The Joe Rogan Experience - #469 - Dr. Carl Hart

Episode Date: March 17, 2014

Carl Hart is an associate professor of psychology and psychiatry at Columbia University. He is known for his research in drug abuse and drug addiction. Hart was the first tenured African American professor of sciences at Columbia University.

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out! The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day! Hey man, what's up? Thank you very much for being here. I really, really appreciate this. I've admired your work online, I've seen a bunch of your videos, and read some of the interviews, and I think it's incredibly important to have a guy like you out there.

It's incredibly important for a bunch of reasons. One, because it's important to spread the truth about drugs and to have someone who's actually intelligent and a real professor who really understands what they're talking about. And two, you look like us. Well, thank you, man. You don't look like some weird stuffy dude. You got dreadlocks.

You look cool as fuck. I could hang with this guy, guaranteed. Any dude who has dreadlocks, you can't be like I can hang with this guy guaranteed any dude who has dreadlocks you can't be uptight look at your hair it's impossible you know I think it's very important I appreciate it man

thank you for having me man people have been telling me that I gotta come check you out so thank you well I'm glad they connected us you know that's one of the coolest things about this whole Twitter

social media thing is that you know I get to find out about people like you and I get to be introduced by all these Twitter people that want to get us together. So it's pretty bad. Right on. Right on. I'm happy to be here, man. Well, I'm, I'm, again, I say I'm happy that there's a guy like you out there because I've learned a lot from what you're doing and I've learned a lot from some of the interviews that you've had where, you know, you've had to kind of confront a lot of the ignorance that people have. And it even kind of exposed a lot of my own ignorance. And, uh, I thought that was really fascinating.

And one of the things was that you did a John Stossel interview where you talking about how many people use meth and Coke and don't fucking ruin their lives. They, they figure out how to keep it together. Like, yeah, you know, that's one of the biggest misses that people think that, uh, individuals who use drugs like crack cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin, they think that the majority of the people who use those drugs are addicted and their life goes spiraling out of control. They think that because it makes great TV drama, for example. And so we reinforce it in our sort of pop culture. And also we can always think of somebody who screwed their life up as a result of drugs. But the people who

don't screw their life up, they don't talk about it. They just go about paying taxes, paying their bills, handling their responsibilities. Yeah, that's interesting. Do you get pressure to not say that ever? Because people say, well, hey, you're going to encourage people. And what if they go out and they do become addicted to drugs? Like, are you giving them false hope? And what if they go out and they do become addicted to drugs? Are you giving them false hope? Well, you know, I'm an educator first. And so when we think about hiding information or not telling people the truth because we're afraid that they can't handle the truth, that's illogical.

I can't live my life like that. I have children. Thank you. Thank you for saying that. Yeah, no. It's so important. I mean, I have to teach my kids about sex. I have to teach them about other potentially dangerous activities like driving their automobile too fast. Drugs is just

one of those sort of activities. And I'd be irresponsible if I didn't tell them the best information that I know. That's so important. That's such an important thing to say. And I've had that discussion with people before where, you know, they would talk about any sort of drug that I don't want to let people know. I don't want to talk about it because then I'll encourage them to do it. Like a friend was telling me that about heroin. He was saying, you know, heroin really is not that bad for you if you don't take too much. It's really not that bad. That sounds like sex. I mean, it sounds like a number of things, you know, it's like we all know this. I mean, it's just logical. Anything that you overindulge in, you can get in trouble.

Heroin is not different. But there's a few that we have like these unfair assumptions about. Like crack was the one for me. I always heard, dude, you smoke crack once, you're hooked. But I met a few people that have smoked crack. And I'm like, wait a minute, you just smoked it once? Yeah. And they're like, yeah.

So if anybody ever tells you anything about I did it once and I was hooked for life or I'm hooked, that's a license to stop listening. Because nothing in life you do once and you're hooked. That's just nothing. Nothing. What's the quickest to addict to? There are certainly physical addictions. Like people do get alcoholism where it actually makes them sick if they stop. So like physical addiction, certainly that's a part of addiction.

But that's not the sort of main point of addiction. Addiction, the main thing of addiction is like this disruption of psychosocial functioning. You don't pay your taxes, you don't meet your obligations, those kinds of things. But you can get physically addicted to something like tobacco, although it's not life-threatening, but it's irritating. But the thing that we see that's more that we think is excruciating pain is heroin addiction. For example, we think that if someone is going through heroin withdrawal, they are in such agonizing pain that they are on the verge of death. They're not. If you've ever had the flu, you've had heroin withdrawal.

But the only one of the major drugs that we use today that can actually kill us from withdrawal, it's alcohol. And most of the people who use alcohol don't come near experiencing alcohol withdrawal to the extent that it would kill you. You certainly can't die from heroin withdrawal. Wow, that's fascinating. I've seen a guy going through heroin withdrawal. I had a friend who was hooked on heroin and came out from New York to stay with me in California in the 90s. And I didn't know it at the time, but his idea was that was how he was going to kick it. So he came out to visit me, and he was like, like he had the flu for a week. He just laid around in bed, and then seven, eight days later, he was fine.

Not fine, but, you know. Yeah, it's the flu, basically. So if you've had the flu, you've had heroin withdrawal. It's not pleasant, and I don't recommend that someone go out and get the flu or heroin withdrawal. But the point is that it's not going to kill you, and it's not as excruciating as is often portrayed in films. And so those kinds of things, they just do a horrible job of educating the public or miseducating the public. And it wouldn't be bad if, let's just say, you do this sort of characterization and it didn't have consequences. The consequences is that we always have these repressive policies that follow,

and then people pay the price, not so much from the drugs, but from the repressive policies. And that's a real concern that I have. So the repressive policies lead to more prison sentences, lead to more private prisons, lead to essentially people becoming, it's like a form of slavery that's state sanctioned. Certainly, we have that. And it also, the major thing that it leads to is this sort of dependency on that economy, like law enforcement. There are also treatment agencies. There are a number of people who depend on this sort of industry now or they depend on this approach. And it's hard to get out of this approach because right now in the country, we're talking about liberalizing drug laws.

You can't liberalize drug laws unless you give police officers something else to do. You can't liberalize drug laws unless you give the treatment industry something else to do. And that's one of the things we haven't really talked about in this whole conversation, because those people are going to fight to keep their money. And they sort of are now. I mean, that is an issue now. Prison guard unions lobby to keep certain drug laws in place. Absolutely. They are. They are. They are intense. So it seems to me like it needs to be. There's a multi point strategy that has to be hit in order to make a transition between the prohibition that we're experiencing right now and not having all these people completely fighting against it because of their jobs. There has to be some sort of a strategy for taking the resources that are being applied right now to this unsuccessful drug war and doing something healthy for communities. Yeah, you know, that's one of the things I wrote my book recently, High Price, and that's one of the things I tried to, well, I told this story. It's a memoir and a science book. So I told a

memoir portion, which is deeply personal, and it's not something that I'm so comfortable doing, but I had to do that in order to kind of contextualize the whole drug war and what it all means. And also the science portion is there so people can understand what these drugs actually do and what they don't do. And if you have that sort of contextualization and an understanding of the science, now you can probably make some reasonable, logical decisions, some choices about how we should deal with drugs in the country. Now, when you see something like the country of Portugal, which decriminalized drugs less than a decade ago, right? More than a decade ago.

Was more than a decade ago? 2001. And their results have been pretty extraordinary. Yeah. You know, when you, like Portugal, let's just be clear so the audience understands what decriminalization means. Decriminalization is not legalization. Legalization is what we do with alcohol and tobacco. Decriminalization would be like treating drug violations like we treat

traffic violations. You can't go to jail or get a felony charge, but you may be subjected to a fine or so. That's how they deal with drugs in Portugal, all drugs, from heroin to marijuana to methamphetamine to cocaine. Now, when you look at the major indicators, for example, drug use, they have less drug use than we do in this country. When you look at drug-related overdose death, they have less than we do in this country. When you have the amount of money that they pump into their prison systems and so forth, of course, they're pumping less than we do. And so they're doing better than us on all of these major indicators,

and they have no sort of plans to go another direction because they're happy with their current approach. And so that's one of the things I argue for in High Price, the book. I argue that we should decriminalize all drugs in this country. But in order to decriminalize drugs, one of the things we have to also do is we have to increase the amount of realistic drug education. Not that just say no stuff that we've been peddling for a number of years, but real drug education. It's pretty ridiculous to think that you can educate anyone to the dangers or lack of dangers in drugs in a 30-second commercial, right? Yeah, you know, but that's not the goal. That's one of the things that people have to understand

is that those folks who came up with those 30-second spots, their goal was not drug education. Their goal was more propaganda and fear-based sort of education, if that's what we want to call it. But the goal was not really teaching people about drugs or what drugs really do. I had a joke in one of my old comedy specials about the Partnership for a Drug-Free America because it was funded by alcohol and tobacco companies. And I was like, alcohol and tobacco companies going after marijuana is like hookers going after strippers. I mean, that's really what

it's like with the idea of alcohol and tobacco companies spending money to try to make marijuana illegal is unbelievably stupid. I tell you, bro, if you studied this issue, you would have a hell of a lot more material for your comedy routine, I tell you, because there are so many ironies that you wouldn't believe. That's a brutal one, though.

Then they call this a partnership for a drug-free America sponsored by drugs. A gang war of drugs. The name this a partnership for a drug-free America sponsored by drugs. Yeah. A gang war of drugs. The name, a partnership for a drug-free America. First of all, there has never been a drug-free society ever. Ever.

Nor will there ever be. And nor do you want to live in a society that is drug-free. And so this whole notion of drug-free, it's ridiculous. Yeah. Drugs encompass everything from coffee to alcohol to cigarettes. It just goes on to acai berries. No, absolutely. You know, it's all of these things are drugs. And so when people try to make the distinction like heroin versus something like caffeine, the body doesn't distinguish something based on the fact that one's illegal and one's not legal. It has biological actions and consequences, both of those things. Why is it that this is something that's controversial to say. Like what you're saying right now on this podcast, you know, a guy who's a distinguished academic saying these things is very controversial. Why

is that if they are true and you are an educator and you have that philosophy, which I admire greatly? Why is that rare? You know, for one thing, there are few people in the country who actually know what drugs really do and what they don't do. So when you think about, you know, I have 24 years of experience of giving drugs to animals and humans in a lab and carefully trying to understand the effect of drugs. That's one reason. A number of people just simply don't know. Another reason is that people, scientists, for example, are a conservative lot, and they are reluctant to speak to the media, in part because they don't want to get their words

twisted, or they don't want to appear to be wrong. And so, I mean, I respect that at some level. And so I think that contributes on the one hand. And on the other hand, we've had in this country for a number of years, people who were in control of the narrative were people who had an addiction, parents, law enforcement. None of those people are uniquely qualified to speak to this issue, but they have dominated the conversation. Now, how did you get involved in this? You started, conversation. Now, how did you get involved in this? You started, you said 24 years ago, doing drug research on animals. How did, what, what was, what led you to want to go down this road? So I was in, I tell this story in the book. And so I was in the air force back in the eighties,

like you mentioned about crack cocaine. So I was in the air force over in England, um, 86, 87, 88. Um, and crack cocaine was a big deal in the United States, as you point out. And I grew up in the hood in Miami. And Miami was a cocaine capital in the United States. And so things that were happening in my community that were not good, high unemployment, crime, all of these kinds of things, I blame crack cocaine for that. And so I thought that if I go to school and get a degree in order to study drugs, the effects of drugs on the brain, I could solve the problems that faced my community or the problems that I thought were in the community, particularly those related to drugs. And so I

began studying drugs as an undergraduate and then went on to graduate school to study drugs on the brains of animals and to try to figure out the neurobiological mechanisms that were responsible for addiction. So you just got fascinated by this idea of fixing this issue that you saw in your community, and then you just fell into a rabbit hole. Yeah. So when I started along my journey, my path, I actually got an education. And, you know, so as James Baldwin said, you know, the paradox of education is precisely this. As one begins to become educated and conscious, one begins to question the society in which he's being educated. And that's what happened with me.

And so along the way, I discovered things like, hmm, the majority of people who use these drugs are not addicted. That was one thing I discovered. I discovered that many of the things that we said about crack cocaine were just simply not true. Like the whole crack baby myth. And people said that our generation should be prepared to have an army of kids who couldn't learn because of being exposed to crack cocaine. That just simply wasn't true. When all the data came out, beginning in the mid-1990s, we realized that that simply wasn't true. Other things that I learned that just simply wasn't true, things like one hit of crack cocaine, you're addicted. Not true. That crack cocaine was

different from powder cocaine. Not true. All of these things I discovered along the way that they weren't true. And not only that, I discovered that this wasn't new. I went back to the early 1900s and saw the same sort of hysteria, mainly race-based hysteria surrounding drugs, occurred even then. And so I thought, what's going on? And then that helped me to be more critical about my issue. Is there a difference in the effect of crack cocaine, the physical effect, and cocaine and heroin? So let's think about crack cocaine. Not heroin, rather powder cocaine. Yeah, let's think about crack cocaine. I mean, not heroin, rather powder.

Yeah, let's think about crack cocaine and powder cocaine. Let's just think about the chemical structure. The only difference between crack cocaine and powder cocaine is that the powder cocaine has this thing called the hydrochloride salt attached to it. That salt prevents it from being smoked. Now you can dissolve the powder cocaine in water and then shoot it in your arm. You can dissolve the powder cocaine in water and then shoot it in your arm. And so you have the effects of cocaine, the onset of the effects within seconds. The same is true with crack cocaine. The effects are, onset of the effects are within seconds.

Now, the biological activity of cocaine is at the base. So that hydrochloride portion on the powder cocaine has no biological activity. So that means that crack and powder are the same drug. They are exactly the same drug, the same effect, same drug. Wow. So it's indistinguishable to the user. Indistinguishable. Now, why is it that they prepare it that way? What's the benefit of preparing it? So it delivers quicker? Like what's the benefit of preparing it so it delivers quicker? Great question. So one of the things that you might recall Richard Pryor back in the days when he burnt himself with smoking. So he was freebasing.

So he was removing that hydrochloric portion of the salt off of the cocaine base so he could actually smoke it. Now, he was using ether, which is highly flammable. With crack cocaine, now you no longer need the ether. You just mix it up with baking soda and water and the cocaine, and you mix it up, and you get rid of that salt. So ether is no longer needed, and it's not as dangerous. So that's one of the reasons that we have crack cocaine as a result of that. And also, it made it so you could sell them in unit doses to make the drug appear to be cheaper. Because you also might recall in the early 1980s, 1970s, you had to buy cocaine powder in bulk. And that made it more expensive.

Crack cocaine made it a lot more simple for people to buy it who didn't have the kind of expendable income that was required before the mid-1980s. So essentially they just brought it down to bite-sized portions. That's right. Exactly. Rather than selling this whole six-pack or 12-pack, now you can sell one item, one can or one bottle. I want to talk more about this, but I should just clarify that Richard Pryor changed his story as he got older and actually said that he tried to kill himself. He lit himself on fire, apparently. I'm a huge Richard Pryor fan, and I know that that was originally what he had said, that he got burnt doing freebases, but I think he changed his story later. I actually worked with him a bunch of times right before he died. It was a real honor.

He's a real special dude as far as, uh, standup comedians go. Yeah. I'm with you. But that, that, um, uh, style of, uh, like free base was a thing that we'd always associated with people that were really, really fucked up. Yeah. Like the guy's doing coke. Oh, well, you know, he's probably gonna mess up his life.

He's free basing. Oh shit. Yeah. He's gone, man. He's basing. He's a base head. Yeah. Right. Base head was the thing before crack. doing coke oh well you know he's probably gonna mess up his life he's freebasing oh shit yeah he's gone man he's base and he's a basehead yeah right basehead was the thing before crack absolutely absolutely i described a couple people in the book from my neighborhood who got into freebasing and exactly the same way you just talked about right absolutely um now everybody has this idea in their head that crime and that everything escalated in the world changed when crack was introduced. Is that a myth as well? talked about December 1984 in the LA Times, the first time we heard of crack, but it didn't become more widely known or available until maybe the mid-1985. Now, once crack cocaine hit the markets,

what happened was that people were fighting over various new markets. Whenever there are new illicit markets, yeah, you're going to get some violent activity until the market settles down. That happened with any illicit market, and that certainly happened with crack cocaine. Now, one of the things that people, there are a number of things that people attribute to crack in terms of crime and all of the sort of downfall of certain communities. Unemployment, they said that unemployment really rose as a result of crack cocaine being around. Now, 1982, the unemployment rate in this country was about 11% for white folks, and it was double that for black people. That was before crack, at least two, three years before crack even hit the market. Now, during the whole crack era, unemployment has never been as high as 1982.

during the whole crack era, unemployment has never been as high as 1982. That's number one. People said things like, people from my community, crack cocaine was responsible for these mothers, these grandmothers now raising new generations of kids because their daughters were strung out on crack. And so now they have to take care of these kids. That simply wasn't true. It certainly happened in my community, but it happened before crack cocaine was ever on the market. It certainly happened in my family long before crack cocaine ever hit the market. When we look at other communities, like particularly immigrant communities, if you look at the Jewish community when they came over, the Eastern European Jews when they came over in the country, the early 1900s, 1800s, and so forth. What you see is that you had a similar sort of phenomenon going on in those kind of communities. What's his name?

Irvin Howe, his great book, Land of Our Fathers or Home of Our Fathers, he kind of described all of these pathological behaviors that happened in that community. Many of those same behaviors were attributed to crack cocaine and black people later, but it's not, they were there long before crack cocaine was there, but crack cocaine became the scapegoat. That's a fascinating scapegoat because I bought into it hook, line, and sinker. I really thought that there was a difference between the 1980s and the 1990s as far as like when crack was introduced, boom, it took off. It was sort of something that was just always discussed as common fact. Yeah, I know. I bought into it too, and that's what drove me to pursue my education in the way I did.

But as a result of pursuing that education, I discovered that it was not true. So are these cultural myths the result of politicians, like political campaigns, who are trying to clean up the streets and they attribute it to certain issues? Or is it something more widespread? Is it the media just running with a narrative? What is it? How did it get started? Well, there are multiple sort of factors and players involved. So when we think about the politicians, for example, politicians, if crack cocaine is the problem, never mind the fact that unemployment rate was out of control before crack cocaine hit the market, unemployment was out of control.

A number of things were already problematic. Now you have crack cocaine. If you blame crack cocaine, it's really easy to simply say, we'll put more law enforcement, we'll hire more cops, we'll put more efforts in controlling these drugs. A lot easier to say, we'll lock people up for selling these drugs, for using these drugs. In the process, what you do is you create jobs for a select group of people, and then you don't have to deal with the real issues. The real issues of unemployment, of deprivation, all of these things, you don't have to deal with the real issues. The real issues of unemployment, of deprivation, all of these things you don't have to deal with. They're far more complicated and so politicians are happy to buy in. Now one of the things about crack cocaine is that

we think about the law that punishes or punish crack cocaine a hundred times more harshly than powder cocaine and the vast majority of people who got punished under these laws were black, 80, 85% of the people, even though they don't make up the majority of the users. So people say things like, well, were those laws racist? And the laws themselves weren't racist because the Congressional Black Caucus, 17 of the 21 members voted for these laws, for these laws that punish crack cocaine 100 times more harshly. But the point is, is that everyone bought into it. Parents bought into it. Because the parents, for the parents, what this meant is that you don't actually have to educate your kids about this. You just say that they're bad and stay away from it. No education required. Even scientists and

treatment providers, they all bought into it because you got a problem. We're going to solve your problem. So we are needed and we are valued. So you had all of these sort of constituencies from society benefiting from the vilification or the scapegoating of crack cocaine. All of those things came together nicely. And then we think about the rappers. They all came into the game too, because it's like, I'm conscious. I'm going to say that this is a problem in my community

and I care about my community and this is the way that I can show it. So everybody had a stake in this sort of thing. Wow. That is absolutely fascinating. You know, one of the things that I've, I've talked to quite a few people about when it comes to issues like real complex issues like drug addiction and violence and poverty is that once you feed it with any organism, whether it's that organism is law enforcement or that organism is education, whichever one you feed is the one that's going to grow. is education. Whichever one you feed is the one that's going to grow. And once you feed the law enforcement one and you look at this really complex situation, I think law enforcement is important. But I think education is probably more important to avoid future law enforcement. I think the more education we have, the more nuanced our ability to raise children is, the more we understand that we're all in this together, the less you're going to need law enforcement. But when law enforcement becomes this machine that lobbies against the legalization of certain drugs, which when you start looking at the data,

there's only one reason to do that. And the only reason is that you're trying to stay alive. You're trying to grow. You're an organism. You're trying to eat the sugar. You're trying to keep going. So you're creating more jobs by putting people in jail. It's essentially, no one wants to look at it like this, but it's a form of slavery. I think in the house I live in, the film, Eugene Drecke's film, I think that's the kind of analogy he was trying to draw in that film. Absolutely. So I think we get it. I think a number of people get that.

That's exactly what it is. Yeah, it's exactly what it is. And it doesn't seem like anybody's willing to address it. No one's willing to change it. There's that very famous speech where Eisenhower gets out of office and as he's leaving, he addresses the nation and he warns of the dangers of the military industrial complex. And it's a weird speech because this is a sitting president and he's leaving and he's letting people know, like, there's a machine out here that's growing. And I'm letting, I can clue you into this. Like, be aware of this thing. This is the same with law enforcement. It's the same with private prisons. It's a, they become organisms. They become individual things that are filled with people that are all working for the greater good

of the great corporation. Absolutely. And people need to understand the conflict of interest that these folks have. And oftentimes when we have these types of discussions, one of the sort of impulses of the media or folks who have these discussions is that they want to invite law enforcement personnel. And it's like, what expertise do they have to talk about drugs really run none well you remember ronald reagan when he's on tv maramona may very well be one of the most dangerous drugs we've ever discovered you remember that or whatever the exact quote no no i i know you know i try to forget ronald reagan but uh i i hear you it's i had a a conversation today about actors with a friend. We were talking about actors being in politics, like how crazy it is that you let someone who's a professional liar try to tell people the truth.

I mean, that's what an actor is. They're really good at bullshitting. Like, they pretend they're really sad because someone they know just died. Nobody fucking died. There's cameras all around you. There's lights on you. You're wearing makeup. But you're so good at bullshitting that I'm willing to pay money to see you bullshit.

Well, I mean, let's think about what we consider news in the country. And we think about the people who are delivering news. They are the same. They're worse. They're too stupid to be actors. Right, right. That's what most of them are. And here's Bob with the weather.

Wow, what a day, what a day, what a day. The wind's coming in from the northeast. And I do these radio tours, and I'm sure you do them as well when you promote your books. But you'll hear the same voice over and over and over again. Like somehow or another these guys have plugged in to what they think is a radio guy. And they're playing the role of a radio guy.

And it's very strange. Yeah, there's a lot of strange things that has happened on this book tour. So, yeah. So that's the people that we have disseminating information and in some cases running the government. You know, the Arnold Schwarzenegger thing was so crazy. You know, we're running around telling everybody the fucking Termator is the governor of the country that's ridiculous you know it's a yeah there's so much to say about uh arnold schwarzenegger as it relates to drugs too when we think particularly we think about performance enhancing drugs and those kinds of things

you know we know about his use and then you think about the hypocrisy of it all and that's the thing that's just disturbing if people just call it like it is and say what it is you actually help people understand what these things do and what they don't do and then you don't have people have all of this cognitive dissonance about it's like how can I get to that level how can I do this level when you when you know that those folks did performance enhancing drugs, so now they're saying that you shouldn't do performance enhancing drugs. Yeah, that's an interesting situation. I think there's a real issue with that in sports. There's a bunch of different groups that are trying to clean it up. Recently, the UFC has made big steps

to try to limit the amount of performance enhancing drugs. But unless you're watching guys all day, every day, it's really hard to tell without testing them. Well, you know, I don't know how I feel about the performance enhancing drugs thing. The thing that I like to know, first of all, is that we get better information on it, you know, and I don't want to have this sort of just say no attitude towards this stuff without really good information. And I don't know if we're there yet. I agree with you 100%. I think the issue that people will have, though, is the term natural. You know, natural is an interesting term, because is it still natural if you're taking multivitamins? But what if you got creatine? Is it still natural if you drink

coffee? Coffee is a drug. You're kind of drug using. is it still natural if you use you know certain types of water that's treated certain ways to make your body process oxygen better i mean whatever new thing that comes out is that still natural and it gets it gets real weird it's like should you be should people not be allowed to take any supplements so they just only have food like this is what you give them just plants and animal protein and water and then we monitor what your diet is Then we let you fight Yeah, you know there are a number of issues going on because I mean the whole notion of like natural I think people need to grow up. I don't even know what that means natural

That's not my concern My concern is that if you have performance enhancing drugs and then people are Giving given a drug in order so they can continue to perform even though they are hurt. That's my concern, that we run further risk of having people being injured. But in terms of training and that sort of thing, I don't have so much an issue with that whole issue of using performance-enhancing drugs, as long as we're doing it in a safe manner in which people understand what's happening.

I think the question is fairness. That's the question. Fairness. Americans are, they annoy me with fairness. I mean, fairness, really? Come on. Well, they're worried that someone is going to cheat and they're going to win when they're taking an illegal drug.

I mean, it's pretty simple. That's the fairness argument. That's the fairness argument. That's the fairness argument. So when we think about our ability in this country to train better than some of our opponents in the Olympics because we are a wealthier country, is that fair? No, definitely not. Yeah, so I mean, we think about wealthier people whose kids can have access to prep tests before taking the SAT, before taking the MCAT or some other exam, whereas less wealthy people can't afford those tests. Is that fair?

Absolutely not. So this whole issue of fairness is, come on. Right. When it comes to combat sports and athletics, though, obviously I have a vested interest in this idea and this debate. But I think there is an issue if two guys have very similar, almost identical economic situations, identical training environments, identical amount of experience in martial arts, and one guy is taking a drug and the other guy isn't. That guy has an unfair advantage. Sure. It certainly can be.

But, you know, the thing, and that's fine, whatever the rules are now, we must adhere to them. All I'm saying is that I think that we need to make sure that we study the issue really well so that if one person has access to anything, the other person also should have access. But right now, the rules are that you can't. That's fine. Right. So I totally understand. So what you're saying is you think that the rules should be based on scientific evidence of efficacy and of health benefits and risks and all that and have it laid out. Absolutely. It's not. Absolutely.

Yeah, really, it is kind of a weird thing. Like, you can sell testosterone. Like, on it, we sell a T-plus enhancer. It enhances your body's ability to produce testosterone. But it's legal. I mean, there is a bunch of stuff. Like, creatine. Creatine is legal's ability to produce testosterone, but it's legal. I mean, there is a bunch of stuff that like creatine, creatine is legal. You can, they can't stop you from taking creatine. There's a bunch of stuff that, you know, caffeine, they'll let you take a certain amount, but if you get above like 200 milligrams in your system, they go, Oh no, you

don't like too much. It's real weird. Natural is a weird word. Yeah, no, I know. You know, it's a difficult one for me. I don't know the performance enhancing world as well as I'd like to. But, you know, maybe that's an issue for another book. Well, you know, there's the term natural. I got a conversation with a friend of mine and we were talking about pollution and all these different things that people do. And we were saying what's really kind of weird is we always think of things that humans make as unnatural. But they're all made out of stuff on Earth. It's not like we're taking shit from another dimension

and creating artificial things. Yeah, it's like the marijuana smokers. They say, well, weed is natural, so all drugs are natural. You know, it's like heroin comes from the opium poppy. Right. Methamphetamine from a federal-based plant. You know, cocaine from the coca plant as well. So it's like all of these things are natural,

if that's what your definition of natural is. Even the synthetic versions are created by earth-grown components. Absolutely. The synthetic versions might be better. I mean, like aspirin comes from the willow bark, I believe. But we have made it synthetic so we can harness the components that we need. So that's a good thing. And that's a drug. Yes.

Yeah, so a drug-free America would mean no aspirin. No aspirin. That's right. It is pretty silly. No Coca-Cola either. That's a drug. That's right. We're filled with it.

That's right. Our culture's filled with it, and that's such a great point that you made earlier. That's right. We're filled with it. That's right. Our culture's filled with it. And that's such a great point that you made earlier. Every single culture. Absolutely. So like kids who are trying to learn how to think critically, when people present them with things like drug free, they should really question that sort of thing. That they should be taught that this is part of critical thinking. Drug free society just doesn't exist. So please don't feed me propaganda. So that really does exacerbate our issue, right? Because with all that ignorance out there,

it makes it very difficult to have a real debate about it because people come into everything with preconceived notions. Like, I don't know very much at all about chess. I don't know who's the best. I don't know what the strategies are. I kind of know how the things move. That makes two of us. You know what I'm saying? But if I came into chess going,

oh, no, no, no. You guys don't know what the fuck you're talking about. The way to do chess is you got to just move faster than the other guy. I had all this crazy, oh, I've fucking been watching on TV. And you're a chess master. You'd be like, bitch, what are you saying? That's not how you play chess. The fuck you talking about? Crack babies, man. The crack economy. You're telling me crack didn't ruin our economy, bro? Shut the fuck up. It's like people already have this in their

head. They're already coming to the table with a bunch of bullshit. Right on. I couldn't have said it any better, man. It's got to be really frustrating. I mean, when you go to cocktail parties and if I had a cocktail party, I invite you. You're a cool guy, when you go to cocktail parties, and if I had a cocktail party, I'd invite you. You're a cool guy. If you go to cocktail parties and people say, well, Carl, what do you do? And you go, well, you know, I'm an academic. I'd say I'm a shoe salesman, man. That's a good way to get out of it. I used to tell chicks that I worked for my father's insurance company.

Because working for an insurance company is so unglamorous. But working for your father's insurance company means you're such a bitch, you can't even get your own job in an insurance company is so unglamorous. But working for your father's insurance company means you're such a bitch you can't even get your own job in an insurance company. You're just some ne'er-do-well that lives in his parents' basement. And they would be so mean to me. It was so crazy. I was on television at the time. I thought they'd be like, yo, you're going to inherit the company, so I should probably push up. Nope.

Nope. There was none of that going on. I wasn't flashy enough. I didn't have enough shit. If I was pulling up in a Ferrari and I said that, maybe then they'd be like, hmm, but There was none of that going on. I wasn't flashy enough. I didn't have enough shit. If I was like pulling up in a Ferrari and I said that, maybe then they'd be like hmm, but I was driving a Volkswagen Corrado at the time. I just

it was shocking how mean people could be because of that. We have you know, certain things that we accept and certain things we don't accept. And when it comes to, you know, things that people talk about at cocktail parties and what have you and if someone comes along and says heroin's not that addictive, cocaine doesn't ruin, a lot of people take it on a regular basis, you're going to encounter a bunch of know-it-alls, right?

Don't you? You must. Of course I do. So that means that I have to make sure that I don't engage in conversations with people who don't play by the rules of evidence. And so if I engage in those kind of conversations, I'm too old for that, man. And so I try to limit my exposure to people who are mainly faith-based in their sort of belief systems. It becomes a real problem when they're really smart about something else. Like I had a conversation with Michio Kaku once, and we were talking about panspermia.

It was on the Opie and Anthony show. We were talking about the concept of building blocks of life coming in from asteroids, and that that might be where a lot of things came from. And one of the things that we were discussing was psychedelic mushrooms, because Terence McKenna had this theory about psychedelic mushrooms, spores coming from another planet. It's very possible that asteroid impacts that carried all the other building blocks for life also carried psychedelic spores, which is why they're so uniquely different from any other plants on Earth.

And I was asking him if he ever did mushrooms. This is my sneaky way of asking Michio Kaku if he did mushrooms. But he started going off about it, giving you brain damage and becoming addictive. And I'm like, what the fuck are you talking about? It's so unfortunate that he was talking about it ruining your mind. Like, I'm trying to improve my mind. I'm like, oh, come, sir. Please. You're like a blind man describing a kaleidoscope.

And unfortunately, it makes you question all the things that that guy's an expert in. Because if you know something to be untrue, and here's this brilliant guy who's telling you about the universe itself and the building blocks of matter, and he's so smart, and he's so definitive with his definitions and descriptions of these things, but then he tells you something that you absolutely know to be incorrect. And you go, well, come on. You're fucking awesome. Why are you saying this? you're the one who's telling me about the cosmos you're telling me about all these other cool things that i know are amazing and scientifically

provable but now you're saying some dumb shit as well i'm with you man i mean um that's one of the things that we all try to guard against because uh we all have a limited sort of knowledge base. We all do. I mean, we can only be experts in so many areas. I mean, it's just requires so much work to be an expert in anything. And so we have to have the humility to say, you know, I don't know that as well, but I'm willing to keep an open mind and learn. So you're right. I hope that I don't overreach like that on any subject matter because I know drugs very well. Other things I know less well. That's such an important thing. And a lot of really smart people don't ever want to admit that, you know, there's a lot of really smart

people that are really smart about one thing. So that you question them about things that they're not really smart about where they don't really have as much information about they'll bullshit. Sometimes that's fucking dangerous. I'm with you, man. And I'm so glad that you expose that kind of thing and you highlight the concern related to that. But, you know, we have to be able to say, I don't know. Yeah, it's an important factor, like in distributing information. We have to know that these sources that we reach,

whether it's you or any other academic, is 100% honest, and there's no ego or fuckery involved. And when these guys show a little bit of ego where they don't want to show humility about their ignorance, they ruin the whole thing. The whole discussion gets, it's very difficult to take them as seriously. Absolutely.

And it waters down all the things that they say that you know are true as well. It's like... Yeah down all the things that they say that you know are true as well. It's like, yeah, you know, on the one hand, it's like, we should be allowed the latitude to be, to have been wrong. But as a result, we should also be able to say, oh, you know, I was wrong. And I got this new information that made me see the light. And so, so it's a two-way street, you know, it's like people are going to make mistakes, and we want them to be able to make the mistakes because in the process of trying to understand something,

they might discover something really fascinating or good. And so they should be able to make a mistake, but they have to also be able to say, I screwed up. Yeah, it's really unique, isn't it, when people are running for president. We don't want none of that. We want no flip-flopping. If you're a flip-flopper, we don't want to think that anybody learned from their mistakes

and changed their opinion or had some new information come in. They reconsidered their ideas. Well, the people who say that this guy flip-flopped or this and that, they don't speak for me, and I hope they don't speak for the rest of the country, although they may have the microphone. But I hope people see through that nonsense. They do, but there are, I think what they're trying to get at for the most part,

I mean, I think we're certainly right when it comes to like you can learn, you can change your opinion. I certainly have learned in my life and even recently changed my opinions on things. But I think they're just concerned with bullshit politicians that are just think they're just concerned with bullshit politicians yeah that are just they're just completely playing the breeze that's right

where is it going i'm going this way i'm pro-abortion oh no no no no no no no that's right so you have that issue where people are uh like you said they are uh trying to make sure they have all the bases covered and they say one message to one group and a completely different message to another group. No, I get that. But then there are politicians, too, who actually learn new information and change their mind. And then they get called the flip-flopper. And that's bad.

Now, when did you do your first research, your first research on drug effects? I think the first study I published was in 1992. And what was the climate like then in comparison to climate in 2014? Because we're talking about pre-internet. Yeah. Damn, that's pre-internet. Al Gore had he discovered internet in

1992. Al Gore probably already had it. Probably already had a cell phone with it on. Right. I think, well, I got on in 94 and I think it's generally considered like 93 was like, when I say pre-internet, I think it all started um i think well i got on in 94 and i think it's generally considered like 93 was like when i say pre-internet like i think it all started around that area right on the attitudes hadn't really changed no i mean the attitudes the attitudes around drugs they haven't really they i mean only until the past year or two have they really started to change people year or two

yeah people are are starting to open their mind to these issues. Maybe we've been hoodwinked. Maybe we've been bamboozled. But for a long time, I mean, we think about from Reagan to Bush 1 to Clinton to Bush 2, even Obama, the beginning of his first term, attitudes about drugs, they hadn't changed that much. I mean, the bottom line was that drugs were bad. And as a politician, what you say is that you're going to be tough on drug users and people who sell drugs. And that was popular until recently. Now people are starting to say, wait, wait a second, maybe we've been doing this wrong.

But that's a recent phenomenon. What do you attribute the changing of that tide to? Is it just the overwhelming information? I think there are a few things. called the New Jim Crow to help people to understand the fact that we now have 2.3 million people in our prisons and largely because of the war on drugs. You know, so it's like we have 5% of the world's population, 25% of the world's prison population. And then we start looking at the racial sort of discrimination in terms of who's in prison. Black men make up 5% of the population or 6% of the population or 6% of the population,

35% of the prison population. You start to look at all of these numbers. I think Americans are like, well, we are fair. We are fair people in general. And so I think they are disturbed by that. I think that helped. And I think the fact that my book, I'm a scientist. I've been doing this for some years. I am on a number of boards, respected scientific boards. I have played the game, mainstream game. And then I'm saying I've done the studies and I'm telling you, you've been misled. And I think that, so I think the economy, the fact that we don't have the kind of money that we had, we once had, particularly in the mid and late 1990s, where we could build prisons and we could put all this money in law enforcement. I think all of those things have helped people to understand that maybe we're doing something wrong. And now with Colorado, one of the things, Colorado and Washington, those two states have legalized marijuana. And one of the things that's being really talked about is the amount of tax revenues that the marijuana in Colorado is going to generate. In this country, ultimately, money remains king. And so that has opened people's mind. You know, I like to think that

empirical evidence helps to really shape the way people think. But money is really king. And I think that all of these kinds of things, the economy, Colorado, some information, the fact that we don't want to be an immoral people, all of those kind of things are coming together to help people to rethink what we're doing with drugs. All of those kind of things are coming together to help people to rethink what we're doing with drugs. And if you looked at our culture, if you looked at our civilization scientifically and saw those statistics, those unbalanced statistics, at the very least you would have to say, well, there's an incompetency in engineering their culture. If it's not racist, if they're not, if it's, if they're not victimizing a certain population of the certain percentage of the population that can't defend itself as effectively

and, and taking advantage of them at the very least, it's a very poor engineering of the civilization. I agree, man. You know, the thing is, is that this is one of the things, one of the things I did, I actually believed many of the American sort of mythology that we were a fair people that, you know, equal rights for everyone. And so I think a lot of us believe that. And so I think as a result of us believing that sort of mythology and then actually looking at the data, I think people are disturbed. I think that people are understanding that we're just about 50 years removed from the March on Washington and the famous Martin Luther King speech, I have a dream, and that sort of thing. 50 years removed from that now. And then we were all upset about the social injustice that happened during that era.

And now I think people are understanding that we have our own social injustice happening right before our eyes. And then so the question becomes, well, where will history say you were on the issue? And I think people are getting it. But I think many people were just simply ignorant to it. But I think the message is getting out now. So it's just this combination of factors that are overwhelming, the internet providing all this information, Colorado and Washington state providing alternatives to the economic situation, all the above. All of them. It is an issue. It's one of the big issues when it comes to the difference between a democratic leader and a Republican leader is the way they treat some social issues. And that's a big one that the, the way that the Obama administration has sort of said

that they were going to treat marijuana and then the way they did treat it which is very different it was very bush-like it was it wasn't much different i mean they've started recently saying that they wouldn't go after these states but there was a lot of people that went to jail a lot of people did time a lot of people are still in involved in the court. I know people personally that have been busted and they were doing everything according to state law. Fact. So what what's that about? That's a good one, man. You know, I think about when Bill Clinton was elected in 1992. And I remember the excitement that the country had because we thought that the war on drugs and all these things were going to reverse. Then it turns out Bill Clinton, under his administration, more people were arrested than any other administration for these sort of violations until that time.

And so I think a similar thing kind of happened under the Obama administration. of happened under the Obama administration. It's hard for the Democratic sort of leadership or the Democratic candidate or president to go in a different direction for fear of being considered soft on drugs, on crime. Now, I will say this. This administration, as of late, is the only administration that said that they were going to change the way that the justice system, for example, enforced mandatory minimum drug laws. They said they wouldn't be enforcing those laws anymore. They said that sort of thing. This administration said that they would leave Colorado and Washington alone, those states that have legalized marijuana. Because under federal law, marijuana remains illegal. So technically, the federal government can come in and stop that.

But they have said they're going to allow it to happen. They said it's an important sort of experiment. And so on the one hand, I certainly wish they would do more, the current administration. But when we look at what previous administrations have done, they have done more than any other administration. When it comes to drugs. When it comes to drugs. So there have been some horrible things like the busting of these medical marijuana dispensaries. But is that just a part of what we were talking about earlier, that just the machine needs to be fed?

And it's way easier to do that than to knock on some trailer that's got smoke coming out of it in the middle of the desert, and some dude comes out with a machine gun, and you go into one of those medical marijuana, you get a nice clean bust, you bring in a lot of cash, and if people don't know the racket, it's kind of hilarious. Here's what they do. They go, they arrest you, they come in jackbooted with fucking bulletproof vests on and machine guns, They hold people down. They step on your neck when you're on the ground. There's videos of all this and I'm making this up. They take all the weed and they take all the money and then they say that they'll

be in touch with you. They say that they'll review your case, that charges will be pending. They decide when they're going to press charges, when they're going to put your thing into a system. So then these people have to decide whether or not they go back to work. Do they decide whether or not they go back to work? No one's been charged with anything yet. You got arrested. They took all your shit, and then they let you go. And so you're sitting there terrified and broke trying to figure out is this worth doing more of?

And the people that work there often quit. You've got to find new employees. College kids don't like getting boots put to their face and a gun in their back for weed. And so this money just evaporates. And it's been millions of dollars worth of money. It just sort of goes away. And you can't get it back.

It's not yours. The weed, it's ours now. It just goes away. No, I mean, these kinds of things, to be highlighted, and people need to really publicize these things because, I mean, as you just described, obviously most of us are horrified at those kind of events. But people need to know. I mean, this has been going on in this country for decades. for decades. Yeah, it seems like there's got to be a way to balance it out. There's got to be a way to take all these industries that are profiting off of it being illegal and locking people up and making sure there's law enforcement officers that are being paid. There's got to be a way to shift that into something else. And until they do, it's a hard road. Well, you know, first of all, we have

to have the conversation that it has to be a shift. Like you're saying, people are not even having that conversation. People aren't having the conversation to say, well, what do we do with this machine that we built up over the past several decades? I mean, I can think of a number of ways that we can use police officers in different roles than what they've been used currently. I mean, I can think about the educational sort of thing. Sometimes let's think about heroin. People have been talking a lot about heroin overdose deaths and those sorts of things, saying that heroin is cut or laced with some sort of other compound.

We can use our police forces. For example, whenever they confiscate something like heroin, why not do the chemical analysis and make sure it's posted in those local regions so people understand what the drug actually contains. I mean, we can have police outreach doing this sort of thing. Okay, you want to avoid this because this compound is dangerous. We can do those kinds of things. We never do. They never tell the public what's actually in the compound. If something is in the compound, they say that, oh, it's cut with

something or why not tell the public who is more likely to be susceptible to obtaining that type of heroin? Completely agree. But if you were on the Bill O'Reilly show, he'd be like, you're just going to encourage those kids. Now they know what they can take and what not to take. You're going to do the testing for them. Who's going to pay for that testing? Our tax dollars are going to go to give them the exact recipe of their heroin that they like. So Bill O'Reilly, you know, he was generous enough to have me on his show. And so some props to him for that. But the thing about the Bill O'Reilly show is that people should not get twisted. That is not news.

That is entertainment. And the goal of what he's disseminating is not public education and not necessarily for the public good. So if you want to be entertained, he's outstanding. But if you actually want information, you're in the wrong place. Wait a minute, man. You didn't watch the thing about him talking about God

making the tide go in and the tide go out and no one could explain it? You didn't see that? I watched that and I was like, okay, he's fucking trolling. He's trolling. He knows about gravity. This motherfucker is saying we can't explain why the tide goes in and the tide goes out. He knows they can explain that.

He's fucking with you. Well, I mean, think about it. The guy's had the number one news show, quote unquote news, in the United States for about 15, 16, 17 years. And that's the formula that he's used. Why should he change? Right. So for him, it's like he might as well be like Stephen Colbert. He's playing a role.

Absolutely. It's just his role is not funny. His role is just designed to scare the shit out of you and get you to want to build bigger borders. Well, the thing about it is that you and I understand that he's playing a role and he understands he's playing a role. But all of these networks like that, they're all playing a role and he understands he's playing a role but all of these networks like that they're all playing a role and but the thing is we just don't caricature them like we do him but

they're all playing a role right right they bring in so-called experts but they think that they're the expert and so all of these guys are playing a role it's entertainment it's not news and that's one thing that the public has to understand that's not news you can't really they give you news while they're giving you entertainment but you're absolutely right it's entertainment first yeah that's why they're wearing skirts that barely cover their vaginas i mean those women on fox news those are some of the hottest legs you can see on television and they're giving you the news and they're crossing their legs back and forth when they're on the couch hypnotizing you you don't know what the fuck they're talking about syria or ukraine who knows look at her legs why is her her legs are naked like imagine if guys wore skirts

in interviews it'd be the most ridiculous shit ever but somehow or another you're allowed to see most of this woman's you know you should sexually legs. You should actually go to the network. And tell them that? Or be there live? No, no, actually go. I don't want to. I'd get tongue-tied. I wouldn't be able to talk.

Yeah, it's hilarious. I mean, it's a propaganda factory. It really is. I mean, they're just trying to dance for you and get you to keep tuning in so they can sell shampoo. No, I know. Exactly. But that's all we have.

I mean, if you don't go out and get your news on your own, if you're one of those people that you get home from work and you turn on the evening news and you sit in front of the dinner table and you watch the evening news, if that's the only way you get your information, like, wow, we're fucked. Yeah, that's right.

That's why I'm a college professor. To help. Yeah, I's right. That's why I'm a college professor. To help. Yeah. I mean, I guess, but that is the future. Like, guys like you teaching young people so that they grow up in a different, I mean, I think they're growing up in a different environment anyway, don't you? I think so. I think we're in a new moment, man, particularly as it relates to drugs. This is something that we haven't seen before.

And the young people today, I mean, you see it on Twitter. I see it on Twitter. Some of the comments and the statements that people tweet at me, I mean, they are a lot more critical about this issue than my generation was. And so I am deeply encouraged. And so when I speak on this issue, as you pointed out how frustrating it might be to deal with certain people, I'm not really dealing with those people. I'm really dealing with the future. I'm speaking for history. And that's really the only way you can change things is to change the minds of the young people that are coming up.

The people that are set in their ways, they already have their mortgages that they have to protect. And that's, yeah, they can also justify that it's okay what they're doing because they've always done it. Other people are doing it and it's legal. That's right. So they don't think they're doing anything wrong. I had a friend who was a cop who I did jujitsu with. He was always telling me, I don't give a fuck if they got a medical marijuana license. If I catch him with weed, I'm busting him. I'm like, dude, do you fucking listen to

yourself? You're a good guy. Like, why are you talking like that? That's ridiculous. You would take me, aren't we friends? You'd take me and you'd throw me in jail for no reason. Do you know how stupid that is? For what? But your friend, right? You talking to your friend, I'm sure he respects you, so therefore he'd probably re-evaluate what he just said. I hope so. I don't think so, though. He's fucking crazy, that dude. But he's a cop, and you know, he just, he thinks of it as us

versus them. You know, he's got that mentality, us versus them. And that, when there's a law, it allows that other person to be the them. That's right. If it's written down, that's the them. That's right. If it's written down, oh, that's the them. That's right. I mean, that's one of the things that happens when people are involved in legal cases, divorces, disputes with their company. It's us and them.

And we go into us versus them mode. And cops are in us versus them mode when it comes to drugs. They've lived their whole lives as police officers under the thinking that someone who's got drugs is a perp. And then they can get that guy. And then that's something that they win. They win. The guy's in jail and they win. That's right. They dehumanize the person and so forth. And that person isn't really a person. And that's a problem. That's a major problem. I mean, and so you want to make sure that people, we want to encourage people not to behave like that. Yeah. And it's got to be really hard for the cops as well.

If this is what they've done always their entire career, and then all of a sudden the laws change and they have to adjust. Well, so I was in the military. You know, we haven't talked about that. And so I was a cop in the military for a short period of time. And one of the things about cops that they're really good at, they're really good at taking orders. So they will adjust if it comes down from the top. But the pressure has to be put on the top to make sure that the sort of rank and file officers follow these orders. But they're really good at following orders.

I'm sure they are. I just would be concerned that it would take a long time to turn that battleship of intent around, change the way they look at it. Look at Colorado. Look at Washington, right? The amount of money that those folks are projected to make into taxpayers' money,

I assure you, you're going to have former DEA agents involved in the marijuana industry, police officers involved in that industry relatively quickly. So when you say it's going to take a long time, no, it won't take a long time. All you have to do is just change the orders or the contingency. The contingency in this case, money. So you can actually do it if you have a commitment to doing it.

I don't think it'll take a long term. That's very optimistic. When you look at Colorado, when you look at Washington State, do you think that the genie's out of the bottle and it's just going to spread now? The genie is out of the bottle, and it will depend. Whether the genie stays out of the bottle depends on how much tax revenue is generated. That's number one. If Colorado continues to generate the revenue that they've been reporting recently, the genie's out of the bottle for a while. Especially in this economy.

It's kind of a perfect storm, right? This screwed up economy when everything's all... That's right. Especially in this economy. But in the United States, if you're making money, that trumps everything. Right.

What a freak fucking group of humans we are. It's really strange, but it's exciting. I mean, I hate the fact that the situation exists as is. I hate the fact that just this giant percentage of our population is imprisoned for nonviolent crimes and involve personal choice and either drug use or even selling drugs it's it's unbelievably hypocritical

when you have drugs everywhere you look but but at least i'm encouraged that i see this shift in the young people yeah me too i'm very encouraged man and that's the thing that keeps me going that's the thing that keeps me on the road with this book, talking to people about this issue, trying to educate people. I mean, because I think that they're going to do it better than we did it. And if I could play any role in helping them do it better, let's do it. What's been the biggest resistance out of all these years of studying drugs and studying the reactions of drugs?

What do you feel has been the biggest resistance or the biggest hurdle that you've had to overcome? Because I'm sure it must have been pretty difficult to get this going, especially in the 90s. Yeah, you know, so when you say what's been the biggest hurdle to overcome, I'm not sure if you mean professional hurdle or personal hurdle, because, you know, in the book, it's personal and professional.

And so it all kind of combines it all. So I'm not sure exactly where you want to go with this. Well, either one, either or. But what I meant is the resistance to your research. Yeah. So the resistance to the research, the biggest sort of resistance has been primarily from law enforcement community and treatment providers, those two communities, in part because, I mean, I understand that I'm messing with their money at some level. But that's okay. I expected that sort of thing.

And my major thing is that if I can just get people to focus on the evidence, the real evidence, and not the hysteria, not anecdotes, although anecdotes can be important. If I can get people to focus on evidence, I think I'll win them over. Yeah. When I tell people how marijuana was initially made illegal, they look at me like I'm crazy, like I'm making things up. And I give them the William Randolph Hearst story and how they use this term marijuana that was a wild Mexican tobacco. And the people that were making marijuana illegal didn't even know they were making hemp illegal. That's right.

Which had been used for thousands of years. That's right. There was a product called a decorticator that was invented. And when the decorticator was invented, it was a more effective way to process the hemp fiber. And they were talking about hemp being a billion-dollar crop. It was on the cover of Popular Science. And everybody was like, well, this is it. Hemp is going to make a new comeback because now there's a machine that allows people to process it easy.

And they shut that shit down so quick. And that was the original reason why marijuana was illegal. It had nothing to do with even the psychoactive form of it. Well, you just kind of talked about my book. That's the sort of theme of the book is that when we talk about these drugs, when we look from marijuana to heroin, what we find is that the illegality of these drugs have less to do with the pharmacology and more to do with these social and economic reasons that you just laid out. That's precisely it. Well, it's really interesting that there are laws in two states in Colorado and Washington making

marijuana legal. But even though hemp has been non-psychoactive and used in this country legally since, I mean, you could buy it from Canada like we do at Arnett and we bring it over and it's totally legal to possess, but you can't grow it. They won't let you grow it, which is just unbelievable. It's kind of hilarious. And that's the real reason why marijuana is still illegal to this day. It was all done just to keep hemp out, which is incredible. Yeah, so there were, and also one of the things that we have to understand too is that there is always this sort of the time

when we made marijuana illegal. It was a time when the country didn't really want to have federal laws. And so you had to have fuel and the fuel that we use was related to the Mexicans and black people using the drugs. So there were a number of people who genuinely believe that marijuana made these folks misbehave and engage in heinous crimes. And so people thought that the drug was so awful that any responsible society would ban the drug. So that component of banning drugs existed before marijuana. That's why heroin, opioids, opiates were banned. That's why cocaine was banned earlier. So yeah, this year, this song has been played over and over. Who financed Reefer Madness? Do you know? Who financed Reefer Madness? That's a tough question

because I don't know all of the history related to it. One of the things that I do know is that the Bureau of Narcotics headed up at the time by Harry Anslinger, his bureau got more money as a result of going at the marijuana or vilifying marijuana. And so I know that played a big role in the driving of making marijuana illegal. But in terms of the Hearst family, that whole storyline, I know it slightly, but I don't know it as well as I know the Harry Anslinger story. It was apparently, it was originally financed by a church group under the title Tell Your Children. And the film was intended

to be shown to parents as a morality tale attempting to teach them, this is from Wikipedia, teach them about the dangers of cannabis use. However, soon after the film was shot,

it was purchased by producer Dwayne Esper, who recut the film for distribution on the exploitation film circuit beginning in 1938, 1939 1939 and through the 40s and 50s the film was rediscovered in the early 70s and gained new life as a satire among advocates of cannabis policy reform so again it became about money yeah came a guy who realized he can make some money scaring the shit out of people and sell tickets

to this movie yeah but also understand now, by this time, when the film really became big, in 1938, the drug was already illegal. The drug became illegal in 1937. And so maybe the film was just capitalizing on the sort of mood at the time, too, of the country. Right, that people were scared. That's kind of interesting, though, that it was originally from a church group and then some dude who made money exploiting these fears. Then he started doing it.

It really kind of goes along with what we've been saying the whole time. It's all about the money. Follow the money. Follow the money. I mean, in many of these cases, follow the money. It's like we all have our price. Follow the money. That's so disturbing, though.

That's disturbing to hear for some people, that our entire society is being engineered the money. That's so disturbing, though. That's disturbing to hear for some people that it's all that our entire society is being engineered by money. Well, you know, it's one of these things that you hope people behave in a moral fashion, you know, despite the fact that we have these sort of interests, these monetary interests. But if people are hearing for the first time that it's about the money, well, they are kind of late to the game. Yeah, it's sort of a duh, duh. What do you think about, I don't know if you've ever watched the Vanguard show, the Oxycontin Express. Did you ever see that episode?

No. How about you tell me about it? I got a lot to say about Oxycontin, but tell me about it. I don't know the show. It's a great show about the pathway, the highways between Florida and the rest of the country, that Florida's drug use and the OxyContin prescriptions were so high. I think Florida had some insane amount, like more than the entire country combined by a long shot of OxyContin prescriptions. And people were going down to these pain management centers, and they documented the whole process.

Apparently, Florida, since this documentary, has been forced to clean their act up. Yeah. Because we talked about it on the podcast, and I got a lot of tweets from people with new information. It was pretty cool. But they had these pain management centers that were built in. They had a doctor and a pharmacy right there. Hey, my back hurts. Here you go. Take this paper. Go right next door and get your

heroin. And then people would do it under like 15 different names. They had no database. So you'd go to one doctor and get a prescription. Then you'd go down the street and go to another doctor. And they weren't able to exchange information and find out that this guy, this Joe Rogan character has 100 different prescriptions for OxyContin.

He's just driving around all day with a backache. No, no. You know, like that sort of thing. I'm happy that people are concerned about the overuse of any drug, for example. But the thing that concerns me about the whole that sort of thing is that when you make these documentaries they they invariably they do poor jobs one of the reasons that they do poor jobs is because they highlight these sort of aberrations they the worst case scenario and then so me the viewer or we get outraged because we see this abhorrent behavior that's going on. And then what happens is that

you get this crackdown so severe that people who are in pain who actually need the medication find it difficult to get the medication. So it'd be nice if we just had like our routine sort of policing of all of these activities. When we find that people are abusing the system, we deal with it, but don't exaggerate our sort of punishment to the extent that we're doing more harm. So on the one hand, folks, if they are using OxyContin, I would much prefer them use OxyContin than that they use street heroin, in part because OxyContin, we know it's 100% pharmaceutical grade and the adulterants, there are no adulterants in that OxyContin versus heroin where there are adulterants in the street level heroin. So on the one hand, you have to think about, we have to weigh all of these sort

of potential risks and benefits. And oftentimes it's a one-sided story. And that bothers me. Well, one of the things they were talking about in the documentary was how Florida was providing the rest of the country with OxyContin, and that's why it was a big issue. Sure. Like I said, I know that Florida had these issues, and that's fine, and the authorities should take care of it. They should do what's appropriate, but I hope they don't exaggerate it because typically that's what we do. We go overboard. Yeah, that is one of the issues of another article that I was reading on Bloomberg about these pain victims that were trapped in this prescription crackdown and that the amount of OxyContin prescriptions has dropped dramatically, dropped by 97% after a joint U.S. state task force made 2,150 arrests for offenses ranging from improper sales to over-prescription by doctors. Yeah, docs are afraid. I mean,

there are far more good doctors out there who are trying to be responsible than the wayward ones that you describe. And the ones who are trying to be responsible, they say, ones that you describe. And the ones who are trying to be responsible, they say, I'm not prescribing these pain meds because I know there's too much potential for risk or harm there. Not so much for the patient, but for myself in terms of losing my license. Somebody may think that I'm doing this intentionally. And so I worry about that, how we crack down too severely. I worry about that, how we crack down too severely. Yeah, that's the whole point of this one article on Bloomberg. And if anybody wants to check it out, that's the name of it.

Florida pain victims trapped by prescription crackdown. It's under their health section. In 2010, Florida had 90 of the nation's top 100 pharmacies buying oxycodone. Wow. Well, isn't that where Rush Limbaugh was getting his? Yeah, he was popping some insane number too, that fat fuck. He was throwing down like 100 a day. He's got a lot of bulk he's throwing heroin through. You know, on the one hand, there's so much there.

Number one, he was on essentially heroin. That's what OxyContin is, basically. But yet he was going to work, he was paying his taxes, and he was handling his responsibilities, right? Yeah. Nobody was, nobody pointed this out. And so when we think about drug users, that's your typical drug user. That's a great example of it. because, I mean, who better? A guy who's anti-drugs, who happened to be on drugs,

and a guy who's a mouthpiece for the right-wing machine, which has always been anti-drugs. And here's a guy who's taken fucking elephant-sized doses of this shit every day. He's got his nanny out there running around, or whoever it was, his housekeeper, running around out there buying more heroin for him, and she got popped. It's hilarious that that guy

was like an anti-drug guy. I mean, it's... He's performing. You know, that's his show. You know this. Yeah. But it's fascinating that those guys exist, that the Bill O'Reillys,

the Rush Limbaugh-type characters, the people that really are putting on an act. And Stephen Colbert, everybody thinks of him as this caricature. But they're all caricatures. Absolutely. That's how they make their money. And you look at Rush Limbaugh's house. It's fucking giant. It's huge.

People like what he does. He's out there golfing every day with a hearing aid now because apparently he did so much OxyContin, he fucked up his hearing. Don't blame that on OxyContin, please. That's what Alex Jones told me. Don't blame that on OxyContin. Alex Jones explained it to me in some pseudo-medical terms.

I just will parrot right back at you. No, I mean, you know, when you say the kind of venom that that guy says, you know, somebody probably hit him upside the head. But don't blame that on OxyContin. Is it possible to take so much OxyContin that you go deaf? I am not aware of that. I am just not aware of that.

Yeah, I would have to do the research here. No, I mean, I have been studying this issue for a while, and I just never ever heard of that. I only heard it because of Alex Jones. It's not the best. It's not Wikipedia. He's not even Wikipedia. He's a great guy and everything. You go deaf.

Let's see if it's true. Let's punch that shit in. We live in strange times, you know? Yeah, but all right. Really quickly, he acknowledged he had gone almost completely deaf. No, he's not admitting it. Who knows? How much OxyContin?

What's the LD50? For folks who don't know, LD50 is lethal dose 50%. So some drugs, it's very high. Some drugs, it's very low. Marijuana, it's insane. I don't know what the LD50 for OxyContin is, but one of the things about heroin or just any other opiate like OxyContin is that if you've been using it for a while, that means you can really increase your dose of the drug. So, you know, I've seen heroin users take anywhere from 25 milligrams of that drug to 500 milligrams.

That's a why and be fine. And so it all depends on the user's history of using the drug. So I'm not surprised if he's been using the drug for a while that he was using large doses. That doesn't surprise me. And that doesn't even concern me if he was using large doses if he had developed tolerance. So if you develop tolerance and you're taking, say, 50 pills a day or whatever he was taking, that's no more dangerous than taking one or two pills a day if you don't have the tolerance for it? That's right. See, one of the things that people don't talk enough about in terms of drugs is the sort of protective effects of tolerance. So when people develop tolerance to any drug, whether it be

marijuana, alcohol, heroin, it protects you from some of the toxic effects. So you can really push the dose without having harmful effects. Let me just give you an example from an animal study. One of the things that we reported that was reported in the literature with laboratory animals and methamphetamine is that you give them a whopping dose of that drug, you can cause neurotoxic effects. Brain cells die, right? Now, if you allow that animal to develop tolerance by giving escalating doses over several days, and then you give them that whopping dose, you block the sort of neurotoxic or brain cell death as a result of them developing tolerance. So tolerance is important to protect the animal from some of the toxic effects of the drug.

That's fascinating. So the LD50 rate will absolutely change with those who are tolerant to it from continued use. Yeah, so the lethal dose will look different based upon the user's history. Okay, so when they say like lethal dose 50% or 50% of the population being, you know, like if you have 100 people and then you give them a certain amount of heroin, 50% of them die. As soon as they start taking that heroin, that number changes. That's right. That number, you know, it's hard to predict when we start talking about people who have tolerance. I mean, so when we think about the LD50, we're typically talking about folks who don't have experience with the drug. And we do physically addict in some form to a lot of drugs. Like you were talking about alcohol

being one of the few that if you physically addict to it and you quit, didn't that, isn't that what happened with Amy Winehouse? Didn't they show that her system had nothing other than alcohol in it? It had nothing but alcohol, but I'm not sure how she died. I don't want to get this wrong. Some folks do die that way, though, right? Oh, yeah, you can die from alcohol withdrawal. You die typically from seizures that's caused as a result of the alcohol withdrawal.

So if someone out there is addicted to alcohol, how do they kick alcohol? Do they have to do it very slowly? Yeah. So if you develop dependence on alcohol, you should probably be admitted to a hospital in order to receive benzodiazepines, something like diazepam of value, which acts in a similar way as alcohol, but it's longer lasting, so the body has a chance to detoxify. The benzodiazepine slowly leaves the body, whereas alcohol abruptly leaves the body. And then that's what causes the

seizure activity and those sorts of things. What is the physiological effect of the alcohol leaving the body and then the seizure? What causes the body to just... So when... Have you ever had a hangover? Yes. That's alcohol withdrawal. Really? Yes. That's alcohol withdrawal. Really? Yeah, that's alcohol withdrawal. I thought it was dehydration.

It's partly, it's part of alcohol withdrawal. Dehydration is part of it as well. But that's like the mild symptoms of alcohol withdrawal. So, but when you think about the severe sort of alcohol withdrawal that you're asking about, what happens with the seizure? of alcohol withdrawal that you're asking about what happens with the seizure. So the idea is that alcohol, what it does is that it suppresses much of the brain activity, much of the brain activity. You're telling me, man. It is just suppressed. And then for long-term use of alcohol, it really suppresses a number of brain cells. And then all of a sudden, because alcohol is half

life, the time at which half of the drug leaves the body, is only about an hour. It's really quick. So the half-life is so short. Once the alcohol has left the body and it's been depressing the central nervous system, the brain activity, now all of a sudden those cells fire wildly, uncontrollably, and that's what causes the seizure activity. That's unbelievably fascinating. So it's also unbelievably fascinating that it's been proven that alcohol actually suppresses the use of the mind, that the mind can't work as well. Well, I don't want to say that strongly.

It certainly depresses certain neurons, a number of neurons. So like when you think about it, when you are anxious, if you're anxious and you have some alcohol, if you have a benzodiazepine, it's suppressing certain type of activity. And so that's a good thing. And you might actually function better because if you think about going to a party or having some event and then you're so anxious where you can't perform as well and you maybe have a drink and now you're calm and you might actually be more social and you might actually perform more better in that situation. So I don't want to say that it's just sort of generalized bad effect on your behavior or the brain. So at certain low dosages, it can be beneficial.

At high dosages, it does shut down certain functions of the brain. Like at certain low dosages, it can be beneficial. That's high dosages. It does shut down certain functions of the brain. Like there's very few people that would score as well on their SATs after five shots of Jack Daniels. Yeah. I think that, um, that's one of the things we've been really good at public education. Most people know that they shouldn't do shots before taking the SATs for that reason. Right. Can you imagine if it made you smarter? Um, yeah. I mean, I can't imagine anything that makes you smarter besides studying and working hard. Good for you. That's a very good way to say that. That's so true.

But it's interesting, though, when you think about the idea that this is one of the most popular, if not the most popular, recreational drug in the world. And one of the most popular, the only big time sanctioned one in America, where you don't have to have a sickness. Almost every drug that we have, that's a prescription drug, whether it's good for you or bad for you, dangerous, incredibly potent, whatever it is, you have to get a prescription. There has to be a reason for it. You don't need a reason to get fucked up on booze. There's Mikey's Bar, and you walk on in, give me a double and a beer, and then boom, 20 minutes

later, you're drunk. We don't need any, no reasons, no doctor, nobody has to hold your hand, you don't have to write anything down, you don't have to give the guy your name and phone number. I'm trying to figure out are you saying that's a bad thing or a good thing? I'm fascinated by it. I'm neither. I'm not saying it's a good or a bad thing.

If I had to say, should it be legal or illegal, I would say absolutely legal. I've enjoyed alcohol many times in my life. I don't have a problem with alcohol. But it is very telling and fascinating that that is the one drug that we chose. Well, it is for a number of reasons. I mean, when you think about it, how we do alcohol, we take it orally. And so it's the only drug that we take orally that you can feel the effects almost

immediately. And so when you're at a party, you don't have to wait for the onset of the effects to happen. It happens almost immediately and you control the intoxication simply by taking more or less of the drug. You can't do that with other drugs orally. And that's one reason that that's the case is because alcohol essentially has no blood-brain barrier. Like those other drugs, they have to cross the blood-brain barrier. With alcohol, there's essentially no barrier for alcohol. So the pharmacokinetics or the pharmacology properties of the drugs makes it very convenient for a recreational drug. That's another important reason that it's legal yeah that's a good point when you consider like if you were going to open up like a mushroom store

and everybody come and sell mushrooms you'd give them the mushrooms and be like come back and hang out in an hour and 20 minutes because for the next next hour you know nothing really is going to happen you're just going to start sweating you you know. But alcohol, one shot, two shot, you're feeling it in 15, 20 minutes. Yeah, you're doing it through the oral route. So when you take a drug orally, some of it will be broken down before it reaches the brain, which is a good thing because that means that you don't have such large doses being shot into your vein or smoked in your lungs into the brain. And so it's kind of protective in that way. And so those pharmacology properties, I can't think of another drug that have such good properties.

Yeah, I couldn't think of another drug either. If you were doing marijuana, the issue would be that you would get people around you high as well through secondhand intoxication. Well, it's not only that. You have to actually smoke it, but there are better methods now. You got vaporizers and that sort of thing. So you can smoke marijuana more discreetly. And as these sort of methods are developed, it might become a more social drug, but we still have the issue of getting large amounts into the bloodstream, therefore into the brain in such a rapid success. And that's the thing that worries us in terms of safety. And so people need to be able, need to be educated on how to make sure that they don't take too much of a large dose at once. And once you do that,

you can help people be safe. But alcohol, don't have so much worry about it. The thing that we try and prevent people from doing has been drinking because of having large amounts in such a rapid amount of time. That it's just your body can't process it quickly enough. Yeah, it's just, well, you know, toxicity occurs primarily because of the large amounts at a rapid sensation. It's a rapid sort of, in a rapid order. But what about, I mean, the other big issue with alcohol as opposed to marijuana is coordination. Drastically affects coordination, drastically affects your ability to move correctly, your response times. Yeah, it all depends dose again, you know, so it all depends

how much people are taking, you know, like all of these drugs. One of the things I try and point out, the most important thing about drugs is dose. You know, as you increase the dose, you increase the likelihood of toxicity because there are doses in which you can take all of these drugs safely and accomplish whatever task you're trying to accomplish. But it's all about dose. So when we say general statements about what alcohol does or what cocaine does, we have to be cognizant of dose. What about drinking and driving, though? When you see the limits, I don't remember, what are the current national limits? They've varied a little bit. And I actually think they've lowered them in certain places. Do you think that they're fair where they're at right now? Do you think they

should be adjusted? What are your thoughts on that? No, I think they're fair. I mean, they're the best we can do. And then we also have those roadside tests and those kinds of things. It's the best that we can do. And I think we're doing a really good job at sort of alcohol-related drinking, I mean, driving problems. When we look at what issues we had in 1960s compared to what we have now, the number of accidents and deaths related to driving have dramatically decreased, all those sorts of things, in part because of our education, because of what we're doing. So I think we're going about that quite well and appropriate. What about tolerance? Yeah. In relates to that, because for a person who doesn't drink at all, if they have a point,

whatever, and then you get some dude who's just hitting it hard every night and he's only had one or two beers, but if he gets pulled over, he's going to test too high, but his tolerance might be so that he would be fine. You're absolutely right. And that's one thing that these sort of criteria don't account for is tolerance. But a good lawyer who has to defend someone should probably bring in tolerance, particularly if their client is tolerant to the alcohol effects. But good luck. That's a tough one because people think that they have this definite measure and it tells them something. And it really doesn't without understanding tolerance.

But you're absolutely right. That's a great question. So a universal number like that is inherently unscientific, knowing the understanding. A universal number like that does not apply to everyone. It does not consider tolerance. That's right. But it's the best that we have currently.

Other than the hand-eye coordination drills. That's right. That's the thing. It's the behavioral tests that are important. You want to see how behaviorally impaired the person is. Because if you have that in combination with the blood levels, then you have an increased confidence of what you're seeing. But if you have, for example, somebody testing over the limit based on their blood, but their hand coordination,

they pass a sobriety test, then you're less confident in what that blood level means. Right. That makes sense. Is there any other variables as far as like a person's ability to pass a hand-eye coordination test when they're drunk? I mean, athletic ability, things along those lines, because some people, they could barely bend down to touch their shoes, whereas other people are yoga masters. If you've got a yoga master fucked up and, you know, you might be able to just put his foot over his head while he's hammered and the cops would be like, this guy's sober. Well, that's right.

You know, if people have practice with the test and they know how to do it really well, then maybe they're not impaired driving as well. I don't know. But, yeah, but all of those issues that you bring up, man, those are complex issues. And those are issues that the society has to struggle with, but they won't struggle with it because it's too complicated and it's just nicer to have a number. Now, how does a state like Florida become this weird aberration? How does a state like Florida have so many, like they said, 90% of all the oxycodone pharmacies, the pharmacies that are making it and selling it? How does that happen? How does one state just go haywire? You know, I don't know the Florida law, but I'm sure it's related to the permissiveness of their law.

I think that that's the thing that contributed to this. I mean, they probably were allowed to set up pain clinics in a way that you didn't require much sort of oversight. And then, so whenever those kinds of things happen, you know, there's a potential for abuse. And so I would probably guess that's what happened. I was also wondering if maybe it might be some of the remnants of the cocaine era of Miami about how, did you ever see Cocaine Cowboys? You ever see that documentary? Yeah, yeah.

I'm from Miami. Okay. Cocaine Cowboys and Cocaine Cowboys 2. Shout out to my friend Billy Corbin who made those movies. I met that dude. Very nice guy. And really, really fascinating documentaries that cover the whole cocaine era of Miami where one year the graduating class the police academy every single member

either wound up dead from murder or in jail for corruption like they were just crazy and making money off of coke and coke is moving in and out and I had always wondered if maybe that had something to do with like sort of the echoes of this pervasiveness of drugs in that state. Wow, man, you know, I haven't lived in Miami, Florida since 1984. Florida is a bizarre state in general, you know, so I have to say that I'm outside of the scope of my expertise when it comes to trying to understand Florida. I don't understand Florida. Well, they said that there's more banks per capita in Miami than any other city in the country, and that is directly related to their ability to process money.

That was coke money. Yeah, I mean, I grew up in that era, you know, the late 70s and early 80s, and the Scarface era, you know, 1980 was a peak murder rate in this country. You know, one of the highest murder rates was in 1980, in part because of the cocaine sort of thing. Mind you, long before crack, but nobody's really talking about that. And so, yeah, I know that era and I know that cocaine was a big deal in Miami. My friend Steve did his residency in Miami, and it was during that era. And he's got just crazy stories of violence, of just people coming in, just all fucked up. And a lot of it was drug wars.

Yeah. How did that all of a sudden happen? Do you know the history? New drug markets. How did these drug markets open up? I mean, what took so long that it took the 1980s for them to get over here? Well, I think, well, the story that I've heard, and I haven't researched this to the best of my ability, so this is only what I've read superficially, is that there was a crackdown on marijuana,

a big crackdown in the 70s on marijuana. A big crackdown in the 70s on marijuana. And then so the drug cartels brought in cocaine because it was smaller weight and you could make more money. And then so that was about the time when cocaine started to flood the U.S. markets. That's what I've read as far as that goes. But like I said, it's a superficial read of my understanding of it. So really all crack cocaine was was like the second wave of cocaine. It's like cocaine came when they figured out there's an opening because of marijuana crackdowns.

And then they said, well, we've got to figure out a way to get it to people that can't afford to buy a brick. Yeah, no, absolutely. Some industrious dealer uh, cook cocaine and produce mass, produce it in ways that people could smoke it at cheap unit doses. I mean, that's, that's brilliant, quite frankly. Um, yeah, it is when you think about it that way, you know, but that person is brilliant. Whereas whoever rigged the laws in Florida to allow Oxycontins to come in and, you know, the, the, you know, know, we look at that and we go, well, this person, this is corruption. You know, this is what they've done is terrible. Well, you know, I don't know the law, so it's hard for me to speak on the specifics of that. And so I don't know. I don't know.

The person could have had a great idea and probably meant well. I don't know. I don't know. The person could have had a great idea and probably meant well. I don't know. But it certainly doesn't seem to be playing out as about these drugs. What happens? Do you get resistance from people in universities? Do you get resistance from your peers? No. You know, how science works is that you publish these stories. One study doesn't mean as much as multiple studies. And so you publish one study, and it's like, that's a great finding. Cool.

Let's see if you can replicate it. Let's see if you can extend it. Let's see if other people can replicate it. And if other people can replicate it, you can extend the findings. Now you feel more confident in what you're finding. And so that's kind of what happened. Over the years, I built on my findings and then it increased my confidence so much so that I thought that I should write a book in order to make sure the public understands what's happening. Because when you publish in the scientific literature, five people read your paper, if you're lucky. You know, people there, there's not many people who read the literature besides those few people who are interested in your area. besides those few people who are interested in your area. And so as I increased my confidence in the findings,

I thought I wanted to publicize it because I thought what we were doing with drugs was inconsistent in terms of policy and the way we educate and treat drugs was inconsistent with the science. And the way that you communicate with the people was to write a book, a trade book. Now, how's this book been received? Is there any, like, have you had a debate about it?

Has anybody ever said, I challenge you on your ideas? These are not correct. This is not true. Have you ever had to, like, sit down with Ann Coulter or anything along those lines? Well, I don't think she's qualified to be challenging me, quite frankly, about drugs. But she would do it anyway. Yeah, I know. She might embarrass herself if she did, I assure you.

But there have been people who may say that they have some trouble with the conclusions that I draw. But the scientific community and the general public have been welcoming, and it's been a breath of fresh air for most people because people already know this. The things that I'm saying about drugs, like the fact that the vast majority of people who use drugs are not drug addicts, that's not really that groundbreaking to people who actually know drugs and people who are critical, that's not groundbreaking. What's groundbreaking is that it's being said in a public forum because it's never been said in a public forum. It's always been the exact opposite.

It's always been the propaganda. And what's really refreshing about what you're doing is the fact that you're pushing fact first, regardless of how it's going to be accepted. You're just saying, look, I'm a scientist. This is what's going on. And we have to really accept that in order to figure out what we're dealing with. Yeah, man. You know, science actually saved me.

I mean, the data. The focus on what do the data say saved my life. You know, without science, I'm not here. And all I can do, I mean, there are people who are smarter than me. There are people who are more smarter than me. There are people who are more articulate than me. There are people who are more wealthy than I am. But the great equalizer are the data. Whatever the data says is the position that I take. And as long as I do that, I'm okay. I can do, I can say anything publicly. I can be in public. Nothing intimidates me as long as I am on the side of the data.

Yeah, that is so important, and that's not what's been thrown around. It's been what ideology do you prescribe to? What are your thoughts on free will? What are your thoughts on a person's ability to handle certain things that other people can't? That's what the discussion has always been more, almost more philosophical. Yeah, I know. As long as discussion is at that level. And now we can engage in this exchange of ignorance. And that's what we've had.

So in this case, what I'm trying to do is make sure we avoid the exchanges of ignorance and making sure that if people engage in this conversation, that they have some expertise, some skills, some knowledge, and not just some emotion. Now, in a perfect world, would drugs be decriminalized or would they be legalized? Yeah. So in High Price, in the book, I argue that all drugs should be decriminalized. I say they should be decriminalized and then we should have this corresponding increase in realistic education. Now, when things are decriminalized, then that means that people can be fined. That's right. They may be subjected to fines. You don't necessarily have to be fined, but just like a traffic violation, you might get a fine or you may not get

a fine. But the one thing that's important here is that they don't go to jail and they don't ruin their lives as a result of having a felony conviction. Because when we think about the last three presidents, Barack Obama, George Bush, Bill Clinton, all three of those guys used illegal drugs. Clinton, marijuana, Bush, marijuana. He's widely suspected of using cocaine. Obama used marijuana and cocaine. All I'm saying is that let's make sure that the society has,

everybody in the society has the same opportunities as those guys. Now, in a decriminalized situation as opposed to a legal situation, how do we decide where the revenue comes from as far as like tickets? Isn't that an issue? Because then it becomes a money thing again. You can charge people a ticket for having marijuana. Marijuana is decriminalized and all of a sudden we're getting tickets left and right for weed. It's like a speeding thing. It's like putting a 25 mile an hour speed limit on the highway when you know everyone's going to break it. Yes. No, no, that's exactly right. And so know everyone's going to break it. Yes. No, no, that's exactly right. And so that's where we have to be smart as a society in terms of thinking about the administrative fees or the fines that

we would charge people. Well, we set limits to make sure that we don't become excessive. For example, the greatest amount of fine that you can give someone, let's just say it's $25 or some amount that is not prohibitive and an amount that police departments can't depend upon for their budgets. And that money shouldn't be allowed to be used to support police budgets. That's an interesting way of doing it. Are you completely opposed to legalization? No, no, no. I mean, I am not completely opposed to legalization. My concern here is that the country, we're too ignorant right now for legalization. Not that people will go out and do some dangerous things related to drugs, but if you legalize drugs now, what will happen is that you will have the detractors say things like, any ills in the society is going to be blamed on the drug. And we're so ignorant, we're susceptible to believing that. So before legalization, I'm arguing that we have this increase in education about what drugs do and don't do. So people cannot be susceptible to being hoodwinked like that. I'm arguing that the education provides an inoculation, if you will.

So you're saying we can't handle the truth, essentially. What you're saying is that we need this decriminalization step before we get to a legalization. We couldn't just jump right into legalization. It would be too much change, pandemonium, people would go crazy, fear, people would use propaganda to set people against it, to go against it. Yeah, so I'm thinking about, well, I'm not saying it'll be pandemonium. We have Washington and Colorado right now. Mark my words, there will be studies coming out of Washington and Colorado showing that young people in those states do more poorly on whatever measure you want to have as a result of marijuana. The studies, the data won't

support that conclusion, but that's what people are going to be drawing from those data. And so I'm, this is my prediction right now, as a result of people's ignorance about marijuana. And that's, that's marijuana, a drug that we have a lot more experience than with heroin. And, but mark my words, you'll see those studies come out. Now, isn't it problematic that marijuana is legal in two states, medically legal in, what, like 18 or something now? About 17 or 18, yeah. But still a Schedule I substance, which means that it has no medicinal value.

Whereas for folks who don't know, heroin and cocaine are both Schedule II, which is kind of silly. Schedule I also includes all of the non-lethal psychedelic variants like psilocybin, which the LD50 rate is something fucking crazy. Marijuana, it's like 1,500 pounds inside of 15 minutes. Yeah, so to be clear, heroin is a Schedule I drug, not a Schedule II. What is Schedule II? Methamphetamine is Schedule II. Schedule II is Methamphetamine. Cocaine is Schedule I drug, not a Schedule II. What is Schedule II? Methamphetamine is Schedule II. Schedule II is Methamphetamine.

Cocaine is Schedule II? Cocaine is Schedule II. Morphine is Schedule II. So how do they get Oxycontins in then? Schedule II. Those are Schedule II. But it's heroin. Yeah, it's an opiate, and they act at the same brain receptor.

Right. So your your your your your puzzle look just kind of explains or it typifies Americans drug education because you were right when you said, but it's heroin. Exactly. But a better analogy is that morphine and heroin are essentially the same drug. Like I explained, the difference between crack and powder, that's morphine and heroin. Well, that's why I was, I'm sorry. Yeah. So morphine, heroin is just morphine with an acid group attached to it. They're the same drug. And so the fact that drugs are legal, you know, and I talked about this earlier, has less to do with the drug's biological activity of pharmacology and more to do with the social conditions that were surrounding the legality of the drug, more so than pharmacology. That's interesting. So cocaine, which is a Schedule II, is crack a Schedule I? Crack is a Schedule I, yes, dear.

Oh, it gets squirrely, doesn't it? That's right. That's very squirrely. So heroin, yes, dear. Oh, it gets squirrely, doesn't it? That's right. That's very squirrely. So heroin, crack, bad, OxyContin, and all the other variants. The thing people have to understand is that these schedules are largely based on politics. They're more political than pharmacology. Although we say that they're largely based on pharmacology. But some of this stuff, as you're pointing out, the inconsistencies in our logic, and

you don't even study this. You just are just pointing this out, and you can see the flaws in our thinking, and you're absolutely right. So the scheduling thing is largely sociopolitical cultural. That's fascinating. I had always assumed that heroin was scheduled too, just because I knew that Oxycontins were prescribed. I didn't know. And then the crack, the whole thing totally makes sense. What is the medicinal use of cocaine?

Because there's medicinal cocaine. Yeah. So let's think about it. If you've ever gone to a dentist, you might've had Novocaine put on your gums. Without cocaine, you don't have Novocaine because cocaine was the first local anesthetic, right? That's one. But cocaine today is used primarily in minor surgeries in order to restrict the blood flow so people can operate in that environment. That's what it's mainly used for. So lidocaine also related to cocaine? Lidocaine is related to cocaine. That's right. I had my nose fixed and they, uh, threw some lidocaine up there and they, you know, they had the packing up there and then they spray lidocaine and I was fucked up all day, man. I mean, I, it

was a weird feeling. Like I wasn't high, you know, it wasn't like a cocaine high, but I was like, wow, I don't feel good. And I knew it was that lidocaine shit. I was like, I think I would rather have just felt the pain than to have all this weird stuff in my system, you know? Yeah, but yeah, without cocaine, you don't have the local anesthetic properties of lidocaine because it's a modification of the cocaine structure. Now, how difficult would it be to get these drugs

that have these insane LD50 rates and have a wealth of medicinal benefits like marijuana and get them out of Schedule 1? I think marijuana, there's a lot of movement now for marijuana to be moved away from Schedule 1 to Schedule 2. I think if the public continues its pressure, I think it'll happen. But the public has to be vigilant and they have to continue its activity and intensity. Otherwise, it won't be it won't happen. You know, like we sometimes think that these things are based mainly on medicine and medical community, scientific community. The public has an important role to play here.

So public opinion and public the tide, which way the tide is going is very important. Yes. Now, when you have something like marijuana that doesn't hurt people, that doesn't kill people, and then you hear on TV people come on and start talking about withdrawal symptoms and people that have withdrawals from marijuana, are there physical withdrawals from marijuana? Is it possible? withdrawals from marijuana. Are there physical withdrawals from marijuana? Is it possible? Yeah, I think I've published maybe, along with my colleagues, maybe 10 papers on marijuana withdrawal. So we have actually shown a demonstrated marijuana withdrawal. Now, I should say,

in order to see marijuana withdrawal, you have to have people who smoke the drug every day, damn near every day, and multiple joints per day, and then you abruptly stop them. Now, you don't see marijuana withdrawal in everyone, but you certainly can see some marijuana withdrawal in some people. And when I say marijuana withdrawal, it's about like nicotine withdrawal. You know, people, they have sleep disruptions, they have eating disruptions, they are more moody. These are more psychological sort of issues. Certainly not life-threatening, but it's unpleasant. If you can think about having withdrawal from tobacco, you probably have a good idea of marijuana withdrawal. So it would be as strong as tobacco withdrawal? Because tobacco

withdrawal is a huge one. Like oftentimes it's connected to being as bad as heroin. Well, that's an exaggeration. Yeah. Goddamn cigarette smokers. Yeah. Yeah. That's an exaggeration. And now when we think about, again, when I want to emphasize, when we think about marijuana withdrawal, it's only seen in the heaviest users and it's not seen in even all of the heavy users. And so it's something that you certainly can observe, but it's not common. And so when you talk about these absolutely extreme versions of people that are smoking multiple joints a day every day and then they stopped abruptly then they just feel like shit for a little while that's it that's right that's it that's right no danger no i mean you're you'll be fine there's you're not in any physical danger is part of it your brain just scrambling because all of a sudden it's not high anymore

and you're like what are we doing what the fuck is going on here like maybe that's the better way to put it you know i was just trying to think of some scientific way of saying, but I think that that might be a better way of just saying, you know, think about it this way. Whenever you engage in some activity heavily for some extended period of time, and then you abruptly stop, you know, your body, particularly when you think, take in some substance, your body adjusts to that substance being there. And now that substance is abruptly removed. And now all the compensatory mechanisms in your body and your brain are overactive. And so that's part of the reason that you have the withdrawal symptom.

But eventually the body resets and goes back to its homostasis, its normal sort of balance. Except in extreme examples like alcohol, where your body desire, you have to do something to bridge the gap. Yeah, alcohol, it's too traumatic. I mean, with marijuana, one of the nice things about marijuana is that it stays in the body relatively long. So the half-life of marijuana can be as much as 24 hours. Now that allows the body to slowly detoxify. Whereas with alcohol, it's gone within an hour and it's like this abrupt shut off. You're shut off and now all of these compensatory mechanisms are hyperactive. And whereas with marijuana, these compensatory mechanisms are active, but they have an opportunity to slowly adjust. That's fascinating. So that's such a, that's such a unique piece of information,

uh, that the hangover effect is a withdrawal from alcohol effect. Yep. I'd always thought that it was just dehydration, but I'd always wonder like, why is it so strong? Like you got to get really fucking dehydrated to get the kind of feeling that you get when you have a hangover. Yeah, particularly, you know, just think about you putting all this alcohol in your system. People who have hangovers, all this alcohol. And as you get older, you don't need to pump that much in. You pump all this alcohol in your system, then all of a sudden it's gone. It stopped.

And then your body was just adjusting to the drug being there. So compensatory mechanisms are really, that's the mechanisms behind addiction, that you're trying to reintroduce the drug to keep those compensatory mechanisms satisfied? No. Let me try. How can I think of it? Let's think about heroin. That's an easier one for me.

We think about heroin. One of the things that heroin is really good at, and it's used medically for this reason, it had been used medically for this reason, is that it stops diarrhea. So people who have diarrhea that can cause death, for example, you give them heroin, it makes you constipated. That's a compensatory mechanism of heroin, right? So that's a compensatory mechanism of the body having it. I'm sorry, the compensatory mechanism of the body is that it tries to counteract the sort of constipation that heroin causes. So it has to get the juices flowing again, if you would, the body tries to do that. When the heroin abruptly leaves,

these overactive mechanisms now causes someone to have diarrhea because it was trying to get the system going. So the body is just trying to correct itself to be where you need to be because you need to go to the bathroom. And the body is trying to make sure that happens because heroin is blocking that ability to do that. That's absolutely fascinating. Now, when you do heroin for long periods of time, like how long does it take for these compensatory mechanisms to really set into the point where you hit a withdrawal syndrome? For heroin. For heroin. It all depends. And so, like, if you only are using the drug intermittently, you don't have to worry about the body becoming, the compensatory mechanism becoming so active that you have to worry about withdrawal symptoms. constant sort of administration of the drug, constant levels

of the drug in the body that the body compensatory mechanism become hyperactive. Is that the case with cigarettes as well? Because you ever see that movie The Insider with Russell Crowe? I did. It was funny. It was a comedy. No, no, no. It wasn't a comedy. It was about the guy who worked at a cigarette company.

He was a scientist. It was based on the 60-minute interviews and that sort who was a scientist? No, I know which one you're talking about. It was one they did. It was based on the 60-minute interviews and that sort of thing, right? The 60 minutes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes. I do know it. Yes. It was all the guy who was talking about the 500 and plus different chemicals that the government allows them to put in cigarettes that are all directly related to addictive. Yeah. I mean, well, tobacco has about 4,000 chemicals in it. Jesus. Yeah. Well, natural mean, well, tobacco has about 4,000 chemicals in it. Jesus. Yeah.

Well, natural tobacco or? Natural tobacco. Okay. So natural tobacco has 4,000 natural chemicals. About 4,000, yeah. The additional chemicals that the cigarette companies put in, which is what this scientist was highlighting, the guy who Russell Crowe played.

What's going on there? How are they able to do that? When they're adding these things to cigarettes that make it so that you become more addicted more quickly, how are they doing that? What are they doing? There have been so much said. For example, there are chemicals that I understand that they were trying to add to tobacco to make it more readily released to more readily released a nicotine there there are chemicals being added to tobacco for flavoring they say there are a variety of sort of things but I don't know exactly what you're getting at it in terms of why they add the comp the compounds in terms of addicting people.

Well, this is just from what I got from that movie. The movie, Russell Crowe plays this scientist who's testifying about how they had designed cigarettes to be much more addictive. Yeah, so one of the things that I think it was illegal to manipulate the nicotine content in the tobacco cigarettes because the tobacco companies said that tobacco is a natural product, so they don't do any manipulations. That was one of the things, but then it was found out that they had been growing this high nicotine strain tobacco somewhere in South America. And so that was one of those sort of issues related to this. The tobacco company understands pharmacology, or they understood pharmacology in terms of designing the cigarette. And the goal, one of the major goals, is that if

you want to get someone addicted to a drug like tobacco or nicotine, is that you want to make sure you can release the nicotine in a more rapid, efficient way to hit the lung and to the brain. And I think the argument was that tobacco had figured out how to release the nicotine more rapidly. And then one of the major theories in addiction work is that the more rapidly a drug hits the brain, the more addictive the drug is. And so I don't know if all of that has been demonstrated, but I know a lot of this has been said. But I don't know what has actually been demonstrated in terms of what the tobacco company did and what scientists say. company did and what scientists say. So it's all in dose and frequency, and that's how the compensatory mechanisms get set off. And so even heroin, which we've all thought that you can't do once, you'll go, man, they'll get you. You can, and you could probably

do it twice, but you can't do it every week. You can't do it like every day for a couple weeks. If anybody out there have taken Vicodin, Percocet, Oxycontin, all of those drugs, you've taken those drugs for pain or whatever reason. And then your pain is over and you go back to your life and you do your thing. You have essentially taken a low dose of heroin. And so the notion that someone can't take heroin more than once without becoming addicted, that's just voodoo. That's silly. That's 1937. But what about people that do take pills? And I have a relative and he hurt his back. He was a construction worker, hurt his back, started taking pain pills and became fucking a total junkie. He was responsible. He had a family, got divorced, wound up being this crazy liar pill popper dude. Like, what's that?

Yeah, those are the toughest questions that people ask me, right? Because on the one hand, it's like, it's not the drug, I assure you that. So when you talk about him becoming a liar and becoming all these kinds of things, I don't know the guy. But the fact is, is that we know that people do become dependent on these drugs for whatever reason. I don't know whatever the reason was for him. But there could be a variety of reasons.

A lot of times people become addicted on these drugs because they have co-occurring psychiatric disorders, because they have lack of better better options because they have other issues that's going on i don't know but i have to like understand this guy's complete situation but it's a fact that people do become addicted some people but the vast majority don't so we can't blame the drug what we need to do is more systematically understand what's going on with that person and then we can figure out what's going on with that person. And then we can figure out what's going on. Yeah, that's so important what you just said because it's always, I mean, what I just did.

I gave you this anecdotal story about this guy. Well, I know a guy who ruined his life. And then, well, maybe he would have ruined his life anyway. And he would have. He's a fucking idiot. I know the guy. Just so you're dead right. Your observation is correct.

He was always looking for an excuse his whole life. If he had to run seven laps, he would run six and pull his ankle. I've got to sit down. He's just that guy. Does he listen to the show? He does. Tough shit, bitch. You know who you are.

He is who he is. It's not good for everybody else if you try to baby fuck him. You've got to do what you've got to do. That guy was always that guy. And so when he got hooked on pills, he blames his whole life on pills. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing that's, that's one of the things that frustrates me in this sort of mission to educate the public is that people blame drugs for their, uh, for some of their shortcomings and some of the things that are not their shortcomings. It's not their fault.

But we don't get to figure out what's really going on when you simply blame the drug. So there are two crimes that are committed in that case. We don't get to figure out what's going on in your situation. And then you're restricting access to the drug for other people who may do it and need it responsibly. And also, it's an incredibly complex discussion, and we're breaking it down to these very simple terms that may or may not apply. My friend who I told you about that had a problem with heroin, who came over to my house to detox, his family was crazy. He was, when I, you know, got to know him better, and I sort of understood his family's medical history, I understood what was going on.

He was self-medicating. There was a psychiatric issue in his family and it was not just one person. So this guy was self-medicating and I think that's often the case. And I think that's one of the great tragedies of what happened during the Reagan administration when they started releasing people out of the streets, homeless people that were interned before that. They were in mental institutions and they changed what defines a person as mentally incompetent. Like, look, you wipe your own ass. Can you feed yourself? Get out of here. And they just kicked them out in the street. And you have a bunch of people walking around talking to themselves that used to be in hospitals being cared for. Yeah, no, absolutely. You raise all of these complex issues. And I just hope that the public, as a result of this show, your show and other things that are going on, I just hope that they ask hard work and and sticking your neck out there and doing all these shows doing

Bill O'Reilly and you know disseminating the actual facts and the data and doing so so confidently and I think it's awesome and I really appreciate it I appreciate you coming on the show thank you man I am very very important so folks please support go go buy his book it's called high price you can get it at high price is it high price the book highprice the book.com um i'm sure you can get it on amazon right do you have a audible version of it as well audible version did you read it no damn it they always do that man they fucking steve rinella my friend uh wrote a book and they did it to him too they had some fucking

actor to read his book no i know that's whack it's whack. It's your book. I'm going to make sure I tell my editor that. Next time, tell that editor, shut your mouth. I want to hear the guy who wrote the book read the book. I want to hear the woman who wrote the book read her book, man. I don't want someone else reading your book for you. That's stupid. Right on. You got enough juice, so this will happen next time.

It's got to happen. Whoever it is out there making those audio books, get your shit together. Dr. Carl Hart doesn't need anybody reading his book. Silly freaks. All right. Go buy the book and follow him on Twitter. It's Dr. Carl Hart on Twitter. That's H-A-R-T on Twitter.

And thank you, man. That was awesome. Thank you, man. It was a pleasure meeting you. My friend, good friend, Chris Ryan, told me I had to come hang out with you. So thank you, man. Yeah, I love Chris Ryan. And we do a podcast once a month together. We don't have a name for it yet, but what we do is for folks who've listened to the ones with Duncan and Chris Ryan and me,

we do my podcast, next is Duncan's, next is Chris's, and we just keep doing it. So we do one a month together. We have no name for it. We need a new name. But he speaks very highly of you as well. I really appreciate you being on. Thank you. It was awesome. Dr. Carl Hart, ladies and gentlemen, thanks to our

sponsors. Thank you to Squarespace.com for sponsoring our podcast. I should know that fucking URL by now, but of course I don't. Sponsor copy. Squarespace.com Use the code word Joe. That's for 10% off your first purchase. Go to Squarespace.com. Use the code word Joe.

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And Matt the Terra Serra, former UFC welterweight champion, will join us tomorrow at 3 p.m. as well. So much love to everybody. Thank you, everybody who came out in Dallas. We had a great time. It was so cool. And we'll see you soon. Much love. Thank you.