The War on Drugs, with Ethan Nadelmann

It's no secret that the War on Drugs is controversial -- and millions of people have found themselves on the wrong side of often draconian drug laws. In today's episode, Ben and Matt are joined with Ethan Nadelmann, the founder of the Drug Policy Alliance and creator of Psychoactive, to learn more about the past, present, and -- most importantly -- future of drug policy in the US.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.

(00:25):
My name is Matt our Colleaguel is on an adventure,
but he will return soon. They call me Ben. We're
joined as always with our super producer Paul. Mission Control deconds.
Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that
makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. Uh, Matt,
We've said it before on the show. Regardless of whether

(00:46):
or not you live in the United States, yourself, regardless
of your personal stance on politics, policy, law enforcement, or
even pharmaceutical companies, if you're hearing this, you are being
affected by the consequences of a multi generational war. It's
not a war on any specific country, any specific person,
even specific ideologies. It's a war on a concept, a

(01:08):
war on substances that themselves have no goals, belief or ideology.
You me, everyone, We're all affected by the war on drugs.
But how did we get here? What led us to
this point? Where are we collectively now? Where will we
be in the future. To answer this question, we wanted
to go directly to one of the leaders in this

(01:28):
conversation in this field, Ethan Nadelman. Ethan, thank you so
much for joining us on the show today. We're we're
quite excited to speak with you. Hey, my pleasure, Ben Matt.
It's great to see it. Great to meet you, Ben. Oh, yes,
so u. Some people may know you from your podcast Psychoactive.

(01:48):
Many others will know your face and your voice from
a Ted talk that you gave back in the day.
That's God. I don't even know how many millions of
views at this point, but a vast majority of the people,
if they if a little bell rings when they hear
Ethan Nadelman, it's because you are the founder of the
Drug Policy Alliance. And I just wonder if you could
give us maybe a short rundown of who you are,

(02:13):
because I feel like I can't introduce you properly. Sure man,
happy to do that. Well. So, I basically spent uh
most of my adult life working to end the war
on drugs, and now I'm gonna be sixty five and
in a few months, so and I've been working on
this since my twenties. So I mean, basically, the real
synopsis of it is, you know, graduate school, I started

(02:35):
studying international drug control, got a security clearance from the
State Department, real class right report on drug lated and
money laundering, interview drug enforcement agents from the US of
the countries all around the world. Wrote some books about
this issue. Became a professor at Princeton in the late eighties,
right when the drug war was going absolutely crazy, like
McCarthy ism on steroids, and I sort of stood up

(02:58):
and said this is crazy. Got a few fifteen minutes
of fame. There was an emerging drug policy reform movement
in those days. A few years later, I get a
call out of the blue from a philanthropist and financier
named George Soros who was interested this issue. We kind
of hit it off, so I left Princeton University, started
up this institute in ninety four. Eventually in two thousand

(03:22):
emerges with another organization becomes the Drug Policy Alliance. I
ran that for seventeen years until I stepped down about
four years ago. At that point, Drug Policy Alliance was
the biggest and leading drug policy reform organization not just
in the US but around the world. And during the
course of that it meant we got deeply involved in
things like ballot initiatives to legalize marijuana first for medical purposes,

(03:46):
and then more broadly, we got deeply involved in trying
to roll back the role of the drug war in
mass incarceration. And our other major priority was making a
serious commitment to treating drug use and addiction as a
health issue, not a criminal issue, which meant everything to
try and reduce the spirit of AIDS through needle exchange programs,
to overdose prevention, to introducing Americans to cutting edge ideas

(04:10):
that were being implemented in Europe and elsewhere. Wow. Okay,
so there was so much there, so many, so many
little things that I want to jump on and uh, Ben,
I'm sorry, I don't mean to just take over for
a second here, but you you throughout the name George Soros,
and he's one of these guys that just has so
many rumors circulating about him because of his you know,
obvious wealth and power. But like, what was that interaction?

(04:33):
Like I just I'm so curious personally about that, because
I did I didn't know there was a connection there. Yeah, no,
I'll tell you, Matt, I mean with with George, Um,
when I first got the call in the summer ninety two,
almost thirty years ago. Uh. You know, he was a guy,
wasn't that well known. He was more thanless for his finance,
and but he had been the key philanthropist funding the
dissidents and the opposition to socialist dictatorship and former Soviet

(04:56):
Union Eastern Europe. And what had happened was Communist had
fallen much more quickly than he or anybody expected, and
he had been the key private individual helping bring about
its downfall. He was very committed to the ideals of
an open society, right fighting totalitarianism from the left and
the right, and so he then began asking the question, Well,

(05:16):
he had always thought that America was the model of
what an open society is, but it now seemed, you know,
the question was what in America was inconsistent with open
society ideals. And basically one of the first things that
hit him between the eyes was the war on drugs,
And so he reached out. And you know, at that point,
I was all I was a young professor at Princeton,

(05:37):
but I was already the most prominent person probably in
the world speaking out against the drug war and in
favor of looking at things like legalization and decriminalization. And
so we got together and we hit it off. And
it's funny now to think that, you know, he's now
identified as his radical left funder um. But in point
of fact, when I first met George, I think his
politics effect he said, so, they were more most like

(06:00):
liberal Republican or what was known in the days as
you guys may not know, but Scoop Jackson was a
famous Democrat who you know, very anti communist but kind
of progressive on social issues. And George really identified as
a kind of Scoop Jackson human rights democrat or maybe
liberal Republican, uh, very much not identified in the way
is now. And so he and I essentially developed a

(06:22):
partnership where you know, he agreed to back my starting
an organization and funding grants programs and doing all sorts
of things like that. And in terms of his current reputation,
that really began, i'd say around two thousand and three,
when George was simply horrified at the Bush administration's war

(06:43):
on Terra and all the implications of this thing. He
saw what we were doing with the invasion of Iraq,
he saw all the rhetoric around the anti terrorism stuff
as really being over the top and not reflective of
open society ideals. And it's at that point where he
started to get much more politically involved in supporting Democrats.
Until that point, he hadn't been much of a player.

(07:05):
But if you jump forward now, I mean he's become
a bit more progressive in his views. But what's really
gone on is the demonization of sorrows by you know,
by the right. I mean, it's notable that if you look,
it's not just the people on the right in the
United States who demonized sorrows. It's pouted right, you know,
it's uh, you know, what's his name, the president of Hungary.

(07:28):
It's the right wing authoritarian dictators around the world who
hate sorrows. Because he's the one supporting the Orange Revolution
and the other revolutions and the former Soviet Union. He's
the one fighting for freedom. He's the number one funder
of human rights in the world. And fortunately for me
because I I think our relationship because of his commitment,

(07:50):
even though his support for drug policy reform has only
represented maybe two percent of the billion dollars a year
that he and his foundation are given a way it's
always loomed large in his consciousness and especially in the
earlier years, I think in the public perceptions of him
as well. So I mean I think he's you know,
he's now ninety one, he's still going. He's an extraordinary

(08:13):
human being who's gonna go down in history, um for
you know, really fighting for open society ideals. And you know,
why he's been demonized. I think what happened is part
of it. Maybe the name Sorrows, you know, it's like
a provocative name and everybody can remember it. And I think,
you know, sending out, you know, sending out you know,
anti sorrow stuff and song and some of us also

(08:34):
playing on anti Semitism, you know, the notion of the
Jewish capitalist, the Jewish communist. You know, it goes back
to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, you know,
you know that famous anti Semitic tract of the late
nineteenth early twentieth century. So there's some of that going on.
It's a shame. It's a shame. But I mean, if
you look at the good, what I mean, books are
being written about all the good he's done, and it's

(08:55):
really extraordinary around the world, and Uh, the coke other's
hat um, which is always a good sign to me. Well,
you know, I'll tell you Ben, it's a bit complicated
because there are issues like ending the drug war and
criminal justice reform and some foreign policy issues were actually
George and the Koch brothers. Well now it's no longer

(09:16):
the brothers. Now it's basically Charles since David died, where
they actually see eye to eye on something. So on
a lot of the big issues that are opposed to
one another. But I'll tell you there was a moment.
You know, one of the other famous right wingers is
Grover Norquist, you know, the famous anti tax, let's get
governments so small we can strangle on a bathtub kind
of libertarian approach. But Grover became an ally of mine

(09:39):
on ending the drug war because he hates the drug
war coming from a libertarian perspective. And I landed up
arranging for George Sorrows to speak to Grover Norquist, you know,
Wednesday morning breakfast group of you know, leading right wingers
in America. So so I'm part of what I've enjoyed
has been, you know, this kind of bringing the left
and the right to together in behalf of a good cause,

(10:02):
like ending the war on drugs. That's a that's an
important point too, I think, because it is something that
requires massive collective action. You know, growing up at the
in the generation of people like Matt or myself, the
war on drugs was normalized, right you were born into this, uh,

(10:24):
this ongoing conflict with a with a lot of propaganda.
You know, we had programs like dare in in public
schools and so on. Um, we also had a lot
of I think a lot of people in our generation,
maybe a lot of people listening today just here the
phrase war on drugs and immediately have some kind of

(10:49):
vague associations, but don't really understand the genesis of the
situation that that the US entered into. Earlier, you said,
McCarthy is m on steroids in a specific era of
the War on drugs, And that really to me that
that so astute Lee nails the situation that so many

(11:12):
people grew up in. But I think a lot of
people have never investigated the origins of this situation, the
genesis of the war on drugs. And could you Ethan
tell us in the audience a little bit about how
how this all evolved, Like, um, you know, it's a

(11:36):
it's a well known historical fact that for a time,
things like marijuana or cocaine or opiates were legal, you
could buy and over the counter medicinal beverage to you know,
call him a child's toothache. And now those same sorts
of substances can lead to draconian prison sentences and things

(11:59):
like mandatory minimum So, so how did the US evolved
from that earlier point to the current day. Sure, well,
then I'll try to make it as a thumbnail sketch
as much as possible. Basically, if you think about it,
as you said, late nineteenth century cocaine, opiates, opium, even
heroin that is created in the late eighteen nineties, cannabis,

(12:22):
they're basically legal um throughout the United States and many
other countries. And then the first prohibitions come about, not
because there's new evidence of their harms. I mean that
plays a small role. It's more about because the public
perceptions of who uses or who is perceived to use
these substances. So nobody was going to criminalize, you know,
all these over the counter opiates. It was called louder Nam,

(12:44):
this liquid opium. So long as most of the consumers
were middle class white women, you know, in the eighteen seventies, eighties, nineties,
because nobody wanted to put you know, their antio grandma
behind bars. But when opius become associated with the Chinese
migrants coming in working long hours on the railroads and
the minds, what have you, that's when these kind of
zema xenophobic races, fears become dominant, you know, in the

(13:09):
in the media, and the fear that what were these
yellow men, these chinamen gonna do to our precious white women,
you know, luring them into opium addiction and turning them
into sex slaves and our opium dance. Same thing with cocaine, right,
Cocaine widely used coca cola head cocaineidate until nineteen hundreds.
So far as we know, the problems with coca cola
addiction the eighteen nineties were no worse with cocaine in

(13:29):
it than they are now with caffeine in it. Right,
But when cocaine gets to be perceived with devian groups,
and especially with blacks in the South, and the fear
that these black men would snort this white powder and
forget their proper place in society and go out and
do bad things to our precious white women. That's when
you get cocaine prohibitions, and ditto with cannabis. Right, you know,

(13:51):
it wasn't a big deal, but when it gets linked
in the popular imagination with Mexican Americans, Mexican migrants in
the Southwest and the West in this second and third
decades of the twentieth century, that's when you get the
cannabis prohibitions. So that's you have some kind of early
stages of the War on drugs going on. Although back then,
of course, the big war on drugs was alcohol, alcohol prohibition,

(14:13):
the Temperance Movement, that Eighteenth Amendment banning alcohol in nineteen nineteen,
and then the whole revolt against that, leading to the
only amendment in American history to be repealed, you know,
alcohol prohibition by the twenty first Amendment in nineteen thirty three.
So we had these periodic wars on drugs. The one
that people oftentimes point to is Richard Nixon declaring fifty

(14:35):
years ago drugs being public Enemy number one, and that
was you know, there were concerns around heroin, but it
was also part of his you know, fears around the
hippies and weed and LSD and Timothy Leary and all
this sort of stuff. And that was the beginnings of
the War on drugs. But then when in the seventies,
there's this little period where everybody gets chill. And that's

(14:57):
the period when I come of age. Right, I'm only
twelve when the sixties end, but I'm graduating college at
the end of the seventies. And I remember being in
college in late seventies, you know, and I went first
to McGill in Montreal, then to Harvard, and you know,
it was cool. People would get high. Nobody was all
flipped out. Cocaine was kind of around, but it wasn't
a big issue. There was this kind of sensible period.

(15:20):
Jimmy Carter proposes, you know, a federal law decriminalizing marijuana.
People are talking sense. But then what happens is um,
you know, an anti parents movement starts up. In the
late seventies. There are legitimate concerns about, like one intent,
high school kids getting high every day, and nobody likes
you know, high school kids waken and bacon. And so

(15:40):
you have the beginnings. The Democrats starting getting fearful, and
then Reagan comes in and Reagan starts to pick up
on the War on drugs and the rhetoric and see
the political advantage because and being able to kind of
you know, the dog whistles, you know, connecting it with
fears around black people and crime without actually sounding out
right like a racist. Uh. And then you know the

(16:02):
and then Mary and then crack cocaine nineteen eighties, Len Bias,
a famous basketball player dies of a cocaine overdose. And
then there's a bipartisan like, let's step up the penalties.
And that's nineteen eight six is when I really begin
to date the modern era of the War on drugs.
Penalties for selling or for that, you know, for both.

(16:24):
I mean, it's basically what happens is that's when they
start to introduce penalties at the federal level, and the
states do the same thing of basically saying, cocaine possession
can put you into prison. Maybe goog will give you
a shot of treatment, but if you don't stop, you're
going to prison. And you get penalties for you know,
sometimes one but sometimes five years even more for simple
cocaine possession of small amounts, and for people selling it,

(16:47):
they're introducing penalties of ten twenty years. You know, I mean,
it's crazy. By the late nineteen eighties, I mean, it
is the number one. Fifty percent of Americans in public
opinion polls are saying drugs is the number one threat
to America. I mean, it's that sort of craziness and
marijuana which everybody getting chill about, and it's getting tied
up in the whole war on cocaine. And it's not

(17:08):
just older people as younger people. Right in the late seventies,
I think fifty percent of all college freshmen were in
favor of legalizing marijuana. By the late eighties, it's down
to sixteen percent. So, you know, I start teaching at
prison in seven and I can't I'm amazed at how
conservative my kids are when they're they're taking a seminar
with the on drug policy and half of them have
never even smoked a joint. I mean, it's a whole

(17:30):
transition what goes on. And when I used the phrase
McCarthyism on steroids, well you think, like you know, McCarthyism
was about the fear of communism, right, the fear of
the Russians invading us, the fear of communist spies. But
the fact of the matter is the Russians were not
lapping at our borders, and there was not a communist
spy under every bed. But you could persuade Americans to

(17:51):
become hysterical and engage in these witch hunts where people
be fired for past associations or not signing up to
loyalty host well. War on drugs, yes, there was a
real problem with drugs coming from abroad and people getting addicted,
and yes there was a problem with drug dealers domestically
and of fears around kids. But in point of fact,
the realities of the issue, it was not the kind

(18:14):
of threat that was being depicted in the popular imagination.
And what happened is you had right wing Republicans, most
notoriously the first drugs are a guy named William Bennett,
you know, under the first President Bush, who see this
is a vehicle in which the right wing can play
on the fears of middle class American parents and get
them to embrace these draconian policies. And the Democrats who

(18:36):
don't want to be accused of being soft on crime
or soft on drugs, and some of the old timers,
most especially a famous Democrat back then, Tip O'Neill, the
Massachusetts liberal congressman who was Speaker of the House. You know,
they all joined on board. So we get this bipartisan
war on drugs, and all of a sudden, America's prison population,
which had been sort around the global average back in

(18:57):
the seventies, it goes from five thound and people behind
bars in nineteen eighty to two point three million by
the early two thousands. We four percent of the world's population.
We've got twenty or twenty percent of the world's incarcerated population.
We're locking up black people in a way that makes
South Africa nder Aparthi look like nothing. We're competing with
the Soviet goologs when it comes to rates of incarceration

(19:20):
of black people. Right, So we embrace this policy of
of of drug testing the entire society, trying trying to
use drug testing in schools, in the workplace, firing people
not for being high on job, but just for having
spoke to join over the weekend. We're locking up people ruthlessly.
We're treating drug dealers as if they were rapists and murderers.
So that's the war on drugs that you know, And

(19:41):
that's the thing I've been spending much of my life
trying to repeal and roll back ever since. And and
you've spoken with some very interesting people for your show
Psychoactive on this very topic. And you know, I don't
want to focus too hard in on the war on
drugs because there's so many things we could discuss here. Abou.
I think maybe maybe your discussion with Larry Krasner, the

(20:04):
the d A. I think he's the d A in Philadelphia,
But is that correct? Right? You guys had he had
some interesting things to say, and you guys actually had
some background, um just about how as a district attorney
you can help to shape how some of these laws,
even if they're on the books, how they're actually enforced.

(20:26):
Can you just tell me a little bit about what
you guys discussed when it comes to are the current
you know, how some of these drug laws are enforced?
Right now? Yeah? Well, I mean I'll tell you that.
You know, we oftentimes people say, you know, follow the money, now,
explain the drug war. And you know there's some truth
to that. I mean, private prison corporations and you know,
prison guards unions are fighting for their jobs, and and

(20:47):
you know, police departments wanting more money and all this
sort of stuff. But actually the most venal element of
the war on drugs has oftentimes been the prosecutors, the
district attorneys, the U S attorneys at the federal and
state and local prosecutors. And that's not about money. That's
about power, you know, and that's about power in terms of,

(21:07):
you know, the more the tougher the laws are, the
more you can coerce low level you know, people who
are picked up on drug possession or low level dealing
to plead guilty, sometimes even if they're not right. I mean,
the more also in terms of that inner person relationship
between the prosecutor and the defense attorney. I mean, it
just grossly shifts the balance of power. A lot of
prosecutors want to run for public office, and so you know,

(21:30):
getting on the whole drug war bandwagon is great for them,
and so they have really been some of the most
unaccountable champions of the war on drugs, Worse than the
police chiefs, worse than any right wing drudges, works than
you name it, right, and Larry Krasner, the Philadelphia d A,
is really one of the leaders in a new wave
of progressive prosecutors, basically saying the drug war is both

(21:54):
filling our jails and prisons with tons of low level
people engaged in low level crimes of you know, drug
selling doesn't make any sense. We need to treat the
drug issue primarily as a health issue. Law enforcement is
not to keep part of the solution. And so Larry
Krasner is very bravely been doing this in Philadelphia, and
I was delighted because a lot of these progressive, progressive prosecutors,
when they start moving forward, you know, if there's all

(22:17):
of a sudden a spiking crime, you know, they could
get elected out of office. But Krasner, you know, easily
won re election in Philadelphia, you know, fairly recently, so
you know, he's a good guy. I mean, some of
the other guests, like you know, Senator Schumer, he was
one of the real drug warriors, but now we see
him kind of co sponsoring a marijuana legalization bill, or

(22:37):
the head of the National Suit on Drug Abuse who's
been there for like eighteen years. Nora volcal I really
saw her as kind of a kind of kinder, gentler
face of the drug war establishment, you know, who would
run away from me, I mean in all our previous encounters,
but now she was willing to be on the show.
Because things are changing, right, So there is this evolution
with good guys like Krasner and other process secutors like him,

(23:00):
and police chiefs stepping up and saying we need a
different way, and then some of the old bad guys
beginning to change their tune because the public is changing.
We're going to pause for a word from our sponsors
and will return with more from Ethan Nadelman, and we're back.

(23:23):
So you have been working tirelessly for for decades to
change these prohibitive, draconian policies. And we do know that
the conversation has shifted overall, right, at least at least
for some time and in some parts of the US.

(23:44):
And one thing that we alluded to at the very
beginning of our conversation today, UH is the idea that this, ultimately,
this war on drugs is a war that has serious
consequences outside of the US. In Psychoactive, you spoke with
Juan Manuel Santos, former President of Columbia, and that conversation,

(24:10):
I think is astonishingly eye opening for a lot of
people who only think of this in domestic terms. What
do you see other people, residents of other countries, what
do you see as their perception of the U s
is war on drugs. Well, I'll tell you it's evolved

(24:31):
over time. Band. I mean, if you look at the
United States, you know, we have been the global champion
of the war on drugs from early in the twentieth
century until more or less the second term of President Obama.
You know, it was as if we felt that having
embraced the war on drugs in our own country, we
needed to proselytize it to everybody else. And we justify

(24:53):
it by saying that most of these drugs are being
exported from abroad, heroin, cocaine, and much of the marijuana,
even much of the myth amphetamine. So we got to
crack down, protect our borders, blame foreign countries, you know,
use carrots and sticks to get them to change their
ways in terms of drug production and drugs export to
the United States. But there was another element, some element

(25:14):
of almost kind of like like it, almost but by
forcing others to embrace our way of dealing with drugs
are highly punitive, abstinence only, prohibitionist war on drugs approach,
it was almost like helping to legitimize our own approach
in our own eyes. If we get everybody else to
do it through persistent pressure it would somehow make it
more legit. And so we played a pivotal role in really,

(25:36):
you know, you know, making this a global drug prohibition regime,
where all sorts of countries which had never even heard
of marijuana or never seen cocaine le ended up prohibiting
them and criminalizing them, not even barely knowing what they were.
And then twenty thirty years later, all of a sudden,
they're having to deal with black markets or their own
people using these things through a criminal lens rather than
a regulatory health lens. Right. I remember back when I

(25:59):
got ow in late eighties, early nineties, I go down
in Mexico, Colombia, Peru, uh, you know, you name it,
and these countries they just felt stuck between a rock
and a hard place. On the one hand, it was
clear that the illicit drug markets were essentially global commodities
markets like coffee, like sugar, like tea, like precious metals,

(26:21):
like you name it, and that so long as there's
a demand, there's gonna be a supply, and that there's
no way to stop that. And the notion of putting
law enforcement officials in charge of trying to stop a
dynamic global commodities market just made no sense and was
a recipe for creating huge criminal organizations and vast black
markets and corruption and violence and all of that. Right

(26:43):
on the other hand, they had the U. S. Government saying,
you better do it our way, or we're gonna penalize you.
We're gonna cut off your exports, We're gonna send you know,
police and maybe even soldiers. We're gonna hurt you in
all sorts of ways. So they were really stuck. They
were stuck, and I think was a pivotal moment that
happened really um. I think after we won the ballot

(27:05):
initiatives to legalize marijuana in Colorado in Washington in and
you know, Obama had previously promised that he wanted to
really start to roll back the war on drugs, and
he wasn't willing to do it in the first term
because they saw it as too politically risky. But once
we won in Colorado Washington, it puts the federal government
a tough spot. And at that point, they you know,

(27:26):
they said, what are we gonna do here? It's illegal
under federal law, but Colorond Washington legalized, so they said,
We're gonna let those states implement their legalization and if
they can make it work, who are we the FEDS
to object? And at that point that led to a
series of events where the United States stopped being the
global champion of the war on drugs. We essentially handed

(27:48):
off the baton to the Russians, who loved being the
global champion of the war on drugs. And now Biden,
who was probably the least good on the drug issue
among all the Democrats in the primaries back in twenty twenty. Um.
You know, so he's no great friend of drug policy reform.
But even under him, we see, you know, at least
some progress. Where the US is no longer a robust

(28:09):
global champion of the war on drugs, other countries can
breathe a bit. The European model, with all of its
harm reduction approaches treating drugs as a health issue, has
more chance to flex its muscles and be embraced in
other countries. So we are fortunately sing an evolution in
recent years. But I gotta tell you, I'm ashamed. I
would I would travel around the world and I'd start

(28:30):
off my speeches by saying, I want to apologize to
you as an American citizen for the harms that our
country's war on drugs has done in this country. Well,
thanks for doing that as our representative. Uh, that's very
kind of you. UM. I want to talk about where
the war on terror meets the war on drugs. In
my mind, I first encountered this with Ben Gosh maybe

(28:51):
ten years ago when we made a video on this
been on Afghanistan and the opium trade, and um, there
were just stories come out about soldiers protecting opium fields
and we had just learned, you know, we had been
learning quite a bit at that time, just about the
military's involvement, you know with both the War on drugs. Uh,

(29:14):
fighting the war on drugs and perhaps a few key,
a few small groups of people doing some other things
with drugs when they're funding, you know, other groups with
the sale of drugs and things like that. But when
I think back to that time, I have this very
clear picture of soldiers protecting poppy fields in the opium

(29:39):
trade because it was very valuable both to the people
of Afghanistan and for you know, potentially for the for
the government and the purposes of the military being active
in Afghanistan. When you spoke with David Mansfield. My my
view of that changed quite a bit, um because of
his experiences. I just wonder what your takeaway from that

(30:00):
conversation was. Yeah, well, I mean, David Mansfields, you know,
probably the world's leading expert on drugs in Afghanistan. Um.
But I'll tell you that it's a complicated story because essentially,
you know, for the United States, fighting drugs has although
it's been a huge thing rhetorically, in reality it's always
been a secondary concern compared to first of all, fighting

(30:22):
communism from the fifties until you know, the late nineties,
early two thousands, and then fighting the War on Terra
after two thousand and one. Right, And so what would
happen is that if I mean, and there's a wonderful
book about this by a University Wisconsin professor, Alfred McCoy
called The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, which sets

(30:42):
the context for your question about Afghanistan, which is that
what would happen is go back to Southeast Asia. You know,
they're the United States was fighting in the sixties and
early seventies. We were fighting against communist guerrillas in Vietnam
and Loos and Cambodia, what have you, and many of
our allies there where these other you know, indigenous you know,
tribes and other organizations that were anti communist, and sometimes

(31:06):
the best anti communist fighters, right were the people who
are also involved in the illicit drug activity. And so
what happened in Southeast Asia is that you know, the CIA,
oftentimes sometimes the military more from the CIA, you know,
they would be shipping weapons up to our anti communist
allies in parts of Loos, you know, Vietnam, what have you.

(31:30):
And then when those planes came back filled with opium
or heroin to Saigon to be exported to the U.
S and other parts around the world, well, U S
Intelligence would just turn a blind eye to that, right,
because the greater objective was fighting communism. Same thing happened
in you know, Central America, the Countras back in the eighties, right,

(31:51):
once again fighting the communists. So when our Countra allies
would get involved in drugs to help fund their activities,
you know, you know, the CIA, sometimes the d A
would be going after those guys, and the CIA would
intervene and say, wait a second, those drug traffickers, they're
the best allies. We haven't fighting the communists and this
would even happen exactly, and this would even happen in
smaller ways going on, and you know, parts of Latin America,

(32:14):
South America and Afghanistan of course was the great example
of that, because you know, under the when the Taliban
were first in power in the late nine is only
two thousand's our greatest ally and fighting the Communists was
deeply implicit, you know, implicated in the in the opium
trade and the heroin trade. The guy who was assassinated
by the Taliban right before nine eleven, and so it

(32:37):
was once again kind of saying, hey, we got priorities here. Now.
Part of when consequence of this is that you would
have some people United States, especially black politicians Maxine Waters
from California others, who would say, the reason we have
a drug problem in America is because of the CIA.
They're sending crack cocaine into our ghettos, or decades ago,

(32:59):
they're sending harrow intur ghettos. And what I would point
out to them is, yes, the CIA is complicit, it
is true, But even if the CIA had been squeaky clean,
crack cocaine would have shown up just a few months
later in Los Angeles and New York. Who would have
you or Heroin would have shown up this way because
ultimately these are global commodities markets, and any role the

(33:21):
CIA is playing with our you know, anti communist or
anti terrorist allies in in Afghanistan or or Vietnam or
Mexico through the years, it's it's a tiny it's a
drop in the ocean compared to the bigger dynamics that
play here. So it's always been a complicated story. Doesn't
justify the US being involved and being complicit in drug trafficking,

(33:43):
but I think it's important to put it into that
context there. Yeah, I think that's a I think that's
an important point and one that needs to be brought
up more often. Uh. The sad reality often seems to
be that people, whenn't hearing and narrow heard of want
want an easy cut and dried story of villains and

(34:06):
heroes rather than the you know, much more realistic story
of competing and sometimes uh complimentary interest right the the
old strange bedfellows situations that occur so often in the
world of geopolitics. This leads us to one of the
questions I'm very excited to ask you as as the

(34:27):
world's foremost expert on drug policy. We've entered the realm
of a little bit of myth busting because we know
that the story of drugs in the US is often
riddled with uh alarming accusations, right with conspiracy theories. We've
already mentioned two of the most popular, the idea that

(34:50):
the CIA purposely flooded disadvantaged neighborhoods with cocaine, sort of
steepling their fingers Monty Burn style the whole time. And
with this in mind, we have to ask, are any
of the conspiratorial things people here about drugs and prohibition?
Do any of them, in your opinion have some sand

(35:13):
I'm thinking particularly about accusations of for profit motivations, which
you mentioned. Um. I think also one of the big
ones that we've yet to address is the possible role
of legal drug manufacturers pharmaceutical companies, you know, the produce
the Sackler family kind of operations. I guess what I'm asking, Ethan,

(35:37):
is is any of that real like the accusations that
Big Pharma is quote unquote doing this. I mean, I'll
tell you it's complicated, right, So so let's just take
Big Pharma as one example. And then I'll turn to
another um. You know, back in the late eighties, an
organization emerged called the Partnership for a Drug Free America,

(35:58):
and they were obs st about marijuana use among young people.
Now interestingly, in the early years they were funded by
big alcohol, big tobacco, and big pharma. Right now, ultimately
they were embarrassed and to stop taking money from big
alcohol and big tobacco. But and the guy who was
ahead of that organization was a fellow named Jim Burke,

(36:19):
who had been the head of was ahead of Johnson
and Johnson, the famous pharma Sula company, who was a hero.
He was when when they went through a little scandal
with his tainted Thailand all killing people. The way he
handled that, his crisis management, that became a role model
that it would teach on Harvard Business School for how
to deal with crisis management. So he was one of
the most powerful people in America and the corporate world

(36:40):
and in that kind of you know, you know, wasp
establishment in America. And but he be and but he was,
you know, anti head of the Partnership Drug for America,
the chair of it. And it seemed to be all
about demonizing marijuana. Because you know, if you google, or
you couldn't google back then late eighties, early nineties, but
if you looked around on drugs, what would pop up
is drugs meant heron Cooke came marijuanam F amphetamine LSD.

(37:02):
But drugs also meant everything big farmer was producing. And
so they had a kind of marketing issue, which how
do we distinguish our good drugs are okay drugs from
those bad drugs. So the Partnership for Drugs Free America
became entirely focused on marijuana. They entirely ignored the issues
with pharmaceutical problems. They downplayed the issues with alcohol, at
least in their earlier years. Right, So you had that part,

(37:25):
you know, Now, I didn't see them putting big money.
I mean, and they never actually put big money into
opposing our marijuana legalization initiatives, but they would get involved
in trying to figure out, you know, like how do
we slow the pace of this reform here. Now you
move forward to the Sackler family and Perdue Pharma, which
became notorious for its you know, grossly inappropriate promotion of oxycontent.

(37:48):
Oxycontent was a new formulation of an opioid that was
a miracle drug for people struggling with pain, but when
it's marketed to people with chronic pain, created a big problem.
And I interviewed both the author of the book Empire
of Pain, Patrick rad and Kief about his book about
the Sackler family, but also Kate Nicholson, who started an organization,

(38:10):
you know, to represent the interests of people who are
using pain medications pharmaceutical opioids responsibly but now can't get
them anymore because doctors are afraid to prescribe them because
there's the pendulums swung so far in the direction, and
so they're What I say is, you know, the Sackler
family and especially you know the key people involved with
Perdue Pharma and that organization, they deserve the blame they're getting.

(38:34):
They deserve to be punished, put out of business, penalized,
you know, maybe even go to jail. They deserve that
because of their gross over promotion of this stuff. But
as you said, Ben, people want to have the easy enemy.
So all of a sudden, the Sackler's Perdue Pharma represents
the entire face of the opioid epidemic, But in point

(38:55):
of fact, they have not been a major part of
the problem for the last ten or fifteen years. You know,
the problem then became heroin, and now it's about fentinyl
being imported illegally from China and Mexico. Um, you know.
And and then I mean, so there's a kind of
gross distortion. So the sacklers who deserve of the blame
or perdue pharma are being given of the blame, and

(39:17):
that distracts us from what's really going on. And then
I'll just point out one other example. I mean, there
is probably no more demonized and appropriately demonized force out
there in the kind of global capitalist world than big tobacco, right,
I mean those there's lie cheated, sold their cancer sticks,

(39:37):
addicted teenagers, came up with more addictive cigarettes. I mean,
you name it, right, So I mean absolutely a despicable
business that you know, basically ends up killing their most
loyal consumers, right, you know, after making a huge amount
of money from then. But now we're this interesting moment
where some of the big tobacco companies are getting deeply

(39:58):
involved in developing e cigarettes and these what are called
these heat not burned devices. Well, it turns out these
are ways of consuming nicotine that present a tiny fraction
of the risks of cigarettes. In fact, if you could
snap your fingers, you know, and tomorrow the forty million
Americans who smoke cigarettes, or the billion plus people around

(40:20):
the world who smoke cigarettes were to suddenly stop smoking cigarettes,
and every single one of them were to start vaping
and using e cigarettes or jeweling or whatever, it would
be one of the greatest advances in public health history,
in public health in in the history of the world.
And that would even be true if far more young
people were vaping. You know, that that that had that

(40:41):
had been smoking, But most Americans don't know that. So
big tobacco has become a very complicated figure where they're
still selling their cancer sticks. They're still making money there,
but some of them are trying to make a real
transition to selling nicotine in far, far dramatically less dangerous forms.
But once again, our need for simple answers and simple

(41:03):
enemies is standing in the way of an effective public
health approach. Simple answers and simple enemies. It describes so
much of what we cover on this show. Um, you're
making me think about propaganda. I just I I crafted
this question. I'm gonna ask it the way I wrote it.
Out just because I was kind of proud of it,
ethan Um. But it's basically what you've already said. I

(41:26):
just I want to see if you've got a different
answer when it comes out this way. Um. While there
are several ways to affect the laws governing this democratic republic,
in my opinion, the second most effective maneuver is to
change the way a majority of the voting populist thinks.
Uh so, for better or for worse. That means deploying
some form of propaganda, at least to my mind. Over

(41:48):
the course of your career, how have you seen propaganda
most effectively deployed from both sides of the War on drugs? Well,
that's a great question, matt Um. I mean, when I
look at the propaganda on the drug wars side, they
were just extraordinarily successful in the eighties and nineties. I
mean they managed to take an innocuous substance like marijuana,

(42:10):
not totally innocuous. I mean, you know, people can get
addicted to it, people can have problems with it. So
you know, I I know people have had serious marijuana problems,
but the vast majority don't, Um, And for the vast
majority is probably in that positive in their lives, right,
But somehow Nancy Reagan gets up there with her just
say no and saying the most dangerous drug user in
America as a teenage marijuana smoker who's doing well in school,

(42:33):
basically because they said saying the wrong message to everybody else.
So they really they're propaganda, the ones who believed in,
you know, instituting a system of mass incarceration and blaming
everything on drugs. You know, I mean there's success in
the eighties and nineties and early two thousands. I mean,
I think a lot of people are now in their

(42:53):
teens and twenties don't even appreciate how venal and effective
that campaign was. I mean it would literally be if
you took ten scientific questions about drugs, about the relative risks,
or about what happened or this and that, and you
asked ordinary Americans, you know, they would get the majority
of the answers wrong simply because the media was so

(43:17):
so in the media everybody, I mean, it was just
everything they believed was basically false, right. I mean, you
know that that use the drug once you become instantly
addicted false for that of all people, you know, you know,
opiates the fact that if you have a legal, secure
supply of heroin, you can consume that and live to
be ninety years old and hold a job. Right, it's

(43:40):
more about black market heroin and adulterated heroin. I mean
people didn't know that, you know, marijuana does these things
to your body LSD, you know, harms your chromosomes, m D,
m A, drained your spinal fluid. I mean, these were
front page news stories where people would get freaked out
about this stuff, and it was all bullet or or both.
You know that aarro want is a stepping stone, you know,

(44:01):
to to using other getting in trouble with other drugs.
Well I described that as an ounce of truth embedded
in a pound of both. Right, and now we're seeing
the same misinformation around the issues of vaping nicotine as
opposed to cigarettes, where a majority of Americans believe that
the cigarettes and vaping is as are more dangerous than
smoking cigarettes, when it's diametrically opposite in which a majority

(44:24):
of doctors believe that nicotine is what causes cancer, when
nicotine doesn't cause cancer. It's the combustible elements of the
cigarette that cause that cause cancer. Right, So they're propaganda
both then and now the modern day stuff that we're
seeing around vaping and even somewhat around the roll of
opioids and pain management. You know, it's just horrific propaganda

(44:45):
that helps explain a big part of the American War
on drugs and why we've had such a problem, not
just a mass incarceration, but why we have a hundred
thousand people dying of overdoses today. Now, if you ask
on our side where we've been most successful, Hey, man,
we don't through propaganda. We're just all about the evidence
about the science. But I'll tell you this, UM, I

(45:06):
think you know there was one of the things we did, UM,
that I think was very effective was that we were
we were smart about our messaging. You know, UH already
almost twenty five years ago, we did some UH focus
groups in public opinion testing, and we realized that most Americans,
the word legalized to them meant something being out of control,

(45:27):
whereas when we meant legalization, we meant regulation. And we
realized that using the phrase of tax control, regulate, and
educate was the way to reassure people in the middle
that what legalization was was a responsible regulatory approach. And then,
you know, I remember you know, back in this is
about ten years ago, different groups, my organization, other organizations

(45:49):
which had sometimes different views about what would be the
most powerful message. You know, some people said that it's
about personal freedom. Some people said it's about marijuana being
safe for than alcohol. Some people said it's about the
medical value. Right. But what we all agreed on was
that say whatever you want to say, but come Labor Day,
two months before election day, when we were gonna have

(46:10):
an initiative on the ballot, we would all stop our
own favorite messaging and we would rely on the messaging
that the polling told us was gonna work best to
persuade the fearful soccer mom, the person in the middle right,
the the American parent who maybe used marijuana or they're
younger who was kind of scared but new marijuana prohibition
didn't work. And those two messages were, hey, we'd rather

(46:34):
have the cops focusing on real crime instead of going
after young people from marijuana. And we'd rather have the
government taxing and regulating these stuff instead of giving all
the money to the gangsters. And that message discipline, which
was you know true in most states, really helped us
move forward. Now you know, we're this little kind of
sweet spot right now where there's almost there's remarkably little

(46:58):
negative stuff coming out about merril juanna. I mean, it's
almost as if it's you know, with the with the
mass commercialization, with marijuana emerging in liquid forms and chocolate forms,
and this and that, and and the medical value being
more and more appreciated. But we're in this period where
I see it beginning to swell up now, where we're
gonna see the pendulum begin to swing, and people are
gonna start talking about the harms of marijuana again and

(47:21):
the dangers of marijuana, and bringing back both some of
the science which is true about some risks of marijuana,
but also some of the propaganda. It's why I was
very reassured when just recently the annual Survey of of
Drug Use came out and it showed that marijuana use
among adolescents dropped more or last year than almost any
year in decades. So notwithstanding the broad legalization and commercialization,

(47:44):
you know, and notwithstanding the fact that marijuana use among
people my age is increasing dramatically, marijuana use among adolescents
keeps dropping. So as long as that stays the case,
I think we're in a sweet spot. But at some point,
because this goes up and down irrespective of public policy,
you know, adolescents are gonna get into weed again, and
we're gonna see an increase, and then we'll see the

(48:05):
anti drug propaganda reemerging. Yes, save the save the children.
That's a that's a that's a heck of an effective message.
Right well, you know right, I mean so often the
entire war on drugs has been justified as one great
big child protection act. And now when we look at
the opposition to eat cigarettes right where, we know that
you know, smokers in their thirties, forties, fifties, and sixties

(48:28):
switching to East cigarettes could dramatically you know, cut, you know,
tobacco related deaths. But hey, what about the kids. They've
been jeweling, they've been doing this stuff. And even though
the risk to them are dramatically, dramatically less than the
harms to adult smokers, Hey man, it's all about the kids.
If a million adults got to die prematurely so that
we can keep a bunch of kids from vaping, hey,

(48:49):
that's a price worth pay it. So we're seeing the
old drug war rhetoric now connecting to this issues around tobacco, vaping,
and cigarettes. And with that, we're gonna take a quick
moment to hear word from our sponsor. But we'll be
right back with Ethan Naedelman and we've returned. I'd like

(49:12):
to talk of briefly about this is something that that
I personally take as good news. We're talking about evolving policy.
One of the things that we've mentioned in the past
on this show is that a clear um, a clear
and delitarious effect of prohibitive drug policies is that they

(49:35):
can stymy research into possible benefits of a substance or
even just learning more about something. And that that applies
to marijuana for a long time, but it also applies
to psilocybin to cite of these these psychoactive, hallucin genic
rather substances. And in the past few weeks or you know,

(50:00):
in the past few years. But I was just reading
the news a few weeks ago up to a few
days ago, it seems that there has been a lot
of progress in the research front on the possible benefits,
the possible benefits of psychoactive substances. And this is this

(50:20):
is pretty solid methodology. It appears to me. I'm not
the expert. I wasn't involved in the studies. Um Uh,
you know, I I have an I understand what they're
talking about. Yes, perhaps, yes, that's that's the most diplomatic way,
thank you. Um But I wanted to I wanted to
ask you, uh specifically about this because I know there's

(50:44):
a lot of a lot of people struggle to find
optimism in in the like the situation that we have
been in as a nation for so long. There are
a lot of there, there are a lot of dangerous
and terrible things that have happened as a result of
prohibitive policies. So what do we see is the future

(51:07):
of psychedelics? I'm asking specifically because I just read that
someone in New York has filed a bill to legalize
medical psilocybin. Do you think these kinds of things will pass?
Will will psilocybin become kind of like will it assume
the role that marijuana currently has in the future, will

(51:28):
not quite marijuana? Ben It's a great question. I mean,
there is truly a psychedelic renaissance going on right now,
and most of these substances psilocybin also mescaline. I mean,
psilocybin is the key ingredient mushrooms. Mescaline is the key
ingredient in peyote and the san pedro plant. Then there's LSD.
Then there's M D M a ecstasy, which is not

(51:49):
really a psychedelic, but you know sometimes people group it
in that category. And then there's five M E O
D M T, which is what they call the toad medicine. Uh,
you know, it's another powerful thing. So those just some
of the examples. Um So, there's an incredible, really a
psychedelic renaissance going on right now, and I'm just blown
away by it. I was just at a couple of
conferences on psychedelics and business and then psychedelics and the

(52:11):
movements in both in Miami and New York in the
recent months. And even though these drugs are and what's
called Schedule one in most cases, I'm not ketamine kena
means the one legal sort of psychedelic that we have
ketamine clinics popping up and it's legally regulated, and so
that's the one short acting quasi psychedelic that's out there.
But you know, Schedule one, what that means is that

(52:35):
the government has said that there's no legitimate medical uses
and great harm associated with this drug, and you know,
ridiculously marijuana remains in Schedule one. So it points out
what a farce the entire scheduling system is and how
highly politicized it is. I mean that, you know, and
I think in a way that farce helped us in
our marijuana legalization efforts because you know, we're here, we're

(52:56):
within these ballot initiative on medical marijuana back in the
nineties and two those ends, and the government saying there's
no such thing as medical marijuana. And you know, over
third of Americans know people personally are using marijuana medically.
So the fact that the government was lying helped to
delegitimize their case and helped us, i think, ultimately move
forward with legalizing marijuana winning support. Now with the psychedelics,

(53:18):
it is technically possible to do research on Schedule one drugs.
I mean, there's even been research giving heroin to human
subjects going on in the past at Columbia and Johns
Hopkins and at Wayne State in Michigan, So it's possible.
And which you've now seen happening is more and more
private companies or in a key case, an organization called
MAPS Multidisplay Associated psycholic studies that have been moving forward

(53:43):
with the f d A getting permission to do these
research studies, right. And so we're now seeing that m
d m A is probably going to be approved by
the f d A forward treatment of PTSD at roughly
two years from now. And we're also seeing that psilocybin,
the ingredient of ushrooms, is probably going to be approved
by the fd f DA for treatment of attractable depression

(54:05):
maybe a year or two after that, right, So that's
going to cause them to be rescheduled. Um, So we
are seeing some evolution. And meanwhile, there are dozens of
studies mostly funded now more with private investment capital than
with foundation support, you know, that are moving forward, especially
in the US and Canada, a few in Europe. Right.
And finally, just a few months ago, the National Institute

(54:29):
on Drug Abuse for the first time in like forty
or fifty years, just approved a grant to Johns Hopkins
for a study giving psilocybin and seeing if it helps
people stop smoking. So I think we're gonna see more
federal funding in this area as well. So, on the
one hand, there's this kind of medicalization approach that's going

(54:49):
through the f d A or its European equivalents that
is really showing this incredible promise. And there are you know,
you look at that some of these companies out The
company doing the psilocybin research, Compass, has a stock market
valuation of like a billion and a half dollars, and
one of the major investment funds you know, also been
a half dollars. And another company that's doing setting up
retreats and clinics, you know, is valued at a half

(55:10):
a billion dollars. So this is a rapidly growing area,
both of small start up firms and of companies going public.
And I think this is going to continue. I mean,
there'll be mistakes made and there'll be some pushback, but
the media coverage is fantastic. Then there's that second track
that you mentioned, the decriminalization track, right, that's what was

(55:31):
started when Denver decriminalized uh, you know, psilocybmin possession. I
think it was a few years ago, and then the
city of Oakland did the same thing, and more recently
Detroit did it in the most recent election, and then
Oregon remarkably last year past two major ballot initiatives. One
was one that my organization Drug Policy Alliance under the

(55:52):
leadership of my successors, you know, had were introduced, and
that was to decriminalize possession of all drugs, including haron coke,
m f amphetamine, where people essentially would not go to
jail for possession of small amounts. But the other one
was a psychedelics initiative that basically said possession is decriminalized
and that the state of Oregon should move forward with

(56:14):
allowing people to be prescribed psilocybin or or psilocybin not
just for serious illness, but even for general mental health
and well being. And so what we're gonna see now
is more of that psychedelics reform moving forward through ballot
initiatives in other states. It might be Washington, California, Colorado,
you name it. You know, typically the western states go first,

(56:37):
or it might be legislation like the one in New
York that you mentioned, you know, where it's beginning to
move forward. So these two tracks, the decriminalization and the
legitimization of regulated you know, access to these drugs in
a quasi medical environment and clinics, and on the other hand,
the medical, very medical environment. I mean, there's amazing momentum

(57:00):
behind these things. I cannot claim much credit because you know, I,
although personally psychologics have played a very important role in
my own life, in my organization, we were only involved
at the edges of this, and far more credit goes
to you know, Rick Doblin, who founded the Multidistroyer Associated
Psychologic Studies MAPS back in the eighties and has led
this effort, and to other researchers, you know at major universities,

(57:23):
and now to some of the investors who are obviously
trying to make money but taking some real risk to
get this stuff moving forward. And of course the philanthropists
like Soros. Actually, so you know, you know, it's funny
when I talked to George about the psycholic stuff a
long time ago, and then I gotta tell you just
a funny story here. So back um uh it must

(57:43):
have been twenty fifteen, I think it was, And I
organized a fundraising dinner um at Soros's apartment, right, and
I had there, you know, some of our biggest donors.
One of them was Sean Parker, you know from Facebook
fame and all that. And another one was a guy
named John Morrigan, a very tradercial guy in Florida who
has been a big Democratic Party contributor, and then one

(58:04):
of Soros's sons was there, and some other major people
from investment banks and things like that, and and there
was this lull in the conversation and and so just
for the hell of it, I don't know what gut
into me. I said to them, you'll never guess where
I was last week? And they said where? I said,
the World Ayahuasca Congress, an Ebisa, And they said the

(58:26):
World what Congress? To Iyah? Who the Iyah? What right?
And you know, they had no idea what I was
talking about. And at that point, George's son jumps jumps
in and he goes, you know that, or actually calls
him George, you know, you have no idea how many
ayahuasca sessions are happening in Brooklyn and Manhattan every weekend? Right,
So George, you know, he and the key staff were

(58:47):
never much into this. But fortunately one of the key
people working within the foundation a good friend of mine,
Kasha Milanowska. She's been sympathetic to this. So we've begun
to see a limited amount of funding coming out of
sorows this foundation, very very small um for cyclost reform.
I'm not even sure George knows about it. Um, but
it's uh, but it's definitely helping, you know, and from

(59:09):
their angle, it's putting the money in on the social
justice side, right, So it's about the role of indigenous
people and making sure they're protected. It's about trying to
introduce some racial justice elements in the psycholics world. So
that's really the focus of his foundation on this stuff.
But it's it's tiny compared to everything else. I wonder
how many of those stories you have just weird connections

(59:31):
and then drugs and somewhere I'm mad. I gotta tell
you it's true. I mean also, you know, from from
the left wing to the right wing and foreign presidents
and dignitaries and media. It's funny, it's true. These stories
keep pouring out, and uh, you know when the when
they I'll write a book about it. I guess is
the common expression that when gives about this. I'll tell you.
One of the joys about doing this podcast, Psychoactive is

(59:54):
that in each of the episodes I get to tell
some of these stories, you know, because I'm having guests
on and you know, I'll have somebody who wrote a
Pulitzer Prize winning book about the drug war within the
black community, and I can share my experiences with Jesse
Jackson and Charlie Rankling others or or you know. Ben
mentioned having the former Colombian president who won the Nobel
Peace Prize, one Milo Santos, but I've known him for

(01:00:15):
a decade and can tell some of those stories and
so that that's that's one of the joys for me
of doing the podcast. And this is one of the
reasons that it was so important for us to to
have you on the show today. And and first, Uh,
as we said the very beginning, thank you so much
for joining us, because we want our our fellow listeners

(01:00:39):
to learn more about these incredibly important issues, to learn
the context, to learn the present, and to learn the future,
and to hopefully, and I will make this call to action,
hopefully to join in creating that future because as you,
as you point out, it does it's this is uh,

(01:01:03):
this is such a complex situation. There are a lot
of factors involved, and I think everybody can agree that
as a society, the US could do a lot better.
It's uh, the way a corporate America would would probably
phrase it is there are areas of opportunity. Well, Ben,
I'll tell you something. I mean, given especially the name

(01:01:25):
of your podcast here, stuff they don't want you to know.
You know. My one sort of parting piece of advice
for your listeners is, whenever you see a new drug scare,
look again, because the odds are it's wrong. Now in
the case of fentanyl and the overdoses, it's right. Fentanyl
is deadly and you've got to be careful and not
be mucking around. And it's even showing up in cocaine

(01:01:45):
and other drugs like that. So there's some truth to
it there, right, and so you do need to be aware.
And it's a shame that government's been lying and deceiving
so much that people do sometimes fail to appreciate that.
On the other hand, when you see the stuff now
being said about opioids, and when you see the stuff
being said about vaping of nicotine, you know that stuff
oftentimes is grossly exaggerated and oftentimes factually and accurate. And

(01:02:09):
the fact that the mainstream media, including the New York
Times and others, are buying into this stuff. The fact
that some of the worst defenders sometimes are not right
wing nutheads but but left wing progressive politicians who have
generally been good about ending the war on drugs, but
they jump on the bandwagon when it comes to new
things around opioids or vaping. So I would just you know,
partning words was, you know, look carefully, if you're curious,

(01:02:33):
look at the evidence, and don't buy the initial boat.
Because the willingness of even smart people or people who
think they're smart and educated and have wisdom and are
progressive to buy into mainstream boat is unlimited. But because
we see ourselves as enlightened and progressive, oftentimes we think
we're immune to that. But oftentimes we're not very well said. Yeah,

(01:02:55):
and uh, we do have to we do have to
do a little bit of disclosure. I think, Matt, we
are both big, big fans of Psychoactive. I I am
tremendously impressed. I have learned so much just from tuning
in and that you are also instrumental in this show.

(01:03:16):
This is a this is a Matt Frederick production. What
I've never heard of this show before. I just today, Uh, Matt,
I was so psyched when you came to the launch
party for Psychoactive in New York and this summer, and
the look in your eyes and your enthusiasm when you
were meeting some of these characters I and I loved it.

(01:03:37):
I loved it. No, it's true. Yeah, we were on
a rooftop in New York City, and the it is
they were characters in your life, but they're also highly
influential people, mostly in the field of education. The people
that I was speaking with, they were like professors who've
been working for ages just studying some of these topics,

(01:03:59):
and people who've been working their entire lives, you know,
to advocate for some of the same things you're advocating for,
ethan Um. It was very moving to be there. And yes,
I am an executive producer on the show, but I
would just say everybody, if you get a chance, please
listen some of the some of the most interesting informative
conversations around the topic of drug drugs exist in that show.

(01:04:23):
And I'm very uncomfortable with drugs personally, and I don't
use many, if at all. I have a vape uh
and I drink some alcohol every once in a while.
But it's it's really changed the way I view the
topic entirely. So thank you for making the show, ethan
and please check it out everybody, And I should just
call you many people have asked me do I get

(01:04:43):
high when I record the show? And the truth is
I don't smoke merril Wana because I find that if
I use merril Wana it's hard to stay focused and
remember what the previous question I asked was. So I
never get high before. But I just recorded an episode
about this drug Creatum, which is sold legally in most
days in America. And in this case, I went out yesterday,

(01:05:04):
I bought some creative and I drank a glass of
creative while I was interviewing my guest about this subject.
So that was a bit of a new experience. So
that's the new thing. You just do whatever. It's got
to be a mild one because I'm not gonna you know,
I was thinking I should I probably should start micro
dosing before I do an episode on micro doos, saying,
but I keep forgetting to micro dos. So, you know,

(01:05:27):
so another thing I enjoyed. I I fully agree with
Matt's point about the tremendously important educational nature, but I
also I have to have to confirm what you said
earlier about these stories just come out of me. That's
something I really enjoy in Psychoactive. And there was a

(01:05:47):
rolling stone interview. I think it was rolling Stone that
you did where where, he said, when the laws had
changed in New York, you and a friend like decided, Okay,
we're gonna smoke a joint on this street. And there's
there's a cop across the street. Then exactly, I'm walking
with a friend. It's like the day or two after

(01:06:08):
the New York law had passed. It's the first law
in the country which allows people to smoke a joint
in public. So we're in Central Park and we can't
smoke in Central Park because you're not allowed to smoke
tobacco in Central Park. So I said, let's go outside.
So we walk outside. It's on Fifth Avenue, around a
hundred street, right and and and so there we're on
a sidewalk. It's legal. And I'm across the street from

(01:06:28):
Mount SIDEI Hospital, which is actually where I was born,
and there's a police car across the street. And I
started to my friend, goes Ethan, what are you doing?
I said, this is a cop car. I said, Poward,
this is the meeting of freedom. And in fact, even
if we were not two old white guys with two
young black men, we could still do it. So I
feel very proud of that moment. It really brought home

(01:06:50):
to me the kind of personal element of the freedom
that we're fighting for and trying to end the war
on drugs. There you have it, everyone, check out Psychoactive.
This has been Ethan Nate. Yeah, I'm sorry, I feel
you know. My only regret here is that we do
eventually have to end this episode. But that's not the

(01:07:12):
end of the story. This story does continue in Psychoactive. UM.
I would also like to highlight, uh, for anybody interested in, UM,
how is it phrase the internationalization of criminal law enforcement. UH.
Do check out the books that you have, You've you've
created cops across borders, policing the globe. The information that

(01:07:37):
will empower people in this in this ongoing conversation. It's
out there, it's available. UH. And to your point, yes,
there there are entities that consider that information the stuff
they don't want you to know, which means that wherever,
wherever you fall personally, you should know. It's so exactly. Guys,

(01:08:00):
thanks so much for the opportunity to be honest with you.
I I love doing it, man. I appreciate your work
on Psychoactive, and I appreciate this podcast so Ben great
to meet you as well. We cannot we cannot wait
for the next episodes. You want to thank you for
your time. And at this point, folks, we also want
to pass the mic to you. What do you think

(01:08:21):
is the future of drug policy, not just in the US,
but in the world. What do you think of the
what we called the long tail consequences of some of
these prohibitive policies. Let us know. We try to be
easy to find online. If you don't sip the social needs,
you can give us a call at our phone number
one eight three three st d w y t K.

(01:08:43):
And if you want to send us an email, we
read every single one we get. We can't wait to
hear from you. All you have to do is drop
us alive. We are conspiracy at i heart radio dot
com m H. Stuff they don't want you to know

(01:09:13):
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