00:00:18.100And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.
00:00:23.820Our brilliant guest today is a psychologist and neuroscientist who is known particularly for his research into drug abuse
00:00:29.560and other things related to drugs. Dr. Carl Hart, a very warm welcome to Trigonometry.
00:00:34.600Thank you for having me. I'm happy to be here.
00:00:37.020It's a great pleasure to have you on the show. Listen, you're well-known in the United States,
00:00:41.420less so here in the UK. So tell everybody a little bit about who are you, how are you,
00:00:46.120where you are, what has been your journey through life?
00:00:49.260Yeah, well, as you point out, I'm Carl Hart. I'm a researcher, scientist, professor at Columbia
00:00:54.540University. My expertise are in drugs, that is studying drugs and people trying to understand
00:01:02.920the effects of drugs, what they do, what they don't do. I came to this area because I was
00:01:09.740concerned about drugs destroying my community in the 1980s. At least that's what we were told.
00:01:17.340In the 1980s, I was in the UK serving in the U.S. military and getting reports back from home
00:01:23.380where that crack cocaine was destroying communities like the one from which I came.
00:01:31.500And so I started to study psychology and neuroscience in order to have a better understanding
00:01:37.480how drugs affect the brain. I figured that if I could alter the way that drugs like cocaine
00:01:44.700affect the brain, that I could probably develop some treatments. And then if I developed some
00:01:49.880treatments, then I could start to go a long way in solving the problems that I thought were caused
00:01:57.400by drugs in my community. Problems like unemployment, violence, a wide range of problems that were
00:02:03.640attributed to drugs. Some 30 years later, I have come to the conclusion that we all got hoodwinked
00:02:12.280and I'm trying to help people to understand just how. And when you say hoodwinked, I mean,
00:02:17.800You've set up the interview beautifully because now everybody wants to hear what you have to say.
00:02:23.120What is it that you think has happened and why does the official narrative, in your opinion, not represent the truth?
00:02:31.440Well, if anybody ever watched a television program, a movie about drugs, anything about drugs, drugs are always scapegoated to be the problem.
00:02:41.520People who write movies don't have to even develop a character if we say that the person is a drug dealer. The public is already primed to think that the drug dealer is just a unidimensional bad person. There is no complexity to the person, which is nonsense. There is complexity to every human.
00:03:04.000And so I thought drugs were the problem in my community, for example, when in fact the problems are the same things that have always been a problem.
00:03:15.560Things like unemployment, things like poor education, things like lack of health care.
00:03:21.420All of these issues have always been the problems long before drugs were ever in various communities and long after drugs were in communities.
00:03:32.040These were always the problem and they continue to be the problem.
00:03:35.140And we can talk about some of my research findings, some of the evidence that bring me to that conclusion.
00:03:42.260Well, let's talk about it. So what does bring you to that conclusion, Carl?
00:03:46.540Let me give you one example. An important example is this.
00:03:51.420The vast majority of people who use drugs are not addicted. That is, 80, 90 percent of the people who use drugs never have a problem. In fact, they are middle to upper class people who are responsible. They take care of their families. They pay their bills. They pay their taxes.
00:04:08.620is in some cases, like in our case in the United States, some of those people even become president
00:04:14.920of the United States. You can think about Bill Clinton. You can think about George Bush. You
00:04:20.500can think about Barack Obama. All three of those guys reported using drugs like marijuana and
00:04:26.440cocaine when they were younger, just like many people around the globe, and they never become
00:04:32.260addicted. The people who become addicted and have problems, they have those problems because of not
00:04:39.560drugs, primarily because of the other issues in their life. Like they may have co-occurring
00:04:45.040psychiatric illnesses, co-occurring pain problems. They may have chronic unrealistic
00:04:52.640expectations heaped upon them. They may have other issues, but oftentimes we have to look
00:05:00.280beyond the drugs themselves and look at the person's environment, at the person's personal
00:05:07.460situation. But drugs are scapegoated. So we don't have to look at those more complex problems. And
00:05:14.700those are the kind of things I'm trying to share with people. Yeah, it's an interesting perspective,
00:05:18.780but isn't the problem, like with alcohol, which of course is legal almost everywhere in the world,
00:05:23.500is that 90% of people can have a glass of wine and then leave it there. But there is that small
00:05:28.780minority of people who do become addicted, whether that's genetic or whatever the cause of that is.
00:05:34.880And they are the ones, whether it's alcohol or other drugs, who are causing a lot of the problems
00:05:40.160in society, the violence, the crime, the burglaries, the whatever. And so, yes, most people don't get
00:05:46.500addicted, but the ones that do really have a terrible experience and they inflict a lot of
00:05:51.560damage on the rest of society. Yeah, you're making my point. So if 90 percent of the people who use
00:05:57.180alcohol don't have a problem, then you can't blame alcohol. I know you just said maybe it's
00:06:04.280genetics and so forth, but it'd be nice if we had some evidence to show that it's genetic,
00:06:09.880which we don't. I know people, they sometimes say, well, we have disassociation, but association is
00:06:15.400not correlation. And like I said, those problems become all the things I talked about, co-occurring
00:06:22.680psychiatric illnesses, chronic unrealistic expectations. Sometimes people were somebody
00:06:30.440in their community. They now lost gainful employment and they have no sort of prospects
00:06:35.980of regaining their previous status. All of these issues are far more important than the alcohol
00:06:42.680itself. But we act as if alcohol is the problem because it doesn't require us to look any deeper.
00:06:49.760It's a any stupid person could say, well, it's genetics without having any information that it is genetics.
00:06:57.480And so what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to help people to look deeper so the rest of us can continue to enjoy our substances.
00:07:05.900And then the rest of us can maybe help solve what is the problem with those people who are having problems.
00:07:12.920So do you think the path to having a better drug policy is decriminalization and medicalization
00:07:20.980of this problem? Emphatically, no. So we have to explain the difference between decriminalization
00:07:30.880and drug legal regulation. So decriminalization simply says that you're not going to arrest
00:07:37.920people for personal use of the substance. Selling of the substance remains illegal. That means that
00:07:45.000the people who are using substances still have to interact with a black market. There are problems
00:07:50.540with the black market, like you don't have quality control. Your substance might be tainted. In the
00:07:56.880United States, between 1920 and 1933, we had alcohol prohibition. In effect, it was kind of
00:08:05.300like a decriminalization, such as some people could get alcohol and not have to worry about
00:08:09.680being arrested. But the quality controls weren't there. And so tens of thousands of Americans were
00:08:16.020maimed or killed because of tainted alcohol, because of having to interact with the Black
00:08:21.700market. And so, no, I'm not a proponent of decriminalization, maybe as an intermediary
00:08:27.300step on the way to legal regulation. But legal regulation, you can sell it legally and you have
00:08:34.300this quality control such that people can be sure of what they're getting so what do you think needs
00:08:43.460to be done if you were in charge of the government's drug policy what laws and what regulations would
00:08:50.100you implement or would you go for a completely libertarian approach well please let's not talk
00:08:56.200about a political party or a political position because that's i'm a scientist and and so when
00:09:01.180we start to talk about libertarian conservatives or what have you, and then people start to join
00:09:07.340camps like they are on a fucking football team. Just saying, this is much more complicated than
00:09:15.220that. Because you may have to dip into all of these camps in order to come to some solution
00:09:21.580that actually works. So what I think, where I start is this. Most countries around the world
00:09:28.220have some sort of, in their constitutions, something about people's right to liberty,
00:09:35.340people's right to freedom. And part of that right to liberty deals with having the right to put in
00:09:42.720your body what you choose as an adult. And so when I think about these substances, people should have
00:09:49.260the right to put what they like in their bodies, particularly when substances actually make them
00:09:56.620feel better and happier, increasing the likelihood that they will treat other people better. That's
00:10:02.180a good thing. And so my job then as a public official will be, how do we do this in a way
00:10:09.160that keeps people safe and healthier and make sure we don't have problems with the substances?
00:10:17.860And so I would legally regulate the drugs that people are seeking, cocaine, the opioids, MDMA.
00:10:24.580I would make sure that our unit dose, that is the amount that is in a dose that's in a package, is not enough where someone can kill themselves.
00:10:36.880I would make sure that the route of administration that is available would not be, for example, intravenous.
00:10:44.160I would make sure that the route could be in a form that one could easily digest, whether it's orally, whether it's putting underneath their tongue in a way that does not cause problems like intravenous use can cause some problems.
00:11:01.060And there is no reason for intravenous use unless there is poor quality of drug.
00:11:07.920And so I would use my knowledge in pharmacology to make sure that the way that we make these drugs available enhance the safety, just like we do when we give drugs in the laboratory as part of my research.
00:11:23.600And so we can use the knowledge that we already have obtained.
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00:13:46.560I don't know that I think that that's true
00:13:48.360of cocaine and alcohol, for example, right?
00:13:50.800Well, you know, we don't have the guests about this. You're talking to a person who has given thousands of doses of cocaine to people in the laboratory and carefully studied their effects. I've given thousands of doses of methamphetamine and other drugs to people and carefully studied their effects.
00:14:09.280Other people have given thousands of doses of things like heroin to people and carefully studied their effects.
00:14:22.780I mean, people take these psychoactive substances because they make them feel better or they alter their consciousness in such a way that is desirable for that person.
00:15:25.560And now what you're saying about cocaine, please tell me what you're saying.
00:15:30.000You probably will say some anecdote that you have about some awful person who took cocaine and treated someone poorly.
00:15:39.040That's certainly possible. But in general, when people take cocaine, they feel better, just like anyone else who feel better.
00:15:47.520You're more likely to treat others better. That's just a general statement that is I don't know how one can argue with that.
00:15:56.400and carl what would you say to the argument of that look right let's say you legalize all these
00:16:02.640drugs you therefore make them more prevalent and once they become more prevalent more people are
00:16:07.300likely to take them therefore more people are likely to get addicted yeah so uh as i pointed
00:16:13.600out earlier when we think about drug addiction um the vast majority of people who take any drug
00:16:19.760are not addicted so we can't blame the drug for addiction so yeah if we want to make sure that
00:16:26.220our society is that people are not getting addicted. The way you guard against that sort
00:16:32.300of thing is that you make sure you have a healthier society. Make sure that people have
00:16:36.420employment opportunities. I mean, real employment opportunity, not just these sort of gig economies
00:16:42.620where they don't have much support. I mean, real economic opportunities. You make sure you have
00:16:47.940healthcare in your system. You make sure you have a healthier society. That's the thing that guards
00:16:52.780against having a society with fewer numbers of addiction. But let's not get it twisted.
00:17:02.220Any activity that's worth doing in this human endeavor, there is some risk attached to it,
00:17:09.360whether it's driving an automobile, whether it's flying in an airplane, whatever it is,
00:17:14.580there is some risk attached to it. And so humans who are looking for an activity with no risk,
00:17:19.740well I'm not the person to talk to because that's not the world I want to be in the activities in
00:17:26.620which I engage there is some risk and then because there is also potential payoffs that's life and
00:17:35.740those people who are looking for no risk well that's a pipe dream and I don't really deal in
00:17:41.280pipe dreams yeah that's a good point Carl I was going to say do you think part of the problem
00:17:45.880with this entire debate is that no one ever looks at the substances objectively. You've got people
00:17:52.820on one extreme of the spectrum going, if you touch weed, it's a gateway drug. And then by the end of
00:17:58.240the day, you're going to have a heroin needle in your eyeball when you're going to be mainlining
00:18:01.700it in. And you've got people on the other side who are like, no, it's absolutely fine. It's a,
00:18:05.980you know, it's a gateway, the doors of perception, William Blake, et cetera, et cetera. The fact is,
00:18:11.720we don't have a sensible and rational discussion. Absolutely. You know, my book is called Drug Use
00:18:17.840for Grownups, right? This is a conversation for grownups. And I want to have a conversation with
00:18:24.860grownups. So we have those people on those extremes. I don't have time for that. I'm now
00:18:30.08055 years old. I probably have fewer years left than I've already been here. And so I'm trying
00:18:36.560to enjoy my life and I'm trying to get at what's really important and trying to leave a mark that
00:18:43.340where people who are suffering and from those types of extremities they can have something
00:18:50.420to read that I've written and where they don't feel like they're alone but yeah I don't I don't
00:18:55.820I try to spend I try not to spend my time with people who don't play by the rules of evidence
00:19:00.820life is too short. And coming to your research, which is really the reason that we're really
00:19:08.180interested to speak with you, I guess the basic question I would have for you is why do people
00:19:13.460take drugs? It's a question that's like, why do people have sex? I mean, and beyond that sort of
00:19:20.780religious sort of nonsense reason that people give. I mean, if sex feels good, people like to
00:19:26.920alter their consciousness. Taking drugs alters your consciousness, helps people feel better in
00:19:32.660some cases, helps people be more empathetic or more magnanimous. A wide range of reasons
00:19:39.720is why people take drugs. In some cases, people take drugs out of curiosity, particularly young
00:19:45.180people. But here I'm talking about adults who kind of know something about drugs. I mean,
00:19:49.700to connect with a loved one at a level, a deeper level. They take drugs for a variety of reasons.
00:19:59.060And what about, I think Johan Harry talks about a lot about the fact that drug addiction or drug
00:20:05.540use is often a way to deal with trauma and pain. Yeah, Johan Harry talks about trauma.
00:20:11.620He talks about trauma. Yeah, there are people, for example, who are experiencing trauma, PTSD, post-traumatic stress syndrome, who see things like MDMA is beneficial for that kind of trauma.
00:20:30.460And that is true. But, you know, one of the things I try to do in my latest book, Drug Youth for Grown Ups, is to get away from the pathological frame.
00:20:41.260So, you know, so like when we talk about drugs, we oftentimes talk about it from that pathological frame.
00:20:47.360But, oh, these people are suffering. That's why they're taking drugs or these people are addicted.
00:20:51.860That's a small percentage of people. The vast majority of people who take drugs are just like the vast majority of people who take alcohol.
00:20:59.660I mean, like when someone is at the pub hanging out on a Friday evening, we don't think, oh, yep, that person's had some trauma.
00:21:09.060That's why they're at the pub. No, we think about them celebrating with their mates and having a good time.
00:21:16.340The same is true with most people who take drugs. And and that's not a mystery.
00:21:21.740It only becomes a mystery because we've been so dishonest about this conversation.
00:21:26.000and we have been dishonest about this conversation it's such a good point and we seem to have a
00:21:31.320really dishonest attitude to psychedelics particularly when you look at something like
00:21:36.080mushrooms which i think was made illegal in this country in 2005 i don't think a single person has
00:21:41.860died from an overdose of mushrooms why is it we don't have an honest relationship with drugs in
00:21:48.060general, but particularly with psychedelics? Well, I think psychedelic in general, the psychedelics
00:21:55.660have enjoyed rehabilitation of their reputation, particularly here in the past decade, in part
00:22:03.280because the writers, our reporters, people in the media, the opinion makers enjoy psychedelics like
00:22:13.640psilocybin, like LSD, like ketamine, a number of these drugs writers, our opinion makers enjoy
00:22:22.060these drugs. My concern there is that they treat psychedelics as if they are some special class of
00:22:29.920drugs, like they are somehow different or the users of those drugs are somehow seeking something
00:22:37.700different than the users of, say, heroin or cocaine or some other drug. And so I don't think
00:22:45.380of psychedelics as being special, as it's being elevated today in our society. In fact, I think
00:22:50.820that's dangerous. And that's the thing that's one of the things I write about in the new book.
00:22:56.700Psychedelics are not special. But I agree, they certainly should be available to people who find
00:23:04.040them helpful, useful, or enjoy them. They certainly should be available. But my concern is that we
00:23:09.120have started to pivot to say, this drug is okay, but this drug is not. Let me give you an example,
00:23:15.460a real life example. PCP and ketamine are chemical cousins. They are nearly identical. In fact,
00:23:24.140ketamine is made from modifying the PCP structure. They exert similar effects, but they have wildly
00:23:31.620different reputations. PCP, in the U.S., our police have told these nonsense stories about how
00:23:40.280PCP helps people to develop superhuman strengths. And so if someone's on PCP, they've said,
00:23:48.040you have to shoot them like 16, 18, 20-some times before you can subdue them. Whereas ketamine has
00:23:57.360a reputation. It's actually approved in the United States for treating depression. It has a more
00:24:03.480favorable reputation. Now, how this plays out in the United States? Police oftentimes use PCP as
00:24:10.840an excuse to kill people. In fact, last week, a Chicago ex-police officer recently got out of jail
00:24:20.360after serving three years for shooting and killing a 17-year-old kid, 16 times he shot him,
00:24:27.400even when the kid was on the ground. And the public virtually said nothing, in part because
00:24:35.120PCP was in the kid's system. And you look at the video, the kid was running away from the police,
00:24:42.700not coming towards the police. But the problem is, is that the reputation of these drugs have
00:24:48.080these wildly different sort of narratives associated with them. And so that's why I'm
00:24:54.160a little concerned when we try to act like ketamine or psychedelics are somehow unique
00:25:00.800and when in fact they are not. But there's been quite a lot of research,
00:25:05.920Cole, in showing that, and we had Dr. David Nutt, who's heading up this particular type of
00:25:12.080research, telling us about the wonderful effects that psilocybin is having on treating depression
00:25:17.820anxiety trauma so are you very much in that camp that they they can be used but they're not a
00:25:24.780panacea is what you're arguing to treat these types of conditions yeah i mean i i published
00:25:30.280papers showing that psilocybin can be used to help treat something like cocaine addiction i
00:25:37.620published paper with mdma showing how beneficial that drug can be under some condition mdma is
00:25:44.880considered a psychedelic, but really it's an amphetamine. It's not a psychedelic, it's an
00:25:49.480amphetamine, but it's been, I guess, given honorary status in the psychedelic camp because
00:25:57.820these folks enjoy MDMA. All I'm saying is that if we're going to talk about these drugs in that way,
00:26:06.180then mention the fact that the amphetamine to have been useful for all of these sort of things,
00:26:11.700like even methamphetamine is FDA approved in the United States to treat obesity, to treat
00:26:18.240attention deficit disorder. So just bring all of these drugs and don't don't act as if there's
00:26:24.320just this special category. That's my concern. Some people would say to that, though, that some
00:26:30.360drugs are worse than others. And by the way, what I would where I certainly I think would agree is
00:26:34.740that actually many of the drugs that we are legally allowed to consume are far worse than
00:26:39.080some of the drugs that are currently illegal. But wouldn't it be true that something like
00:26:44.080crack cocaine, heroin, meth are far worse and damaging to you, and alcohol, by the way,
00:26:51.960than something like marijuana, for example? So shouldn't we look at things differently on a
00:26:55.560case-by-case basis? Yeah, I think we should. I think that's a good point. But the assumption
00:27:00.960that, for example, meth is far more damaging to you, or heroin is far more damaging to you,
00:27:07.220We have to think about what's the comparison and what are we saying.
00:27:14.580So when we think about something like heroin, one of the things that we're seeing is when we think about how damaging it is, we're thinking about intravenous use, for example, for some people.
00:27:26.960And we don't need to use heroin intravenously.
00:27:30.220You can make heroin. You can use it. You can have it be available sublingually, underneath the tongue, or orally, or intranasal, some other route that probably won't have as many problems associated with it.
00:27:45.340So it depends on the route of administration.
00:28:04.500But they're taken orally in those cases.
00:28:07.860And so when we're talking about people making illicit methamphetamine, smoking it or shooting it,
00:28:14.580And you might start to see some problems, but the problem aren't necessarily the drugs themselves, but it could be the conditions under which the drug is taken.
00:28:24.300So when we think about taking drugs, it's important to talk about route of administration, the environment that drug use is occurring.
00:28:35.680And I actually I'm glad you made it because I think and this is, again, the point you've made earlier already about how we see things shown in the media and movies, etc.
00:28:45.020When I was saying, well, heroin and meth and whatever are so much more dangerous,
00:28:49.760really what I'm saying is the image in my head of a meth addict
00:28:54.080is worse than the image in my head of a chain smoker, right?
00:29:37.220or so not decriminalized, legalized all drugs,
00:29:39.360as you would, where it's working out well?
00:29:41.960No, because of international conventions, countries have not legally regulated drugs and said what countries do. They move to decriminalize drugs and they have some sort of or they have some de facto decriminalization where they're just not prosecuting or arresting people for drugs, certainly not in the levels that we are in the United States.
00:30:08.700and so I don't think that you'll get drug legal regulation until you start to see more movement
00:30:17.860in the United States. Case in point, the United States started to, various states on an individual
00:30:24.620level, started to legalize cannabis, legally regulate cannabis. Now we have at least two
00:30:32.800countries, they have legally regulated cannabis. Canada and Uruguay and Germany has said that
00:30:41.360they're planning to legalize cannabis as well. These kind of things are happening in part because
00:30:47.720in the United States, we have about 20 states that have legally regulated cannabis for adult
00:30:54.360use. And so as the United States goes, so goes the world. And Carl, you talk a lot and you put
00:31:02.480you wrote this open letter, which I read, which I thought was fascinating. You were talking about
00:31:08.240the politics of respectability, particularly when it comes to the politics of respectability
00:31:13.320around drug laws. Would you be able to talk about, first of all, explain to our viewers and listeners
00:31:18.300what is the politics of respectability, and number two, how it affects drug laws?
00:31:23.620Yeah, so when we think about drug laws in the United States, especially, people think that
00:31:28.840drugs are banned because of pharmacology, because of the sort of unique dangers that some particular
00:31:35.100drug poses based on its pharmacology. And that's just simply not true. When you go back to drug
00:31:41.740regulation in the United States, the first federal regulations were in 1914. We regulated or banned
00:31:51.360drugs like cocaine and opioid drugs. And we did so because of our fear of Black people taking
00:31:59.620cocaine. And there were media reports of people testifying before Congress who would say things
00:32:06.160like when Black people smoke cocaine or use cocaine, they became impervious to 32 caliber
00:32:14.240bullets and such that if you unloaded your six shooter into a Black person's heart on cocaine,
00:32:20.940that person would not stop. They would continue to come at you. They were more murderous and they
00:32:26.440were better marksmen. These were the stories that we told. And these stories were the primary reason
00:32:33.240that we banned or regulated cocaine at a federal level. We told similar stories about Chinese
00:32:40.860people who had come over to the United States and when it related to opioids. And so, and then
00:32:46.980And with cannabis, when we banned cannabis, we told stories about Mexican-Americans in that way.
00:32:53.860And so these are the reasons why that these drugs are banned, not because of pharmacology.
00:32:59.340Now, when we think about politics of respectability, now we think like, okay, that's racism, classism, and so forth.
00:33:06.720That participated, and that's the reason that these drugs are banned.
00:33:10.820But our racism is not limited to the dominant white culture. Our racism also occurs within those groups. So you have Black people who are equally sort of going at the cocaine or saying this nonsense about cocaine, repeating this nonsense, and trying to distance themselves from other Black people,
00:33:36.680trying to show the larger white population that we're not like them, we're better.
00:33:42.300That's the politics of respectability. In fact, they even try to police the behavior of members
00:33:48.520of their group in this way such that they don't use cocaine. So that's what I mean when I say
00:33:54.680politics of respectability, policing the behavior of members of your group in the way that you show
00:34:02.560the dominant culture hey i'm uh deserving i'm like you i'm not like those other bad black people
00:34:09.060and so that's what i mean when i say politics of respectability and and that being the case
00:34:14.800do you think we still that still operates even now because you talked about the crack
00:34:21.460emphatically yes that operates now turn on your television um you could think about hip-hop music
00:34:28.980You can think about a number of these sort of cultural promoters of information.
00:34:37.780Hip-hop disparages drugs, and they talk about the horrors of crack.
00:34:43.860They participated in getting these awful laws passed by telling these stories that had no foundations in reality.
00:34:53.340Yeah, this happens all throughout society.
00:34:56.800just watch a movie anything you'll see it but hang on but carl but also rap celebrated the use of
00:35:04.280smoking weed you know smoking blunts etc etc so it's not so they didn't just demonize one drug
00:35:10.740they also celebrated another you know you look at the chronic literally had a marijuana leaf on the
00:35:17.080cover that's right uh they celebrate the safe drug the easy choice uh cannabis now is legal
00:35:24.820And for most Americans, it's legal. That's not edgy. I know it pretends to be edgy, but it will celebrate cannabis on the one hand and vilify everything else. On the other hand, no foundations in reality.
00:35:43.820Yeah. You turn on your television now, the stories about cannabis are a lot more realistic than they were, say, 20 years ago, say, 30 years ago. A lot more realistic than 40 years ago. The only thing you saw in the U.S. about cannabis was Cheech and Chong. And now we look at that and we cringe because it was so awful. And it had little bases in reality.
00:36:08.940But people thought that was reality, and they laughed and they tolerated that nonsense. And so cannabis is not edgy. That's not hard to do when you have been allowed to say, okay, this is the way that you can act up.
00:36:28.360You can express some sort of disagreement with the general population.
00:36:35.520I mean, that's the only way. And that's the sort of sanctioned way that that's not that's you get no cool points for that.
00:36:45.160I mean, you get cool points for like following the evidence and being the only person saying that or because the evidence leads you to say that.
00:36:55.000That's real cool. The rest of that shit. No.
00:36:58.360I wish we lived in that world, Carl, where following the evidence made you cool.
00:37:04.080I'm afraid we haven't lived in that world for some time, my friend.
00:37:24.060If I said that, it'd sound ridiculous and cringeworthy.
00:37:26.700when you said that, I went, correct. But let's talk about marijuana, weed, whatever you want
00:37:33.800to call it. I don't think we're having an honest discussion about it, Carl, and I'll tell you why,
00:37:38.360because to me, we talk about marijuana, and skunk is a completely different drug, isn't it?
00:37:46.980Skunk is far more powerful, far more potent, far more likely to addict you. It's far more likely
00:37:52.400to create mental health problems push back if i'm talking rubbish because this is what i've
00:37:56.680ready i love the smile on his face you're about to get destroyed with facts and logic okay come
00:38:00.860on destroy me car yeah no i just want to i mean you're absolutely right about like we have these
00:38:06.840higher quality of cannabis so the thc level the major active ingredient in some like skunk is
00:38:14.640higher than something like a ditch weed or some nonsense that some people smoke so you're absolutely
00:38:21.820right that we have these different potencies. Now, this notion that it's more likely to cause
00:38:28.660you to become addicted, there is no evidence to support that. I know people say that. In fact,
00:38:34.620if you have a higher THC concentration cigarette, you're more likely to take fewer hits off of that
00:38:43.140joint, which is a better thing if you're smoking because then you're not inhaling as much
00:38:48.640burning weeds down your throat, which is a good thing. And this notion about more likely to cause
00:38:58.540you psychiatric problems. Now, if a novice smokes something like a skunk the first time and they
00:39:07.040have no experience, yeah, that can cause them to have more anxiety, more paranoia, and that can
00:39:14.360cause them to have some problems. But the vast majority of people, they should just chill and
00:39:19.380relax, and the drug will float away from the receptor, and those effects will subside,
00:39:26.800even if it's hours later. Now, like all of these leaps that people are making into more addiction,
00:39:34.660into more psychiatric problems, that's not, I mean, long-term psychiatric problem, that hasn't
00:39:40.500been demonstrated. And that's not necessarily even a logical conclusion. The most expedient
00:39:48.100conclusion is that just think about if you drink, if you have two drinks, you have a stiff drink
00:39:56.680with 151 rum, and then you have a drink with a lager. You're going to drink those differently.
00:40:05.100If you don't drink those differently, you're going to have some wildly different effect.
00:40:10.180If you drink your 151 rum the same way you drink your lager, that's not a good thing. And you only need to do that one time. And you know that that's not a good thing.
00:40:22.280And so most people who have just a small degree of intelligence know that. And so these people who are predicting these horrible outcomes are just divorcing what humans really do. They are acting as if humans don't learn from these things.
00:40:45.300But our education can help people too. That's one of the things that has helped when you know
00:40:50.700the amount of THC in your substance. Like in the US where we have legal cannabis,
00:40:57.260you can purchase cannabis cigarettes with varying degrees of THC in it. And if you are a novice,
00:41:05.140you know not to purchase the one with the most amount of THC because that's stupid.
00:41:09.700hey KK do you believe in spring cleaning yes but only when my wife does it in Russia men who
00:41:17.700clean are executed for not being real men which is correct well for those men who are living in
00:41:23.500the 21st century manscaped has an incredible offer for you manscaped are the global leaders
00:41:29.980in men's below the waist grooming and have forever changed the grooming game with their
00:42:48.340This is not some, you know, bizarre site I go to on the internet.
00:42:52.680Why is it that our own media and the sources of information
00:42:56.340are not being honest with us when it comes to this subject?
00:42:59.380Well, you hit on the major reason that we have this thing we call the drug war, these restrictions, because the drug war is one of the most successful jobs programs in the history of the world.
00:43:15.960Now, when we think about the media, you can write reports, articles on drugs, you can write movies, you can write a number of stories about drugs, and you can really increase the drama.
00:43:31.220And you don't have to have factual information, well, information that has been vetted.
00:43:37.820You don't have to have it. You only need to have information that makes contact with people's stereotypes about the drug. And so the quality of the control of the information in the media is not vetted as heavily as, say, when you're talking about a politician's position on some issue.
00:43:57.960It has to be heavily vetted. The vetting of drug information, it doesn't. It just has to be in line with the current stereotype view of the drug. And that's the problem. And it's easier for the writer to get their articles published. That's the real concern.
00:44:18.960So when we think about the war on drugs, we oftentimes think about police benefiting, prison officials benefiting, and we never talk about the writers, the lazy writers who benefit from this nonsense. I mean, just watch any movie related to drugs and you'll see what I'm saying.
00:44:36.660When drugs are involved, we don't have to develop the character in the same way we would have to develop other characters.
00:44:45.060And you have this unidimensional sort of view of the drug characters compared with other characters.
00:44:53.740And I was thinking about, like, The Sopranos.
00:44:57.880I love watching The Sopranos, shows like that.
00:45:00.620On a show like The Sopranos, Tony Soprano is the mob boss who kills people. His nephew, Christopher, had a drug problem, and they treated Christopher like he was a pariah, like he was the worst thing on the planet.
00:45:17.860Now, these people who are treating Christopher like this, mind you now, they kill people on a regular basis, but they were looking at him as he was a horrible person for taking heroin, but not for killing people. That's the kind of shit that we accept as viewers as if that's okay. That's remarkable.
00:45:42.820You know, when you put it like that, it is remarkable.
00:45:45.000And it leads me to the question I was going to ask you, which is, why are some drugs more
00:47:57.580But a question I suppose I would ask is why,
00:48:00.360if you were a massive alcohol company,
00:48:02.620surely the thing that would make the most sense
00:48:04.480is you encourage the legalization of other drugs
00:48:07.380and then get into that business yourself
00:48:09.220because you've already got the infrastructure to distribute it.
00:48:11.500Why aren't they lobbying for that, Carl?
00:48:13.900Well, because they are going with public opinion,
00:48:17.900just like politicians, and what they try to do is to say that our substance is not like those
00:48:28.040other drugs. In fact, we're not really a drug. I mean, they try to convince the public that
00:48:34.020they're not even a drug, which is nonsense. And so that's where they have put their efforts.
00:48:39.740And tobacco goes a step further and say, we are an agricultural product. All
00:48:47.760All of these drugs, all of these drugs we're talking about are agricultural products.
00:48:52.760But you don't hear folks using that kind of language because but the tobacco companies have years of experience with this.
00:49:03.040Carl, why do we look at people who take drugs, people who sell drugs, but mainly people who take drugs and in fact drug taking as a whole as a moral issue?
00:49:16.640we tend to look at people who take drugs as immoral why do we do that
00:49:22.260we have convinced the public the regular common person in the public that
00:49:30.360your value is attached to your ability to abstain from these pleasures this sort of
00:49:45.020Protestant work ethic. You resist, you abstain, and you work hard, and you don't have these
00:49:59.160unearned pleasures. And so we've convinced the common person of this nonsense. And so the common
00:50:09.220person can say, well, at least I don't use drugs. You know, I may not have the job that I want. I
00:50:17.500may be a horrible person. I treat my significant other poorly, but I don't use drugs. I mean,
00:50:24.780you can see this. One of the things that used to make me laugh in the 1980s is that
00:50:29.880some hip hop artists, they do these public service announcements about staying off drugs.
00:50:36.220Back in the 80s, I was a DJ and I did some shows with Run DMC and we got high together at a show like smoking some weed, some little lightweight stuff.
00:50:49.300And then like a few weeks later, I see Run DMC in a public service announcement saying something like.
00:50:56.440What's up? We're Run DMC and our rap's about something which is no doubt when it comes to drugs.
00:51:01.360just say no. We've teamed up with the Drug Enforcement Administration and millions of
00:51:06.120people who won't fool with drugs. Not now, not ever. Who wants to be involved with something
00:51:10.920that can rob you of your job, your future, your self-respect, your family, even your life? Nobody
00:51:16.760does. That's why, where drugs are concerned, the only thing to do is just say no. Kids stay off
00:51:25.080drugs, you know, don't do drugs. And meanwhile, some of these folks are doing horrible things,
00:51:31.540but you're excused if you say, stay off drugs. And so drugs have been that sort of activity
00:51:39.180that people can use and say, at least I don't do drugs. I may be a horrible person, but I don't do
00:51:45.580drugs. What do you think about the conspiracy theorist position, Carl, which I've migrated to
00:51:51.640more and more over the pandemic, just with everything.
00:51:54.360Yeah, it's because you've been smoking a lot of weed, man.
00:54:09.800But when I read about tens of thousands of people who are being butchered every year,
00:54:14.120when I read about some of the horrific atrocities that are happening, that's when I start to
00:54:19.520go, well, look, I appreciate that I think legalizing drugs will have certain negative
00:54:24.360trade-offs, but at least it will take away these billions of dollars that are currently
00:54:30.440going to some of the worst human beings in the world only because there's a profit to
00:54:35.020be made and that profit is only able to be made because these drugs are illegal.
00:54:39.800Yeah, I mean, when we think about horrible people in the world, you should probably look at some of the people who are leading our countries, yours, mine, other countries. I think those people are equally horrible. But the problem is, is that they have these media machines that don't show them in the negative light that we see so-called drug cartel leaders are shown. And so I think we should be careful about.
00:55:04.900Well, hold on. So what do you mean? So-called drug? Are you saying there's no drug cartels?
00:55:08.660No, no, no. There are drug cartels, but the ones who we prop up as the evil folks. I mean, I'm not defending them. This is more an indictment of people like your leader, Boris Johnson and Biden.
00:55:22.740What I'm saying is that these people are equally horrible in terms of having people killed and that. So that's what I'm saying. Now, when we think about legalizing drugs so that you take away the black market, yeah, you certainly will take away that black market.
00:55:43.560But it's frankly naive to think that we're going to take away black markets in general, because as long as there are people who are suffering and they are not allowed to participate in the sort of mainstream economy, people will seek alternatives.
00:56:03.400I think about in places like Brazil. I spent a lot of time in Brazil. There are a lot of people who've been shut out of the mainstream economy. And some of those people are in drug trafficking. But drug trafficking is not only what they do. These organizations do a wide range of things. And so when we focus our attention only on the drugs or the trade, again, we're missing the mark and we are following that easy story. It's a lot more complicated than that.
00:56:33.400So you don't think if we legalized the drugs, cocaine, etc., etc.,
00:56:40.480in your opinion, would it fundamentally change the black markets in Mexico?
00:56:45.180Or do you think these people will then just go work in other black markets
00:56:49.220because they've been ostracized from society?
00:56:51.760They're already in other black markets.
00:56:53.840I mean, this notion that they are just drug traffickers, that's nonsense.
00:56:59.440I mean, just like the tobacco companies,
00:57:01.040When we really started to put the pressure on the tobacco companies in the 1950s and
00:57:06.84060s, the thing they did was that they diversified your cereals, your sugars, all of these sort
00:57:22.980And that's what these folks have done.
00:57:24.540And so when we focus on just the drug markets, that's not very smart.
00:57:31.700And, Cole, what do you think the future holds now for drugs?
00:57:34.980Do you think it's going to be a steady case of, you know, legalization and we're going to have a far more sensible approach to it?
00:57:42.160Or do you think we're going to we're going to carry on with this quite infantile way of discussing a very serious subject?
00:57:49.780I think we're going to continue with our infancy with some drugs.
00:57:54.620most of the drugs of cannabis will be moved out. And we will continue to see growing legal
00:58:03.480regulation around the world as governments and think that they can make money off of that one.
00:58:08.820But these other drugs, I don't see the stupidity stopping in any way, which is unfortunate. That
00:58:16.240means that a lot of people are going to unnecessarily die. That's not a good note to end
00:58:22.780So let me, before we ask you a couple of questions from our supporters on Locals, let me ask you a final question, which is always the same.
00:58:31.100What is the one thing that we're not talking about as a society that we really should be?
00:58:36.600So in my latest book, Drug Use for Grown-Up Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear, the thing, I started out to write a book, a love story about love and how drugs have these tremendous beneficial effects
00:58:51.500and how drugs can enhance your sort of understanding, empathy of other people.
00:59:04.720And you can never talk about love when you're talking about drugs
00:59:09.760because everybody wants to talk about addiction
00:59:12.620and these problems that are a minority of drug effects.
00:59:17.500It's like saying, hey, let's talk about, I want to talk about cars.
00:59:21.500You know, I'm a car enthusiast. And then the audience only wants to talk about car crashes. And so we're not talking about love. We're not talking about the empathy and the sort of generosity that occurs when people are in these states.
00:59:40.980And I think that's what we should be talking about more. And I try to do that. But invariably, I get I have to go. I'm a university professor, but I'm always asked to teach elementary students, school, primary school students. And it's maddening because I want to teach university at the university level.