Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 1003 ｜ What If We Decriminalized Drugs？｜ Guest： Christina Dent

00:00:00.000 Should we decriminalize drug possession? It's not just far-left activists who think so. Christian conservative mom and author Christina Dent is an advocate for decriminalizing drugs in the hopes that it will help those who are affected by drug addiction and ultimately be better for the country as a whole.

00:00:25.600 I, though, have many questions and concerns about this. This was a very educational conversation. I learned a lot. I think that you're going to learn a lot, too. We have two very different perspectives on this issue. I'll be interested to hear what you think about this, what you walk away with at the end of this conversation, but I'm excited for you to listen to it.

00:00:51.100 This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers. Go to GoodRanchers.com. Use code Allie at checkout. That's GoodRanchers.com, code Allie.

00:00:58.600 All right, guys. Before we get into that conversation, I just want to remind you that today is the day for our big announcement. Our big announcement is headed your way on social media tonight.

00:01:22.360 I don't know exactly what time, but we are going to post it here on YouTube. We are also going to post it on Instagram, and we'll probably post it on all the social media channels, and I'm super excited. This is a long time in the making, and it's been a dream of mine for a while, and I cannot reveal it to you here because I don't want to steal the thunder of the social media announcement.

00:01:47.060 But please tune in. We will talk about it tomorrow on the show, but if you want to be one of the first to know what's going on, then you need to make sure that you tune in to my Instagram account sometime this evening.

00:02:02.940 All right. I just wanted to kick off the show saying that, super excited about it, but now we have to get into this fascinating conversation with our guest today, Christina.

00:02:13.080 So without further ado, here she is.

00:02:17.060 Christina, thanks so much for taking the time to join us. Could you tell everyone who you are and what you do?

00:02:24.560 Yeah, I'm Christina Dent. I'm the founder and president of End It For Good. It's a Mississippi-based nonprofit that works on health-centered approaches to drugs and addiction.

00:02:33.720 And you've given a TED Talk on this subject, right?

00:02:36.100 I have.

00:02:36.740 That was probably a cool experience.

00:02:38.180 It was an amazing experience. And really, it helped me to kind of solidify and condense all the things that I had been learning over the last couple of years and then be able to present those in a way that I felt like captured my heart for this issue.

00:02:51.680 Right. It's not really a subject that we've spent a whole lot of time on on this podcast, but I know that I speak for my audience and, of course, for myself when I say that all of us want an end to drug addiction and the harms caused by drug addiction.

00:03:09.460 There are disagreements on how best to do that. And I'll be honest, whenever I hear someone say decriminalize drugs, my first thought as a conservative is no, no, no, no.

00:03:25.200 That's scary to me. I'm afraid that's going to make things worse.

00:03:28.440 But acknowledging that we have the same goal to try to reduce as much of that harm and reduce as much addiction as possible, I'm open to the conversations about it.

00:03:39.580 So I'm excited to get your perspective. But first, I just want to back up. Tell me why you're even talking about this. How did you start thinking about this subject?

00:03:47.800 Yeah. So a little background. I'm born and raised in Mississippi. I've lived there my whole life, was homeschooled kindergarten through high school, grew up in a wonderful Christian home, conservative home, still have those values today, had a very happy childhood.

00:04:02.940 I think I'm probably in like the top one percent of the world and like just amazing childhood, amazing family, parents.

00:04:08.500 And so I went to college at a Christian liberal arts university. I have a degree in Bible, did not use drugs at all in high school, college, none of that, not not of interest to me at all.

00:04:22.620 And so I really didn't come close to this issue until I was in my early 30s and my husband and I decided to become foster parents.

00:04:30.460 And it was through that experience that I met a woman named Joanne.

00:04:34.680 She was a mom who was struggling with an addiction for many years. By the time I met her, she had been using for about 20 years.

00:04:44.120 She was pregnant with her first child and gave birth to him, was not able to beat her addiction during her pregnancy.

00:04:53.060 And so her son was born and was immediately removed from her custody and went into foster care when he left the hospital.

00:04:59.060 And he came to our house and we became his foster family.

00:05:03.440 And I didn't know anything about addiction at that point.

00:05:06.260 I had kind of grown up with this idea that using drugs is bad.

00:05:10.980 And so I kind of took that to mean people who use drugs are bad.

00:05:15.120 If you struggle with addiction, that was extra bad.

00:05:18.520 And so I didn't have any way to understand her behavior other than this is a mom who doesn't love her child and he's better off with me. 0.88

00:05:28.460 But I went to go bring him to his first visit with her at the local child welfare office.

00:05:33.820 And I popped his car seat out of my van and turned around in the parking lot.

00:05:38.400 And here comes this woman sprinting across the parking lot towards me, weeping. 1.00

00:05:44.940 She runs over and just starts kissing this tiny little preemie baby. 1.00

00:05:50.620 And I'm awkwardly standing there wondering what on earth is happening.

00:05:55.080 This doesn't make any sense to me.

00:05:57.460 It's not what you expected.

00:05:58.520 Not what I expected at all.

00:06:00.180 And so I just kind of stood there and smiled while I'm experiencing such an intimate moment of mothering, of desire to be with her child.

00:06:11.280 So we walk in and I leave him with her.

00:06:14.040 She gets one hour of visitation with him.

00:06:16.880 And I come back and pick him up.

00:06:18.820 And I walk into that little visitation room.

00:06:21.000 It was tiny, only the length of a couch on one wall.

00:06:25.040 And she's sitting in the corner of the couch and he's up on her shoulder.

00:06:29.160 And she's sitting there with her eyes closed.

00:06:31.580 She's not sleeping.

00:06:33.100 She's not on her phone.

00:06:34.380 She is drinking in every minute that she has with her son.

00:06:40.020 Just to give him back to me, I take him back to my house.

00:06:42.920 And she goes to inpatient drug treatment in another part of the state.

00:06:47.160 So she had asked if she could call me.

00:06:49.260 And I was hesitant about that at first.

00:06:51.260 You know, who is this woman? 1.00

00:06:52.760 I'm not really sure.

00:06:53.880 Do I want her to have my phone number?

00:06:55.240 But we had decided we wanted to try to do what we could to be supportive of her ability

00:07:01.080 to regain custody for her to be able to parent him.

00:07:04.920 And so she had my phone number and she would call me once a day from the treatment center 0.65

00:07:09.020 and ask me to give her any update that I could on him.

00:07:13.420 What is he doing?

00:07:14.640 What is he anything?

00:07:16.540 Even though he's not doing much of anything, babies just sleep and eat.

00:07:20.220 And that's about it.

00:07:20.900 And so I would give her the update and then she would say, Christina, can you put me on

00:07:25.340 speakerphone?

00:07:26.680 And she would sing to him over the phone.

00:07:29.760 I can be standing in my kitchen listening to her sing Jesus Loves Me to her son.

00:07:36.340 And it just created this turmoil in my heart.

00:07:41.040 Because the more that I got to know her, the more I realized she is simultaneously a mom

00:07:49.700 just like me, who loves her son just as much as I love my three sons.

00:07:54.860 And she's struggling at that time with a methamphetamine addiction.

00:07:59.860 How can those things go together?

00:08:02.400 I didn't think they could.

00:08:03.640 But here I'm seeing them go together in this woman.

00:08:05.940 And that started for me, this learning journey of, wait a second, I know that we're arresting

00:08:13.860 thousands and thousands of women just like her and men too. 0.77

00:08:18.060 But at this point, I'm concerned on kind of a mother-child family front.

00:08:23.240 I know we're arresting lots and lots of people who use drugs every year who are doing exactly

00:08:28.540 the same thing that she's doing.

00:08:29.940 She's getting help in treatment, but many, many others are ending up in incarceration.

00:08:35.720 Very similar situation we had with some friends of ours at the same time.

00:08:39.120 The mother in that situation was sentenced to 15 years in prison. 0.97

00:08:43.360 And so it started for me this learning journey of what's really going on with drug use, with

00:08:49.060 addiction.

00:08:49.840 And that opened up a whole broader conversation to me around drug markets, how we handle contamination

00:08:55.000 and crime and all of that, and really began a process for me that ended up with me changing

00:09:01.840 my mind, not about my values, but about the best way to get outcomes that are consistent

00:09:07.540 with my values.

00:09:09.120 Wow.

00:09:10.320 And at what moment did you realize that you had built up all of these presuppositions and

00:09:18.300 expectations about what a drug user looks like, what a drug using and a drug addicted mom

00:09:24.640 would look like, like, what was the aha moment that you realized, wow, I have gotten this

00:09:31.920 all wrong, at least when it comes to this mom? 1.00

00:09:35.620 Yeah, I think it was a process because it's really painful to confront that in myself, that

00:09:43.820 judgment, that belief that I'm better than because I haven't made that decision.

00:09:51.880 And so I'm a better mom or I'm a better person.

00:09:55.140 I'm a better Christian, whatever it might be.

00:09:57.760 And instead realize I have painted upon her a picture that's not true.

00:10:06.040 And I have removed from her some of my ability to see her as made in the image of God and

00:10:12.380 valuable and worth so much in his eyes.

00:10:16.720 And I don't think I would have ever said that.

00:10:18.740 I wouldn't have said I don't believe that people who use drugs aren't made in the image

00:10:22.300 of God at all.

00:10:23.900 But the way that I thought about it, the level of judgment that I had for people who made

00:10:29.480 those choices was deeply ingrained.

00:10:32.880 And I was simultaneously able to feel deep empathy for people in lots of different kinds

00:10:38.560 of situations.

00:10:40.020 I've lost both of my parents to cancer, went through a really traumatic train accident when

00:10:44.960 I was a teenager, a number of people died, and I survived.

00:10:49.460 So I had been through experiences that had helped me develop lots of empathy and grew

00:10:55.180 up in a home where that was valued.

00:10:56.900 But I was able to turn that off for particular groups of people where I was able.

00:11:01.600 Now, I couldn't see that at the time.

00:11:02.840 But as the more that I got to know Joanne, the more I realized I have had a way of viewing

00:11:10.860 people that can be turned on and off in terms of how much I value them or how much I'm able

00:11:16.160 to really see the image of God in them.

00:11:17.840 And tell me what you learned about why and how people stay addicted, even when they love

00:11:37.840 their child, because you would think, and this is my own naivete, I'm sure talking as someone who

00:11:44.000 like you has not been around drugs, I just haven't been around people who use or have

00:11:49.700 used drugs very much in my life.

00:11:52.260 And there is a part of us that's like, why not just stop?

00:11:56.040 Not even pregnancy, stop, like not even loving your son.

00:11:59.100 We know that loving your child is such a powerful force and can change all kinds of things about

00:12:04.540 you.

00:12:05.440 And so there is part of us that's like, okay, yeah, I get that it's hard, but can you not

00:12:11.260 just stop for this?

00:12:12.400 So tell me what you learned if you had that assumption too.

00:12:17.160 Yeah.

00:12:17.660 One of the most helpful stories that I came across, which I think is helpful because I

00:12:23.260 had no context.

00:12:24.680 And a lot of us don't have any context if we haven't been close to addiction.

00:12:28.240 And even if we have, sometimes that can give us an incorrect perception of what's really

00:12:34.400 going on because what we tend to see is the harmful behavior.

00:12:37.480 And we don't see what's behind that harmful behavior, what's driving that.

00:12:41.320 And so as I was reading and learning, my mom instilled this lifelong love of learning

00:12:46.720 in me.

00:12:47.420 And so as I got curious about this after meeting Joanne, I started reading, I started talking

00:12:52.120 with people like, how can I understand this issue and what's really going on?

00:12:55.860 And one of the experiments that I came across was, it's called Rat Park.

00:13:00.380 So there was a psychologist in the 1970s who decided that he was going to redo some experiments

00:13:08.600 that had been done.

00:13:09.480 Now, I remember as a child seeing these experiments about rats that you put in these little cages,

00:13:14.920 you give them access to drug-laced water, and they will use it and use it and use it until

00:13:20.340 they overdose and die.

00:13:21.700 And that was done to show, look at the power of these drugs.

00:13:26.140 If you're given an opportunity to use them, you will eventually just become addicted and die.

00:13:32.700 And so this psychologist, Dr. Bruce Alexander, he looked at that experiment and said, but

00:13:38.880 wait a second, the rat is alone in the cage, and we know that rats are very social creatures.

00:13:44.140 I wonder what would happen if we built an environment that is what a rat would want to be in.

00:13:51.240 And we also give them access to the drug-laced water.

00:13:54.560 So they built what they called Rat Park, and they put rats in it.

00:13:58.280 They built it on the floor of their laboratory.

00:14:00.260 They included sawdust and tin cans for them to play in.

00:14:04.100 They put lots of rats in there so that they would have social interaction.

00:14:08.080 And they also gave them access to drug-laced water and plain, clean water.

00:14:13.400 And what they found is the rats almost never chose to use the drug-laced water in that environment

00:14:18.740 when they were happy and in a place where all of their rat needs were met.

00:14:23.780 They didn't want to change the way that they felt.

00:14:26.300 But when they were taken away from all of that and put in an isolated cage with nothing

00:14:30.500 to do and no one else, they did use that drug-laced water over and over and over.

00:14:35.180 And so what they took away from that experiment is that it's not that drugs don't have some

00:14:42.380 addictive qualities to them, but whether or not a person becomes addicted is far more dependent

00:14:48.400 on their environment, their experiences, the things internally that are going on with them,

00:14:54.900 whether they are suffering from childhood trauma, whether they have loneliness, grief,

00:15:01.220 all kinds of the brokenness that comes into the world that's part of our experience as

00:15:06.800 humans in a world that has gone terribly wrong.

00:15:10.580 And no matter how painful and how harmful an addiction is on the outside, the only way that

00:15:20.520 we're going to be able to address that is by looking on the inside of what's actually going

00:15:25.860 on with a person.

00:15:27.060 It's much less about a drug or whatever that thing is that they grab onto and much more

00:15:32.820 about what's driving that addiction.

00:15:35.060 What is it that is so painful that they would need to numb that so consistently, even if it

00:15:42.320 takes away so many other things in their life that they want, like their children or like

00:15:48.080 good relationships with family can be incredibly powerful.

00:15:51.700 But to solve that, we have to look on the inside.

00:15:54.280 And how do you balance what you just said, which I believe is absolutely true, probably

00:16:01.560 in most cases where someone is just perpetually addicted to drugs and numbing?

00:16:06.860 And how do you balance that with the Christian knowledge that we are sinful and we have agency

00:16:14.360 and we are responsible for our choices and that bad things happen to all kinds of people?

00:16:21.860 And there are all kinds of responses and reactions that some people may have to childhood trauma.

00:16:30.140 For example, someone who is sexually abused as a child is more likely to sexually abuse as

00:16:35.980 an adult.

00:16:36.640 Yet we don't say, well, yeah, that sexual abuse that they perpetrated was wrong.

00:16:43.260 But before we look at that, we really just need to look at their background and what they experienced in the past, too.

00:16:50.220 We understand that at some point, no matter what has happened to someone or what they've experienced,

00:16:55.420 that they are making a decision that carries some responsibility.

00:17:00.280 At least when I see biblical definitions of justice throughout Scripture, of course, God is gracious and merciful.

00:17:08.520 But particularly like in the law giving to Israel, we see accountability for actions that are done.

00:17:15.660 And so how do you wrap your mind around that as a Christian?

00:17:20.280 Yeah, I think it's been helpful for me to think about accountability as lots of different types of accountability.

00:17:27.240 So Joanne would say it was right that her son was removed from her custody.

00:17:32.840 That was the right kind of accountability for where she was at that time.

00:17:37.840 And she's doing great today.

00:17:39.340 She's been sober since he was a baby.

00:17:40.880 I was going to ask.

00:17:41.800 Oh, praise God.

00:17:43.280 Amazing.

00:17:44.380 She has an eight-year-old son now who's doing amazing as well.

00:17:48.660 But so there's lots of different kinds of accountability.

00:17:51.160 That's one kind of accountability.

00:17:54.180 Arresting her would be a different kind of accountability.

00:17:56.320 And so there are natural consequences.

00:18:00.760 You know, if we struggle with an addiction, we might lose our job.

00:18:04.300 We might lose our housing.

00:18:05.800 We might lose our marriage, our family relationships.

00:18:08.860 There are all different kinds of consequences that might happen that are natural consequences to that behavior and how that is going to play out in a person's life.

00:18:18.280 And that's true of other kinds of addictions that a person might struggle with.

00:18:24.200 Let's say to something that's legal, like alcohol.

00:18:26.920 If you struggle with an alcohol addiction, you might lose all of those things.

00:18:31.100 We're not going to arrest you for drinking alcohol.

00:18:34.580 You're not going to be drinking contaminated alcohol because we sell it illegally.

00:18:37.760 But there are definitely consequences to that.

00:18:40.320 And I would say that that would be the way I would hope that we can shift our thinking about the use of other substances is that, yes, people are responsible for their actions and their choices.

00:18:51.360 But we as the community are also responsible for our actions and choices and our response to what they do.

00:18:59.740 And so there are correct ways or helpful ways that we can hold people accountable, such as if you are driving under the influence, well, now you're putting other people at risk.

00:19:11.120 So there's accountability for that.

00:19:13.160 That's true of legal substances like alcohol as well, where we say you're allowed to drink that, but you're not allowed to go get on the road if you can't operate a vehicle with a blood alcohol limit that's below the legal limit.

00:19:26.380 So we have ways already built in that we hold people accountable for their choices, and yet we don't proactively add extra harm and extra difficulty to their lives, such as through an arrest or something like that.

00:19:42.900 Because when you think about the cycle that an arrest tends to kick off in a person's life, so let's say they were using substances, whatever it might be, and they're arrested.

00:19:54.420 Well, they're immediately disconnected from their employment or housing, whatever it is.

00:20:00.240 Their family connections are very difficult to stay healthy during incarceration.

00:20:05.460 If a person comes out of incarceration, which most people do at some point, they have a really difficult time regaining employment because they now have a criminal record.

00:20:15.540 And all of that makes regaining a stable life for themselves and for their family very difficult.

00:20:21.920 And that whole cycle is really traumatic.

00:20:26.280 And so it is that kind of accountability, criminal justice accountability for a person's choice to use a substance creates more pain, difficulty, and trauma in their life for an issue that we know is made worse by pain, difficulty, and trauma.

00:20:44.740 So it's not that the criminal justice system is not an appropriate tool for lots of things in our world.

00:20:50.460 It is when we have someone who needs to be separated from the community because they have committed a crime that is violent, where they cannot be part of the community for the community's safety.

00:21:02.180 That's an appropriate use of the community's safety, but when we use it for issues that it's not the best tool for, it can create a lot of harm.

00:21:11.700 And I think that's what's happening here is that we do need accountability and we do need the criminal justice system.

00:21:17.020 I just don't think that that's the right kind of accountability for the issue of drug use.

00:21:21.760 I think of someone that I know who got kicked out of college.

00:21:28.480 He was using cocaine and it was found on him when he was, well, it's a whole dramatic situation, but basically the police on campus found that he was carrying cocaine and he got arrested.

00:21:44.060 He went to jail and he was made to go to drug court for several months.

00:21:50.320 And so he was pulled out of his social sphere from the familiarity of home and he had to go to a different part of the state and complete this.

00:22:00.720 And I know that he would say if he had not been arrested, if he had not gone to jail, if it had just been, well, you know, that's just the choice that you're going to make.

00:22:11.980 And you're just going to have to bear the consequences of that.

00:22:14.620 He may have never stopped.

00:22:17.100 It was actually the accountability of the law that shook him and made him realize, oh, my gosh, what am I doing?

00:22:24.360 I don't this is not the life that I want to lead.

00:22:26.500 I want to get married.

00:22:27.160 I want to have kids.

00:22:27.760 I want to have a job and all of that.

00:22:30.200 It was the consequence of the law that actually not only held him accountable, but woke him up to this is not the kind of person I want to be.

00:22:39.460 These are not the kind of consequences that I want to bear.

00:22:41.740 I don't want to go to prison for 20 years.

00:22:44.620 And so I know that there are probably there are many stories like what you just described of maybe someone's addiction actually becoming worse or being compounded by the social isolation that the criminal justice accountability caused in their life.

00:23:02.240 But I also wonder how many people are like my friend who would say, thank the Lord for criminal justice because God used that justice to wake me up and to stop my addiction.

00:23:15.500 So I don't know.

00:23:16.660 I guess if we rely on the anecdotes, you could probably see both sides of it.

00:23:20.880 Yeah, so I think that's a great point.

00:23:22.820 And I would say there's definitely more people like him who would say jail is the thing that saved my life.

00:23:28.320 It is the thing that turned my life around for me.

00:23:31.140 Trying to step back from that and saying how many people have that experience versus how many people have an experience where it creates far more difficulty and is sort of a spiral into more criminal justice involvement for them.

00:23:44.580 I think just statistically speaking, even law enforcement.

00:23:50.220 So we host a lot of events with the organization that I work for, End It for Good.

00:23:53.640 We host a lot of events across Mississippi and we've had a lot of law enforcement that have come.

00:23:58.080 I was just at a sheriff's office about two weeks ago.

00:24:00.340 They invited me to come and give a presentation and lead a discussion with all their deputies and support staff.

00:24:05.400 And one of the number one things that law enforcement says is we are so tired of arresting the same people over and over again.

00:24:13.560 It just doesn't, for most people, it doesn't solve the problem.

00:24:18.160 It doesn't stop their addiction.

00:24:19.700 So I think drug courts are a great way for us to handle when we have a crime like theft or something like that.

00:24:27.780 Like property crimes, the vast majority of property crimes are committed by people who are trying to get enough money to feed their addiction.

00:24:34.040 So the underlying cause of that theft, let's say, is actually I'm trying to get enough money to feed this addiction.

00:24:40.280 And so for drug courts to be able to come in and say, hey, we need to hold you accountable for that theft.

00:24:46.500 You have you have crossed the line.

00:24:48.340 You have taken someone else's freedom and stuff away from them.

00:24:51.960 And so we're going to hold you accountable for that.

00:24:54.360 But we're going to do it in a way that actually addresses the root cause of the problem.

00:24:58.320 And we recognize the reason that you committed that theft is because of this addiction that you're struggling with.

00:25:03.880 So we're going to give you the opportunity to be held accountable by the law, but also address the root cause of why you are here in the first place.

00:25:12.680 I think that is such a great way to give people an opportunity to get healthy while also holding them accountable.

00:25:20.540 So I agree.

00:25:22.100 I think drug courts are a great thing. 0.92

00:25:23.460 A lot of people don't have access or don't get the opportunity to go to one.

00:25:28.980 And they're also very long.

00:25:31.360 They can be three to five years of and you have to pay to be part of it.

00:25:35.680 And so it can be challenging.

00:25:36.840 Not everybody is able to do that.

00:25:39.200 But they're a great they're a great way to hold people accountable when the root cause is an addiction.

00:25:45.980 And maybe the reason that they're in the criminal justice system is something something else that is does need to be held accountable.

00:26:04.300 So for a property crime, for example, someone who broke into a car, stole something to try to sell it and to get the drugs that would then feed their addiction.

00:26:14.780 You're talking about that person going to drug court rather than going to jail for the property crime.

00:26:21.920 Yeah, a lot of drug courts operate that way. 0.99

00:26:24.020 OK, I don't know very much about that.

00:26:26.360 Like, how do they assess that?

00:26:27.960 How do they say, OK, you're not going to go to jail for this property crime that you committed.

00:26:31.460 Instead, you're going to go to drug court for something that you weren't arrested for.

00:26:35.620 So drug courts operate in different ways.

00:26:37.680 So some of them will have people who are arrested for possession.

00:26:41.780 Some of them you could they can divert you to drug court for lots of different crimes if they determine that what they think is actually going to help solve the situation is this type of accountability.

00:26:54.300 So it's just a different type of accountability that the criminal justice system uses.

00:26:57.580 They say instead of just letting you go sit in jail where drugs are readily available in jails and prisons, they are all throughout our prison system.

00:27:06.020 And so I don't know that. Can you talk about that a little bit?

00:27:09.500 Yeah. So if you think about how markets work, we haven't gotten into this yet.

00:27:14.340 But one of the things that I learned is if you think about how a market works when it's legal, businesses sell a product because consumers want to buy that product.

00:27:26.200 And if you have a popular product that is criminalized or pushed underground that is not able to be gotten legally, it doesn't go away.

00:27:35.760 It just shifts markets.

00:27:37.180 So it goes from a legal regulated market to an underground market where it's just owned.

00:27:43.840 The business is owned by criminal gangs, cartels, terrorist organizations, whatever that might be.

00:27:50.400 So jails and prisons are a small kind of microcosm of what's happening globally with the underground drug market where there's still demand for a drug.

00:28:00.440 People in jails and prisons want to use drugs.

00:28:03.660 And so it creates a market for it.

00:28:07.020 Whoever is willing to bring those drugs in can make a lot of money in the same way that out in the free world, whoever is willing to provide drugs for people who want them, even if they're illegal drugs, there's a lot of money to be made.

00:28:18.520 But how would prisoners be paying for them?

00:28:21.880 There is a whole system of ways that they can get family members to go buy these types of cards that you can buy in any store like a Walgreens.

00:28:32.800 They give the number to the incarcerated person over the phone.

00:28:36.380 That person gives the number to the person that they're paying for their drugs.

00:28:39.660 It's a very sophisticated way of transferring money in and out.

00:28:43.800 Sounds like that could be a whole episode in itself.

00:28:46.460 Wow. Yeah.

00:28:47.540 And it sounds like there could possibly be some corrupt involvement there.

00:28:52.000 Yeah. So there's a lot of a lot of corrections officers are anecdotally.

00:28:58.160 That's what law enforcement says is how the drugs get into prisons is that there's an and it's we don't want that to happen.

00:29:06.260 But it is a response to a market force, which is customers on the inside are willing to pay money to whoever will provide them the drugs.

00:29:15.120 And we know that humans like to make money.

00:29:18.840 And so there's a significant financial incentive for anyone who's willing to bring drugs in.

00:29:24.240 And so when we think about even incarceration as a way to help someone get sober, they have access to drugs in jail and prison.

00:29:31.980 So it's not keeping them from drug use, but it is creating a lot of potential other harm in their life, including what they experience in prison.

00:29:41.980 Our prisons are full of physical, emotional, mental, sexual abuse at all levels.

00:29:48.620 And so no one is immune from that.

00:29:52.160 And so we have to think long and hard about who is it that needs to be in that environment?

00:29:57.900 And is that environment the place that they're going to get what they need to change their behavior when they come back out, which is what we ultimately want?

00:30:07.160 And if you could clarify for me how criminalizing drugs or keeping drugs illegal enables and exacerbates that system that you just described of drugs being able to infiltrate prisons and someone profiting from that.

00:30:26.200 What's the connection?

00:30:27.600 Yeah.

00:30:27.820 So any time that you still have demand for a product, and that's true in prisons, maybe more so than in the free world because it is a very stressful environment.

00:30:38.440 Any time that you have that, there's going to be somebody that's willing to provide that substance or that drug or whatever it is.

00:30:46.980 And so in the free world, we have that with this underground drug market that operates.

00:30:52.840 So we have chosen some drugs and said we're not going to allow them to be sold legally.

00:30:57.020 We're going to push them into this underground market by banning them. 0.90

00:31:01.340 And what happens is that criminal organizations then pick up those markets and they say, well, we will provide the drugs to whoever wants to buy them.

00:31:10.720 And so that's what's happening.

00:31:12.200 And they make the vast majority of their money off of this prohibited underground drug market.

00:31:18.160 Think about the global underground drug market is worth about $500 billion a year.

00:31:23.000 So that is consumer cash that they are willing to pay to whoever is going to supply those drugs.

00:31:28.420 And so every time we prohibit a new substance, it creates more cash incentive and more cash going to organized crime, criminal organizations, which creates a lot of crime in our community, south of our border, all over the world.

00:31:45.360 We feel the effects of that underground drug market.

00:31:48.360 If you could create the ideal accountability apparatus for a person who is, say, caught doing cocaine, smoking crack, whatever it is, what would that look like?

00:32:03.460 I think it would be a non-criminal justice response unless they are breaking some other laws or hurting someone else.

00:32:13.340 Certainly there's accountability even in the criminal justice system that's needed for that.

00:32:16.900 But for somebody who is consuming, I would say think of it very similarly to how we think about alcohol consumption, where we allow people to consume if they choose to do so.

00:32:29.240 We don't arrest them for their choice to use it, but they might experience a lot of other accountability and consequences for their use if it becomes chaotic or if they become addicted to it.

00:32:41.460 And I think that's the appropriate way to think about it is when when their use begins harming other people in terms of breaking other laws, the criminal justice system should be involved when their use is harming other people.

00:32:55.740 Maybe it doesn't step over the line of criminal where they're drinking and driving or driving under the influence of some other substance, but where it's harming their family.

00:33:05.800 And then those same kinds of accountability that would fall on somebody who's struggling with an alcohol addiction, I think, is the same way that we respond.

00:33:16.500 And I think what you're getting at is this tension of we want people to stop using and we want families not to be harmed by substance use.

00:33:28.400 And we want children not to have parents who are struggling with an addiction.

00:33:31.920 And so there is a tension there between right now we have the force of the law to try to force someone to stop using.

00:33:42.480 But for most people, that doesn't have that effect.

00:33:45.940 And in some cases, it makes their addiction worse or maybe they were casually using and they become addicted as part of the fallout from that.

00:33:53.280 So I think that holding that tension is important of not swinging from one side to the other, not swinging from arrest to there's no accountability.

00:34:04.060 We should just let people go do whatever they want to and not tell them that it could be harmful to them and not encourage them to make healthier choices.

00:34:11.780 That is not what we want.

00:34:13.320 That's not what I want.

00:34:14.400 What I think changed for me is I learned how much harm is coming from using this particular tool, not just for consumers,

00:34:34.900 but also for that drug market of creating so much crime in our communities and around the world from prohibition and what it does to a market.

00:34:45.400 But what that also does is contribute significantly to the overdose crisis that we have right now.

00:34:51.680 So the vast majority of people who are dying from a drug overdose right now are dying from contamination.

00:34:57.880 They are using substances they bought on the street and they're laced with fentanyl and they're dying as a result of that.

00:35:06.220 So if our drug, if our approach to drugs was working over the last couple of decades,

00:35:12.380 we would not be seeing all of the increasing harm that we're seeing.

00:35:17.600 Illegal drug use has doubled in the United States in the last 20 years.

00:35:21.160 Almost 20% of U.S. adults have used an illegal drug recently.

00:35:28.580 And this is mostly, is it true that it's mostly opioids, pharmaceuticals?

00:35:34.140 Isn't that the increase in the past 20 or so years?

00:35:37.580 It is.

00:35:38.440 These are all illegal drugs and we're not talking about pharmaceutical drugs.

00:35:41.940 This is the number of people who are accessing a drug that they bought on the underground market.

00:35:46.700 So it might be an opioid.

00:35:47.580 Which sometimes might be Xanax or something like that.

00:35:49.720 We actually had a local teenager recently, so sad, who was taking Xanax and it was laced with fentanyl.

00:35:56.240 So those are legal substances too that somehow, I guess, make their way underground are laced with these toxic drugs that can kill you very quickly.

00:36:10.200 And so I don't know exactly how that happens, but it seems like even for drugs that are illegal, there's a possibility of them then going underground and then killing a person because they're laced with something like fentanyl, right?

00:36:23.560 Yeah.

00:36:23.760 So a lot of drugs have a legal version of them and then they are manufactured by the underground drug market to be sold for their purposes.

00:36:35.740 And so now the technology behind producing pills is so sophisticated that you cannot tell the difference between a pharmaceutical pill and a pill that was created by a cartel somewhere.

00:36:48.740 And so what we have is so many consumers who can't get the drug that they want to use in any sort of legal regulated way.

00:36:58.980 And so they're accessing it on this underground market and they have no idea what's in it.

00:37:03.620 They don't know how potent it is.

00:37:05.380 They don't know what's in the substance.

00:37:07.360 And anytime that you have a prohibited substance, it immediately gets more potent.

00:37:14.480 So if you think about like a sports stadium where you can't drink alcohol on the inside, people tailgate outside and they drink beer.

00:37:22.160 But if they can't legally drink on the inside, they start drinking hard liquor.

00:37:26.980 That's what they smuggle in. 0.62

00:37:28.800 It's because they don't want to take the risk of transporting something that's lower potency, the beer that they really want to drink.

00:37:37.740 And so when prohibition starts at the gate, they start drinking hard liquor.

00:37:43.440 They smuggle the hard liquor in.

00:37:45.060 And that same process that regular citizens are going through if they want to drink on the inside is happening in the rest of the global drug market, where when you have to smuggle something, you need the biggest punch in the smallest package.

00:38:00.820 And that's why we have fentanyl in our underground drug supply.

00:38:03.980 Fentanyl is now, but it is not the last.

00:38:08.200 So we already have xylazine that's hitting big cities.

00:38:11.380 It creates horrible flesh wounds for people who are using it.

00:38:15.440 It's a large animal tranquilizer.

00:38:16.960 We now have nidazines that are showing up in cities.

00:38:20.600 Nidazines are far more potent than fentanyl.

00:38:23.440 And so we think about the root cause of why these challenges are happening.

00:38:30.740 The root cause underneath the overdose crisis is contamination.

00:38:35.120 The root cause of the contamination crisis is that consumers can't buy the substances that they want to use in a legal, regulated way.

00:38:44.920 Now, it makes me uncomfortable to think of people having access, now adults, adults having access to a broader range of substances legally.

00:38:54.620 But when we look at that other side, which I think is looking at intent versus outcome, and I think for me, that's kind of one of the big ideas that changed my mind was looking not at the intent of our drug laws.

00:39:11.780 I think my intent in supporting them, and I think for most of us, is we don't want people harmed by drugs, and we recognize that drugs can be really harmful.

00:39:19.500 And so it seems like the right thing to do to prohibit them, to do everything we can to discourage people from using them.

00:39:27.060 But what happens on the outcome side is that we get loads of crime from an underground market.

00:39:34.560 We get contaminated substances that are killing 100,000 people a year.

00:39:39.480 About 90% of people who die from an opioid overdose have fentanyl in their systems when they die.

00:39:44.580 So this is not a pharmaceutical crisis.

00:39:47.000 It is a underground drug supply crisis.

00:39:49.760 And then we have so many families, families like Joanne's, like many others, who are torn apart through criminal justice involvement.

00:40:00.800 If you just look at women who are arrested just for drug possession, this is not like trafficking or anything like that.

00:40:07.100 There's about 178,000 women who are arrested every year. 1.00

00:40:11.560 About 50,000 of those are for marijuana possession.

00:40:14.420 So if we just take even a small step, maybe it's not taking all the steps that I think could really help us reverse the trend on these incredibly detrimental outcomes.

00:40:28.440 But even a small step could make a big impact on families, on women, on children.

00:40:34.660 That's not to say all of those women were in a place where they could be a good parent. 1.00

00:40:39.900 But the best way to help them is to address the root cause of their addiction instead of using the criminal justice system, which is not effective at changing behavior, statistically true, not effective at changing behavior in the future, but does have a lot of downside to it.

00:41:00.560 So I think on that outcome front and looking at root causes, that's what moved me to this place of believing that shifting away from the criminal justice system and towards health-centered approaches to drug use and addiction and markets that are legally regulated for adults.

00:41:19.300 And I would say wisely regulated, this is not drugs in the candy aisle or anything like that, but just trying to find that middle ground where we don't swing the pendulum too far one way, but we also don't swing it too far the other way.

00:41:33.620 And we find the way that truly does reduce the most amount of harm that we can, because it's not just us who feels that pain.

00:41:44.260 The way that the U.S. handles drugs and drug policy influences the rest of the world and the amount of money that flows into criminal organizations, the amount of people who die from overdose, the amount of families who might be able to have a more stable future.

00:41:59.560 And I think there's a lot of opportunity for us to respond in a way that's more consistent with helping reduce harm.

00:42:18.800 On the one hand, I understand the argument for keeping something below ground.

00:42:24.740 One, you said that it encourages producing drugs with a higher potency, so lacing something with fentanyl because they don't want to take the risk of producing something that people don't get addicted to and don't want to buy.

00:42:40.580 They're trying to make a profit.

00:42:42.520 And I guess the argument is bringing the market above ground will take some of the power, the monopoly away from these drug cartels, these traffickers.

00:42:52.040 I am uncomfortable with the idea also, though, of anyone making a profit from selling meth or selling fentanyl or selling crack cocaine or any of these things.

00:43:04.340 So say we have a reputable store that sells the best quality crack on the corner.

00:43:10.740 I have a hard time seeing how that will benefit society because I already see with decriminalizing marijuana, which the vast majority of people who are in jail for marijuana, it was a plea deal that's typically not actually what they were placed in jail for.

00:43:28.540 But I already see a destigmatization of marijuana and culture that has really followed legalizing it that I don't like because marijuana is bad for you.

00:43:43.040 It can make you dumb.

00:43:44.280 It can make you lazy.

00:43:45.440 I don't like smelling it when I'm walking around.

00:43:47.640 I don't like my kids smelling it.

00:43:49.260 I think it makes culture worse.

00:43:50.660 I think it makes really smart, sharp, driven people worse.

00:43:56.300 And when I think about, of course, not everything should be illegal, but there is a value in stigma to a degree.

00:44:05.420 And the law can be a teacher that when something is illegal, think about child pornography, for example, child sex abuse material.

00:44:14.120 It is technically underground, and you could say that it exacerbates trafficking, but we can't imagine a world in which it would be legal.

00:44:24.240 Well, let's just do above board child sex abuse material. 0.88

00:44:28.600 That's just not possible.

00:44:30.120 We believe that it should be criminalized and we arrest people not just for producing it, but also using it and consuming it, which I think is right, even though they're addicted to it.

00:44:41.680 And to me, that's good.

00:44:43.140 It creates a stigma around it.

00:44:46.300 And we have no idea how many people don't access child sex abuse material or don't access drugs because they don't want to go to jail.

00:44:55.120 Like, there's just no statistics on that because you would have to be able to read people's mind.

00:44:58.940 Right, right.

00:44:59.380 And so I think about that, too.

00:45:01.220 How many people now are like, well, it's cool to use to smoke weed in Colorado or it's cool to gamble when you go to Las Vegas because it's just what everyone does.

00:45:11.400 It's not stigmatized anymore.

00:45:13.140 So that's what I fear.

00:45:14.520 If we bring it above ground, yes, there may be people who's maybe their lives are improved because they don't go to prison anymore.

00:45:23.740 But how many other people who would be responsible because they don't want to break the law now are willing to do it because it's no longer breaking the law?

00:45:33.340 That would be my fear in decriminalizing it and essentially removing a lot of the stigma from it.

00:45:40.300 Yeah, I think you made two great points there.

00:45:43.580 So I would say, first, totally agree with you on things like child pornography, anything like that.

00:45:51.700 And I would say that the difference for me in something like that versus something like substance use is that there's a very clear harm to another person that is happening with child pornography.

00:46:05.080 It is morally wrong in and of itself, and it is hurting a child in a way that our culture agrees is criminally liable.

00:46:19.340 We are going to protect children.

00:46:20.760 Whereas we think about just the choice to ingest a substance is not morally right or wrong in and of itself.

00:46:29.540 Certainly, it can have some moral implications depending on how it affects you, what you do while you're on it.

00:46:34.260 But all of us ingest, you know, when you take an opioid from your doctor, that's not morally wrong.

00:46:39.800 And so there is the use of a substance itself is not a moral right or wrong in and of itself, whereas the use of...

00:46:51.820 I don't know if I agree with that.

00:46:53.000 Okay, so let's, yeah, let's talk about that.

00:46:54.900 So there is a continuum.

00:46:56.900 I would say there's a continuum and there certainly can be moral implications, but just the use of something that changes the way you feel.

00:47:05.480 Think about if you take Tylenol for a headache, you're intentionally trying to change the way that you feel.

00:47:12.460 It's not a psychoactive substance.

00:47:15.060 And maybe that's where the line crosses.

00:47:18.040 Although most Christians would drink alcohol, which is a poison that slows your brain function. 0.57

00:47:26.760 No matter how much you drink of it, that is what it's doing.

00:47:29.860 But it is possible to have a glass of wine and not feel anything or to be a casual drinker once a month to get a margarita.

00:47:38.780 I just don't know.

00:47:41.200 I mean, maybe I'm wrong, but I don't know if there's such thing as casual, you know, meth users or casual cocaine users.

00:47:50.280 And to me, I think the difference between like prohibition and criminalizing drugs is, and maybe this is not, maybe it's not perfect.

00:47:58.360 You would know better than me.

00:47:59.500 But it seems that we criminalize drugs that we understand very quickly go from ingesting and just affecting you to affecting everyone else.

00:48:12.020 And we are trying to preempt that by saying, no, we're not even going to get started there.

00:48:15.820 We're not even going to allow you to get started because, okay, it's really hard to regulate how many glasses of wine someone can drink.

00:48:22.300 Someone might be able to drink four glasses of wine and be totally fine.

00:48:24.980 But if you take fentanyl, if you take cocaine, if you take these drugs, you are going to be very quickly and deeply affected and probably very quickly addicted.

00:48:37.120 There's just no time in between someone starting to take cocaine and someone starting to negatively affect all of the people around them.

00:48:45.680 It's just different in substance than alcohol.

00:48:48.320 And so that's why I think it's like, why, why do we wait until that person on math is then giving math to their child?

00:48:57.160 Why are we waiting?

00:48:58.600 Oh, let's just see if they start abusing their kids. 1.00

00:49:00.960 Like, let's just see about that.

00:49:02.600 Probably.

00:49:04.380 I don't know.

00:49:05.260 That just doesn't seem like the right approach to me.

00:49:07.560 Yes.

00:49:07.680 I think I totally get where you're coming from.

00:49:10.840 So I think we devalue or maybe don't realize just how much harm actually comes from alcohol, which is we tried alcohol prohibition and we rolled that back.

00:49:23.840 It created that underground market, created lots of contamination.

00:49:26.520 Alcohol on a harm scale in terms of the harm it does to your own body over time from using lots of it and the harm that it contributes to the community, whether that's through people getting drunk and assaulting someone or whatever it is.

00:49:43.660 Because alcohol on a harm scale is the most harmful drug on the planet in terms of just the community level of harm and what it does to your body over time.

00:49:53.960 But the combined effect of those two is the most harmful drug on the planet.

00:50:00.020 Now, we have come up with lots of.

00:50:01.880 You could argue because it's so pervasive and so available and so accessible because it's because it's legal.

00:50:07.260 We probably just have better statistics on that because more people use alcohol because they can versus someone who's willing to go on the street corner and get true.

00:50:15.540 Although this is not collective.

00:50:16.820 It's not the sort of collective harm of alcohol.

00:50:19.020 It's just the substance itself as it affects people around it.

00:50:26.860 The amount of harm that tends to come out of a person's life related to alcohol.

00:50:32.300 Now, that's not talking about just casual drinking.

00:50:34.220 It's talking about, you know, just addiction.

00:50:37.440 Yes.

00:50:37.900 How much is this going to harm kind of the community around you?

00:50:41.580 But I think it's a it's a good point that we don't want to we don't want to.

00:50:49.440 Have this sort of open door of, hey, let's just sort of let people do whatever they want to do.

00:50:56.660 And because I think you're right that the law can discourage people from use.

00:51:02.240 And I think what has changed for me is not is not that I think that's not true, but that the cost of using the law on this particular issue to try to discourage use is so great.

00:51:14.620 What we're giving up to have that messaging tool, I think what we're losing on the other side in terms of just loss of life from overdose, loss of life from crime, loss of quality of life for people who live in high crime areas.

00:51:30.160 Even whole countries who are destabilized because of the effects of the cartels and all of that, that the cost versus the benefit of that signaling for me is is the cost is far greater than the benefit.

00:51:48.800 Although I absolutely recognize the benefit as with all policies, there's pros and cons.

00:51:53.440 We don't know. There's no policy where it's only an upside.

00:51:57.480 Yeah. And that's true here, too.

00:51:58.760 And so I think what shifted for me is that the more I learn, the more I I in my mind, the weight changed from that.

00:52:07.920 That the the pros outweigh the cons to the cons far outweigh the pros of criminalizing.

00:52:15.160 And we've seen with tobacco that we can signal really effectively without criminalizing it.

00:52:23.640 So when we realized how detrimental to your health, smoking cigarettes was, we didn't outlaw cigarettes that would have created a huge underground market.

00:52:32.920 Instead, we really. Effectively and honestly messaged how detrimental they can be to your health and we discouraged people from using them.

00:52:45.160 We used proactive incentives like better health insurance rates for people who are not smoking.

00:52:51.540 So we have done this before where we have we have a substance that is really harmful to you.

00:52:57.360 We have allowed people, allowed adults to make a choice to use it.

00:53:01.860 But there's consequences to them for their own health.

00:53:04.660 There's consequences to other things in their life.

00:53:06.800 It has become more and more difficult to find places where you can smoke, which is great for public health.

00:53:11.880 That's a really positive thing. And it's also a way that we encourage people not to smoke.

00:53:17.640 And so we have done that before. I think it's possible to do again.

00:53:21.000 I am right there with you that there is even though this is what I do is I invite people to rethink these policies.

00:53:27.920 There's still a lot of it that I'm uncomfortable with.

00:53:30.320 I hate smelling marijuana. I don't want people around me smoking marijuana.

00:53:34.520 I've never been around that. I don't like it. I don't want people using it.

00:53:39.960 And yet I can find that middle path that says the cost to continue criminalizing it in terms of not just for consumers, but for whole communities and and the world at large.

00:53:55.700 And that cost is too great for me.

00:53:58.900 And I think it is better overall for us to be able to to find that middle ground of discouraging use while allowing that market to operate in a regulated way and allowing adults to make that choice if they want to.

00:54:15.220 Well, being very effective at communicating risk to them.

00:54:19.780 And that's true for that.

00:54:21.800 But I think it also, you know, people aren't dying from marijuana overdose from marijuana that they're buying on the underground market, but they are dying from from opioids that they're buying or other things that they're buying on the underground market.

00:54:34.160 So for something like fentanyl, I think it's helpful to to realize, which is not something that I knew prior to this learning journey, that fentanyl has been used in every hospital in this country for decades.

00:54:47.760 It's in epidurals.

00:54:48.720 Yeah, yes, yes, exactly.

00:54:50.540 So my youngest son, when he was four, he cut his finger really badly, had to go to the hospital.

00:54:56.400 The nurse comes in and she says, you know, hey, I'm just going to give him some fentanyl before we do these stitches.

00:55:02.280 And at the time and still today, we've got tens of thousands of people every year.

00:55:07.500 They're dying from fentanyl overdose.

00:55:09.800 But in a regulated environment like that.

00:55:14.620 You could give it to a four year old and it is a helpful medicine.

00:55:18.980 And so I think that's part of what we have to grapple with is.

00:55:24.080 But I guess like so that's that is a good point, but I don't know.

00:55:29.640 I would probably put that in my camp of like fentanyl is already available and regulated in some ways.

00:55:37.720 And yet we are still seeing it kill people in the underground market.

00:55:41.880 And so I fear that even a lot because I you said a few times like we still have to regulate these drugs.

00:55:49.580 And so fentanyl is already legal and regulated.

00:55:54.280 And yet it still exists underground.

00:55:56.900 These drug cartels and traffickers are still making money from it.

00:56:00.800 So my fear would be say we do that to all drugs.

00:56:03.980 It's regulated.

00:56:05.440 You have your cocaine shop on the you know, the corner of Main Street, which sounds like a dystopian nightmare to me.

00:56:12.480 But somehow you still have these drug traffickers saying, OK, well, we're going to make stronger cocaine because we're still not going to allow.

00:56:19.360 Even if we say let's decriminalize cocaine, if there's some regulation in place, you're still probably going to say, OK, I don't even know how exactly it works, but you can't lace it with you can't lace it with fentanyl or you can't lace it with some of the other things that you talk about.

00:56:33.320 And the drug traffickers are going to say, OK, but we will.

00:56:36.480 And it's going to be a little bit stronger.

00:56:38.620 And so unless you completely deregulate, which I don't hear you arguing for, but completely deregulate and say, go for it, do whatever you want to.

00:56:48.280 There are always going to be criminals who say, well, we have something stronger available.

00:56:53.940 So I don't know if I see the argument of a legal market really competing with an illegal market when in the legal market there's always going to be parameters, right?

00:57:05.820 I mean, again, unless you completely legalize everything.

00:57:09.300 And I think you and I both agree that doesn't sound good.

00:57:12.400 Yeah.

00:57:13.360 So what do we do with that?

00:57:15.660 Yeah.

00:57:16.020 So the reason that fentanyl is in the underground drug market is because of that potency.

00:57:22.220 They needed a higher potency.

00:57:23.980 They're always these are very sophisticated business operations.

00:57:27.060 It's they're making loads of money every year.

00:57:30.640 And so they figured out a way to formulate fentanyl outside of a traditional regulated pharmaceutical system.

00:57:38.980 And so that is that's that's that's available now.

00:57:43.000 They have that technology now.

00:57:45.260 They have those recipes.

00:57:46.400 They know how to formulate it.

00:57:47.660 But it came as a result of how can we get a higher potency in a smaller package?

00:57:54.400 And fentanyl has been used in hospitals for decades.

00:57:57.560 But now that it can be created in this underground market, you can smuggle a suitcase of fentanyl instead of having to smuggle a boatload of heroin.

00:58:07.380 So it didn't used to be that there was any market among consumers for fentanyl.

00:58:11.920 People weren't looking for fentanyl.

00:58:13.940 It was not a thing.

00:58:14.820 They were looking for heroin.

00:58:16.100 But cartels started cutting heroin with fentanyl because it allowed them to smuggle it in a smaller package.

00:58:23.440 What that's created now is a market for fentanyl among consumers who have now been using it and now developed a preference for it in some cases.

00:58:33.820 And so that's not what we want.

00:58:35.920 We don't want people developing a preference for higher and higher and higher potency substances.

00:58:41.480 But that underground market pressure is what created that environment where fentanyl is everywhere now.

00:58:48.860 For most consumers at the beginning of this, before enough of them had been using it, that there are now people who specifically want it.

00:58:57.180 That was not what they wanted.

00:58:58.540 They wanted something lower potency, which for most people is still true if you think about during alcohol prohibition.

00:59:05.580 The most popular type of alcohol prior to prohibition was beer.

00:59:10.880 And the most popular alcohol today are beers and wines, low potency alcohol.

00:59:16.720 But during prohibition, all of those went away.

00:59:19.480 And you could only get this high potency, you know, moonshine liquor.

00:59:23.900 And for most consumers now, we it's hard for us to see this because all that we see is use of high potency substances on the underground market.

00:59:33.740 But for most consumers, they would prefer not to have those high potency options.

00:59:42.940 Most people aren't looking for fentanyl.

00:59:45.400 They're maybe even using fentanyl testing strips to know whether the drug they're about to use contains it so that they either won't use it or use a lot less of it.

00:59:55.640 So we don't want people using contaminated substances.

00:59:59.440 But you're right that as long as consumers, consumers, we know this economically, consumers kind of hold the cards on if they can't buy something legally and they want and someone else is offering it illegally, they're going to go there to buy it.

01:00:14.460 So we want to try to encourage people to make wise choices.

01:00:18.060 But we know with close to 20 percent of American adults buying illegal drugs, which is what's happening today, that we have a whole lot of people who are going to be accessing those unregulated drugs that they're buying.

01:00:32.980 They have no idea what's in them.

01:00:34.360 They don't know how to dose it appropriately.

01:00:36.360 And yes, we we wish that they just wouldn't be buying the drugs.

01:00:39.960 We wish that they just wouldn't be using them.

01:00:41.900 And yet they still are.

01:00:45.360 And so what what I hope for us is that we can simultaneously discourage drug use and help people stay alive long enough.

01:00:57.220 If they're struggling with an addiction, they're able to get the help that they need and be able to bring these markets back into regulation so that they're not in this free for all of the underground market.

01:01:08.080 Where they can sell whatever they want to, to whoever they want to, your your child's age means nothing on the underground market.

01:01:15.960 You can buy methamphetamine when you're 14.

01:01:19.400 There's no age restrictions.

01:01:20.660 And so we regain some important things in regulated markets.

01:01:24.360 We regain the ability to have age restrictions, to have potency and purity, to have proper labeling, to have who is going to be selling that.

01:01:31.760 Is that is that going to be at a pharmacy?

01:01:33.120 Is it going to be through a prescription?

01:01:35.640 Do you need to be under the care of a doctor?

01:01:37.860 We we get all of those options when we allow something to be sold in a regulated way.

01:01:44.940 We lose all of those options on an underground market that is just pervasive.

01:01:49.800 And now kids can tap a phone screen and they can have drugs delivered to them.

01:01:57.120 That's that's the world that we live in now.

01:01:59.480 It's super scary for us as parents to realize that that's what that's where we are.

01:02:04.800 And I think we're we're not going to be able to find that best path forward, maybe with the first go round of kind of changing these approaches.

01:02:16.600 But I hope that we can look at those root causes and try to find solutions that address those so that we can get more of, I think, what we all want,

01:02:27.380 which is healthy families, healthy adults, healthy children, people not dying, crime to be significantly decreased.

01:02:46.560 When we look at a place like Oregon, I'm sure that you've seen this.

01:02:50.780 They tried to decriminalize drugs and of course they had the same kind of the same arguments and the same beliefs.

01:02:59.260 And then they actually recently passed a bill to recriminalize drug possession, because according to the CDC, the overdose death rate actually increased by 43 percent when they decriminalized drugs.

01:03:15.340 And so I don't know what you make of that.

01:03:18.580 And, you know, places like San Francisco, where you see this open drug use, when they're basically encouraging it, they're saying we want to reduce harm.

01:03:27.540 And so we are going to provide them with clean pipes and clean drug paraphernalia so they're not getting other diseases when they're, you know, using the needles and everything that they use to take drugs.

01:03:40.920 And I mean, the cities that have done that, when I think about these liberal cities that typically are slower to enforce the law, especially when it comes to like poor populations, I mean, those cities have just gone downhill.

01:03:56.820 I don't know if there's any city that I know of that has become more lax on drugs and it's gotten better and people and fewer people are in poverty and the school systems are better and everyone's healthier.

01:04:09.820 Everyone's happy.

01:04:10.580 I mean, everyone talks about how in San Francisco you can't even you can hardly live there safely unless you are the richest of the rich.

01:04:17.940 You can't go to the parks.

01:04:19.880 You can't walk on the sidewalk without public defecation.

01:04:24.360 And I mean, I see videos just that break my heart of these strips of streets, whether it's L.A. or San Francisco or Philadelphia or D.C. or Denver, these tent cities where these people are just doubled over, addicted to drugs.

01:04:41.940 And I don't think it's a coincidence that they live in cities where they are not legally held accountable for the most part when it comes to taking drugs.

01:04:54.180 And so what do we do with that?

01:04:56.040 That it seems that like being lax in the enforcement of the law when it comes to taking drugs is not reducing harm or reducing addiction in a lot of the cities across the country.

01:05:06.600 Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up because that's a lot of what people are talking about when we're hosting events.

01:05:12.800 People are saying, well, what about Oregon and what about these other cities?

01:05:15.720 Yeah.

01:05:16.060 And I think as I've looked at what has happened in those places, I think part of what's happening is that the pendulum is swinging too far in the other direction where instead of saying, hey, maybe we don't arrest people for drug possession,

01:05:30.340 but we are still going to enforce all the laws around theft, around public drug use, around all the things that impact the broader community.

01:05:39.600 That's really important that those laws stand.

01:05:42.660 It's really important that we don't take one person's behavior and just say, well, everybody else just has to live with it, no matter how it impacts the broader community.

01:05:54.360 And so when you think about a place like Oregon, so they decriminalized possession of drugs there and they just rolled that back recently.

01:06:03.060 When you look at their overdose death rate, fentanyl started on the East Coast and made its way towards the West Coast.

01:06:09.320 And it got to Oregon right about the same time that their decriminalization measure passed.

01:06:15.300 And so the rate of fentanyl overdose death did not increase more than it increased in surrounding states and more than was expected prior to that passing.

01:06:28.580 So the decriminalization didn't cause their rates to increase, but fentanyl just happened to get there at the same time.

01:06:36.400 And decriminalizing possession doesn't change this contaminated nature of the drugs people are using.

01:06:42.600 They're still buying drugs that are contaminated with fentanyl, even if we're not arresting them for possession.

01:06:49.140 Importantly, too, in Oregon, they do not have a law against public drug use.

01:06:54.180 And so when there was no law against possession and there was no law against public drug use, it created, you know, there's lots of people who have different perspectives on that.

01:07:06.060 I would say, you know, public drug use in public places is not OK.

01:07:10.720 That that that's stepping across the line of other people's rights to be able to use public places in a way that is safe and healthy.

01:07:19.140 And so there are ways that we could have addressed that without going back to criminalizing possession and instead saying, what's the real problem here?

01:07:30.280 It's not so much that people were reacting to people possessing drugs.

01:07:34.260 It's that they they were reacting to what was happening out on the street, which is lots of public drug use that was happening.

01:07:40.700 That's not good. That's not healthy. It's not it's not what we want in communities.

01:07:46.000 And so for me as a conservative, I think I would love to see conservative states taking the lead on this because I think we could do it really well where we have where we're able to find that middle ground where we we don't continue policies that haven't been effective and have produced a lot of additional harm.

01:08:09.400 They've been effective in some ways in terms of certainly some people have been discouraged from drug use, but we've had a lot of this extra harm and finding that middle ground where we say we're going to allow you like with alcohol to to make a personal choice.

01:08:21.660 But we're going to really educate you about the potential harm from this and we're going to protect the community.

01:08:27.000 We're going to enforce all of our laws that are going to protect the broader community from any behavior that you might have that is detrimental to the broader community.

01:08:36.020 And I think that's where the pendulum swings too far sometimes and why I think it's really important to have not just a respect for the humanity of somebody who's struggling with an addiction, but also respect for the broader community and that everyone's rights are important.

01:08:52.900 And we we can't elevate some rights over other rights.

01:08:57.320 Wouldn't you say that most people who are charged, they end up being charged with possession, they probably weren't initially arrested just for taking drugs like in their apartment?

01:09:11.620 I mean, like, how often is that really happening?

01:09:14.180 Wouldn't you say that most arrests are already because of public drug use or DUI or breaking some kind of other law and maybe through the plea deal, they say, OK, you're just going to jail for the marijuana use.

01:09:28.760 But really, it's because we found you doing something else.

01:09:32.760 So like if we just because it sounds to me like what you're saying is that the only thing that you really want to be legal is someone in the privacy of their own home taking drugs.

01:09:44.740 But like, for example, was that was was was that Joanna's case?

01:09:49.780 Like, was she only taking drugs inside her home or was she being held accountable for being in public, as you said, infringing on other people's right to a safe space?

01:10:00.020 Mm hmm. Yeah, that's a good point. And it's true that people certainly can get arrested for whatever, lots of different things.

01:10:08.660 And that the plea bargaining system, which the vast majority of all people who are arrested for anything, end up taking a plea deal is something like 95 percent.

01:10:17.700 Yeah. Very few people actually go to trial. It's almost always pled down to something.

01:10:23.440 And so, yes, some of those people are. So I think for me, then the arrest.

01:10:30.020 Arrested data is even more helpful sometimes than the incarceration data.

01:10:34.480 You know what what somebody is serving time for might have been pled down from something else versus what they have been arrested for.

01:10:40.740 So going back to women again, that's arrest data of one hundred and seventy eight thousand women being arrested for drug possession.

01:10:49.320 So that's not a pled down. That's just like what they were originally arrested for.

01:10:55.360 So it might be that they're being arrested in their own home for that.

01:11:01.700 A lot of arrests happen through traffic stops for lots of different reasons.

01:11:08.440 And so I think that's a it is a it's a helpful point that it can be pled down.

01:11:15.280 And yet we still see high rates of arrest for drug possession.

01:11:21.780 And if it was for other things, they could have been arrested for that.

01:11:25.780 And yet they're not being arrested for those things.

01:11:28.180 They're just being arrested for possession.

01:11:29.780 And so to me, that is significant because if they were, let's say they were publicly using, why weren't they arrested for that public use?

01:11:45.020 Why wasn't that the charge that they were given?

01:11:47.300 But for a lot of these people, that's not the charge that they were given.

01:11:50.340 And so and Joanne wasn't arrested for, you know, she was able to go to treatment instead of being arrested.

01:11:56.140 So it's kind of like, OK, so she had been caught for that prior to being able to go to treatment.

01:12:05.140 You know, what she was engaging in was illegal activity. 1.00

01:12:09.560 So that that's that tension.

01:12:12.860 I think that's just good for us to sit with, because it's almost like, you know, on a on a Tuesday, if she had gotten caught, she could have been like this other mom that we knew spending 15 years in prison on a Wednesday.

01:12:24.800 She doesn't get caught.

01:12:26.000 She's able to go to treatment and get a completely different response that has helped her to be able to be this incredible mom.

01:12:36.040 And now she helps other people find sobriety and she leads to celebrate your recovery.

01:12:41.780 And she's opening a sober home for moms with kids that can help them stay bonded to their children, even while they're getting help. 0.83

01:12:49.780 So praise God.

01:12:50.460 And, you know, I want a system.

01:12:52.260 And, you know, like you said, policies are all about tradeoffs.

01:12:55.000 And a lot of people don't understand that, but they all have tradeoffs.

01:12:58.260 And I can see both sides of it, because when I hear her story, I'm like, I'm so glad that she didn't go to prison.

01:13:03.080 And I'm so glad that she has the redemption story that she has.

01:13:06.660 And just like it touched me so much hearing you describe how she was running across the parking lot to her baby.

01:13:12.260 And like, oh, it just makes me want to cry all over again thinking about it.

01:13:15.520 So I'm so thankful for her.

01:13:16.960 And I think about more people like her who, because they didn't go to prison, they were able to get the help that they need.

01:13:22.480 Praise God for that.

01:13:23.400 And then I think about everyone on the other side of drug use and how quickly you go from just using cocaine once to harming everyone around you, heroin, fentanyl, all of these things.

01:13:34.360 And I think of these coming above ground and raising my kids in a city or community where that has grown to be largely destigmatized and readily available.

01:13:48.420 And in some ways, it might be better for them that it's not underground, but it's not good for me.

01:13:54.060 It's not good for the rest of us who would have never taken drugs either way, whether they're legal or not.

01:13:59.480 And now you have all these people who may have been prevented by the law from doing drugs.

01:14:04.720 That was their last barrier to doing it.

01:14:07.500 And I think that could be a lot of people, especially in this secular age, that people don't just like hold these pervasive cultural Christian values the way that we maybe did 50 years ago.

01:14:20.120 And so it really is only the desire not to go to prison that is stopping someone from doing all kinds of illegal things, including taking drugs.

01:14:29.640 So when I think about on the other side of that, I'm like, that does not sound like a good society to me.

01:14:35.880 That doesn't sound like a city I want to be in.

01:14:37.580 That doesn't sound like a community that I want my kids to be raised in.

01:14:41.220 The pot shop or the cocaine shop or the fentanyl shop on the corner sounds really bad.

01:14:46.200 And thinking about people legally profiting from that, oh, that sounds awful too.

01:14:51.740 So I get it.

01:14:52.880 I mean, it's a good conversation to have, but it does worry me going in the direction of legalization, just the kind of world that that creates, especially for children.

01:15:06.360 Another, the last thing, because we've got a long time because it's such an interesting, interesting conversation.

01:15:13.960 You wrote in your book, religious conviction and even virtuous ideals shouldn't be enforced through the law.

01:15:21.360 If they are, they lose their meaning and transformational power, becoming not much more than coerced behavior modification.

01:15:29.400 Now, I disagree with that, but I just want you to kind of explain and clarify that, because I think a lot of people might agree with you and your stance on that.

01:15:39.660 So, yeah, so that's where that is in the book as part of this kind of broader context of me wrestling through kind of what are my values and what do I want people to do?

01:15:50.480 What do I what do I what are the behaviors I think are going to be best for them, whether that's because of my Christian values or conservative values or whatever it is?

01:16:01.000 What kind of world do I think is best?

01:16:03.320 And then thinking about should that always be enforced through the law?

01:16:10.340 And so even thinking about, you know, the Ten Commandments, well, we don't want all of the Ten Commandments to be criminalized.

01:16:17.420 You know, we don't even though we know that creates the best world, we know that's God's goodness for us is giving us these parameters of how life works best.

01:16:27.320 And yet we don't want everyone who commits adultery to go to prison, everyone who covets or uses the Lord's name in vain.

01:16:35.080 We recognize that the law has limits of where it is helpful for us, even in our Christian life, that we were not trying to criminalize all sin, you know, and make us all criminals, certainly.

01:16:50.940 But so there's a line there.

01:16:53.160 I think Christians would all agree with that, that there is a there's a line somewhere between what we want, what is best and what we should actually use the law to try to enforce.

01:17:05.520 And so for me, that's where this wrestling has happened of where does that line where is that line?

01:17:12.960 And yes, the law can be helpful for signaling what is a good and virtuous life.

01:17:21.440 But I think we also always have to weigh the pros and cons of that signal and what we're losing on on the other side.

01:17:30.380 And so I think I still wrestle with that.

01:17:33.760 Where is that line exactly?

01:17:35.960 I think most of us probably do if we've kind of thought about this.

01:17:38.940 I remember actually thinking about, oh, wait a second, we it's not our goal really to make all sin illegal.

01:17:46.080 So where where is that line between kind of what we use the law for to enforce and what we use other things for other types of teaching, other types of incentivizing to try to modify behavior and not using the criminal justice system?

01:18:01.880 And I think.

01:18:02.320 Oh, sorry.

01:18:02.860 No, go ahead.

01:18:03.640 I was going to say, I think we actually do agree on that.

01:18:06.440 All law is moral.

01:18:08.060 All law speaks to a virtue.

01:18:10.000 All law is based on a particular worldview.

01:18:12.780 Thou shall not murder is obviously a part of the Ten Commandments that we do believe.

01:18:16.460 Yep.

01:18:16.960 That should be enforced through law.

01:18:19.820 Not stealing property laws are based on if you look in the Old Testament law giving, not only were there laws against theft, but also laws against covetousness.

01:18:29.940 So we see the honoring of private personal property all the way back in the Old Testament.

01:18:36.780 And so anyway, I think we do agree.

01:18:38.820 Maybe we don't always agree on where to draw that line.

01:18:41.400 But yes, virtue and morality is enforced through law every day.

01:18:46.120 Every single law speaks to a morality.

01:18:48.860 The question is, what is it?

01:18:51.120 Which sins need to be regulated, restricted, enforced, and which just need to be discouraged?

01:19:00.360 So we agree on that.

01:19:02.380 We agree on the bigger picture of wanting to reduce as much harm as possible, protect children, protect people who struggle with addiction, keep families together as much as possible.

01:19:11.980 We want people to be whole and healthy and to have a beautiful redemption story like Joanne.

01:19:18.060 So thank you for this conversation and your heart and your compassion.

01:19:24.240 I just really appreciate your perspective.

01:19:26.200 And I learned a lot today.

01:19:27.660 I hope everyone else did too.

01:19:29.240 Thanks so much, Alliebeth.

01:19:30.140 It's been so great to be here and just have the conversation.

01:19:32.960 So much of what I want is just for us to start thinking and considering alternatives.

01:19:41.300 I don't have all the answers.

01:19:42.920 I don't think any one of us does, but I think we can begin pursuing life-saving, life-affirming approaches and find where we can find those commonalities and where we can get the best outcomes and be willing to work towards those things so that we can have more people living out who God made them to be in all of its fullness, which I think is what we all want.

01:20:05.700 And your book, where can they get that?

01:20:07.700 Yes, my book is called Curious, A Foster Mom's Discovery of an Unexpected Solution to Drugs and Addiction.

01:20:12.600 You can get it on Amazon.

01:20:13.960 And we've got some free copies for your related gals and related bros. 1.00

01:20:18.080 Good, good.

01:20:18.640 You can email curious at enditforgood.com and we will send out 25 copies to the first 25 people who email us.

01:20:26.560 And you don't have to agree with everything in it.

01:20:28.480 I hope it's just a good opportunity for people to learn.

01:20:31.740 So curious at enditforgood.com.

01:20:33.520 Shoot us an email.

01:20:34.260 We'll send you a free copy.

01:20:35.180 No strings attached.

01:20:36.320 We just want people to be having the conversation.

01:20:38.260 Thank you so much, Christina.

01:20:39.300 I really appreciate it.

01:20:40.320 Thanks.

01:20:42.600 You can leave a broadcasting mistake.

01:20:46.520 Thank you.

01:20:47.520 Bye.

01:20:48.040 Bye.

01:20:48.480 Bye.

01:20:49.920 Bye.

01:20:56.260 Bye.

01:20:59.360 Bye.

01:21:00.260 Bye.

01:21:02.400 Bye.

01:21:04.280 Bye.

01:21:05.420 Bye.

01:21:08.000 Bye.

01:21:08.520 Bye.

01:21:08.980 Bye.

01:21:09.540 Bye.

01:21:09.920 Bye.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - May 15, 2024

Ep 1003 ｜ What If We Decriminalized Drugs？｜ Guest： Christina Dent

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - May 15, 2024

Ep 1003 ｜ What If We Decriminalized Drugs？ ｜ Guest： Christina Dent

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript

Ep 1003 ｜ What If We Decriminalized Drugs？｜ Guest： Christina Dent