Dr. Hart joins me in Mexico City to talk about drugs and addiction, and why we should all be using more of them. Dr. Hart is a professor of psychology at the University of Southern California and the author of a new book on the subject, "Addiction: The New Black Plague." He's also a regular contributor to the New York Times, and a frequent guest on Fox News and the Bill O'Reilly Show. He's been around a long time and has a lot of experience in the drug and addiction field, but he's not a doctor, so it's not like he's some sort of expert on the topic. He just happened to be a guest on a Fox News show a few weeks ago, and we had a good ol' chin wag about it, so I thought it would be fun to have him on the show again. I hope you enjoy this episode, and if you do, please leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, and tell a friend about it. We really appreciate it! XOXO, Dr. Kevin Hart xoxo - Kevin McLeod - The Narcissistic Epidemic and Dr. John Rocha (The Narcissism Project) The Narcotics Anonymous Podcast is a production of Gimlet Media. Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe, subscribe and subscribe to our other shows, and spread the word to your friends about what you're listening to this podcast. and sharing it around the wide and far and wide. . Thank you for listening to our podcast! Love ya, bye! - Kevin, Kevin, Kristy, Kristian, and Mike, Mike, and Sarah. - EJ, EJ & Sarah, and the Crews. Love you, Jon, Sarah, Mike and Sarah, & the Crew, - Thank you so much, Thank you, John R. Hart, Rachael, and your support is so much love, Jon and R.A. & Mike, etc, etc., etc. - MURPHY, etc. etc. , etc. <3 - ETC, R. & JUICY, KEVIN MURCHEY, RYANTHORO, JAYE, JEANNA & KERODO, RAYLEY, AND SONGS, etc.. -
00:00:08.000I was in Mexico City, and I'm in my hotel room, and there's only like two different channels that speak English, so I'm forced to watch Fox News.
00:00:17.000And I saw you on the Bill O'Reilly show.
00:00:20.000Those clusterfuck shows where they have...
00:00:24.000One person, like Bill O'Reilly's the host, and then they have all these boxes with all these different people, and everybody's talking over everybody, and the whole thing only lasts like three minutes, and they're tackling these complex subjects.
00:00:38.000You got maybe like a half a sentence out before you got interrupted.
00:00:43.000I don't even remember what the topic was.
00:00:45.000It must have had something to do with drugs and addiction.
00:01:17.000And then the thing is, is that I was trying to make clear that the numbers of marijuana users today is considerably lower than what they were in 1978 or 1980. But they weren't aware of the information from 1978 or 1980. Is that like the numbers per capita?
00:01:33.000Because there's so many more people now.
00:01:35.000No, it was the percentage of, in this case, the percentage of high school students who were reporting marijuana use in the past 30 days or the past year.
00:01:44.000Okay, it's like, I recently found out that there's 100 million less Americans in 1970 than there are today.
00:02:16.000Yeah, the highest percentage of Americans who were smoking or using any illegal drug was about 1978 to 1980, about that time period.
00:02:24.000It hasn't been anywhere near that high today.
00:02:29.000It was probably right after the Nixon administration.
00:02:32.000That fucking idiot probably had everybody just doing drugs.
00:02:35.000When you got a president that's that messed up, gets busted with Watergate and just all the foolishness involved in his administration, I bet he led people to drugs.
00:02:46.000Well, you know, there's a whole lot of theories about it.
00:02:48.000But, you know, one of the theories is that people became distrustful of government and things that government was saying.
00:02:54.000So not only that, kids were experimenting in the 60s.
00:03:04.000But the thing is, is that even then, drug use rates weren't that high, really.
00:03:09.000I mean, because the people who were using marijuana at the time, they're now running the country.
00:03:14.000They're now doing these, they're in these responsible positions.
00:03:17.000And they're doing about as well as previous generations.
00:03:20.000And so it's not a big deal that people use drugs.
00:03:25.000In fact, you know, I'm working on a new book.
00:03:27.000And the thing is, is that what I'm going to argue in the new book is that more people should be using drugs.
00:03:34.000Like, when you say more people should be using drugs, here's the thing about, I hate the term, there's two terms that I have a real problem with.
00:03:43.000I don't hate them, but I think they're weighted.
00:03:47.000Addiction is one of them, and drugs is another one.
00:03:50.000Because addiction is like, when you start talking about being addicted to texting, I have friends that are definitely, they definitely are inclined to check their phone way too much.
00:04:00.000Like, they feel compelled when they're in traffic.
00:04:03.000They feel like there's a red light, and they're like, oh, good, let me check my phone.
00:04:25.000Yeah, well, you know, when we think about addiction, it's a simple sort of definition that we use in medicine, and the definition is that does it cause you a tremendous amount of distress, and is it disrupting your social occupation or your family's sort of functioning?
00:04:42.000I mean, so people can indulge in a behavior every day, multiple times a day, but they're handling their responsibilities and they are not distressed about this behavior.
00:04:52.000They wouldn't meet criteria for addiction, whereas somebody could like use alcohol or cocaine or some drug once a month or once a week or what have you, and then they have all of these disruptions surrounding that drug use.
00:05:06.000And they may meet criteria for addiction, whereas I could be using cocaine every day, but handling my responsibilities, I'm not distressed by it.
00:05:15.000I don't have these problems related to it.
00:05:17.000I'm not an addict, even though I'm using it every day.
00:05:20.000So addiction has to do with social disruptions and being distressed, not actual amount of use or how many times you engage in the behavior.
00:05:29.000But this sort of definition is missed upon many of people in the general population.
00:05:36.000Yeah, most people don't think about it that way.
00:05:38.000Most people think that if you don't use it, you're...
00:05:59.000And this guy would get heroin, he would cop every morning, he would go there, and he would sit in his truck, and he would shoot up and, you know, whatever, however long that lasts, you know, he gets an hour lunch break, and he would come back and go to work.
00:06:23.000And I was working in a heroin clinic where they administer heroin every day, seven days a week, twice a day, to people who meet criteria for heroin addiction.
00:06:34.000And when I say they administer heroin, I don't mean like small doses.
00:06:39.000I mean doses that go up to like a gram a day, a thousand milligrams a day, a lot more than what people use here in the states typically.
00:06:48.000And these people who are getting heroin every day, a large percentage of them also go to work.
00:06:55.000A large percentage of them have families and they're taking care of their responsibilities.
00:07:00.000This is their treatment and this is a treatment that works for them.
00:07:04.000But their treatment includes two daily doses of intravenous heroin.
00:07:11.000Seven days a week, you know, and and so like when I think about Well, one of the reasons I went there and I did this because of the way we think of heroin in this country We think of it as such as evil drug and that's just American mythology and that's just wrong and that's ignorance and but that's how many including drug experts in this country think of heroin,
00:07:32.000but that's just We have all of this great technology, but we're so ignorant when it comes to many of these drugs So heroin administered intravenously on a daily basis, it's not devastating?
00:08:50.000They had to make sure that The drugs were pure, so they were worried about death, HIV, all of those things, and this was the rational response where they put it in a medical community where people got treatment along with their heroin, and they have no plans of going back,
00:09:16.000I mean, you would say propaganda, but even me, someone who's a pro-drug for the most part person, I would say, God, heroin every day is probably going to fuck you up.
00:09:28.000Yeah, I mean, but you raise a good question.
00:09:49.000All of those films now can't use that salacious story anymore to grip us.
00:09:55.000It's not reality, but it makes great films.
00:09:59.000It makes great sort of subjects for documentaries.
00:10:01.000When we think about musical heroes and people who say, well, they were misunderstood, so they used heroin.
00:10:09.000I mean, they use heroin because it's a rational sort of use of the drug when you think about its ability to decrease anxiety, its ability to make people or have people relaxed and just be in a space where they finally can get some peace.
00:10:24.000When you think about all of the things that many of these sort of musical icons or these great artists have to deal with, It's rational.
00:10:46.000I mean, we've been trying to get rid of heroin in our country for some times, but every year we have 100,000 to 200,000 new heroin users every year.
00:10:55.000That number has not changed for 40 years.
00:11:00.000Well, if that number hasn't changed, but the population has increased, how does that work?
00:11:06.000Well, that's why it's like between 100 and 200,000 every year.
00:11:09.000I mean, it's been fluctuating between those numbers.
00:11:13.000But the point is that we're going to have a substantial proportion of heroin users, new heroin users.
00:11:21.000These are new heroin users every year.
00:11:23.000And on top of that, People don't consider the people that take opiates in pill form that are prescribed by their doctors, which is incredibly high.
00:11:32.000And I've known many people, I have close family members that have ruined their lives getting fucked up on pills.
00:11:41.000You know, I want to say addicted, but now I'm reluctant to say addicted.
00:11:46.000I mean, maybe that describes some people.
00:11:49.000But please understand, the majority of people who use those pills use them responsibly, and they know what they're doing.
00:11:56.000But there are people, like you said, who ruin their lives as a result.
00:12:01.000But the thing that we have to think about is that if the majority of the users of these pills are fine, and then you have this subset, this smaller subset who are not, it tells you that it's not the pills.
00:12:13.000But by that same token, there are still some issues I have with the way we have our pills, or the way we do our pills in this country, opiate pills.
00:12:50.000It is stated that they put acetaminophen in the pill because it's an added pain reliever.
00:12:56.000But I don't think that's the real reason.
00:12:58.000I think the real reason that it's in the pill is, think of it this way, on the California Highway, I think the maximum speed limit is like 65 or 70. Now imagine if someone designed a car that had tires on it that blew out when you reached 75 miles per hour.
00:13:44.000And I think that that's a problem because when you think about even other countries like Geneva or Switzerland, you don't see acetaminophen in these medications like they are here.
00:13:57.000You certainly don't have people prescribing them like they do here with the acetaminophen.
00:14:02.000You know, it's like you don't need that in there.
00:14:05.000If you want somebody to take an additional pain reliever, you prescribe it or you tell them you recommend it, but you don't need The number one reason for liver toxicity with opiates, I think, is there to have people blow out their livers or to discourage people from taking more opiates.
00:14:24.000So would that be to alleviate their responsibility, to make sure that less people have opiate addictions?
00:14:45.000That seems like they would have to have had a paper trail in order to, I mean, it seems like that has to be something that would be discussed.
00:14:52.000Well, I think, like I said, the stated reason is that it provides an additional pain reliever.
00:14:58.000And I'm saying it doesn't make any sense.
00:15:01.000If you want to have that additional pain reliever, simply give somebody acetaminophen or ibuprofen or something else, but you don't need to put it in with each other.
00:15:13.000Yeah, so would they do that to make some sort of a proprietary blend or something like that?
00:15:19.000Where their pills would be different than others?
00:17:05.000So you think that some people just have that sort of compulsive behavior, and that behavior could manifest itself in drinking too much coffee, or it could manifest itself in taking those pills, or it's essentially the behavior that's an issue more than it is the actual substance or the medicine?
00:17:22.000Well, you know, people overindulge in activities for a variety of reasons.
00:17:26.000And if we really want to understand why they do it, we have to understand that individual person's situation.
00:18:37.000And the methadone is what we always heard of in America.
00:18:42.000I think I told this story last time you were here, but I used to play pool at this place that was right next to a methadone clinic, and these people would go and they'd get their methadone.
00:18:50.000Then they'd come over and play pool and they just looked like zombies.
00:20:23.000Because if we can freely purchase alcohol and even more insidious in a way is the amount of sugar consumption that people In this country especially, our consumption of sugar, and this is something I've really been focusing on a lot lately because I've been educating my kids about how much sugar is in things.
00:20:42.000It's really hilarious because my seven-year-old was talking to my five-year-old yesterday, and she's like, there's nine grams of sugar in that.
00:20:50.000They're having this little conversation about this thing that she wants to drink that's supposed to be healthy.
00:23:29.000But we're very strange in what we allow and don't allow other adult human beings to do.
00:23:37.000And that really sort of gets to the heart of all this.
00:23:42.000And then we're also very squeamish about the idea of needles.
00:23:46.000And when you say this program in Geneva is super successful and they're giving people intravenous heroin up to a thousand milligrams a day, I'm like, wow, needles?
00:24:12.000And so it decreases the likelihood that they will have abscesses and those sorts of things or other sort of blood-borne illnesses or concerns.
00:24:32.000So intravenous heroin can in effect act in a lot of the ways that maybe some prescription drugs like Xanax or maybe some antidepressants do where they alleviate the anxiety that certain people have?
00:25:23.000At least people in medicine outside of the United States know this.
00:25:27.000This is not anything that's earth-shattering or groundbreaking.
00:25:32.000Well, what is the difference between the education that they receive outside the United States and inside the United States?
00:25:37.000Just the bias that we have about certain medicines?
00:25:40.000Yeah, we cannot divorce our drug education from our social control.
00:25:49.000And so when we think about how drugs or drug policy has been used to go at the groups that we don't like, and if we're not a part of the out-group, we just kind of accept this information uncritically.
00:26:02.000And we've been told that people who use heroin, they have those issues, and they're not like us.
00:26:30.000And so that's one of the reasons that I travel and I continue to travel and to learn.
00:26:36.000And I'm learning so much about my biases that I held and that I'm trying to get rid of.
00:26:43.000I'm trying to really just focus on the evidence.
00:26:47.000So, in a sense, like, the United States is very unique in its propaganda and unique in its sort of singular view on drugs?
00:26:57.000Well, given that we have such a big military, it's hard for us to be unique because other countries, with our military might and our money, we kind of tell them what to think, too.
00:27:09.000Canada is one, but all of South America or a large portion of South America, even some places in Europe, Asia, you know, a number of places share our screwed-up views on drugs because they've been told to share our screwed-up views because they get some money for having these screwed-up views.
00:27:27.000Like, we support various programs in Colombia about drugs, eradication of drugs, and all around the world.
00:27:34.000So these countries share our views, but places like Geneva, that's really autonomous, and there are some other autonomous nations that actually look at the evidence and see what's best for their population, and not what's best for the people of the United States.
00:27:50.000And they don't just accept the propaganda without thinking about their population.
00:27:56.000Have you seen, there's a new TV show, Fear the Walking Dead?
00:28:00.000It's like the new spin-off that's in LA. I have not, no.
00:28:05.000I mean, I've been away, you know, from the United States, so...
00:28:08.000I watched it and I thought immediately of you.
00:28:10.000Because there's a character in it that's a heroin addict.
00:28:26.000The kid's a junkie and he's in this drug den and he's shooting up and this chick he's friends with turns into a zombie and starts eating people's faces and shit.
00:29:05.000A day ago, his face has all the color in it, looks normal, and I remember what you had said last time you were here, that withdrawal is a lot like getting the flu.
00:29:17.000It's like getting sick, and then it goes away, and everything else is just sort of in your head.
00:29:22.000Well, yeah, you know, the severity can vary based on the extent of how long people have been using the drug, obviously.
00:30:09.000His mother actually breaks into the school to get pills for him.
00:30:14.000She breaks back into school and then she has to fight zombies and shit.
00:30:17.000But she breaks into the school to get pills for her son and she's gonna like slowly wean him off with these pills.
00:30:24.000But the fucking kid was normal just a day ago, you know?
00:30:29.000Yeah, you know, man, it's too hard for me to watch this stuff.
00:30:32.000I mean, you know, on the one hand, it's like I'm trying to be a regular citizen and just, you know, appreciate art or what other people do.
00:30:39.000But then on the other hand, it's just that I just know the consequences of that rubbish.
00:30:44.000You know, the consequences that it gives some idiotic politician raison d'etre.
00:30:50.000So they feel like this is their reason for being now and they can go after this drug because they saw it on this awful TV show.
00:30:59.000I think the real issue is, like many people, the writers and the producers probably aren't heroin users.
00:31:09.000So their idea is based on the popular mythology, the popular culture, the idea that we've all been sort of fed by Trainspotting and all these other films, they're sort of just repeating that.
00:31:21.000No, I'm glad you pointed out that you can have a good TV show but get the drug issue wrong.
00:31:31.000But a lot of us have this idea, and I swear, before I met you, and I'm a person who's not averse to drugs, I thought of it all as, I thought heroin, like, oh yeah, man, you can get addicted.
00:31:43.000You do it once, you're addicted, and then you're fucked.
00:31:46.000It just, somehow or another, becomes a part of you.
00:31:50.000That's why I've always had a problem when they start talking about marijuana addiction, like how many people get addicted to marijuana, because I don't understand what even the mechanism would be for you to get addicted to that.
00:32:02.000Yeah, I mean, again, if we go back to the definition that I talked at the start of the week, when we think about social disruption, disruption of family function, work, and that sort of thing, and it's causing you distress, you can clearly see how somebody might be addicted to marijuana.
00:32:19.000A low percentage of people become addicted to marijuana, but you certainly can see that, yeah, somebody might get distressed by their marijuana use.
00:32:28.000So they can meet criteria for addiction.
00:32:30.000But when you compare marijuana addiction to alcohol, nicotine, cocaine, or any other drug, it's lower than all the rest of those drugs.
00:32:38.000But certainly, it's possible that somebody has some distress and have...
00:32:44.000Psychosocial disruptions and functioning.
00:32:46.000So the disruptions and functioning is what really identifies someone as being an addict.
00:32:52.000But if someone is a person who's using heroin on a daily basis but shows no disruption in their life, shows no problems with their social situation or their job functioning or anything like that, but then they get off of it.
00:33:08.000Because if they get off of it, or they try to quit cold turkey, and then they get all fucked up because of that, well then you would have to kind of qualify them.
00:34:23.000It only becomes a big deal when we're talking about alcohol withdrawal from chronic alcohol use, or when we're talking about barbiturate withdrawal from chronic use, because the person can die.
00:34:35.000Outside of those drugs, I mean, those are the only sort of more commonly used drugs that we worry about withdraw.
00:34:44.000People constantly throw around the term addiction then, I guess, in an incorrect way, in a technically incorrect way, because I know a lot of people that I would say are addicted to coffee, where they need to have coffee in order to wake up and function.
00:35:03.000I mean, because the coffee is actually helping them to maybe do their job better and not disrupting their job.
00:35:09.000The coffee is helping them in their human function.
00:35:14.000Well, the last time you were here, you explained something that really I never knew either.
00:35:19.000It's the thing you just discussed, that...
00:35:22.000A withdrawal is actually, or rather a hangover, is actually your body withdrawing.
00:35:27.000Like the compensatory mechanisms that your body uses to deal with the alcohol in your system, that's what the feeling of being hungover is.
00:35:35.000Is your body just withdrawing from that alcohol?
00:35:38.000Certainly that can be a symptom of withdrawal, the hangover.
00:36:30.000Since I saw you last, I've been all over the globe.
00:36:35.000And one of the things that when I give these talks, when people say, I heard you on the Joe Rogan Show, you know, all over the world from Vancouver to Brazil to Geneva to the Philippines, all over, I know when they say that I heard you on the Joe Rogan Show,
00:36:55.000I know that these are people who look for information outside of the normal sort of source of information.
00:37:03.000And so those are the people who I'm trying to reach, the people who are actually grappling and struggling with these ideas and trying to evaluate the ideas for the merits, based on their merits, and that's it.
00:37:16.000Whereas when you talk about the O'Reilly's and you talk about the politicians and you talk about these people, Those are the people who I like talking to least.
00:37:25.000I mean, not necessarily O'Reilly himself, but some of the people who watch him.
00:37:31.000And so I'm trying to reach the general public, the people who watch your show, the people who are into what you do, the common folk who are out there who are struggling and they're trying to learn.
00:37:45.000And I think if we reach them, the politicians will follow them, not the opposite of way around.
00:37:51.000And so my least favorite people to talk to are politicians.
00:37:55.000I mean, it's as an adult, me and you, you like to talk to people who take you seriously, particularly when you're respecting them.
00:38:06.000Politicians oftentimes don't give a shit about you.
00:38:09.000They only care about their votes and how they can use you for those votes.
00:38:15.000You know, it's insulting to me to talk to people in that way, and so I try to avoid them.
00:38:21.000Coming here to this place, I know that there will be people out here who listen to you who will struggle with this, but they will evaluate it based on its merits.
00:38:30.000And that's all you can ask, is that people evaluate your arguments based on the merits, and then you have conversations, discussions, and you go back and forth, and the best evidence wins.
00:38:41.000And everybody understands those rules, and those are your listeners.
00:38:50.000And so they're not the people who I'm trying to reach.
00:38:53.000And it helps to keep me sane because I can't deal with people who don't use evidence or don't play with evidence as part of the rules.
00:39:02.000Yeah, that's a great quote that's on your website about, I make sure that I don't engage in conversations with people that don't abide by the rules of evidence.
00:39:28.000And unfortunately, those people oftentimes, when these politicians, they'll get involved in debates or get involved in some sort of a public function where they're discussing something or giving a speech, and they can say things that are just absolutely inaccurate.
00:39:45.000And those things, when people aren't really discerning or they don't have the time maybe to go over the evidence, these people take that as fact.
00:39:55.000You know, this is why I continue to be out here, because when people make those kind of statements based on no evidence and they're just lies, they're just inaccurate, the consequences of those lies and inaccuracies are so great, and there are so many poor people who pay the price for it.
00:40:12.000That's why I continue to stay out here, and I stay out here to call those people out on it and try to embarrass those people.
00:40:18.000I mean, I'm a firm believer in embarrassing politicians when they tell these lies, when they make up this information, because they are ruining too many people's lives as a result.
00:40:30.000Well, they're agents of poor information oftentimes, whether they want to be or not.
00:40:35.000I think all they want to do is get elected and stay in power and then serve whoever paid for their campaign.
00:41:21.000I mean, it just simply means that people can't be arrested for drug possessions.
00:41:26.000And drug possession is considered like a 10-day supply of drugs in Portugal, which is a good thing.
00:41:32.000And then there are other places around the world that people are doing other innovative things, like in Sao Paulo, In Brazil, the mayor is paying drug addicts or drug users, paying them a salary,
00:41:49.000giving them housing, giving them food, three meals, and that sort of thing to make sure they show up for work.
00:41:57.000And if they're coming to work, that means they're not getting into other activities.
00:42:01.000And so he's trying to keep He has certain areas of his city safe doing that.
00:42:08.000And so there are a number of people thinking about innovative ways to deal with drugs and to treat people like adults and not children, like in our country.
00:42:18.000We're still concerned about moralism, even though there have been some states that have said, as you well know, Colorado, Alaska, Oregon, Washington, they've said that we're going to legalize marijuana for adults.
00:42:33.000And I suspect California will vote in November 16 to see if they want to do the same thing.
00:42:42.000Despite the sort of moralism, we still have some people out here pushing for progressive, rational, adult sort of drug laws.
00:42:53.000And so I hope we continue to see this.
00:42:56.000Well, when I look at the current state of politics in America, and I look at What we call our leaders and the way they discuss drugs.
00:43:06.000What I'm looking at is it's almost like they're trapped in an ancient way of thinking that doesn't work anymore because of the Internet.
00:43:14.000Because of the Internet, we have so much access to information now.
00:43:19.000We have a freedom to actually find the truth.
00:43:22.000So like what you're talking about where people have these misconceptions and then you come on and you give the absolute truth fact-based evidence and you're forced to like examine like why do I have these assumptions in my head?
00:43:37.000Why do I have and why do I? I mean I was forced to confront these when I talked to you the first time.
00:43:43.000I was like why do I have these ideas in my head?
00:44:49.000So as we think about the politician, as we think about the politician, I think the last Republican debate, there were a couple politicians, I think, Bush and Christie, and they were saying how they would bring the federal government in to change what's going on in Colorado.
00:45:10.000You know, that kind of logic and thinking...
00:45:16.000I think that if he actually got the nomination, that wouldn't happen.
00:45:20.000I don't know if they have to say these kinds of things, but it would be nice if the American people really punished these idiots who say things like that.
00:45:29.000Because on the one hand, we think about the folks of Colorado taking this vote and the whole issue of states' rights.
00:45:38.000And this is what the Republicans say they really like.
00:45:41.000Well, I don't mean to go after the Republicans because I think they're the same as Democrats, quite frankly.
00:45:46.000So this is not a knock on them as a party.
00:45:52.000But when people talk about states' rights, that's what this is.
00:46:00.000And so the public The American people should really slam idiots who say things like they're going to go after a state.
00:46:07.000What about this issue of states' rights?
00:46:09.000I mean, and so I think Republicans and Democrats should really go after these people for saying remarks like that.
00:46:17.000Well, Chris Christie in particular, because a lot of the things that he says are totally inaccurate, and then on top of it, What is his concern?
00:46:25.000I'm assuming his concern is the health consequences of marijuana use.
00:46:29.000Well, the health consequences of being a gigantic fat fuck are way worse than the health consequences of marijuana use.
00:46:35.000I mean, that guy is morbidly obese, and he's talking about people who smoke a plant that makes them happy.
00:47:05.000It's a tough sell, but people think of coke as dudes who won't shut the fuck up at the parties, want to start businesses with you, want to tell you about some shit that they never really did.
00:47:15.000That's what people think about coke, assholes.
00:47:17.000Well, they haven't done coke with people I know.
00:47:20.000Damn, I need to be around at least people you know that do coke, because everybody I've been around that's on coke is an idiot.
00:47:28.000Well, you know, some of the people who do coke around me are in government, so I guess they can pass as idiots too.
00:47:36.000Well, it's the same thing with alcohol, right?
00:48:09.000And then, while I'm thinking that, I'm next to people that are drunk off their ass at this fucking bar at the improv.
00:48:17.000I mean, these people are hammered, just sloshed, and they're probably doing way more damage to their body right there.
00:48:23.000And I'm like, wow, those poor fucks on pills.
00:48:25.000You know, I mean, it's interesting how we have these categorizations that, like, the pill, the Oxycontin pill, like, oh, this guy's, he's gotta be fucked up.
00:48:35.000Meanwhile, to my left, there's a bar filled with people just throwing back this liquid poison and torturing their liver and their brain.
00:48:47.000When it comes out, I'm going to have to come here.
00:48:49.000But this is precisely what I'm trying to deal with.
00:48:51.000I'm trying to show people how to use drugs to enhance human functioning experience and so forth.
00:48:58.000Now, that means that as we get older, we may have to change our drug use from something like alcohol.
00:49:04.000Alcohol might be a little too toxic on some of our livers as we get older.
00:49:09.000Toxic in other ways for us as we get older and some other drug like oxycontin or something else might be more beneficial for you to achieve that goal that you're trying to achieve and that's what the new book is trying to trying to look at to help people change their drug use according to their age their maturity all of these things and how to keep them safe and also to help them to accomplish that goal that they seek to enhance human experiences when we go to parties We take drugs,
00:49:37.000we take alcohol in order to, as a social lubricant, you know, but maybe that social lubricant isn't working for me as much these days.
00:49:45.000Alcohol disrupts my sleep, you know, whereas an opiate is perfect.
00:49:50.000You know, I can chill, I can relax, and I can get some great sleep, and I can be here to do your show and be bright and bushy-tailed and I'm ready to go.
00:50:00.000As opposed to having that drink the night before, but have an Oxycontin or something else.
00:50:08.000You know, I think also we're dealing with a reaction.
00:50:12.000Like when you were talking about people in the 1970s that were doing the higher percentage of them were smoking marijuana and it could have been a reaction to the Nixon administration.
00:50:23.000I think in a situation like that, you get that preacher's daughter sort of effect.
00:50:29.000The suppression, where people just want to react to that suppression.
00:50:33.000People don't like being told what to do.
00:50:36.000And in the case of things like cocaine, there's that naughty factor.
00:50:43.000There's this factor That what you're doing is something that's illegal, and that makes it more exciting.
00:50:49.000I think that's one of the things that was highlighted by the decriminalization in Portugal and the subsequent effects, and even Colorado.
00:50:57.000What they've shown in Colorado is the lowest instances of drunk driving in, I think, something like 15 years, lowest instances of violent crime that they've had in a long time, and no deaths.
00:51:11.000You know, they're talking about, like, one guy jumped off of a building when he was high on pot edibles.
00:51:16.000Listen, people make shitty choices all the time, whether on pot edibles, or they drink too much Dr. Pepper, or they have too many fucking Twinkies.
00:51:26.000I mean, wasn't there a guy in San Francisco that killed somebody that used Twinkies as a defense?
00:51:39.000Responsible adults being able to make choices based on evidence and based on reality and fact, that should be the foundation of our society, how we treat almost everything.
00:51:50.000Joe, man, you just laid it out with marijuana.
00:51:54.000I absolutely agree with you, but I want to push you to think about heroin in the same way, cocaine in the same way, because what you just said about marijuana, you're absolutely right, but it also applies to these other psychoactive drugs.
00:52:09.000We just need to make sure people know how to do these things safely.
00:52:26.000He was selling it and all this dude did was do Coke and hang out in his house and watch TV and sell Coke and he lost a ton of weight and he looked like shit and it's just like...
00:52:36.000He made some bad choices, but he could have made those bad choices doing a lot of different things.
00:52:41.000Just like you talked about the guy who possibly jumped out of the building after the edibles and had some other issues.
00:52:50.000I mean, you can, I'm sure, you can look at my talks, you can look at other people, you can see, you'd be like, okay, can you tell what drug...
00:53:21.000Nah, a beta blocker might be helpful, but you might want to just take a low dose of amphetamine so you can be really alert and attentive and ready to go.
00:54:12.000So we got him at Jack Daniels, on The Rocks.
00:54:14.000And then he got casual about an hour and a half in, and it became an actual conversation.
00:54:20.000I know virtually nothing about finances, so I wasn't challenging him.
00:54:25.000I was just asking questions and I wanted to get him to illuminate certain perspectives.
00:54:31.000But he was ready for someone to jump in.
00:54:33.000He was ready to be that split-screen thing when you have one person on one side, one on the other, and they have opposing viewpoints and they're just talking over each other.
00:55:03.000Yeah, it's just also a lot of just preaching to the choir nonsense, and they want the conflict of two people with opposing viewpoints yelling at each other and calling each other morons.
00:55:14.000Pseudosymmetry is what they want, to pretend that each issue has a certain amount of evidence over here and a certain amount of evidence over here.
00:55:23.000And the sort of real story is somewhere in the middle.
00:55:27.000No, most issues don't happen like that, but that's how non-thinking people can see the world.
00:55:50.000They were hired to go on these shows and talk about whether it was, initially, it was whether or not cigarettes and nicotine were bad for your health and addictive, and then it became about global warming.
00:56:05.000And they would go on all these different talk shows and just spout out this stuff very loudly and with confidence, and that was literally their job.
00:56:16.000So they'd go on these talk shows, and they would just yap.
00:56:19.000They would just talk real loud and real confidently and talk over people, and their function or their career was to try to change opinion with these short little bursts.
00:57:03.000I mean, they give you like, I mean, I'm not even exaggerating.
00:57:06.000You might have had a talk for, you might have got out 20 seconds worth of talking before they were talking over you.
00:57:12.000Yeah, you know, the thing is just so perplexing to me that you can be so irresponsible and have this stuff be on the airwaves and not get in trouble for it.
00:57:26.000And then what they're doing on many of these shows, they're doing more harm to the American education than most people.
00:57:50.000It's something really sick about this system.
00:57:52.000It is, and it seems like it's trapped in momentum that these shows have always existed the way they have, you know, with these seven-minute segments that go to ad break, you know, one host, loud, boisterous guy talks over everybody.
00:58:07.000These shows have been around for so long like that that they're a comfortable model for us.
00:58:12.000Yeah, for some people, they're not comfortable for me because I tell you, I've been really trying to, rethinking, like, where can I live in this world?
00:58:21.000But, you know, the U.S., they're making it very hard for me to want to stay here.
00:58:26.000But, you know, I have children that I have to raise here.
00:58:44.000Yeah, I mean, Vancouver is a little different, but the rest of Canada is trying to be like the U.S., particularly when it comes to drugs and all of these issues.
00:58:54.000Yeah, Vancouver is the most open-minded when it comes to drugs.
00:58:57.000Yeah, I mean, Vancouver, I really dig the folks at Vancouver.
00:59:00.000Don't they have some sort of a heroin program in Vancouver as well?
00:59:03.000It's on the DL. It's for research purposes, but they certainly have a program where they're giving heroin, and it's a research project at the University of British Columbia.
00:59:48.000Here's another reason why I think it's real.
00:59:50.000There's this place in Toronto and they have, I don't want to give them up because I don't think it's legal, but they do a comedy show there and they have, the front is like a bong shop and then the back they have a comedy club.
01:00:03.000And they have no ventilation whatsoever.
01:00:42.000What we need to do is take someone who's totally clean, like someone who doesn't do any marijuana whatsoever, and make them sit in that audience and watch an hour and a half comedy show and then get up.
01:01:21.000This is a huge story in the world of sports because Nick Diaz, who is one of the most popular fighters in the UFC, and is a very outspoken marijuana enthusiast.
01:01:44.000He's known for being one of the most fit guys in the sport, but he loves marijuana, and he smokes it all the time.
01:01:50.000The UFC has instituted, the Nevada State Athletic Commission has instituted a new drug policy in regards to marijuana where they've lowered the threshold considerably, like much, much lower.
01:02:02.000So you literally would have to be high like the day of the fight in order to test positive.
01:02:09.000He has administered tests from two different organizations.
01:02:13.000One of them, the World Anti-Doping Agency, WADA. And WADA is a blood test, which is much more accurate than what Nevada State Athletic Commission uses.
01:02:22.000Nevada State Athletic Commission uses a urine test.
01:02:25.000The blood tests, both before and after the fight, fined him to be under the threshold, so he passes.
01:02:32.000But Nevada, using their urinalysis test, say that he fails.
01:02:37.000They fine him $165,000, and then they ban him from the sport for five years.
01:02:48.000I mean, really, marijuana shouldn't even be on any of these, even WADA. I know WADA increased their thresholds that's required to trigger the penalty, which is a good thing.
01:02:59.000But it shouldn't even be on WADA's list because when we think about...
01:03:51.000I mean, but if we start talking about drugs and sports, and then we're really being honest, we have to think about why are drugs banned from sports in the first place?
01:04:01.000I mean, and so we start doing that, and then we can systematically go through the illogical sort of reasoning behind these bans.
01:04:11.000People say, well, we care about the health of the athletes and drugs.
01:04:48.000And you just go down the list and think about why we ban these things and it just doesn't fit.
01:04:54.000We ban them because of moralisms and the war on drugs.
01:04:58.000And that's just inappropriate because we're now starting to see that the rationale on which the war on drugs is built is problematic at best.
01:05:10.000What do you think of a situation like, say, the Lance Armstrong situation, where he's involved in a sport where he tests positive for some stuff.
01:05:19.000I don't even think he did test positive.
01:05:22.000I think they weaseled their way around the test so well that...
01:05:25.000He never really tested positive, but he ultimately had to admit to using performance-enhancing drugs.
01:05:32.000They strip him of his Tour de France titles.
01:05:34.000Then on top of that, because he was sponsored by the post office, he gets hit with defrauding the government.
01:05:43.000When you defraud the government, they are allowed to sue you for three times the amount that they gave you.
01:05:48.000So if they gave him $30 million, they're suing him for $90 million or something crazy like that.
01:05:55.000On top of that once you strip him if you're going to give that title to the next person who didn't test positive for that You got to go down to like 18th place.
01:06:05.000Yeah, which is hilarious So like my friend Bill Burr hilarious comedian had a great bit that he did about this on the Conan O'Brien show he was like So basically, our steroided up guy beat your steroided up guy.
01:06:27.000And I've even heard it argued by doctors that doing the Tour de France without the drugs is arguably more dangerous for the athlete's body than doing it with the drugs.
01:06:40.000Well, Tour de France has always had drugs, isn't it?
01:06:42.000I mean, everyone knows this, and so this notion that it's going to be clean or should be clean, it's a pipe dream.
01:07:50.000I mean, particularly when I think about every four years when the Olympics come around and Americans get proud about all the medals we win when we fight.
01:07:59.000Fucking win medals from a country like Switzerland that has seven million people.
01:08:03.000New York City has more people in it than Switzerland, the entire country.
01:08:07.000Of course we're gonna have more medals than Switzerland or some other small country.
01:08:53.000From the outset, when you have these huge countries like the U.S. and competing with these other smaller countries who have limited resources, come on.
01:09:04.000And we talk about fair advantage and unfair.
01:09:09.000There's also there's people that have natural advantages like LeBron James again like that guy if you look at him that is a genetic freak of nature Well, you have very few people that are ever gonna have a body like his right I know but they're in the NBA Right.
01:09:25.000But I'm saying, even amongst the NBA, he sort of stands, he's an outlier.
01:09:52.000Take someone who's less physically talented.
01:09:57.000If they both do the same amount of work, they both try as hard, you're never going to be that guy.
01:10:03.000But you know, there are people who have bodies like his, and they're not him.
01:10:07.000I mean, you've seen this throughout sports, where people have these...
01:10:12.000Phenomenal bodies, but they're not him.
01:10:14.000So it's not only their sort of physical makeup, it's people's drive, their work ethics, all of these things I don't think are emphasized enough.
01:10:22.000I mean, you and I, the thing about it, we're talking about LeBron James and not Jack Brown, because we don't know him.
01:10:30.000But Jack Brown has a hell of a body, but we don't know him because he doesn't have the ethics.
01:12:17.000The way the male endocrine system works, as it's been explained to me, obviously I'm not a doctor, when you take testosterone, your body stops producing it.
01:12:30.000So what these people would do is they would take it and then they would get off of it and their body would have very low testosterone and then they would get a blood test.
01:12:39.000And the doctor would say, hey, you have low testosterone, you need testosterone replacement therapy.
01:12:44.000So we had guys that were in their 20s that were getting testosterone replacement therapy, which is kind of crazy.
01:12:49.000They would take it, and then they would take large amounts of it and recover much better than other people would.
01:12:56.000They would be able to work harder and train harder.
01:12:58.000And we had some instances, and there's this one guy named Vitor Belfort, who was the poster boy for testosterone replacement therapy, because his career was kind of in a lull.
01:13:09.000He got on testosterone placement therapy.
01:13:10.000He's a guy who's been fighting in the UFC since 1997, okay?
01:14:34.000I'd like to see, you know, because if we're going to draw the conclusion that the steroids was the reason that he was fighting like that.
01:14:41.000So now that we did the A portion or the AB portion, so now we need to go back to A, put him back on the steroids, and then I'll feel more confident that, yeah, it was a steroids.
01:14:52.000But the question is, though, is that an unfair advantage for him versus the person he's competing against who is clean and natural?
01:14:59.000His opponent, Chris Weidman, who's the champion, is notoriously clean.
01:15:04.000He's just hard work, looks clean, doesn't look like a guy who does any steroids at all.
01:15:08.000He just works hard, he's smart, he's tough.
01:15:10.000Yeah, so we should give the champion an option to use steroids.
01:15:15.000If he wants to use them, he can do it.
01:15:19.000But the other guy, we should also give him that option and then let's see what happens.
01:15:23.000The problem with that in mixed martial arts as opposed to any other sport is that giving someone testosterone or a steroid is going to allow them to administer damage to their opponent that they might not be able to do without it.
01:15:38.000So their opponent is going to suffer because of it.
01:15:40.000It's a different thing, like the ability to deliver a basketball into a net is one thing, but the ability to kick somebody in the head is a completely different thing.
01:15:51.000And the idea being that if you give someone EPO, for instance, which expands your endurance threshold, you will be able to throw more strikes, you'll be able to attack more aggressively without worrying about conserving your gas tank, and that you could damage someone in a way that you would not have damaged them naturally.
01:16:09.000I remember when Mike Tyson was knocking people out, when people walked in the ring with him, there was always that potential that you might get damaged in ways that you might.
01:17:07.000And if anybody has an excuse for taking it, it's this guy.
01:17:11.000Well, when he was on it, God, this guy could take a fucking punch.
01:17:15.000I mean, he had this war with this guy, Mark Hunt, this epic five-round fight.
01:17:21.000And then when he got off of it, he gets hit and he just goes down.
01:17:24.000Like, it's really shocking, the difference in his ability to take punishment while on it and then while off of it.
01:17:31.000See, you know, I have to tell you, I'm a bit outside of my expertise, so I don't really know these guys, but you certainly have piqued my interest, and I want to know more about it because...
01:17:43.000You know, just to be logically consistent, I think that these things should be allowed in sports.
01:17:49.000And if I'm going to have that position, I'd like to know more about, like, the things that you're saying.
01:17:55.000Like, when he was on it, he could take a punch.
01:17:57.000Then when he got off, he couldn't take a punch.
01:17:59.000I don't know how many years between that and age, what role age plays and all of these sorts of things, but I'd like to know more.
01:18:06.000I'm just at a disadvantage because I just don't know.
01:18:11.000I don't know enough of the details about it.
01:18:15.000But I would just challenge people to think about Hey, what if we allow drugs in sports?
01:18:23.000Well, one of the things that it does do that it helps, it helps recovery, and apparently it mitigates the effects of damage.
01:18:30.000It can mitigate the effects of damage that you take, not just in training, but also in competition.
01:18:37.000And in that sense, it would benefit people.
01:18:40.000But I do see the argument, and Ronda Rousey's made it pretty eloquently, that if someone is taking a steroid, if they're cheating, quote-unquote, that it's going to allow them to administer damage that they would not have been allowed to do or would not have been able to do with just hard work.
01:18:59.000Well, I know that's a conjecture, but I don't know if that's true.
01:19:54.000I'm pretty sure that's a correct position, though, that you would be able to administer more.
01:20:00.000I think if you take very talented athletes that already have all those attributes, discipline, hard work, and then you add steroids, you're going to get a more efficient body.
01:20:09.000You're going to get a body that functions more.
01:20:21.000And on top of that, I think also with fighting, a big one is confidence.
01:20:25.000And there's something about those guys that are juiced to the tits.
01:20:28.000They're confident as fuck because they're Barely human.
01:20:32.000I mean, when you hit these super high, hyperhuman levels of testosterone, you get these incredibly aggressive, confident men that can do things that they might.
01:20:43.000And then subsequently, when they get off that stuff, boy, their confidence erodes radically.
01:20:49.000And their Instagram pages start looking like suicidal strippers.
01:20:52.000It's all like motivational quotes and shit, and like, you know, they get real weird.
01:20:57.000Josie, the ultimate experiment that we have to tell people they're on these things.
01:21:02.000And let's see if their confidence is increased, right?
01:21:05.000And we can see whether or not it's a placebo effect, this sort of confident thing.
01:21:10.000I mean, but I know that they have real physical effects, so I'm not denying that at all.
01:21:15.000But the confidence piece will be interesting to see.
01:21:18.000Whether or not somebody will still have this confidence if we give them placebo and telling them this is what they are.
01:21:25.000But isn't it fascinating also that we're still talking about drugs?
01:21:29.000Like that term drugs is just such a weighted and loaded term.
01:21:33.000The fact that that term could be used for a steroid as well as for aspirin or coffee.
01:21:40.000It's really kind of unfortunate that we have this one blanket term that applies to psychedelics and as well it applies to testosterone and it applies to heroin.
01:22:00.000I mean, because when we think about...
01:22:02.000One of the things that bothers me about the psychedelic kind of movement, and God bless them, people who enjoy this thing, but, you know, people separate their drug use, like the psychedelic use, like, I'm using this to go on a higher plane or for some other reason,
01:22:20.000as opposed to the person on the corner who's getting high.
01:22:48.000I mean, this notion like even the marijuana smokers, when they talk about marijuana and not talk about crack and not talk about heroin, what the fuck is that?
01:23:04.000It's the same elitism that is pervasive throughout our society.
01:23:09.000Well, I think the idea is that when they're doing marijuana or something like that, they're being responsible.
01:23:16.000They're taking something that makes you more socially aware and casual, whereas when you're doing some speed or some meth or something like that, you're stealing cars and fucking driving into pedestrians.
01:25:04.000It certainly doesn't alter critical thinking processes.
01:25:07.000But he was hesitant, and he's the head of MAPS. Yeah.
01:25:12.000See, not to talk about Rick's situation specifically, but just in general, when people are reluctant to say these things, that's part of the problem.
01:25:24.000Because we need to have people get out of the closet.
01:25:27.000There are so many people who go to jail, who get in trouble, who lose their job for doing a behavior that well-respected people in our society engage in.
01:25:38.000I've been all over the world, and I've been hanging out with some of the movers and shakers in a variety of society.
01:25:46.000And I have seen them get high, and they are responsible people, and they are people who I would want my children to be like, in many cases, some of these folks.
01:25:56.000Now, many of those people are closeted.
01:26:00.000But them being in the closet allows this hypocrisy to go on, allows us to go at the poor people for doing a behavior, engaging in behavior in which many of us engage in.
01:26:15.000And that's very, for me, very hypocritical.
01:26:19.000And I like to look in the mirror as a man, as an adult, and to say that I live my life as honestly as I can in that regard.
01:26:30.000And so what kind of man would I be if I wasn't honest about this?
01:26:35.000I mean, I'm the person who has given thousands of doses of these drugs to people and carefully studied their effects, written books on this stuff.
01:26:44.000If I can't say this, Why are you here?
01:26:50.000I would be embarrassed as a person, and I would deserve to be embarrassed as a person, because I didn't take the opportunity to help my fellow citizens who are catching hell for doing the same thing that I and others do.
01:27:53.000I think these conversations where a guy like you, who is so educated in the subject, can expand people's minds and say things in such an honest way, I think it's very critical because we are so hesitant to admit these things.
01:28:08.000I run into situations with parents all the time.
01:28:12.000I go to school, their kids go to school, and then they'll Google me.
01:29:46.000Well, it's also what you're doing is so critical at this juncture because I think we're in a transitionary stage in our culture.
01:29:53.000I think our culture is opening its mind, and I think, as we said before, because of the internet, because we can have conversations like this where no one can step in and stop us.
01:30:13.000And once that information gets out, then they'll Google it.
01:30:16.000A vast majority of the people that are curious about this will start looking into some of the things that you've said and go, wow, that's fucking true.
01:30:24.000And then they'll talk to people at work, they'll talk to people at the gym, they'll talk to people that they're friends with, and then it'll expand further and further and further.
01:30:31.000So I think what you're doing is critical.
01:30:35.000So the fact that you approach it like it's so critical is why you're so important.
01:30:41.000Well, thank you, man, because, you know, that's how I try and see it.
01:30:44.000You know, it's like I think about, like, I don't want to let people down by me not working as hard as I can, particularly when it's so important, as you point out, for so many people, you know, because young people, older people, people are always going to get high.
01:33:42.000And, you know, like, boy, there's a lot of things that could potentially cause your brain to not function at its best, and some abuse of drugs is certainly on that list.
01:33:52.000But there's a lot of things that we do on a daily basis that are not good for you, like poor diet, like a lack of exercise, like being stuck in polluted cities, like breathing in brake dust and fucking exhaust fumes all day.
01:34:07.000All these things are terrible for you.
01:34:08.000Yeah, but we really have to challenge the brain damage narrative.
01:34:12.000I mean, one of the things that we do is that we don't challenge it.
01:34:17.000I mean, one of the things, when we think about the brain damage narrative, it has gained more energy in recent years, in part because we have this technology of neural imaging, of brain imaging.
01:34:29.000But what, in fact, what has happened with brain imaging is that brain imaging has become a projection test, basically.
01:34:36.000You know what I mean when I say projection test?
01:34:43.000Or workshop, these sort of psychological tests where you throw up some image and you ask the person, what do they see?
01:34:50.000And then, you know, you get this sort of, they'll tell you their interpretation and then the psychologist has his or her subjective interpretation of what that means.
01:34:59.000That's what brain imaging in drugs in the sort of drug field has become.
01:36:21.000Nicotine is a lot more dangerous than amphetamine, heroin, and all the rest of these things in terms of potency and that sort of thing.
01:36:29.000But we take nicotine in doses that we avoid any sort of damage or most of the damage associated with it.
01:36:35.000We take all of these drugs in doses that causes euphoria, which is way below The doses that causes toxicity.
01:36:44.000So when we start talking about brain damage, humans don't usually take drugs in the doses that will cause brain damage because if they did, the drug effects become unpleasant and humans won't take it because it's so unpleasant.
01:36:58.000So the notion that these things cause brain damage, you need to really ask people to show you the evidence.
01:37:04.000I have not seen the evidence in humans that any of these recreational drugs is causing some brain damage.
01:37:12.000So when they have those scans, and they show the brain, and they show the effects, like when someone's on X amount of, you know, milligrams of this or of that, I always wondered that.
01:37:24.000Like, what are you seeing when you see, like, highlighted portions of the brain?
01:37:27.000Like, what, is it just activity in that area?
01:37:30.000So if we're talking, most of the studies have been done when people are not on drugs.
01:37:34.000I mean, we can talk about when people are on drugs would do that.
01:37:37.000And so what you do, you typically do, you have like a group of methamphetamine users in one group, and then you have people who've never used methamphetamine in another group.
01:37:47.000You might do what this thing we call a pet image.
01:37:50.000That was popular where you inject a radioactive compound in somebody's body, and this compound selectively binds to, let's say, dopamine cells in the brain.
01:38:01.000And when it binds to the dopamine cells, since it's radioactive, it lights up.
01:38:06.000And so you can see how many dopamine cells are in a person's brain or region, or you can get an idea of the dopamine cells and how many are there.
01:38:18.000One of the things that has done, sort of a popular way that it's done, is that they say the methamphetamine users have less dopamine receptors than the non-methamphetamine users.
01:38:30.000And so, that's interpreted as saying methamphetamine caused the methamphetamine users to lose dopamine cells, kill cells, basically.
01:38:40.000Now, we don't know what was in the brains of the methamphetamine users before they used methamphetamine.
01:39:12.000And so we have a wide range, just as humans, we have a wide range of dopamine cells in each person's brains versus somebody else.
01:39:21.000So you can't say that methamphetamine caused these people to lose dopamine cells because we don't know if they lost dopamine cells in the first place.
01:39:32.000And another thing is that you have this tremendous amount of overlap of dopamine cells in this case in the methamphetamine users compared to the controls.
01:39:41.000So that means that some people in the methamphetamine group has more dopamine cells than people in the control and vice versa.
01:39:51.000It doesn't mean, what it typically means is, we don't know, but what we know it doesn't typically mean is that it caused some brain damage.
01:39:59.000Because when you look at these people's functioning, cognitive functioning, other functioning, they look just like anybody else who didn't use methamphetamine.
01:40:13.000So the only way to tell would be to take someone who is healthy and doesn't have a history of drug use and monitor them, get them hooked on methamphetamine, and then see what's happening to their dopamine receptors then?
01:40:25.000Certainly, that could be a way of doing that, but that would be really expensive, and I don't know if it's justified.
01:40:32.000I mean, we have these natural experiments already.
01:40:35.000So we think about amphetamine use became big in the 30s.
01:40:40.000And we have this sort of history in the military.
01:41:21.000But you can just look throughout the society and you can see various illnesses, particularly neurological illnesses, and see, do you have greater rates of this illness in people who reported this type of drug use?
01:41:38.000And so, when I hear people talk about the brain damage thing, particularly when they show brain imaging, that's not evidence of brain damage.
01:41:48.000You know, when you have animal studies, you can give animals amphetamines for every day for their life, and then you kill them at some point, and then you look at dopamine damage, for example.
01:42:27.000This is the same thing that I worry about with steroid use.
01:42:32.000This is why I want to make sure that we...
01:42:35.000Actually regulate it, because we want to make sure people are not taking doses that are so large that they might actually be causing some damage.
01:42:43.000And when you don't regulate it, yeah, you run that risk.
01:42:48.000And if you really care about people, that's what you would do.
01:42:51.000And then you make sure that you monitor them regularly to make sure that they don't exceed those levels, and you educate them about the potential consequences.
01:42:59.000Well, a good example of that is probably the bodybuilding community, because if anybody takes steroids at hyperhuman and preposterous levels, it's bodybuilders.
01:43:10.000And yet, very few of them wind up dying from it.
01:43:13.000There are a few cases of guys that were really big in the 80s and 90s that are now Dead from heart attack.
01:43:20.000But if you ever see what those fucking guys look like, you realize, like, these are not people that are taking normal levels.
01:43:27.000These are not people that are even taking commensurate levels to their peers.
01:43:32.000Like, a lot of them are taking just these insane, insane...
01:43:35.000And some of them have come clean about their routines and what they would use.
01:44:02.000Your human body is not supposed to be that big.
01:44:06.000Yeah, well, yeah, my concern is that we should make sure we keep them safe by making sure that they understand what they're doing and how to do it.
01:44:15.000But that is a crazy sport when you think about it.
01:44:19.000I mean, some people don't even consider it a sport, whatever, an activity, whatever you want to call it, you know, because it's not like you're doing anything other than standing there looking big.
01:47:19.000Well, you know, it's like if you do a wide range of different types of studies, you know, because there's no perfect studies.
01:47:25.000But if you have all of these different types of studies and then you have the evidence coming, pointing to the same way, the same direction, it increases your confidence that this is real.
01:47:35.000And that's kind of what happened with alcohol.
01:47:37.000There have been dozens of large studies with thousands of people that have looked at folks who don't drink alcohol, those people who drink moderate doses and those who drink excessive or larger doses.
01:47:50.000And the moderate drinkers, time at the time, They are associated with all of these positive outcomes.
01:47:57.000And so it's certainly starting to increase my confidence that it's something real going on where people should drink moderately.
01:48:13.000People should take a little heroin, they should drink moderately, should do some steroids.
01:48:21.000I'm obviously not really stating your position, but there's a thing in red wine, there's an antioxidant called resveratrol, isn't that something that they've associated with health as well?
01:48:32.000Yeah, they were thinking about it was specific to red wine, but now they think it's just alcohol in general.
01:48:38.000In a perfect world, Dr. Karl Hart, if you were the drug czar...
01:48:42.000First of all, why the fuck do we have a...
01:49:40.000Yep, and that's probably why he's so—well, and he also has a personality, and the other folks who are running for the Republicans don't have personalities.
01:49:56.000And personality means a lot in this goofy country.
01:50:00.000Anyway, if someone came along and said, listen, Dr. Hart, you're obviously very educated in this subject, much more so than the average person, what do you recommend we do in this country to handle drugs?
01:50:15.000Yeah, so the first thing I do, you know, you'd be really hard-pressed to have me work in government, for once.
01:50:24.000I just want to state that, because the thing that I love about being an academic is that I'm a free man.
01:50:30.000And in government, these people talk about what they can't do because of some whatever reason.
01:50:36.000I don't understand how you look in the mirror when you say you can't do things.
01:50:39.000But If I had some influence on drug policy in this country, the first thing I would do was decriminalize all drugs.
01:50:47.000That would be the first thing that would happen immediately.
01:50:51.000Then I would change our educational sort of programming in this country surrounding drugs.
01:50:57.000All of these things that vilify the drug and say that it's the drug that causes that that would be out.
01:51:04.000People who are doing the sort of things that the government is paying for, their money would dry up if they didn't change the way that they're educating.
01:51:13.000Another thing I would do with police forces that I had control over, they would, when they confiscate drugs, their main mission is not to arrest people.
01:51:25.000The main mission is to keep people safe.
01:51:27.000Whenever they confiscated drugs, they would test them for adulterants and see what else is in that cocaine, what else is in that heroin.
01:51:35.000And it would be published in the local papers.
01:51:37.000It would be published in some local sort of form where everyone would know Avoid this type of drug or this packaging because it has this adulterant and that's not safe.
01:51:49.000Whereas something else doesn't have that adulterant.
01:51:52.000So the people would be informed immediately.
01:51:55.000Then another thing I would do, I would work on legalizing or regulating all of these drugs.
01:52:03.000Figuring out what would be the best regulated market for marijuana?
01:52:07.000What would be the best regulated market for cocaine?
01:52:11.000What would be the best regulated market for heroin?
01:53:45.000But we certainly can come back to the racism piece.
01:53:49.000But, I mean, so that sort of thing, we were expecting Obama to, his administration, to push for a one-to-one equating with crackwood powder.
01:54:50.000It's heartbreaking, actually, because we thought we would see this president be more bold about these things, raise these issues.
01:55:00.000And some of these sort of arrests are related to race, and racial discrimination is important.
01:55:09.000But one of the things that happens in our country when we start having this discussion or these discussions about racial discrimination It's that we're in this frame where poor black people, poor other people, white people,
01:55:25.000all these other people in the country who are catching the same hell are not working together as a result of keeping this conversation tied to the racial discrimination.
01:55:37.000Although racial discrimination is important in a lot of domains and we should not forget that.
01:55:43.000But there are people, there are white poor people catching the same hell for the same or similar reasons.
01:55:51.000The reason might not be conspicuously race, but it might be for other reasons.
01:55:57.000Like I said, I've been traveling all over the world and I went to Belfast, Northern Ireland, and you got a lot of fans there.
01:56:07.000Like the Catholics, although they're not really Catholics, many of these people are not really Catholics, but they're catching hell For similar reasons.
01:56:17.000You know, they're being dominated by a British sort of occupation, if you will.
01:56:23.000And they have similar problems as poor people have in this country.
01:56:27.000And so one of the things I'm struggling with is that I'm trying to get people to see how poor black people's struggles in the U.S. is connected with poor white people's struggle in Belfast.
01:56:42.000Their struggles are connected with poor peoples in Brazil.
01:56:47.000All around the globe, these people have more things in common.
01:56:52.000And then sometimes the conspicuous characteristic of race Kind of blinds us from our connection with other folks.
01:57:01.000And so I'm struggling with how to communicate this in a way that everybody can see, hey, we're in this shit together.
01:57:10.000And there are a few elitist sort of people who are benefiting from us going at each other's throat and not understanding.
01:57:19.000And then us also just playing right into it.
01:57:24.000One of the things about cocaine and heroin and ecstasy as opposed to marijuana is that marijuana obviously is really easy to make.
01:57:33.000You just put it in the ground, you water it, it grows, harvest it, it's simple.
01:58:36.000So decriminalization, thinking about Portugal and the Czech Republic, you still have the illicit markets in those places.
01:58:43.000And so people have to understand that decriminalization is not to go at the illicit markets.
01:58:50.000Decriminalization, the major reason that you decriminalize is that you don't want to put your citizens in jail and you want to encourage them to get help if they need help.
01:59:03.000But if you're worried about illicit drug markets and you want to get rid of illicit drug markets, then regulation is a way to go, legal regulation.
01:59:14.000And if you're worried about adulterants, legal regulation is a way to go because you get rid of the black market and you get rid of The potential dangerous compounds that people cut these drugs with.
02:01:12.000The presidents have taken stimulants and sedatives, as well they should, because they have to be on these different coasts, and the time change, and they have to.
02:01:24.000I mean, people who have to be in the public eye, I assure you, They are taking drugs to enhance their human experience and function.
02:01:34.000So, to go back to that, there's never been a time, it's not like an achievable goal, there's never been a time where we've gone a month, a week, a year, whatever, without anyone in this country doing drugs.
02:01:45.000So we know that the drugs are always going to exist.
02:01:47.000It would seem to me that this country that's obsessed with making money to the point where we have privatized prisons and we allow people to profit off of people being in jail, wouldn't it be a better source of income to instead tax legal sales of drugs?
02:02:03.000To make everything legal, tax it, and then you get the benefit like you got in Colorado.
02:02:09.000Colorado is the first state ever to get more taxes from marijuana than they do from alcohol, which is incredible.
02:02:16.000They made more money this year from marijuana than they have from alcohol.
02:02:22.000If we did that with cocaine and with heroin and with ecstasy and all these other drugs that we know people are already using, and we also know people are selling illegally and not paying taxes on it.
02:02:35.000It's not only people are selling coke and going, you know what, I'm a coke dealer, but I'm a responsible American, so I like to pay taxes.
02:02:48.000No one's going to do that, so we're missing out on all that tax revenue as a country.
02:02:53.000I mean, it's economically unsound to not legalize it and tax it.
02:02:58.000If you know for a fact that people are going to do it, it seems economically irresponsible.
02:03:05.000And then the idea of these public or private prisons.
02:03:08.000Private prisons are a giant issue in this country because they also lobby.
02:03:13.000And the prison unions, the prison guard unions, and police officers unions lobby to make sure the drug laws stay in place to make sure that they have work.
02:03:26.000Yeah, private prisons now, the thing is that they're all those things you said.
02:03:31.000But understand, they only make up 11% of all prison beds in the United States, right?
02:03:38.000They're going to Brazil now and they're going to some other places.
02:03:41.000And it's important that we are aware of what you just said.
02:03:45.000But we also need to be aware of places like Louisiana.
02:03:48.000I think they have the largest number of prisoners in the country.
02:03:52.000They have local sheriffs who kind of operate like private prisons.
02:03:56.000So they bid or they get these state prisoners to be housed in their jail and they receive a certain amount of money for having those prisoners in their local jail.
02:04:10.000So this is a way for the local sheriffs to generate Income, revenue, by taking the prisoners from state prisoners into their local jails.
02:04:21.000And so this technically is not private prison, but this is certainly unscrupulous.
02:04:27.000And people should be aware of this going on throughout the country as well.
02:04:31.000So private prisons are a concern, but also these local jails and local sheriffs, they're doing similar things.
02:04:38.000But legalizing drugs, though, would be financially a huge boon to our economy.
02:05:08.000Yeah, and there are people who are saying in terms of Colorado, they're saying that, yeah, Colorado is generating all of this tax revenue, but they're having to pay out a lot of it, too, because they have to enforce this new law.
02:05:21.000And so people are kind of distorting this sort of story.
02:05:26.000But I think over time, Colorado and other places is going to show that This is a huge benefit, and the benefits far outweigh the risk, I think.
02:05:38.000And similar to what's going on in Portugal, where you see the decrease in violent crime, the decrease in addiction, the decrease in all sorts of different problems.
02:05:47.000Decrease in revenues to their prisons and all those things, yeah.
02:05:51.000All the negative aspects that we associate with drugs.
02:05:54.000A lot of it is negative aspects of crime.
02:05:58.000Yeah, see the thing about Portugal too, you have to understand, in places like Portugal, Switzerland, those kind of places where they kind of take care of their people, they are more of a homogenous society than we are.
02:06:14.000And when you have a place like the United States where we're not as homogenous, like LA, you guys have every nationality, ethnic group, race, they're all here.
02:06:40.000Whereas Portugal, the Swiss, and those folks, they're such homogenous societies.
02:06:46.000They kind of care about the people in their society because the people who are in power, they see that many of the people who might be subjected to these laws, they look like them.
02:07:00.000In our society, since it's not as homogenous, It's easy for us to think about these drug laws being used to go after those people who don't share our value.
02:07:11.000That's what we say, but they really don't look like us, and they're really not us.
02:07:15.000So this can't really happen to us, because we know that there are a number of people who look like folks who are in Washington, and they're using drugs.
02:07:25.000They're using a lot of drugs, but they're not subjected to drug policy.
02:07:30.000And so it's like we have to be honest about why we have these policies in place in the first place.
02:07:36.000They allow us to go after the people we don't like without explicitly saying so.
02:07:40.000So I think overall, like as an overview, what we're looking at is we have a society that has a lot of ignorance when it comes to both the prevalence of drugs, the use of drugs, and the effect of drugs.
02:07:57.000And that ignorance is part of the problem and it's shaped not just public opinion but also shaped policy, shaped how politicians address these issues like a guy like Chris Christie that is allowed to say ignorant stuff.
02:08:12.000The reason why he's not booed off stage when he does it is for a lot of the people in the audience, they don't know that what he's saying is unbelievably ignorant.
02:08:20.000Yeah, and he kind of provides the cover for them.
02:08:23.000You know, they kind of support these things because they're not happening to them.
02:08:28.000And it's those other people who don't share their values is what they say.
02:08:40.000So Christie, when he says that, he's saying this because he's representing what many Americans think, and he's providing cover for that bigoted ignorance or that uninformed perspective.
02:08:55.000So what you're doing now with this touring all around the world, are you speaking in all these places?
02:09:03.000Yeah, you know, I spoke at the World Health Organization this past summer, universities in Belfast and London, Geneva, of course, Brazil, just down there speaking.
02:09:21.000So just doing all of these talks, I'm trying to Have these kind of conversations, trying to inform people, trying to let people know that they've been hoodwinked all around the world, and they've been hoodwinked, particularly countries that follow the U.S. drug policy,
02:09:37.000and try and expose why the countries are following this policy that is having detrimental impact on their citizens.
02:09:48.000Is it universally received or is it there's different places that are more open to it?
02:09:53.000Yeah, you know, in Brazil, for example, they have followed the U.S. wholeheartedly and Brazil has 50 percent of their population is black, right?
02:10:03.000They have like the greatest African population outside of Africa.
02:10:08.000They, in their prisons, their jails are filled with black people.
02:10:13.000And the poor people in the country are black.
02:10:16.000And their drug policy is being used as a tool to further marginalize this group, basically.
02:10:24.000And so when I go down there and speak, and I'm brought there by their government oftentimes, it's well received, even from the ruling class and the government.
02:10:32.000And so it's a conundrum to me, quite frankly, that I'm so well received there by the ruling class.
02:10:41.000But there are some people who are very interested in changing policy.
02:10:47.000Geneva and those places, what I'm saying to them, those folks there, they're like, no shit.
02:10:53.000And their drug policy is reflected, or it's more rational.
02:11:00.000Go to France, they're equally as ignorant as we are, and they use their drug policy just like we do, and they're equally arrogant as we are.
02:11:58.000But they're getting a lot of money from the U.S. to continue this war on drugs.
02:12:02.000Hasn't Mexico decriminalized a lot of things?
02:12:04.000They decriminalize everything, but nobody talks about it.
02:12:08.000Because, as I pointed out earlier, in Portugal, a person is allowed to have a 10-day supply of drugs before that triggers some sort of criminal prosecution.
02:12:21.000So you can have a 10-day supply of methamphetamine, heroin, whatever.
02:12:25.000In Mexico, you trigger a criminal offense when you have just a small amount of something.
02:12:33.000So it's like, it's really not decriminalization.
02:12:35.000You know, it's just they lowered the thresholds that trigger a criminal prosecution.
02:12:43.000It doesn't really play out in the spirit of decriminalization.
02:12:48.000So they probably did it to appeal to the United States laws or to abide by what the United States is looking for them to do?
02:12:58.000Yeah, I don't know exactly why they did it, but I know they're continuing their war on drugs in part because of us.
02:13:07.000A war on drugs is really a war on people, and particularly a war on poor people, as we know.
02:13:13.000And I'm against wars, and I'm an ex-military person.
02:13:18.000Now, if people want to see you talk, are you still traveling?