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December 5, 2019 53 mins

CONTENT WARNING - This episode includes discussion of mature themes, including illicit drug use, prescription drug abuse, and both legal and illicit drug addiction. Listener discretion is advised.

In the final installment of America's Drug War, Jaye discusses recent trends in the American drug landscape, including cannabis decriminalization and legalization in several US states, and the opioid epidemic sweeping suburbs and rural areas. How did the War on Drugs, particularly its focus on the "usual suspects," lead to the opioid crisis? Will cannabis be legalized on a federal level, and should harder drugs also be legalized?

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Source Texts and Links:

Hari, Johann. 2016. Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs. New York: Bloomsbury.
Temple, John. 2015. American Pain: How a Young Felon and His Ring of Doctors Unleashed America’s Deadliest Drug Epidemic. Guilford, CT: Rowman & Littlefield.
https://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/four-decades-counting-continued-failure-war-drugs
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/08/29/this-is-unprecedented-174-heroin-overdoses-in-6-days-in-cincinnati/
https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2019/07/27/cincinnati-area-had-24-overdoses-24-hours/1846992001/
https://medicalmarijuana.procon.org/historical-timeline/#2016-present
https://www.newsweek.com/state-local-governments-trying-make-cannabis-industry-less-racist-1466077
https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2014/03/conflicting_statean/
https://www.dualdiagnosis.org/infographics/history-of-the-opioid-epidemic/
https://avalere.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Avalere-20181030-Opioid-Trends-Brief-FINAL.pdf
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5993682/
https://www.medpagetoday.com/painmanagement/painmanagement/80054
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6025116-Opioidsuit.html#document/p2/a502790
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02686-2
https://www.poison.org/articles/opioid-epidemic-history-and-prescribing-patterns-182
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/27/nyregion/brooklyn-opioid-investigation.html
https://www.nprillinois.org/post/why-opioid-epidemic-hitting-rural-america-especially-hard#stream/0
https://www.cnbc.com/id/18591525
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/ending-addiction-good/201408/marijuana-the-gateway-drug-myth
https://today.law.harvard.edu/feature/war-drugs-succeeding/
https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/brochures-and-fact-sheets/alcohol-facts-and-statistics

Music:

Potstirrer Podcast Theme composed by Jon Biegen from Stranger Still
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Brigade composed by TrackTribe

Spark composed by ALBIS

Destination Unknown composed by Ugonna Onyekwe

Sunny Over the Horizon composed by RAGE

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