiple days in a row. I was
never stabilized on this medicine, and I just concocted this
grand plan of well, in jail, don't make me take it.
As long as I can get that those seven days stabilized.
I think from there I'll be good. And so my
(16:57):
next drug court check in, I walked in with my
sabo oxen and a letter from my doctor to the
courts imploring them to keep me on it because it
was important life saving medication and my written prescription. And
I walked up to the podium and I asked Judge
Ryant to take me into custody because I needed a
fresh start. I needed to be stabilized on my medication.
I volunteered for Joe. I had some notion that jail
(17:20):
was there to help us. Even after all the life
I'd lived and being persecuted by the police, prosecuted, I
still was raised with this the authorities there to protect
us military brat mentality, and that really permeated deep into
my subconscious You asked me, now, why would I volunteer
for jails. It sounds ridiculous. I was obviously incredibly naive
(17:40):
and stupid, but at the time, you know, the system
was leaning hard on me, and I thought, okay, what
if I lean in? And I get into the Multnoma
County jail that night, and I asked the nurse for
my suboxon and she laughs in my face and tells
me that they do not prescribe that medication. And I
kicked cole Turkey and an open dorm with seventy seven
(18:02):
women staring at me while I puked into a trash
can with fluorescent lights that never turned off, and for
seven days of agony, I had to remind myself that
I chose that that I did that to myself. This
was about six eight months after that day, I volunteered
for jail. My mom died. She was a Air Force
(18:27):
veteran one hundred percent disabled from her service, and she
took prescription medication, but she took too many morphine pills
one night. Whether on purpose or because she had a migraine,
I will never know. I was supposed to be the
one that died. I'm a suicidal junkie. But I found
her and how to call the police, and that meant
(18:50):
that I got life insurance, her military life insurance, real clever.
She'd put it into a stipend for me so that
I didn't get it in a batch. So I got
like one lump sum thirty thousand dollars. And I thought,
if I could just buy enough heroine, that all my
problems would be complete. Like I really only thought, for
you know, since the time I was like nineteen twenty,
(19:11):
that my only problem in life was that I didn't
have enough heroine. And if I could just have enough
everything would be complete. I was just doing more and
more heroine, burning through the thirty thousand dollars, realizing, holy shit,
I'm going to run out of money within a couple
of weeks. And it was right in that period that
my friend Justin texted me, the one who first showed
(19:31):
me how to smoke heroin of foil that first time
I overdose. He'd saved me from several other overdoses. Later,
he texted me looking for a Graham, and he'd left
his wallet at my mom's house the day before she died.
When he came over and I'm like, yeah, dude, I
can sell you a Graham out of my bag, and
I have your wallet. I can finally give you back
your wallet. I was so proud of myself because my
mom had died, I was addicted to heroin, and I
(19:52):
had kept his wallet safe and I knew where it was.
I had moved into a trap house, and I still
had saved his wallet. When you're addicted to heroin, you
will find these little semblances of normality to latch onto,
these little moments of responsibility, And so I was so
proud of myself for having saved his wallet and so
I said, yeah, I would sell him the gram out
of my bag. He came. I sold it to him
(20:14):
and then I'm like, oh, let me grab your wallet.
He's like, nah, no, I'll get it next time. I
gotta go. I was like okay. Then next night he
texted me again looking for two grams. And I'm sitting there,
I'm waiting for Justin to come, and the door just
flies open and it's the swat table and they just
(20:36):
stick guns in my face and are screaming at me,
and I think, oh, man, my roommate's in trouble because
he's the one that sells heroin. And then they read
the warrant and it was in my name, what me? What?
I wasn't like selling to support my habit. I didn't shower,
I didn't leave my house. I didn't need nothing. Come
(20:58):
to find out that Justin had not texted me that day.
Was the police pretending to be my dead best friend.
I was only informed of that while being put in
handcuffs and being told that I was being arrested for
drug delivery resulting in death for the overdose death of
Justin DeLong, a charge that carries a twenty year mandatory
minimum sentence. Justin had died the night before the night
(21:21):
that I sold him a Graham. He went home and
overdosed alone in his bedroom. Justin was one of my
closest friends, closest and oldest friends, and I knew his sister,
I knew his family. I was in between panicked and ashamed,
so I didn't attend the funeral service. His family did
not want to see me go to prison. They testified
(21:43):
on my behalf at my sentencing. They had watched him
struggle with addiction, and they thought that the prosecution was
cruel because that Justin had been so abused by the
system while he lived. They were really clear that they
didn't blame me, and that if I held any guilt,
that I needed to forgive myself. That was a terrible
(22:03):
period in my life. And then I find myself in jail,
and of course you know, I'm detoxing cold turkey because
despite the fact that jail has been promore friend, they
never prescribe it. But that is not when I got clean.
Wish it was. Wish I could say it was not.
My mom had died six months before, my friend Justin
had died three months before that, and I was literally
being prosecuted with his death, which really complicates how to grieve.
(22:26):
I will say, there's so much heroine in jail. There's
much more heroine in women's jail than men's jail because
women have an easier time smuggling in the drug and
so there is a lot of drugs that come into
County jail, and I saw absolutely no point and not
using them. Jail is miserable. My life was objectively miserable,
(22:47):
and so I saw it escape anywhere that I could.
I was having issues with self control and I was
still using. So I went to court and I asked
the judge to transfer me to Columbia County Jail, which
I had been to and knew, who had far fewer
drugs because it's so small. There's a lotless traffic coming in.
There's only ten women in the norm, and there I
(23:07):
found an environment that promoted my sobriety and my self
worth because the deputies were kind and they called me
by my name and not a number, and they were
just so respectful. That promoted this mutual respect and kindness
like I have never seen in a jail or prison
before or after. And I really credit them with like
(23:29):
setting me on the course to true recovery and like
achieving success because they were the first ones who told
me that I could and that I wasn't just a
piece of shit because I did drugs. And I thought, oh,
that's right, I'm better than this and I can achieve
more than I've been achieving. And I never used her again.
(23:58):
We'll be right back with the war on drugs. Pot
guess I realized, like, Okay, this really bad thing happened.
Maybe I can channel this suffering into something positive. And
I know that sounds wild because I've talked about people
dying and my mom overdose from morphine, justin overdose, but
(24:18):
I just I couldn't let it all be meaningless. There
was so much hurt that I lived and somehow survived.
I couldn't let it be meaningless, and so I got out.
I still had twelve thousand dollars left in my bank
account for my mom's life insurance, so I was able
to pay cash for my first quarter tuition at Portland
State University, and I decided I was majoring in public health.
(24:39):
Even though I didn't really know what that meant, I
knew it had something to do with the opioid crisis
and that I wanted to channel my suffering. Then the
dean of the School of Public Health, doctor David Beingsburg,
found me. I don't know. I signed up for like
a coffee with him, and he was like, you're special,
You're going places, and no one had ever told me
that before. Born State didn't help me at all with
(25:02):
the transition. I'd never heard of Google Docs. I annoyed,
would any of my classmates were talking about I felt
like I came from Mars. They're talking about like memes
and music videos and I didn't have the Internet for
four years. I annoyed. I just felt it goes from Mars.
But then the dean dean is sitting there and like,
how can I help you? What do you need and
introducing me to people, and then he invited me to
speak on a local news town hall and that changed
(25:24):
my life. We started a group I was like perfectly
involved in that justice involved student group. There there was
a few, but because of the nature of criminalization and
shame and stigma, very few people would I self identify,
so it's hard to find even the few that did
exist because I was the only one shouting it from
the mountaintops. I was sent to prison for my best
(25:47):
friend's overdose. But then I realized the more I told
my story, people would come up to me and be like,
I have a felony too. I was giving people permission.
It's okay to talk about this. This isn't your fault,
like this city is broken, not you. You are not
a bad person because you did a bad thing, and
especially not just because you did drugs. I just would
(26:09):
tell my story with anyone who would listen. And so
in twenty nineteen, they said, hey, they're looking at a
measure to decriminalize drugs and organ I jumped at it
because doing nothing, literally not responding at all to substance use,
would be superior to what we are doing now. So
(26:33):
Measure one ten, passed by an overwhelming majority the voters
in November twenty twenty, now possession of small quantities of drugs.
So for heroin, it's one grammar less is a class
A violation akin to a traffic citation. It comes with
one hundred dollar fine that can be waived if you
complete a screening just essentially, do you have a substance
(26:55):
use disorder or not? Type screening that will connect you
to services. What it does is it stops the harm.
So no longer are we making people worse. We're not
getting people fired from their jobs. We're not making them
homeless because they choose to use drugs. So the harm
has stopped. The healing phase is much more complex after
(27:16):
we decriminalize drugs. The organ Health Authority was tasked with
creating the Oversight and Accountability Council that was written into
the measure as a bunch of people with lived experience
who were going to drive the ship, unheard of in government.
I applied and because I was so heavily criminalized for
my drug possession and then got out of prison to
(27:36):
major in public health and become a drug policy researcher,
I was appointed. Successfully. I am a council member. Only
Measure one to end oversight in Accountability councils called the OEC,
and we meet several times a week, usually trying to
get this money out to fund the behavioral health resource
networks in every single county in the state. We're currently
(27:57):
trying to get two hundred and seventy million dollars out
the door. I did the math. I approved thirty six
million dollars to go out. It's just like, who am
I to be, like, Yes, here's thirty six million dollars.
It goes to harm reduction, so that can include syringe exchange,
n locks, one distribution, some wound care, and drug checking.
(28:20):
We fund intensive outpatient less intensive outpatient vastly trying to
ramp up medications for opioduce disorder. So we're funding methode
sbox and clinics getting method on in sbox and into
the jails. We're also paying for peer venturing, which is huge,
and housing. So the point of everything that we're paying
for as we are giving people better options, and with
(28:42):
better options come better choices. Why do we have mass
incarceration at the same time as the worst overdose crisis
in human history. That's because everything we're doing is making
it worse. We are doing everything so wrong, okay, and
so even our best public health messaging does not reach
(29:05):
people we have pushed into stigmatize them so badly, and
then so we push them really far away, and we
put all these barriers in between productive, normal society and
their drug use, and we make it almost insurmountable for
them to come back. Oh, okay, you don't want to
be living in a tent smoking fatable anymore. Well, too bad,
you have seven felony convictions, outstanding court fees, you know, like,
(29:27):
oh you can't get housing, Oh no, you can't get
this job. And it's like people who need more help
because they've been struggling with addiction and I just mean
the actual psychological effects of addiction. That's a person who
needs more help. But because of our criminal justice system,
they get infinitely more barriers. And then we wonder why
people don't get better. See, when people are presented with
(29:49):
better options, they make better choices, and as you restrict
their options, the choice is worse. There's nothing about using
drugs that inherently makes your criminal. It's not like using
oxyquotum comes with that. A side effect on the label
is shoplifting, as if every other facet of your character
decays and you only become a drug user, which is
(30:11):
synonymous with you know, sinner criminal. Okay, that is not real.
Drugs do not making me a criminal or engage in
criminal conduct. But a funny thing happens is if you
believe that it's true, and then you create laws that
respond as if drug use were criminal, that actually promotes
people into criminal activity. That really destroys hope for the future,
(30:36):
and everyone needs hope for the future. I remember one
of the times in treatment I was writing hip hop
songs to myself and there's this line. It's always told
I had so much potential, but now that shit is
inconsequence because I already had felonies and there was just
no hope held the whole world in my palm, mailted
(31:00):
down into the spoon, shot in my arms, something like that,
and that is really illustrative for how I felt about
what my future would hold. And as I sit before
you today, I have changed organ law multiple times. I
regularly work with my United States senator try to change
federal law. It doesn't work. How so far it hasn't worked,
(31:21):
but that's because our senate has great lund. I have
a career that I didn't know existed, founded around the
fact that I have been to prison okay, and that
I was addicted to heroin. Those are my primary too
job qualifications. I have been able to channel all of
the hurt and the harm and the suffering that I
(31:42):
lifted through that was imposed on us, that we got
ourselves into both types, and I try to create a
better world for the people that came after me already.
I know, in this state of organ no other Oregonian
will experience what my friends and I did. Every single
friend I lost to overdose to heroin overdose was incarcerated repeatedly.
(32:04):
What are we doing? If we're not doing this to
save lives? What are we doing? My success was entirely
despite the War on drugs. In fact, the War on
drugs tried to crush me. I am the exception, I
am not the rule, and that is the problem. Wow,
(32:32):
So we're back that last line, I'm the exception, not
the rule, and I think we've seen the rule play
out in the War on drugs when you look at
the numbers, and I hope that we've put some faces
to this war and the casualties of this war and
what it normally does. It's amazing that we were able
(32:52):
to see Morgan face to face because there's a very
strong likelihood, you know, there's a lot of different ways
that could have gone where or we would have never
known her and she just would have been in another
casualty of this war. And I think it makes a
lot of sense now if you've kind of gone on
this journey with us, why we saved Morgan for last
because it touches on everything everything we talked about throughout
(33:13):
this entire series. I think she just had a no
story there. Now. I thought it was so profound that
she said, every single one of my friends that died
of an overdose was incarcerated multiple times. And so our
government who says that the entire purpose of this war
on drugs is to get people, is to remove the
scores of drugs and get people clean in our country,
(33:36):
because that's good for our country, and that's a good
goal for everyone to have. It actually like exacerbates the problem.
And you have these people here under your control, and
we actually put them in a worse spot. And she
just keeps saying, what are we doing? And sometimes when
I'm doing my work, I say that to myself quite
a bit as well. It's just like, what the fuck
are we doing? Guys. That's just what stuck with me
(34:00):
in that episode and properly throughout this entire series. Yeah,
and this has been a hell of a journey that
I've been on with you, you know, just to this episode,
ten man, this is the last episode. We started this
thing a little while ago, and I just hope that
everybody that came along with us on the journey learned
as much as I felt like I learned or was
(34:23):
able to get a little more understanding into why things
are the way they are and that they really don't
have to be that way. You know, we might need
to come back. We might need to come back. We're
doing because we might need to bring a season two
back around just to like, you know what I mean,
we got to keep applying pressure. I can't ease up.
You can't ease up. We did a half court press.
(34:44):
We might as well go full court press. Force some turnovers,
you know what I'm saying. Season two more solutions. Yeah,
that's what I'm guaranteeing. And they're and they're out there.
The playbook is there, Like we actually do have the playbook,
and I want, you know, season two to, like you said,
like expose a lot of these success stories, like the
(35:05):
solutions that we're seeing. You know, we touched on a
little bit of you know, places like you know, Switzerland
where they're you know, actually treating this as a health
issue and some of the other places what Portugal's doing.
And maybe we can find in the budget to allow
you know, Clayton and I just go on like a
European vacation for a few months and recording out there
and we'll see that works. Yeah, Bali, Hawaii, everywhere. The
(35:30):
Maldives have an eximate drug program. Yeah, their forfeiture laws
are a little suspect, but we're gonna get there. Their
banking systems solid though. Yeah, we're gonna have to go
down yeah, um yeah. But there is actually like these
glimmers of hope and solutions and people doing things from
a big, you know, from a countrywide standpoint, and then
(35:51):
just communities figuring this out. And like we talked about
like just being just being a human being and showing
empathy towards someone and like the successes that can come
from that. And so I'd love to show a lot
more of that to kind of outweigh that playbook. Now
that we've brought kind of a lot of the problems,
and now let's season two. Let's bring a lot more
of the solutions. Yes, I'm with it. Make sure you
(36:15):
followed the War on Drugs podcast so you don't miss
any new episodes or any of our quick fixed bonus content.
Thank you for listening. Executive producers for War on Drugs
are Jason Flam and Kevin Wurtis. Senior producer is Michael Epstein.
This episode was edited by Julia Dewin, Michael Epstein, and
Nick Massetti. Associate producer, Sound design and mix and mastering
(36:38):
by Nick Massetti. Additional production by Jeff Cleburne and Anna mcintee.
Be sure to followed the show on Instagram, Twitter, and
Facebook at Lava for Good. You can follow Greg on
Twitter at Greg Gloude and you can follow Clayton English
on Instagram at Clayton English. The War on Drugs is
a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association The
(36:59):
Signal Company Number One. I'm your host, Clayton English, and
I'm Greg Glad and thanks for listening to the War
on Drugs podcast. M
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