#698 - Dr. Carl Hart

Sep 21, 2015

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

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Aviston educator an author and he has one book that's out right now

forgot the name of it I think it's what is it called Jesus Christ high price a neuroscientist journey of self-discovery the challenges everything you know about drugs society and more it is an excellent book and he's just an all-around awesome dude so without any further Ado please welcome my friend dr. Carl Hart

The Joe Rogan Experience

welcome back dr. heart good to see brother hold a sucker right up to you right there that's because I was in Mexico City and in my hotel room is only like two different channels that speak English town while I'm forced to watch Fox News and I saw you on the Bill O'Reilly show those klusterfuk shows where they have one person like Bill O'Reilly show host and then they have all these boxes with all these different people and Everybody's Talkin over everybody and the whole thing only last like 3 minutes you got maybe like a half a sentence out before you got interrupted

I don't even remember what the topic was it must have had something to do with drugs and addiction they brought you on right yeah I think I did that episode was drugs and texting addiction addiction really that's what it was it degenerated into texting addiction yet

Jesus Christ was marijuana or something I don't know whose initial e right about what they were concerned about the number of marijuana users the new high number and then the thing is is that I was trying to make clear that the numbers of marijuana users today it's considerably lower than that what they were in 1978 or 1980 but they weren't aware of the information for 1978 or 1980 in this case the percentage of high school students who were reporting marijuana use in the past 30 days of the past year I recently found out that there is a hundred million Americans in 1970 then there are today yeah that sounds about right yeah it is fucking crazy if you really stop and think about that mean 40 whatever years ago

hundred million less people more kids more percent higher percentage percentage of Americans who were smoking or using any illegal drug was about 1978 to 1980 by that time. It hasn't been anywhere near that high today it was probably like right after the Nixon Administration like an idiot probably had everybody just doing drugs when you got a present that's that messed up gets busted with weed a Watergate and you know all just all the foolishness and involved in his administration I bet he let people do drugs but you know it there the whole lot of theories about it but you know one of the reasons that people became too stressful of government and things that government was saying so not only that kids were experimenting and is sick season this sitting in this was later in the 17 they were still experimenting and being Des

Trussville the government so it's not surprising but the thing is is that even then drug use rates weren't that high really I mean because the people who were using marijuana at the time they're not running the countries are now doing very nice responsible positions and so it's not a big deal that people use drugs in fact you know I'm working on a new book and the thing is is that what I'm going are you in the new book is that more people should be using drugs

like when you say more people should be using drugs his a thing about I hate the term I had those two terms that I have a real problem with I don't hate them but I think they're there their weighted addictions one of them been drugs is another one because addiction is like when you start talking about addicting being addicted to texting I have friends that are definitely they definitely are inclined to check their phone way too much like they feel compelled when they're in traffic they could feel like that it is a red light and they're like oh good let me check my phone like I'm at a red light like Jesus Christ what the fuck is going on but I think that's an Impulse it's just a foolish pattern of thought to call that an addiction and then to call like alcoholism the same thing where you can literally die if you stop drinking well that's crazy this these are not the same things yeah but you know when we think about addiction it's a simple sort of definition that we use in medicine in the definition is that does it

how's you what your minutes amount of the stress and is it disrupting your social occupational your family so the functioning. That's kind of it I mean so people can indulge in a behavior every day multiple times a day but they're handling their responsibilities and they are not too stressed about this Behavior they wouldn't meet criteria for addiction where is 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 destruction surrounding that drug use and they made me cry teria for addiction whereas I could be using cocaine everyday but handling my responsibilities I'm not to stress by it I don't have these problems are related to it I'm not an addict even though I'm using it everyday so addiction has to do with social disruptions and being distress not actual amount of use or how many times you're engaged in the behavior but this sort of definition dismissed upon

mini of people in there in the general population most people think that if you don't use it you're an ice if you don't do something everyday like I had a friend who is a longshoreman any work with this guy that would shoot heroin everyday at lunch and that always freak me out cuz the guy showed up for work everyday on time he was a responsible guy he was married he had children and 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 that last you know he gets an hour lunch break and he would come back and go to work and I would like everyday use everyday like I did it everyday well you know this past summer the past 3 months or so I was in Geneva I just got back in the States and I was working in a heroin Clinic where they administer heroin every day 7 days a week twice a day to people who meet criteria

heroin addiction and when I say they administer heroin I don't mean like small doses I mean doses that go up to like a gram add a thousand mg of a lot more than what people use here in the states typically and these people who are getting heroin everyday a large percentage of them also go to work a large percentage of them have families and they're taking care of their responsibilities they are just as their treatment and this is a treatment that works for them but their treatment include two daily doses of intravenous heroin

7 days a week you know n and so like when I think about what one of the reasons I went there and I'm glad I did this because of the way we think of heroin in this country we think of it as such as evil draw and that's just American mythology and that's just wrong that's ignorance and but that's how many including drug experts in this country think of heroin but that's his we have all of this great technology but we're so ignorant when it comes to many of these drugs heroin administered intravenously on a daily basis is not it's not devastating No in fact some people would do better by having the daily doses of daily dose of heroin or another opiate no it was not devastating even me the fuck man that's got to fuck you up like taking heroin everyday it's been all over the world and this whole journey

people do with the drugs that with drugs they're using and how they do it it's been so I opening even for me someone who has spent their life study and drugs and I'm learning so much more about the Switz experience about the Dutch also do this there's some parts of Germany that does Disney have small programs in in the UK they had Small Program there other countries but the Swiss by far has the biggest program they've been the most successful they've been doing this for more than 20 years now and they started doing this in response to HIV concern people worried about an HIV so they had to do something had to have clean needles to have to make sure that the drugs were pure so they worry about death HIV all of those things in this was a rational response would have put it in the medical community where people got treatment and in along with their heroin and they have no plans of going back because it works

that's hard for Americans to swallow right and it is it because of all the propaganda we've been fed is because just a misinformation mean you would say propaganda but even me someone who's up a prodrug for the most part person I would say God of a heroin everyday is probably going to fuck you up Ashley there are people who are used who used this is part of propaganda but then part but I don't think they're trying to use this popped and they're closed many people but then there are other people just think about some of the film Trainspotting you think of a numb these filmed all those feelings now can't use that salacious story anymore it's not reality but it makes great films and make great sort of subject for documentaries when we think about musical Heroes and people who say they were misunderstood

I mean no use heroin because it's a rational soda to use of the drug when you think about its ability to decrease anxiety its ability to like make people or have people relaxed and just be in a space where they finally can get some peace when you think about all of the things that many of these sort of musical icons of these great artists have to deal with it's rational it makes rational since the thing that I'm trying to do is see how do we how do we allow people to do these things and be safe how do we still keep him stay because people going to do it that's a fact I mean we've been trying to get rid of heroin in our country for sometimes but every year we have 100 to 200 thousand do heroin use it every year that number has not changed for 40 years and I don't expect it to change is that number hasn't changed but the population has increased how does that work what that's why it's like between 100 and 200000 every year

that that mean it's been it's been fluctuating between those numbers but the point is it that we got to have a substantial proportion of heroin users new heroin use these a new heroin use every year and 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 and I've known many people I buy First Coast family members that have ruined our lives getting fucked up on pills and I want to say addicted but now I'm reluctant to say addicted but what maybe somewhere predicted I mean play me sad that that that describe some people but but please understand the majority of people who use those pills use them responsibly and they know what they're doing but there are people like you said who ruin their lives that's a result but the thing that we have to think about is that if the majority of the uses of these pills are fine and then you have this subset the smallest subset

or not it tells you that it's not the pills but by that same token there's still some issues I have with the way we have our pills or the way we do our pills in this country opiate pills we put acetaminophen in these pills and which I am not a fan of having the seat of medicine in those fields because the seat of medicine is the number one reason for liver toxicity and so sometimes if people really want to push your dose of their opiate they have to get even more acetaminophen that would that's the more dangerous of the two in no situation this situation why do they put acetaminophen in the pill what is the function of it is stated that they put acetaminophen in the pill because it's an added pain reliever but I don't think that's the real reason I think the real reason that is in the pill is think of it this way the California highway I think the maximum speed limit is like 65 or 70 now imagine if someone design

car in Flathead tires on it that blew out when you reach 75 miles per hour so it's like the safety valve so you blow out the tires or somebody exceed the speed limit I think acetaminophen is in the pills and opiate pills for that reason you take too much you blow out your liver you die really so you think they put it in there for added liver toxicity to make sure people don't take too much of the opiates I think is in there yet to discourage the use of opiates absolutely problem because when you think about even other countries like Geneva or Switzerland in the EU don't see acetaminophen in these medications like they are here you certainly don't have people prescribed him like they do here with the acetaminophen you know it's like you don't need that in there if you want somebody to take an additional pain reliever you prescribe it or you tell him

recommended but you don't need the number one reason for liver toxicity in a with opiate I think is there to have people blow out their livers or do to discourage people from taking more opiates so would that be to alleviate the responsibility to make sure that less people have opiate addictions like what what yeah so it's like it okay if you know that you if you if you take too much acetaminophen then that would discourage you from taking the the opiate that's what I think the reason it wow that seems weird to me that seems like they would have had to of had a paper trail in order to me it seems like that that has to be something that would be discussed like I said the reason is that it provides an additional pain reliever and I'm saying it doesn't make any sense if you want to have that additional pain reliever simply give somebody acetaminophen or ibuprofen or something

but you don't need to put it in with Riot each other so would they do that to make some sort of a proprietary blend or something like that where their pills would be different than others that make any sense now because these things are all generic now so there's no one making tons of money at the result of this stuff in the United States think about you've heard of Vicodin Vicodin is I think oxycodone and acetaminophen Percocet perks that actually is oxycodone vicodin hydrocodone and acetaminophen but all of these Percocet Percocet and Vicodin all of these things have acetaminophen in it so I don't have a lot of experience with opiates but I did get a knee surgery once and they gave me this morphine trip to give him this whole thing that you could press anytime you want that didn't have acetaminophen

that button but that did not say that didn't have acetaminophen in it like you say you press that button and then you probably needed it and that's cool and you were successful you doing your thing you have a successful podcast amine. Luckily I don't know man skip the cabin with that button might be still in the hospital bed you noticed I'm just walking around but I do have a friend that broke his nose my friend Brendan shop he broke his nose and they put them on those pills they put them on oxycontin's after the game I know surgery and his friends want to take him away from after a couple months he was taking him all day because like I said trouble but the vast majority of people don't but the problem is that people think they're simple reframe is that it's these pills it's not these pills so you think that some people just have that sort of thing

pulse of behavior and that behavior could manifest itself and drinking too much coffee or can manifest itself and taking those pills or it's essentially the behavior that's an issue more than it is the actual substance of the medicine well you know people over-indulging activities for variety of reasons and if we really want to understand why they do it we have to understand that individual person situation and not often times with too damn lazy to do that and it's so much easier just to blame the truck but when we blame the drug there are some serious consequences and that's what I'm saying it's like the consequences it's that now we have this new legislation we have this new effort to go out the people who use these drugs and that consequence though those consequences are inappropriate and then so that's why I try to get people to be like one look at the individual person situation what happened with that person cuz it ain't the drug I assure you that

that's it's fascinating that in Switzerland they're doing that Geneva that's where you said it was well Geneva Zurich burn throughout the major cities in Switzerland and they're giving them these high doses do they have a program if they want to wean off these people want to stop doing it this program is for people who want to stop people who want to continue they also have methadone they have buprenorphine to have other sort of treatments as well but they just this is just one of many options that's all and the methadone is what we always heard of in America liquor I think I told the storm last time you were here but I used to play pool at this place is right next to the methadone clinic and these people that would go and they get their methadone and then come over and play pool and they just look like zombies would call them methadone Ian's as we speak but they would come over just zoned out and they were just fucking out of it and this guy that I work with was saying was like you know that

don't shit to give him is actually worse than heroin and I was like that doesn't make any sense why would they just give him heroin what I mean that's a question that the Swiss at why don't you dare read their their answers to that question I mean you will use you said that methadone was probably worth it certainly can be for some people cuz of the half-life of methadone is a lot longer it lasts forever it stays in your blood for a long time compared to heroin so some people say well you know I don't want to have a long-acting opiate such that it makes me feel kind of slow that's why I want to use heroin as opposed to methadone where's other people methadone work for that's fine whatever works but then there are people who said what you give folks what they want and that's what the Swiss say in in this case would heroin they'll be some heroin users who said I want to get off of heroin I want to do whatever I can do to get off

because I don't want to shoot a needle for example and methadone works well for them buprenorphine works well for them but then there are other people who just say no I want to continue to use heroin with the needle and as an adult you should have that right you should have that option you that is the issue right isn't it because 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 something I really been focusing on a lot lately because I've been educated my kids about how much sugar is in things it's really hilarious because of my seven-year-old was talking my five-year-old yesterday and she's like there's no of sugar in that and having a conversation about this thing that she wants to drink it supposed to be healthy she's like reading it does 9 grams should I like to see a seven-year-old do that on my Wow's is kind of cool but sugar can fat people

for sure and I know a lot of people that are addicted sugar not just compelled to eat it but it actually changes their gut Flora you know the actual the floor inside their body craves this to the point where these people that gets they get crazy for it people get really crazy for sugar and it's just causing all sorts of the health consequences but no one wants to say hey we should Outlaw can you know what should say that right it's not right that I have in my closet over here and that little kitchen we could go in there and just chug those bottles and we'd all be dead did finest all dead that's crazy right now but we won't do it but we just drove a car here I mean I could have just driven that car off of a cliff. But we don't do that because we are adults and we are

with these drugs but the thing is is that one of the things that concerns us about sugar is that for so long we've been lied to about the role of sugar and disease men so people didn't realize that sugar was causing all these problems and then so people felt like they would miss that that's okay now we have better education so now you make these decisions with your eyes open the same could be dumb which drugs you make these decisions with your eyes open you're an adult you certainly can get in trouble with this particular drug is a particular drug but here's how you do it there safely you certainly can get in trouble with sugar but here's how you can do it in a way that's reasonable and I'm more safe than not and through education instead of by demonizing things and by Propaganda and I think being moralistic that's you know it's stupid we are very judgemental and moralistic about a number think that I think that the drug issue is ideal for the Apache waiting on me

ilysm that Say It Isn't So Weird one to ride because I don't drink wine in church to serve one that's fucking I don't know I'm pretty sure that's the supposed to signify the blood of Christ right is that it yeah it's booze it up for Jesus but it's some which is where we were very strange and what we allow and don't allow other adult human beings to do and that that really gets to the heart of all this and then we're also very squeamish about the idea of needles and when you say this program in Geneva super successful in the giving people intravenous heroin 2000 mg a day on my needles Cheese's you know that's that's something that the actual administration of it like the method of administration makes people squeamish

no but we give needles in hospitals we do those sorts of things and one of the things about this program that's nice is that they have clean needles they have clean drugs and so it decreases the likelihood that day we have abscesses and also some things or other blood-borne illness it's or concerns they are decrease in fact people are more healthy being in these programs of obviously the not being in these programs so that date they have made me Dave convince me so intravenous heroin can an effect act out in a lot of the ways that maybe some prescription drugs like Xanax or maybe some antidepressants do with a alleviate the anxiety that certain people have oh yeah I mean heroin so these people have to tell you they have psychiatric illness some of them have schizophrenia and some of them have depression to have a wide range of illness it's just like any other identified addicted population her one for example helps people

and in many cases control their soda psychotic behavior Sarasota delusions and tell her when can be a very useful drug in a wide range of soda for fried range of symptoms we know this at least people in medicine old is well let me clarify these people in medicine outside of the United States know this this is it this is not anything that's earth-shattering a groundbreaking what is the difference between the education that they receive outside the United States and inside the United States just to buy us that we have about certain medicines yeah we are we cannot divorce hour drug education from our social control and some we think about how drugs or policy has been used to go out the groups that we don't like and if we're not a part of the out-group we just kind of except this information on critically and we went all that people who

is heroin they have those issues and they're not like us there those people and why is why should we question we don't know them very well and we see people putting a needle in their arm and something must be wrong with that and so you can tell all of these incredible story Physicians believe the stories in this country are medical experts or addiction experts believe this sort of stuff but it's not true it's not reality and so that's one of the reasons that I travel and not continue to travel and to learn and I'm learning so much about my body sees that I held and that I'm trying to get rid of I'm trying to really just focus on the evidence so in a sense like the United States is very unique in its in its propaganda and then unique and it's sort of singular of you on drugs but given that we have such a big military it's hard for us to be unique because other countries without military my in arm

we kind of tell them what they think too so we're not you need to know there's one off of South America or large portion of South America even some places in Europe Asia you know number places share our screwed up views on drugs because they've been told to share out screwed up Jews because they get some money for having these screwed up to you so I we support various programs in Columbia about drugs eradication of drugs and all around the world so 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 was best for the people of the United States and they don't just accept the propaganda without thinking about their population have you seen the new TV show Fear The Walking Dead it's like the new spin-off that's in LA

I have not no I mean I've been away from the United States so I watched it and thought immediately of you because there's a character in it that's a heroin addict this young son is a heroin addict and while he was in the spoiler alert everybody if your fan of the show and you haven't watched any of the app I don't know what spoiler alert here comes fast forward the kids a junkie and he's in this this drug den and he's shooting up in this chick he's friends with turns into a zombie and start eating people's faces and shed and they came to a halt to do you get him to the hospital right here they've got to the hospital for days right he's a little sick at first and then he seems fine and then his his withdrawals kick it is Cravings kicking like fucking days later like days later you can't take any more shaking and throwing up all over himself and he falls to the ground he has seizures and throws up on himself

Lego the kid was fine a day ago like 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 it's like getting sick and then it goes away and everything else is just sort of in your head the Verity can can can vary based on to extend the alarm people been using the truck obviously but yeah it's the flu basically and you're not going to die and all of these sort of dramatic characterizations that we see on TV it's the sell their product it's really to sell their product and the problem is is that people get educated on that boy on that sort of stuff about that I was on a Riley my best

Have You Oughta Riley YouTube been interrupted 150 times already he got a 30 commercials yeah this this kid in the show his mother actually breaks spoiler alert spoiler alert his mother actually breaks into the school to get pills for him into the school to get pills for her son and she's going to lick slowly wean him off with these pills but the fucking kid was normal just a day ago you know, it's too hard for me to watch the other stuff you know on the one hand it's like I'm trying to be a regular Citizen and just you know appreciate art of people do but then on the other hand it's just that I just know the consequences of that rubbish you know the consequences that it gives some idiotic politician raison d'etre so weird I feel like this is their reason for being now than they can go after this drug

because I saw it on this off of TV show the real issue is like many people the writers and the producers probably aren't heroin user so 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 there's or just repeating that no I'm glad you if you point out that you can have a good TV show but get the drug issue wrong wrong obviously but a lot of us have this idea and I I swear before I met you I mean in and I'm a person whose I'm not averse to drugs I thought of it all as I thought heroin like oh yeah man you can get addicted you do it once you're addicted and then you're Fox it just somehow or another becomes a part of you

that'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 yeah I mean again but if we go back to the definition that I talk to to start at where when we think about social disruption disruption of family function work than that sort of thing and it's causing you distress you can clearly see how somebody might be addicted to marijuana low percentage of people become addicted to marijuana but you certainly can see that somebody might get too stressed about a marijuana use Pine-Sol on so they can meet criteria for addiction but when you compare marijuana addiction to alcohol nicotine cocaine or any other drug it slower than all the rest of those drunk but certainly it's possible that somebody has some distress and have cycle social disruptions and functioning so the disruptions and functioning is what really

identify someone as being an addict but if someone is a person who's using heroin on a daily basis but shows no destruction in their life shows no problems with their of their social situation or their job function or anything like that but then they get off of it because if they get off of it or they try to quit cold turkey and then they get all fucked up because of that will you have to come qualify them or if that's just one criteria withdrawal symptoms of only one criteria you have to have let me know it's only one symptom so you have to have several symptoms in order to meet criteria for addiction but if you only have withdrawal that's not an addict I mean could you can think about somebody who's taking an antidepressant medication or somebody who's taking morphine for pray all those people can experience withdrawal but we won't call them and that it I mean it's just like withdrawal it's just a common sort of drug effect after a long term use of a drug caffeine withdrawal

these things are I mean when people have a hangover oftentimes that that's a cute withdrawal that's just an acute sort of manifestation of withdrawal symptoms but we won't call them and alcohol it simply because they went out and partied for a couple of nights that's it and so withdrawal is not the not the only criteria that we used to determine the diction but most people would give me the most people would be wrong problem here I come. They are looking only at what's wrong with you what's wrong it's not a big deal it's only becomes a big deal when we're talking about alcohol withdrawal from chronic alcohol use or we were talking about barbituate withdrawal from chronic used because the person can die outside of those drugs I mean. Those are the only eats or more commonly used drugs that we worry about withdrawal the rest is there you'll be fine

way 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 yeah but like you said that date they use it wrong so many cups of coffee is actually helping them to maybe do their job better and not disrupting a job the coffee is even is helping them in their human function will the last time you were here you explain something that really I never knew either it's that that they thing you just discussed that Ed withdrawal is actually or a rather a hangover is actually your body with drawing like the compensatory mechanisms your body uses to deal with the alcohol in your system that's what the feeling of being hungover is is your body just withdrawing from that certainly that. Certainly that can be a symptom of withdrawal The Hangover absolutely I mean you you put a foreign substance into your body and your body tries to adjust try to maintain use we call the homeless

is this is a normal response and then alcohol is half life is so short that it's in the body and then before your body gets a chance to adjust completely it's gone but your body is already over compensate and so what you're saying is this expression in some cases how difficult is this like when you if you tried to discuss this like the Bill O'Reilly crowd like that. There's a lot of people that are not going to swallow this definition like their idea of definite did their definition of addiction is very different than what you're saying you know like it before we before we will not hear you and I was talking a little bit of this past summer I've been all over I mean this past well since I saw you last I've been everywhere I've been all over the globe and one of the things that when I give these talks when people say I heard you on the Joe Rogan show you know all of 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 I know that they are thinking people I know that these are people who look for information outside of the normal sort of source of information and 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 whereas 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 Reese I mean not necessarily O'Reilly himself but some of the people who watch him and so I'm trying to reach the general public the people who come to watch your show the people were into what you do to the common folk who are out there which was struggling and are trying to learn and I think if we reach them the politicians will follow them not the opposite of way around and so my least favorite people to talk to our politicians I mean it's as an adult me and you we you like to talk to people who take you seriously particular when you're respecting them politicians often times don't give a shit about you they only care about their votes and how they can use you for those votes

you know it's insulting to me to talk to people it in that way and so I try to avoid them coming here to this place I know that they'll be people out here who listen to you who struggle with this and but they will evaluate it based on its merits and 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 you the best evidence win and everybody understands those rules and those are your listeners that's not the politicians that's not the talk show host those are not those people and so they're just not the people who I'm trying to reach

an internet and it helps to keep me sane because I can't deal with people who don't use evidence or don't play with evidence is part of the rules about I make sure that I don't engage in conversations with people that don't abide by The Rules of Evidence that's a great quote and I agree with you about politicians to because essentially politicians just go where the wind of public opinion goes and so many of them they have a team of people deciding what they're talking about team of idiots often to her and unfortunately those people often times bill when these politicians don't get involved in debates or get involved in some sort of a public function with are discussing something or giving a speech and they can say things that are just absolutely an accurate and those things when people aren't really Discerning or they don't have the time maybe to go over the evidence he's

I'll take that as fact yeah I know you know that's this is why I continue to be out here because when people make those kind of statements based on no evidence in there just lies there just inaccurate the consequences of those lies and then that receives are so great and they're so many poor people who pay the price for it that'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 I mean I'm a 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 of poor information often times whether they want to be or not I think all they want to do is get elected and staying power in and then serve whoever paid for their campaign that's it that's exactly it it's a terrible system if you think about it that way that's it that's it it's a terrible system that's why I'm glad you do your thing and I'm glad

that people all around the world are checking you out won't know when you're on these travels and you're going around the world did you go to Portugal what all did you talk to anybody from there I talk to people there like how officials there but I haven't been to Portugal yet and you know I think you bring up Portugal because they decriminalized all drugs so too did the Czech Republic to Czech Republic did it before Portugal but we all know about Portugal yeah so that's a good thing I mean it's just simply means that people can't be arrested for drug possession and drug possession is considered like a 10 day supply of drugs in Portugal which is a good thing and then there are other places around the world that people are doing other Innovative things like in South Paulo Brazil the mayor of mum maragheh Dodge is paying drug addicts or drug users penguin the salary giving them housing giving them food 3

bills and that sort of thing to make sure they show up for work and then and then if they're coming to work that means they're not getting in the other activities until he's trying to keep his certain areas of his City safe doing that and then we talked about the Swiss and we and 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 we still concerned about moralism even though there have been some states that have said as you well know Colorado Alaska Oregon Washington they said that we going to legalize marijuana for adults and they have and I suspect California will vote in November 16 to see if they want if they want to do the same thing so

despite the sort of moralism we still have some people out here pushing for Progressive rational adult sort of drug laws and so I hope we continue to see this when I look at the current state of politics in America and I look at what we call our leaders and the way they discussed drugs what what I'm looking at is it's almost like they're trapped in an ancient way of thinking it doesn't work anymore because of the internet because of the internet we are we have so much access to information now we have we have we have a freedom to actually find the truth so I quote you were talking about where people have these misconceptions and then you come on and you give the absolute truth fact base evidence and you for still like examine like why do I have these assumptions in my head why do I have to confront these when I talk to you

first time like why do I have these ideas in my head that if I really researched them is this something that I am I out there in the field talking to people that are a text talking to people to treating them absolutely no no this is just Trainspotting this is just you know but popular culture politics given to giving speeches that that's all I know of it and I think our base of understanding is expanding now I agree I mean thank you I mean because of what you doing obviously these alternative media forms right I mean the one I think about coming to your shelf my publicist in those people that wasn't on the book ready radar on which is a mistake but I mean we know better now people are are learning now so that's really encouraging to me that we have these Alternative forms of media out here on the one hand but will you you made the you made a point it's it's it slipped my mind now we can we can go

I forgot the point about politics being stuck in the Sun so 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 that bush and Christy and they were saying how they would bring the federal government in to change what's going on in Colorado Chris Christie guy you know that kind of logic and thinking

I think that if he actually got the nomination that wouldn't happen but I don't know if they have to save these kinds of things but it would be nice if the American people really punish these idiots who say things like that because on the one hand we think about the folks of Colorado taking this boat and the whole issue of states rights and this is what the Republicans say they really like I don't mean to go out the Republicans or cuz I think they're the same as Democrats quite frankly so it's not that's not knock on them as a party but when people talk about states rights right that's what this is the state have decided and soda public the American people should really slammed idiots who say things like they're going to go after State what about this issue of states rights I mean and so I think Republicans and democrats should really go out to these people for sinks

remarks like that Chris Christie in particular because a lot of things he says totally inaccurate and then on top of it what is his concern I'm assuming his concern is the health consequences of marijuana use will the health consequences of being a gigantic fat fuck or way worse than the health consequences of marijuana use and that guy is morbidly obese and he's talking about people who smoke a plant that makes him happy that's ridiculous the idea that you're going to take that right away from responsible adult like me like I'm I don't know how old he is but I don't think he's much older than you know I feel you're not hear you but I love you I'll rage about this I mean but this is how this is what Americans have to do about heroin about cocaine so that's why I said it it's a tough sell but people think of coke is due to won't shut the fuk at the parties want to start businesses with you want to tell you about some shit that they never really did that's what people think about

Coke the assholes but they haven't done coke with people I know do Coke cuz everybody I've been around that on coke is an idiot well you know some of the people who do Coke go around me are in governments I guess they could pass Insidious 2 cell. It's the same thing with alcohol right I mean here's a here's an example there was a guy that I know that the soldier that came back from Afghanistan he's got all sorts of pain issues from the war and he takes Oxycontin and he's trying to get off of it he slowly wean himself off but he'll take like a couple of day everyday and he was describing it to me when I was at a bar in my immediate reaction and then I'm next to people that are drunk off their ass at this fucking by

are the Improv Miss people are hammered just sloshed and they're probably doing way more damage to the body right there and I might buy some pills you know I mean it's it's interesting how we have these categorizations that like the pill the Oxycontin pill I call This Guy's he's got to be fucked up meanwhile to my left there's a bar filled with people just throwing is liquid poison torturing their liver and their brain the new book man when it comes out but this is precisely what I'm trying to deal with I'm trying to show people how to use drugs to enhance human functioning experience in Sulphur now that means that as we get older we may have to change out drug use from some like alcohol alcohol might be a little too toxic on some of our livers as we get older are toxic in other ways for us as we get older and some other drugs 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 it to help people change their drug use according to that age their maturity all of these things at how to keep them safe and also to help them to accomplish that goal that they see to enhance human experiences when we go to parties we take drugs we take alcohol in order to rise of the social lubricant you know but maybe that social lubricant isn't working for me as much these days I'll call disrupt my sleep you know where as an opiates perfect you know I can chill so 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 as opposed to having that drink the night before but have an Oxycontin or something else

that's interesting you know I think also we're dealing with a reaction when you're talking about people in the 1970s that were doing the higher percentage of smoking marijuana and it could have been a reaction to the Nixon Administration I think a situation like that yet you get that Preacher's Daughter sort of affect the suppression where people just want to react to that suppression people don't like being told what to do and in the case of things like cocaine there's that naughty Factor there's a fact that it's forbidden is this factor that what you're doing is something that's illegal and that makes it more exciting I think that's one of the things that was highlighted by the decriminalization in Portugal and the subsequent effect when they even Colorado when you look at the car would they shown in Colorado is the lowest instances of drunk driving and I think something like 15 years lowest incidence of violent crime

that they've had in a long time and no deaths you need to talk about one guy jumped off of the building when he was high on pot Edibles listen people make shity Choice all the time whether on pot Edibles or they drink too much Dr Pepper or they have too many fucking Twinkies me was another guy in San Francisco that killed somebody that used Twinkies as a defense between a famous defensive because sugar is a drug I think that responsible adult being able to make choices based on evidence and based on reality in fact that should be the foundation of our society how we treat almost everything you just laid it out with marijuana

I absolutely agree with you but I just I want to push you to think about heroin in the same way come came out the same way because what you just said about marijuana you're absolutely right but it also applies to these other psychoactive drugs we just need to make sure people know how to do these things safely opening my mind to this I just don't have any experience in any of those I was always scared of coke because when I grew up I had a friend and his cousin got he became a mess he was selling it and all this dude dude was do Coke can hang out in his house and watch TV and sell Coke a lost ton of weight you look like shit just like he made some bad choices but he could have made those bad choices doing a lot of different things just like you talked about the guy who possibly drunk jumped out of the building after the Edibles and I had some other issues that you're absolutely right there a lot of issues I mean you can I'm sure

look at my talks you can look at other people you can see you be like okay can you tell what drug I'm on can you tell what drug do this person is on of course you can't because people are most of us are adults and responsible and know what we're doing what's a good drug to take right before you do the O'Reilly show no actually would deal daily lockers the 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 to go Peter shift so he's a financial genius and controversial character very very very successful but has he's like controversial ideas about economics I had them on the podcast and I don't know how many podcast he's done but he started off the show

when you got going on this talk shows you got to be able to fucking Fire.............. 3 hours of just chilling out and talking so about an hour and a half and he starts to slow down when you want to drink I can't have a drink so we got him a Jack Daniel's on the rocks and then he became an actual conversation like I know virtually nothing about finances so I wasn't challenging and I just asking questions and I wanted to find out you know I want to get him to illuminates our perspective but he was ready for someone to jump in he was ready to beat that split screen thing you have one person on one side one the other opposing Viewpoint each other I understand I sympathize with the cat cuz I know how it is then before you know it's over and then you don't really get the minibus thing to our it's not

opportunity to educate the American public it's not it's really an opportunity for the hosts the show how smart they got a lot of preaching to the choir nonsense in the conflict of yelling at each other and call each other morons and pseudosymmetry is what they want to pretend that each issue has a certain amount of evidence over here in a certain amount of evidence over here and the soda real story somewhere in the middle is a no most issues don't happen like that that's how non-thinking people can see the world but the world doesn't work like that no it doesn't that were hired to go on and talk about Jesus Christ. Just watched it really recently what is it the shows and

talk about whether it was initially it was whether or not cigarettes and nicotine were bad for your health in addictive and then it became about global warming the same people and they would go on all these different talk shows and just spout out this stuff very loudly and with confident and it was literally their job they're being hired to do this talk shows his Yap they were just just talk real loud and reel combo and talk over people and their their their function or their their career was to try to change a pinion but these short little bursts yep yep that's what they do when I don't do that very well

yeah well that's why I had to contact you after I saw you on O'Reilly I was like you look so frustrated

picture that shows is so fucking retarded you know I try not to show frustration I really do so if I did that that's not that's not good knowing you you looked mildly perturbed on the outside if I didn't know you'd be like that guy handle that really well as it is fucking talked over him and you might have had a talk for a few might have got out 20 seconds worth of talking before they were talking over you yeah you know it's just so perplexing to me that you can be so irresponsible and have this stuff be on the airway and not get in trouble for it and then what they're doing on many of these shows they're doing more harm to the American Education than more than most people

and yet they're not in jail and back there being rewarded handsomely for the soda thing and then we're putting people in jail for these other minor infraction it's distorted something really sick about this system and it seems like it's trapped in momentum that these the shows have always existed the way they have we know what these seven minute segments that go to add brake one host loud boisterous guy talks over everybody please shows have been around for so long like that they're they're comfortable model for us yeah there's some people they're not comfortable for me because I tell you I've been really trying to read thinking like where can I live in this world but you know the u.s. is is that making it very hard for me to want to stay here but you know I have children that I have to raise here but after that I'm out really where you going to go

but it is really us light man yeah I mean Vancouver is a little different but the rest of that trying to be like the u.s. chicali when it comes to drugs in the all of these issues yeah the most open-minded they do it's on the DL it's for research purposes but they they certainly have a program where they're giving heroin and it's a research project at the University of British friend did British Columbia I was there on Friday night I didn't see her there and you could drive by the theater and get a contact high with your window open like literally just drive right it's so marijuana so open you know that is not correct it's not real right

will wreck some people place in Toronto and they have I don't want to give him up so 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 and they have no ventilation whatsoever you walk into the back room you are in a fucking cloud of marijuana smoke the candles and no longer burning on oxygen they're burning on marijuana smoke there's no oxygen in the room you're breathing pot only and you will get high as fuck cuz I have a friend who doesn't even smoke pot and I took him to the show he's like straight edge he was high as fuck he was like dude I don't even know if I could walk and I was like exactly this is this is a reality like you just need to be an extreme situations I'll take you to Toronto

I bet that will fuck you up I guarantee and make them sit and watch an hour-and-a-half comedy show and then get up that's cool let's do it and it and then we could also test where you are and we can do all that stuff yet let's do it but don't they test positive though if you're at a party and you can't you can't you test positive for some of those more stringent drug tests and I know people say that you know but I haven't seen that but I don't know for sure I certainly haven't seen it but maybe you maybe it's possible do you know the issue that's going on right now with the UFC in this guy named Nick Diaz story in the World of Sports because Nick Diaz who's won the most popular fighters in the UFC and is a very outspoken marijuana enthusiasts he's also extremely healthy he I think he eats mostly vegan except I believe he eat some food

he runs triathlons on a regular basis he swam back from Alcatraz twice he's known for being of one of those fit guys in the sport but he loves marijuana and he smokes it all the time the UFC as Institute of Nevada State athletic commission has instituted a new drug policy in regards to marijuana will they lowered the threshold considerably like much much lower so you literally would have to be high like the day of the fight in order to test positive so he is administered test from two different organization one of them the world anti-doping agency water and wide is a blood test which is much more accurate than what Nevada State athletic commission uses Nevada State athletic commission uses a urine test the blood test both before and after the fight find him to be under the threshold so he passes but Nevada using their urinalysis test say that he fails they find him

hundred and $65,000 and then they ban him from the sport for 5 years so that shoot out Ridge on any of these even while dino water increase their thresholds that's that's required to trigger the dependently which is a good thing but it shouldn't even be on water so that's because when we think about drugs and Performing enhancing drugs clearly people are not using marijuana to enhance performance that's not where those you using it for recreational purposes and maybe that was the day before or several days before but it certainly has nothing to do with their competition and so it should be off of those lists and I mean this is what people should protest and argue about demonstrate about the NFL the NBA all of these things they should remove marijuana from that they should also remove cocaine cocaine but it would not be

inside the in competition you don't think it would have enhanced performance as a stimulant barely I mean it's such a short and Let Live thing I'm phetamines can do a better job of that but cocaine will be be barely it really would be I mean if we start talking about drugs and sports and then we really being honest we have to think about why are drugs banned from Sports in the first place and so if we start doing that and then we can systematically go through the illogical sort of reasoning Behind these bad people say well are we care about the health of the fleets in drugs okay regulate drug use and then Sports and make sure that they have a physician and so forth but if you really cared about the health of athletes in sports you been boxing you been all of these of the things you've been football that's not why you go that's not why we care about drugs in sport not because of the health of athletes that's just not true

we say that athletes are Role Models why should athletes have an additional responsibility more so than anybody else that's a very good point you know it's so that's crap and you just go down the list and think about why we ban these things and it just doesn't fit we ban them because immoralism and the war on drugs and 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 Beth what do you think of a situation like say to Lance Armstrong situation where he's involved in sport where he test positive for some stuff I think he did test positive he never really tested positive for the ultimately had to admit to using performance-enhancing drugs they strip him of his Tour de France titles then on top of that because he was sponsored by the Pope

the office he gets hit with defrauding the government when you defraud the government they are allowed to sue you for three times the amount that they gave you so they gave him 30 million dollars are suing him for $90 or something crazy like that and on 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 which is hilarious so awake 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 are steroid it up guy beat your steroid it up a guy I mean they're all steroid it up every the whole sport is predicated on it mean if it's what they did this Sport and I didn't heard it argued by doctors that doing the Tour de France without the drugs is arguably more dangerous for the athlete body

then doing it with the drugs Tour de France has always had drugs in the ocean that is going to be clean or should be clean it's a pipe dream it's really ridiculous I think that you know the whole Lance Armstrong issue not talk about him specifically but we should allow drugs in sports that's what that's what we should do we should just regulate and be honest and upfront about it is that possible do you think that's possible in this in this environment the right now of course it's possible he was possible right before we got in this environment drug and sports I mean we think about the Olympics for most of the Olympics people were using performance-enhancing drugs that's how we got more selective anabolic steroids because of the Olympics in the East Germans and that whole social thing but actually they were here in America but it was competition with the old Soviet Union so I think that

yeah it's possible it's possible if we are just if we stop being Hypocrites about it and say people say well give some people an unfair Advantage yeah that's a big one now that's a joke that's really a joke I mean protect me what I think about every four years when the Olympics come around and Americans get proud about all the medals we win when we fucking win medals from a country like Switzerland that has 7 million people New York City has more people in it then Switzerland the entire country of course we going to have more medals in Switzerland or some other small country is that an unfair Advantage not yes but hell yes it is but do we talked about that there are some people who have resources and other people don't have resources we going to always have just unfair said life is unfair for the most unfair advantage in the Olympics my opinion is what NBA players play basketball like Jesus fucking Christ

Michael Jordan or Lebron James or someone along those lines play in the Olympics well you know they ate their argument was that the other countries were allowing their NBA players to play fine I mean but from the outset when you have these huge countries like the US and the competing with these other smaller countries who have limited resources come on are you kidding me and we talked about like Fair advantage and unfair

cuz there's also there's people that have natural event is like LeBron James again like that guy if you look at him that is a genetic freak of nature but you are very few people that are ever going to have a body like his right I know but they're in the NBA right but I'm saying even among the NBA he's for the stands he's an outlier obviously he's incredibly discipline obviously he's talented obviously is mass of work ethic no question about it obviously he has basketball intelligence that surpasses 99.999% of the people in the game there's all these other things. But then on top of it he has this fucking race car body you know I mean that like the guy you know you did take you know someone who is less physically counted they're never going to get both do the same amount of work they both try as hard you never going to be that guy but you know there are people who have bodies like his and they're not him I mean you you

do out sports wear shorts but they're not him so it's not only physical makeup all of these things I don't think are emphasized enough I mean you and I to think about it we talked about LeBron James and not Jack Jack Jack Brown because we don't know him but Jack Brown but we don't know him because he doesn't have the Epic to work after he doesn't have the drive he doesn't have all of these things but you and I can go and look at the NFL roster some roster and we can see some guys who were just built and they just look great and then we don't know who the hell they are but we talked about him because this is a selection bias because we see him and he's doing it but I don't diss the whole genetic thing I need to see some evidence before I I start to talk about genetics I don't know to what extent that contributes but what I do know

is that work ethics and drive and people putting into work I know that pays off I absolutely know that it certainly does and that you do need all those things you can't just have genetics genetics just an expression to the hard work beats Talent when Talent refuses to work hard is that it you know and that is that is absolutely LeBron James who has town and hard work then you get a superstar and you get that in all sports but the argument being that he does have this Advantage physically that the average person with an average body just does not have but the average person in the NBA does they have this body they had they look they can look like LeBron a lot of them oh yeah I mean there are some guys who are real pretty big and a fast and those sorts of things

a mix martial arts that used to allow testosterone replacement therapy and was kind of abused and the way was abused is

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 so what these people would do if they would take it and then they would get off of it and their body would have very low testosterone and then they will get a blood test in the doctor would say Hey you have low testosterone you need testosterone replacement therapy so we had guys that are in their twenties that we're getting testosterone replacement therapy just kind of crazy they would take it and then they would take large amounts of it and recover much better than other people would they would be able to work harder and train harder and we had some instances in this is one guy named Vitor Belfort who is the poster boy for testosterone replacement therapy because his career was kind of in a law

got on testosterone replacement therapy he's a guy has been fighting in the UFC since 1997 okay and he's in his late 30s and then all the sudden in his late 30s he is fucking smash on people and he looks like a god I mean his body is just chiseled he's got super confidence he's a super aggressive attacking any just highlight reel knock out after highlight reel knockout in his late 30s then they take away testosterone replacement therapy the Nevada State athletic commission says you know what this is just we don't believe in this anymore we think this is being abused everyone's going to have to get off of it and one of the reasons why they did it is because they tested him out of competition just randomly they grab them and he was off the charts like non-human levels so they they make him get off of it he then fights for the title after he gets off of it and he looks like a shell of himself his body is like soft he's like skin is loose like he

he just doesn't doesn't have endurance like he just he got destroyed in the first round by the champion and everybody looks at it goes we'll see you know this is what happens when you take a guy like that and you get him off the stuff but there's a certain amount of people that look at a guy like that and go man wouldn't you like to see him fight on it when you wouldn't like to see what he could do if you can't them on it cuz he seem like a Monster yeah I mean I know I would I like to see you know because if we going to draw the conclusion that the steroids was the reason that he was fighting like that so now that we did the a portion or would they be portion so now we need to go back to a put them back on the steroids and then and then I'll feel more confident that yeah it was a steroid what's the question is though is that an unfair Advantage versus the person he's competing against who is clean and natural his opponent Chris Weidman who's a champion is notoriously clean he's just hard work looks cleaned and it doesn't look like a guy who does any steroids at all I just

party smart and stuff until we shouldn't give the champion an option to use steroids if he wants to use them he can do it if he doesn't he doesn't have to but the other guy we should also give them that option than the last see what happens the 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 so they're pulling is going to suffer because of it but it's a different thing like the ability to deliver a basketball internet is one thing but the ability to kick somebody in the head is a completely different thing and the idea being that if you give someone CPR 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 then you could damage someone in a way that you would not have damaged them naturally I don't see that as a problem

I remember when Mike Tyson was knocking people out when people walk in the room on the top in the ring with him there was always that potential that you might get damaged in ways that that's right and so I don't see this is the problem we should let it in been to sports and you know this is part of the the risk of what you do that's it's a simple as that for me and then we should also monitor to athletes make sure that they are they do have healthy levels and levels have not going to cause toxicity to them but I don't see that as a problem you know what's interesting conversely guys who have gotten off of it they can take punishment like there is one specific guy in this guy if anybody has an argument for taking it it's this guy his name is Bigfoot Silva and he actually is a giant he has gigantism so he has a tumor on his pituitary gland and he was taking external what is it X doggedness as a side exhaust testosterone and if anybody

he has an excuse for taking it is this guy will when he was on it God has got to take a fucking punch this guy Mark hunt epic 5 round fight and then when he got off of it he gets hit and just goes down like it's it's really shocking the difference in his ability to take punishment while on it and then will offer you know I have to tell you I'm a bit outside of my expertise so I don't really know these guys but the you certainly have piqued my interest and I want to know more about it because you know just to be logically consistent I think that these things should be allowed in sports and if I'm going to have that position I like to know more about like the things that you're saying like when he was on and you could take a punch then when he got off you couldn't take it but I don't know how many years between that didn't age what role age plays in all of these sorts of things but I like to know more I'm just I'm just a tad

Spanish because I just don't know I don't know enough of the details about it but I would just challenged people to think about hey what are we allowed drugs in sports helps it helps recovery and apparently it mitigates the effects of damage it can mitigate the effects of damage that you take not just in in training but also in competition and in that sense it would benefit people but I do see the argument and Ronda Rousey's made it pretty eloquently that if someone is taking a steroid if they're they're cheating quote on quote that it's going to allow them to administer damage that they would not have been allowed to do or would not be able to do was just hard work I know that's a that's a that's a that's a conjecture but I don't know what that's true I don't I don't have no idea if that's true I understand

it's at its most extreme version of sports yeah so it's the most extreme consequences for this debate I think that it's a perfect because it is a sport that you going to get in the ring you better be a man you buy me and you better be taller woman you're tough woman you better be you can't be a wimp getting at that and not ring so I think that it's a great place to think about this and but the notion that somebody will be able to administer more punishment because they're on steroids I don't know if I accept that I don't know if I accept Justice League I need some evidence to two before I come to that conclusion I'm pretty sure that's the correct position. They would be able to administer more I think of you take very talented athletes that already have all those attributes discipline hard workout and then you had steroids you're going to get

efficient body delivery you think that people will be able to deliver blows and ways that I do and on top of that I think also with with fighting a big one is confidence and there's something about those guys that are choose to the tits as fuck I was there I mean when you hit these super high hyper human levels of testosterone you get these incredibly aggressive confident men that can do things that they might end subsequently when they get off that stuff boy they're confident are roads radically Instagram Pages start looking like suicidal strippers saw like motivational quotes and shed and like you know they going to get real weird Chelsea's ultimate experiment that we have to tell people they're on these things and let's see if their confidence are is increased right and we can see whether or not it's a blue

effect of self confidence thing I am me but I know that they have real physical effects I'm not denying that at all but I'm the confidence peace will be interesting to see whether or not somebody will love it still have this confidence if we give them Placebo and telling them this is what the hell it isn't it fascinating also that we're still talking about drugs like that term drugs is just such a weighted and loaded term the fact that that that term could be used for a steroid as well as for aspirin or coffee it's it's it's really kind of unfortunate that we have this one blanket term that applies to psychedelics and as well as it applies to testosterone and it applies to heroin is too many things I actually like that yeah why what what why don't you like it I mean because I'm we think about one of the things that bothers me about the Psychedelic kind of movement and God bless them.

who enjoys think 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 as opposed to the person on the corner who's getting high it's like you can rationalize your drug use however you want but you using drugs and it's all the same thing you know so it's like it's a beautiful thing it's like we're all together in this I'm not better than you with my drug use and you're not better than me with your drug of the Psychedelic exactly other people I mean this notion like even the marijuana smokers when they talk about marijuana and not talk about crack and not talk about heroin I mean come on you doing a drug just like this drug and so it's apocracy it's the same elitism that is pervasive throughout our

I think the idea is that when they're doing marijuana or something like that they're they're being like responsible to take me something that makes you more socially aware and casual wear as we need some speed or some math or something like that you know you're stealing cars and fucking drive into pedestrians that's how people look at it because you know you know I hate I hear these things right like I have done all of these things is not like I am stealing cars are doing any of these wacky when you get on the mess you know look at me

I mean my life revolves about around my work and you know my idea of a good time is being able to write a new paper to write a book but that doesn't that doesn't mean that I don't appreciate drugs and drug use and so and I think this is the majority of drug users in the world of Academia does your stance cause controversy because you know what you're obviously a very educated guy very well respected but yet you say this so openly that you enjoy drugs like where is a lot of people shy away from that even if they do research on the drugs themselves I've had people that you know even guys that work trying to legalize drugs that are very hesitant to admit they're falling like Rick doblin I had them on the podcast he didn't want to admit that he had taken provigil before the show which is Annie he did but he was hesitant to it you know I'm not in Slam

there was this like hesitant to admit that is so mild of energy does your heart rate it certainly doesn't alter critical thinking processes but he was hesitant and he's the head of maps the not to talk about Rick situation specifically but just in general when people are reluctant to say these things that's part of the problem because we need to have people get out of the closet there 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 engaged I've been all over the world and I've been hanging out with some of the more than some of the movers and shakers in a variety of society

and I have seen them get high and they are responsible people and they are people who I will want my children to be like a mini case to some of these folks now those people or closeted it but them being in the closet allows this apocracy to go on allows us to go out the poor people for doing a behavior engaging in behavior in which many of us engage it sounds very wrong with that and that's very for me very hypocritical and I like to look in the mirror as a man as an adult and to say that I live my life it's honestly as I can in that regard and so what kind of man would I be if I wasn't honest about this I mean I'm the person who has given thousands of doses of these drugs to people and carefully studied their effect written books on this stuff if I can't say this

why are you here why am I here I mean what is I will be embarrassed as a person and I would deserve to be embarrassed as a person but 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 that would be wrong I think that's a brave stance it isn't an in the world of Academia like how is that how is that accepted

I don't I don't know I haven't thought about it all I know is that I have to do my job at so I do my job and you not trying to do my job as well or better than my colleagues that's all I can do and no spaces but you know I doser those are not the spaces that which I live I mean I work there but I'm trying to be a citizen of the world and so that's just a narrow aspect of my life that's very admirable I'm glad you're alive.. These conversations were a guy like you is so educated on the subject can expand people's minds and say say things and such an honest way I think it's just it's very critical because it's because we are so hesitant to admit these things you know I mean I run into situations with parents all the time you know why I go to school with their kids go to school and then the Google me I'll find out

don't talk is the one that freaks him out the most not the fact that I'm involved in cage fighting the psychedelics ones psychedelics for the ones that seem to freak them out the most more so even in the pot or parents ask me about DMT yeah I know what this cute curious cross-armed so what is this DMT stuff I have children too so you know I guess I'm sure or an odd looking fella crazy dreadlocks with long fingernails with this motherfucker this guy's eye doctor

yeah you just hit it on the head

but you know that's the sort of thing that drives me but that's why when people are sleeping I'm working I'm working around-the-clock you know that I'm not a pretend like I'm just chilling you know I'm one of the most the so uptight people you want to meet when it comes to work and you know I am a I'm a difficult person to work for cuz you're a workaholic absolutely absolutely what's on sale what you're doing is so critical at this juncture because I think a transitionary stage in our culture I think our culture is opening its mind and I think as we said before because the internet because where we we we can have conversations like this one no one can step in and stop us it's already too late everything you said it's all streamed people recorded it it's being a brat people are listening to it right now there's no way

around that people getting that they're playing in their car no one can stop it and one side information gets out then they'll Google will start looking into some wow that's shocking truth wow this is crazy and then they'll talk to people at work don't talk to people at the gym will talk to people if they're friends with and then we'll expand further and further and further so I think what you're doing is critical it's critical at this juncture so that the fact that you approach it like it's so critical is why you know you're so important but thank you man because you know that's how I try and see it you 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 but typically when it's so important that you point out for so many people you know because young people all the people people always going to get high always going to get so one of the things we can do is we can help them do it more safely and more effectively week and we can actually do that as opposed to say

don't do that come on if you're thinking person you want to know why front it's more important that kids and people challenge me challenge everyone and then when they challenges they might actually go in and Gage in this Behavior okay I have my own kids so that means my kids hear me talking about this so my kids might think what drugs aren't that bad cuz my dad said so I have to understand that there's a potential that my kids will use drugs to yeah I know that but the thing that I try to do is make sure they're safe and they know what they're doing and also that they understand their role about educating their friends and keeping their friend saved and even educating their teachers like I give my kids said dad I had the drug talk in class and this is what this person said this teacher said or this person said that the majority of people who use marijuana go on

the drugs and become addicted to marijuana some other truck so my kid my young kid has a raise his hand and be like mr. X it's exactly the opposite of what you just said and then the teacher says you know like what evidence do you have for this sort of thing because my kids they do when you psych will look at the last three presidents of the United States you know it and so he goes on and he educates the teachers and that sort of way but you know that's that's a hard thing for a kid to do and he feels compelled to do it because he understands that his that's part of his responsibility to there was a great lecture by Terence McKenna wants what he was talking about his kid being in class and Terence McKenna is sort of a legendary feature in the figure in the Psychedelic community and his child was in class and the teacher was telling his child that

LSD causes brain damage and he said you know no it doesn't cause brain damage who told you that he said Albert Hoffman

and like when you've had a conversation with Albert Hoffman you deal with some fucking high school teacher in Podunk Colorado yeah I hope so I would hope so but it's this did the narrative that the brain damage and you know that there's a lot of things that can potentially cause your brain to not function at its best and some abuse of drugs is certainly on that list but there's a lot of things that we do on a daily basis that are not good for you like like poor diet like a lack of exercise like being stuck in polluted cities like breathing in brake Dustin fucking exhaust fumes all day all these things are terrible for you but we have to challenge the brain damage narrative I mean one of the things that we do is that we we we don't challenge it I mean so like when we one of the things that when we think about the brain damage narrative

game or energy in recent years in part because we have just technology of neural Imaging of brain Imaging but what in fact what is happened with brain Imaging is that brain Imaging and has become a projection test basically you know what I mean when I say projection test you know inkblot test so that's where you throw up some images and you ask the person what are they see and then you know you get DeSoto Jail tell you their interpretation and didn't psychologist has his or her and subjective interpretation of what that means that's what brain Imaging in drugs in those sort of drug feel has become it's become a projection test so that means that the soda what the examiner sees is what the test or the information become so it's a subjective sort of you subjective you

what the examiner thinks it's so you can take brain Imaging for example you can take the data and give it to two different Labs just give the date of the two different labs and you don't tell them who the participants are I would bet you any amount of money that the two lives would not come up with the same interpretation you know so people think of this is like being hard science it's there and this is what we we see and we know it it's not that way it's it's really it's it's there's a lot of subjected subjectivity that goes into the soil test and so one of the things we have to do is just push back and ask people when they talk about these drugs causing brain damage where what's the evidence that these are the questions that people have to ask please show me the evidence of the brain damage that you're talking about because it's true

amphetamines can cause brain damage nicotine does a lot more of the dangerous than amphetamine heroin and all the rest of these things in terms of potency in that sort of thing but we take nicotine and doses that we avoid any sort of damage that door most of the damage associated with it we take all of these drugs and doses that causes Euphoria which is way below the doses that causes toxicity so 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 Youmans won't take it because it's so unpleasant so the notion that these things cause brain damage you need to really ask people to show you the evidence I have not seen the evidence in humans that all of these record any of these recreational drugs is causing some brain damage so when they have those scans and they show the brain in the show the effects like when someone's on

milligrams of this or of that I always wondered that like what are you seeing you see like highlighted portions of the brain like what is it just activity in that area so if we talk most of the studies have been done when people are not on drugs I mean we can talk about when people on drugs would do that and so what you do you typically do you have like a group of methamphetamine users in one group and then you have people who never use methamphetamine another group and you image their brain you might do what this thing we call a pet image that was that was popular where you inject a radioactive compound in somebody's body and this compound selectively bind to bless a dopamine cells in the brain and when it binds to the dopamine cells it says radioactive it lights up and it didn't 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

one 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 then turn on methamphetamine use and so that's interpreters at sang methamphetamine cause the methamphetamine users to lose dopamine cells kill cells basically now we don't know what we were what was in the brains of the of the methamphetamine users before they use methamphetamine do we only know from this one scan that's one problem another problem is is that we don't know what the normal range of dopamine receptors or it will end up in a person's brain so if you look at like your brain versus my brain will see differences what is that me or if you look at the brains of people never use drugs or anything you'll see differences what it did to me and 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 so you can't say that methamphetamine cause these people to lose dopamine sell because we don't know if they lost open me sells in the first place and another thing is this that you have the tremendous amount of overlap of dopamine cells in this case in a methamphetamine users compared to the control so that means that some people in the methamphetamine group has more dopamine cells than people in the control and vice versa so what does it all mean

it doesn't mean what would it typically means is we don't know but we know it doesn't typically mean is that it caused some brain damage because when you look at these people's functioning cognitive functioning other functioning they look just like anybody else who didn't use methamphetamine that's fascinating I'm so that's really interesting so the only way to tell would be to take someone who is healthy and doesn't have a history of drug use and mark them get them hooked on methamphetamine and then see what's happening to their dopamine receptors then I can be a way of doing that but that would be really expensive and I don't know if it's John F at all we had these natural experiment already so we think about amphetamine use became big in the thirties and we have this sort of history in the military we still use amphetamines polish using try to make it to make sure the sharp

I have this history so you just look in the general population and you say alright what is a dopamine related illness you look at a dopamine related illness one of them is Parkinson's Disease you lose dopamine cells you get Parkinson's disease do you have higher rates of Parkinson's disease and methamphetamine users and you know the bottom line is that you don't generally see that she don't see higher rates of methamphetamine Parkinson's disease in methamphetamine use it I mean that's just one thing but you can just look throughout the society and you can see various illnesses in particular neurological is illnesses and see do you have a great of rates of this illness and people who reported this type of drug use and you don't really see that and so when I hear people talk about the brain damage thing in particular when they show Brain Imaging that's not evidence of brain damage you know when you have animal studies you can give

animals in feta means for every day for their life and then you could kill him that at some point and then you look at it and set it at a dopamine damage for example you certainly can see damage when you give in feta me at doses 30 40 times what humans take yeah you can see some toxicity it's clear but now when you give the doses that are comprable what humans take over that same. Of time he don't see this yes so the stimulants and the effect of the stimulants don't result in brain damage and less here it just ridiculously absolutely this is the same thing that I worry about with steroid use you know this is why I want to make sure that we actually regulated because we want to make sure people are not taking doses that are so large that they might actually be causing some damage and we don't regulate it yeah you can you run that risk and so regulated and then you and if you really care about people that's what you

and 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 will a good example of that is probably the bodybuilding day because if anybody takes steroids at hyper human error on posterous levels it's bodybuilders and yet very few of them wind up dying from it there are a few cases of guys that were like really big in the 80s and 90s that are now dead from heart attack but if you ever see what those fucking guys look like you realize like these these are not people that are taking normal levels these are not people that are even taking commensurate levels to their peers like a lot of them were taken just he's insane and same and some of them will come clean about their routines and what they would use me they were just redlining it's still just Red Line in their system on a regular basis with trying to win and they were trying to that's a sport where you have to take steroids

you're not going to compete with a leaf or a Dorian Yates you have to either you're human body it's not supposed to be that big Yeah well yeah my kids are just that we should make sure we keep them safe by making sure that then understand what they're doing and how to do it as a crazy sport when you think about it mean some people don't even consider it a sport whatever and activity whatever you want to call it now because it's not like you're doing anything other than standing there looking big it's weird right cuz you're not even I mean it's like you're not trying to run faster you just standing there is a sport you know that if they think it is it that competing right activity there inly legit activity competition so subjective

like if I look at mr. Olympia and is like the top five guys like their indistinguishable to me they're all just giant huge dudes I don't have this one person win in one person on when I don't get it yeah but you know our ignorance is no no I'm not saying prevent I mean you know there are some sports that I just don't get that mean golf is clearly a sport but front cuz I get to skill game coach Murphy 2 skill game it's not a sport you get tired when you get up playing baseball for the sport you know that you know the thing is my view on this certainly should not be considered you know even though

that's because of my own ignorance I shouldn't I shouldn't have much of a say so there because of my ignorance I understand consequences to taking the level steroid that you need to take in order to get that big lead in Arnold have open heart surgery Arnold had heart surgery I'm pretty sure so I think for a lot of those guys but but but I don't has had a funny he got his life has been you know I don't know why he had open heart surgery so but clearly used to Rosie said that's but yeah I don't know if that's the reason I mean I know the number one soda reason that people died in the United States is heart disease and they get that for variety of reasons many of them I've never taken steroids so it's a b or eating habits a wide range of things yeah no alcohol

heart disease and stroke and all the rest of these things just relax and takes a little bit of the edge off and less stress on the body maybe there is a component that has been identified and alcohol that they think it is helpful at getting rid of plaques and that's one thing but I do it's not offended if I don't know have to take a healthy person and exposing to alcohol and monitor as well since it's like you have all of these different type of studies and then you have the evidence coming pointing to the same way same direction it increases your confidence that this is real and that's kind of what happened with alcohol there 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

and the moderate drinkers time at the time they are associated with all of these positive outcomes and so it's certainly starting to increase my confidence that it's something real going on where people should drink moderately should drink and take a little heroin they should drink moderately not really there's an oxen called Resveratrol is not something to do sociated with health as well thinking about it was specific to red wine but now they think it's just alcohol General in a perfect world dr. Carl Hart if you were the drugs are first of all

you know anything about what happens with you as drug policy that you can't help but think that they are evil it's kind of drugs are instead of the drug chairman or the drug you know overseer or policy cord was William act like one if you were I mean it say if President Obama or President Trump when he gets in the office that's get Ash out of your way but not really mad cuz I live in this country look at all of these people run this country doesn't care he did not that different so yep lamp and that's probably why he's so well and he also has a has a personality and the other folks who are running for the Republicans don't have personalities

but not this is not an endorsement by no means but just this is just the state of fact he had the personality and personality means a lot in this goofy I said listen doctor heart you're obviously very educated in the subject much more so than the average person what do you recommend we do in this country to handle drugs yeah so the first thing I do you know they will beat you be really hard pressed to have me like working government for once I just want a steak that because the thing that I love about being a kid doing and is that I'm a free man and then in government these people talk about what they can't do because of some other types of whatever reason I don't understand how you look in the mirror when you say you can't do things but

if I had some influence on drug policy in this country first thing I would do is decriminalized all drugs that would be the first thing that would happen immediately then I would change educational sort of programming in this country surrounding drugs all of these things that vilified a drug and say that it's the drug that causes that that would be out people who are doing this all the things that the government is paying for their money with dry up if they didn't change their to wait at the door educating that's that's another thing another thing I would do police forces that I had control over they would When They confiscated drugs they're the main mission is not to arrest people the main mission is keep people say whenever They confiscated drugs they would test them for adulterants and see what else is in that cocaine what else is in that heroin and they would be published in the local papers it would be published in some local sort of form

everyone would know avoid this type of drug addicts packaging because it has this don't adult rent and that's not say where as something else it doesn't have that adultery in the people would be informed immediately all of these truck figured out what would be the best regulated market for marijuana what would be the best regulated market for cocaine what would be the best regulated market for heroin how do we best regulate see how do we do this and that's that's where I would go and we would we would we would get rid of the people in jail who are they are because of drug violation Obama's a little bit of that it's kind of scratch the surface getting people out of jail that are in for non-violent drug offenses but it's but it was a very small amount of people and it was there was a big deal about it

you know I couldn't help but be underwhelmed cuz I think it was only like 65 people or something like that I don't remember what the total now has gone up to like 80 something like a million people in jail we have 2.3 you you've been overwhelmed Amy underwhelmed I have been disappointed me I voted for Obama and I was hoping that we get a lot more relief on this thing so I mean we crack cocaine was originally punished a hundred times more harshly than powder cocaine at the federal level it's now punished 18 times more harshly than powder cocaine that doesn't make any sense they're the same drug that's just targeting economic disparity in poor community

enforcement of drug laws has been racially discriminatory that's a fact I mean but we certainly can come back to the races and pieces but I mean so that we were expecting Obama to his administration APUSH for a one-to-one equating with crack with powder it didn't happen and by the way it's 18 and one now and then when you look at the arrest of people who are being arrested it's still 80% black it still does racially discriminatory sort of effect so changing that law didn't have any impact on that that's the one thing and then we think about the people who are being the sentences have been commuted you know he has become the president who has commuted more sentences than any other president I think Johnson was ahead of him at one point but now he surpassed Johnson but we have to think about when Johnson was pressing that we met her at 200,000 people in jail you know now we got 2.3 million or so so really this is a drop in the bucket

not this is disappointing to me I am so discouraged and it's heartbreaking actually because we thought we would see this president be more bold about these things praise these issues and some of it is really some of these sort of a rest are related to raise race racial discrimination is important one of the things that happened in our country when we start having this discussion of these discussions about racial discrimination is that we still we were in this Frame where poor black people

poor other people white people all these other people in the country who are catching the same hell

are not working together as a result of keeping it that this conversation tie to the racial discrimination Odo racial discrimination is important in in a lot of domains and I we should not forget that but there are people there are white poor people catching the same hell for the same or similar reasons the reason might not be conspicuously race but it might be for other reasons like I said I've been traveling all over the all over the world night went to Belfast Northern Ireland and do you got a lot of fans there like the Catholics although they're not really Catholic many of these people are not really Catholic but they're catching hell

five for similar reasons you know they're being dominated by a British sort of occupation if you will and they are they have similar problems as poor people have in this country and it's a one of the things I try and I'm struggling with is that I'm trying to get people to see how poor black people struggles in the u.s. is connected with poor white people struggle in Belfast it their struggles are connected with Poor People's in in Brazil all around the globe these people have more things in common and then sometimes the conspicuous characteristic of race

kind of blinds us from our connection with other folks and an end so I'm struggling with how to communicate this in a way that everybody can see hey we're in the shit together and there are a few of leaders or the people or benefiting from us going at each others throat and not understanding and then us also just playing right into it

what are the things about cocaine and heroin and ecstasy as opposed to marijuana is that marijuana obviously is really easy to make you just put it in the ground it grows harvested it's simple it's like you see it as a leave you you don't have to worry about there being a bunch of stuff in it we talked about a what's or use adulterants adulterants and someone's taking cocaine and cutting it was something else that becomes you when you look at it it still looks like white powder legalization if we legalized it as opposed to decriminalizing if you decriminalizing it what you doing is your not Prosecuting people that are using it but what do you do with the people that are selling it and how do you move to an ethical responsible open market for something like this

So when you say what do you do with the people who are selling it what do you mean the people are currently selling out or not will be some things that you're not going to prosecute the people that are using it but how do they get it so and Czech Republic you still have the illicit markets in those places where it so people have to understand that decriminalization is not to go after this markets decriminalization the major reason that you decriminalize it that you don't want to put your citizens in jail and you want to encourage them to get help if they need help so it's about the sort of user ID that that's kind of what you're doing but if you worried about illicit drug markets and you want to get rid of illicit drug markets then regulation is a way to go legal legal regulation and if you worry about adult rents legal

is a way to go because you get rid of the black market and you get to rid of the potentially dangerous compounds that people cut these drugs with that's my major concern that's why I push for now regulating these markets because I'm more afraid of the adulterous I'm not afraid of heroin I know how to keep people safe with Heroin I know how to keep people safe with cocaine but I don't know how to keep people safe with some of the cuts cuz I don't know what they are and no one knows until you test it and it just seems to me that you're if if we accept the fact that people are doing drugs in this country can we we kind of have right I mean it's not like there's ever been a time in our country that people stop doing drugs even for a month there's never been like a month of no one doing drugs in this country so the entire top president when function right I mean those guys take sleeping pills and stimulus to get going I mean a dirty do they have to have to

using Obama take sleeping pills I can't say for sure that he does but if you if we had a bet I will bet you a lot of money that he does just because you so tired because he works so crazy hours he would be I would say it responsible if you didn't take sleeping pills really of course you need to sleep is one of the most important human functions and I want my president to be getting sleep but when you take sleeping pills alter your REM sleep and and fuck with your Cycles some up certainly can so you trying to find the one outstanding for sushi you're a big fan of the opiates on here

are you working for the opiate industry are you involved somehow and I'm sure he has some good Physicians that mean residents have taken stimulants and sedatives as well they should because they have to be on these different Coast in the time change and they have to it just doesn't make people who have to be in the public I assure you they are taking drugs to enhance their Human Experience and function so off to go back to that there's never been a time it's not like an achievable goal there's never been a time we've done a month a week a year whatever without anyone in this country doing drugs so we know that the drugs are always going to exist it would seem to me that this country that's obsessed with making money to the point 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

instead tax legal sales of drugs to make everything legal tax it and then you get the benefit like you got in Colorado Colorado is the first state ever to get more taxes from marijuana than they do from alcohol which is incredible they made more money this year from out from marijuana than they have from alcohol and alcohol has been around forever if we did that with cocaine and with heroin with ecstasy and all these other drugs that we know people are already using and we also know people are selling it illegally and not paying taxes on it it's not like people are selling Coke and going you know what I'm a coke dealer by responsible Americans I like to pay taxes if I made $100 this year

it was going to do that so we're missing out on all that tax revenue as a country I mean it's an economically unsound to not legalize and tax it if you know for a fact that people going to do it yeah it seems economically irresponsible and then the idea of these public or private prison private prisons are a giant issue in this country because they also Lobby in there 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 it's Insidious it's creepy and it's scary private prison now the thing is is that they're all those things you said but I understand they only make up 11% of all prison beds in the United States right there trying to dig they're going to Brazil now and they're going to some other places and and it's important that we are aware of what you just said but we also need to be aware of places like

Louisiana I think they have the largest number prisoners in the country they have local sheriff's who kind of operate like private prisons and so they did or they get the state prisoners to be house in their jail and they receive a certain amount of money for having those those prisoners in their local jail so this is a way for the local sheriff's to generate income Revenue by taking the prisoners from State prisoners into their local jail jails and so this technically is not private prison but this is certainly unscrupulous and people should be aware of this going on throughout the country as well as a private prisons are concerned but also these local jails and local sheriff's are doing similar things

legalizing drugs would be financially a huge to our economy the people will people I don't know if that argument alone is going to be asking is because I'm telling I mean I certainly think it's an important argument but it's it's something that should be considered especially in the wake of what's going on in Colorado 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 and so people are kind of distorting the sort of story but I think overtime Colorado and other places and it's going to show that this is a huge benefit and the benefits far outweigh the risk I think

similar to what's going on in Portugal will you see the decrease in violent crime the decrease in addiction to decrease in all sorts of different prom ever so it's decrease in all the negative aspects of the we associate with drugs you a lot of it is negative aspects of crime yes he the thing about Portugal to 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 homogeneous society than we are and when you have a place like the United States where we're not as much as I like I let you guys have every nationality at that's in the group raise they're all here not homogeneous at all and so what are the things that the drug laws have such as done it has allowed us to separate out those people we don't like and go after that so we decriminalize it makes it more difficult so you taking away that tool whereas Portugal the Swiss and those folks there such a margin as societies that 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 they are there in our society since it's not as marginal

it's easy for us to think about these drug laws being used to go out to those people who don't share our value that's that's what we say but they really don't look like us and they're really not us so just can't really happened because we know that there are number people who who look like folks who are in Washington and they're using drugs they're using a lot of drugs but they're not subjected to drug policy and so it's like we have to be honest about why we have these policies in place in the first place they allow us to go out to the people we don't like without explicitly saying so I think overall I guess 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 that use of drugs and the effect of drugs and that ignorance is part of the problem and it's it's shaped not just public opinion but also

shape policy shape to how politicians address these issues like like a guy like Chris Christie that can is allowed to say ignorant stuff the reason why he's not booed off stage me does it is for a lot of people in the audience they don't know that what he saying is unbelievably ignorant and he kind of provides to cover for them you know they kind of support these things because they're not happening to them and that's those other people who don't share their values as what they say but they really don't look like them they don't they don't dress like them they don't go to the same school as they don't do any of these things so Christy 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 how are that uninformed perspective so what you're doing now with this touring all around the world and are you speaking in all these places like what how do you what are you doing

you know a guy that spoke at the World Health Organization this past summer universities in Belfast and London Geneva course Brazil was just down there speaking I'll be in Canada next month so just doing all of these 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 US drug policy and trying to expose why I the countries are following this policy that has had its happing detrimental impact on their citizen how is this received is it real University received or is it there's different places that are more open to it yet you know in Brazil for example they have followed the US wholeheartedly and Brazil has 50% of the population is black right 50% they have like the Great

African population outside of Africa in the prisons there jails are filled with black people and the poor people in the country up and then the drug policy is being used as a tool to further marginalized this group basically and so when I go down there and speak it well received even from the ruling class and the government and so it's a conundrum to me quite frankly that I'm so well-received there by the ruling class but there are some people who is who are very interested in changing policy Geneva and those places what I'm saying to them those folks there they're like no shit we know that you know an egg dare dare drug policy is reflected or it's more rational go to France they're equally as ignorant as we are and

they use their politics policy just like we do and they're equally as arrogant as we are Belfast they are there trying I mean they are there Catholic population do you know they're on the siege basically Vancouver they feel the message of course Norway all of these people they are responding cuz they know this is not I'm not I wish I was brilliant and brighten all those things I'm not you know this is not anything that earth-shattering date these people know many of the people around the world Columbia when was in Columbia those people they're politicians they know but there is getting a lot of money from the u.s. to continue to sort of War on Drugs Mexico they know but they're getting a lot of money from the u.s. to continue this morning drug house in Mexico decriminalized

they decriminalize everything but nobody talks about it because as I point out earlier in Portugal person is allowed to have a 10 day supply of drug before that that triggers some sort of criminal prosecution so you can have a 10 day supply of methamphetamine heroin whatever in Mexico you get you trigger a criminal offense when you have just a small amount of something so it's like it's really not decriminalization you know it's just they lowered the thresholds that trigger a criminal process of prosecution and so it's late doesn't really play out in the spirit of decriminalization some there still they probably did it to peel to the United States laws or to abide by what the United States is looking for them to do exactly why they did it but I know they're continuing their War on Drugs

in part because of us which is a War on Drugs is really a war on people in particular war on poor people as we know and I'm against Wars you know and I'm an ex-military person now people want to see you talk and they are you still traveling or yeah where can I find out about you about website dr. carhartt.com and when does the new book coming out new book won't be out until after the presidential election okay alright man well thank you very much you're always awesome really appreciate you coming over here what you do and thank you for having thank you sir I appreciate that very much and follow him on Twitter dr. Carl Hart on Twitter dr. Krall is it dr. carhartt.com Z website yeah okay thank you brother appreciate it man thank you buddy

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