#469 - Dr. Carl Hart

Mar 17, 2014

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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The Joe Rogan Experience

how much for being here I really really appreciate this of Margie work online I've seen a bunch of your videos and read some of the interviews and I think it's it's incredibly important to have a guy like you out there it's incredibly incredibly important for a bunch of reasons one because it's important to spread the truth about drugs and to have someone is actually intelligent and a real Professor who really understands what they're talking about and to you look like us some weird stuff he do to get dreadlocks it's impossible to know it's very important I appreciate it thank you for having me man people been telling me that I got to come check you out so thank you well I'm glad they connected us it's one of the coolest things about this whole Twitter social media thing as you know I get to find out about people I do when I get to be introduced by all these Twitter people that want to get together so it's pretty bad

happy be here man I'm happy that is a guy like you out there because I've learned a lot from what you're doing and I've learned a lot from Tim the interviews you know you've had to kind of confront a lot of ignorant people have an exposed a lot of my own ignorance and I thought that was really fast and John Stossel and if you were you talking about how many people use mass and Coke and don't fucking ruin their lives they they figure out how to keep it together like yeah you know that's one of the biggest misses that people think that individuals who use drugs like crack cocaine methamphetamine heroin they think that the majority of the people who use those drugs are addicted in their life goes spiraling out of control they think that because it makes great TV drama for example and so we reinforce it in our soda pop culture and also we can always think of somebody who screwed their life up as a result of drugs but the people who don't screw your life up they don't talk about it I just go about paying taxes paying their bill

Henley no responsibilities yeah that's interesting do you get pressure to not say that ever because people say why you're going to encourage people and what if they go out and they do become addicted to drugs like what are you giving them false hope well you know that's and so when we think about hiding information or not telling people the truth because we're afraid that they can't handle the truth it's just that's the logical and I can't live my life like that I have children I mean I have to teach my kids about sex I have to teach him about other potentially dangerous activities like driving there automobile too fast with drugs it's just one of those sort of activities and I beat the responsible if I didn't tell them the best information that I know that's so important that such an important thing to say and I've had that discussion with people before where we know they would talk about any any sort of drug that I don't want to let people know I don't want to talk about it no more because I don't encourage them to do it I got a friend was telling me that about

heroin really is not that bad but if you don't take too much logical anything that you overindulge and you can get in trouble heroin is not different but there's a few that we have like these unfair assumptions about like crack was the one for me I was her do you smoke crack want your hook a few people to smoke crack and I'm like when you smoked it once but yeah if anybody ever tells you anything about I did it once and I was hooked for life around hook that's a license to stop listening cuz nothing in life you do once in your hook that just nothing nothing what's the quickest to a dick to a physical addiction alcoholism where they at it actually makes them apart of addiction but that's not the main point of addiction addiction the main thing of addiction is like the destruction of Psychosocial functioning you don't

do your taxes you don't meet your obligations those kinds of things but you can get physically addicted to something like tobacco although it's not life-threatening but it's irritating but the thing that we see that's more that we think it's excruciating pain is heroin addiction the for example we think that involve someone is going through heroin withdrawal they are in such a sizing pain that they are on the verge of death they're not if you've ever had the flu you had heroin withdrawal but the only one of the major drugs that we use today it's there that can actually kill us from withdrawal is alcohol and most of the people who use alcohol don't come near experiencing alcohol withdrawal to the extent that it would kill you you certainly can't die from heroin withdrawal

that's fascinating I seen a guy going through heroin withdrawal I had a friend was hooked on Heroin and and came out from New York to stay with me in California in the 90s and I didn't know it at the time but his idea was that was I was going to check at zoo came out to visit me and he was like like you had the flu for a week and just just laid around and Dad and then 7/8 days later is fine yeah it's not fine but also if you had the flu you have heroin withdrawal it's not pleasant and I don't recommend that someone go out and get the flu or heroin withdrawal but the point is is that it's not going to kill you and it's not as its cruciating as is often portrayed in films and so those kinds of things they just do a horrible job of educating the public or Miss educating the public and it wouldn't be bad if that's just say you do this sort of character characterization and it didn't have consequences the consequences that that we always have these repressive policies that follow and then people pay the price. So much from the

drugs but from the repressor policies and that's a real concern that I have to press it policies lead to more prison sentences lead to more private prisons it's like a form of slavery that's state-sanctioned so early we have that and it also did the major thing that at least it was a disorder dependency on that economy like law enforcement they are also treatment agencies there a number people who depend on this sort of Industry now or they depend on this approach and it's hard to get out of this approach biscuits right now in the country were talking about liberalising drug laws you can't liberalize drug laws unless you give police officers something else to do you can't liberalize drug laws unless you give the treatment industry something else to do and that's one of the things we haven't really talked about this whole conversation because those people are going to fight to keep their money and they sort of are now and that is an issue now prison guard unions Lobby to keep certain drug laws and plays absolute

they are they are they are intense it seems to me like that needs to be there's a multi-point strategy that has to be hit in order to make a transition between the prohibition of experiencing right now and you know not having all these people completely fighting against it because of their jobs but there has to be some sort of a strategy for taking the resources that are being applied right now to this unsuccessful drug war and doing something healthy for communities clear you know that's one of the things I've ever read my book recently high price and that's one of the things I try to watch all the story it's a memoir and a science book so I told him why portion which is deeply personal and it's not something that I'm so comfortable doing but I have to do that in order to kind of contextualize the whole Drug War and what it all means what it all means and also the science portion is there so people can understand what these did these drugs actually doing what they don't do and if you have that sort of contextualization

the nun standing up a science now you can probably make some reasonable logical decisions and choices about how we should do with drugs in the country when you see something like other country Portugal with decriminalized drugs less than a decade ago right more than the decriminalization means decriminalization is not legalization legalization as what we do with alcohol and tobacco decriminalization would be like treating drug violations like we treat traffic violations you can't go to jail or get a felony charge but you may be subjected to a fine or so that's how they deal with drugs in Portugal all drugs from heroin to marijuana to methamphetamine to cocaine now when you look at the major indicators for example drug use they have less drugs used in we do in this country when you look at drug-related overdose that they have less than we do in this country when you have

the amount of money that they pump into their prison systems in south of course they're pumping less than we do and so they're doing better than us on all of these major indicators and they have no soda plans to go another directions because they're happy with their current approach and so that's one of the things I argue for in high price the book I argue that we should decriminalized all drugs in this country but in order to decriminalize drugs one of the things we have to also do is we have to increase the amount of realistic drug education not that just say no stuff that we've been peddling for a number of years but real drug education is pretty ridiculous to think that you can educate anyone to the dangers or lack of dangerous and Drugs in a 30 second commercial right now to go that's the that's one of the things that people have to understand is that what those folks who came up with those 30-second spot their goal was not drug education their drug their goal was more proper propaganda and

beer based out of Education if so if that's what we want to call it but that the goal was not really teaching people about drugs or what drugs really do joking one of my old, specials about the partnership for a drug-free America because it was funded by alcohol and tobacco companies and ice like alcohol and tobacco companies going after marijuana is like hookers going after strippers and that's really what it's like with the idea of Alcohol Tobacco Company spending money to try to make marijuana illegal is it is unbelievably study issue you have a hell of a lot more infirmity real for your comedy routine Italian because there are so many iron he's that you wouldn't believe that's a brutal one though for a drug-free America sponsored by drugs yeah well gang war of drugs does the name partnership for a drug-free America first of all there has never been a drug-free Society ever ever Norway

will there ever be an or do you want to live in a society that is drug free and so does whole notion of drug-free it's ridiculous yeah drugs and Compass everything from coffee to alcohol to cigarettes too it just goes on to acai berries no absolutely you know it's it's all of these things and drugs and so when people try to make the distinction like Arrow one versus something like caffeine the body doesn't distinguish something based on the fact that is illegal guns illegal in once not legal it has biological actions and consequences both of those things why is it that this is something is controversial to say like what you what you're saying right now on on this podcast do you know a guy who's a distinguish academic saying these things is very controversial why is that if they are true and you are an educator and you have that philosophy what time

I greatly why is that rare you don't forget for one thing there are few people in the country who actually know what drugs really do and what they don't do so when you think about you know I have 24 years of experience of giving drugs to animals and humans in the lab and carefully I tried to understanding the effects of trust that's one reason number people just simply don't know another reasons is that people scientist for example are conservative lot and they are reluctant to speak to the media in part because they don't want to get their words twisted or do you want don't want to be up here to be wrong and so I mean I respect that at some level and so I think that's that contributes on the one hand and on the other hand we've had in this country for a number of years people who were in control of the narrative where people who had an addiction parents law enforcement

none of those people are uniquely qualified to speak to this issue but they have dominated the conversation

how'd you get involved in this you started you should 24 years ago doing drug research on animals how did what was what led you to want to go down this road so I was in a tell this story in the book and so I was in the Air Force back in the eighties like you mentioned about crack cocaine so I was in the air force over in England 86 87 88 and crack cocaine was a big deal in the United States as you point out and I grew up in the hood in Miami and Miami was a cocaine capital in the United States and and so things that were happening in my community that we're not good high unemployment crime all of these kinds of things I blame crack cocaine for that and so I thought that if I go to school and get a degree in order to study drugs the effects of drugs on the brain I could solve the problems that faced my community are two problems that I thought were in the community room particularly those related to drugs and so I began stop

and drugs as an undergraduate and then went on to graduate school to study drugs on the brains of animals and the try to figure out the newer biological mechanisms that were responsible for addiction she just got fascinated by this idea of fixing this this issue that you saw in your community and then you just fell into a rabbit hole yeah so when I started along my journey my past I actually got an education and you know so as James Baldwin said you know the the Paradox of education is precisely this as one begins to become educated conscious 1 begins to question it's the society in which he's being educated and that's what happened with me and so along the way I just got her things like the majority of people who use these drugs are not addictive that was one thing I've discovered I discovered that many of the things that we said about crack my back crack cocaine we're just simply not true like the whole crack baby myth and people said that when that our generation beep should be prepared

I have an army of kids who couldn't learn because of being exposed to crack cocaine that just simply wasn't true when all the data came out the beginning in the mid-1990s we realize that that's simply wasn't true other things that just simply wasn't true things like one hit of crack cocaine you're addicted not true in powder cocaine not true all of these things I discovered along the way but they want they weren't true and not only that I discovered that this wasn't new I went back to the early 1900s and saw the same sort of Hysteria mainly race bassist area surrounding drugs occurred even then and so I thought what what's going on and then that help me to be more critical about my issue is there a difference in the effect of crack cocaine the physical effect and and and cocaine and heroin so let's

the only difference between crack cocaine and powder cocaine is that the powder cocaine has this thing called the hydrochloride salt attached to it that salt prevent it from being smoked now you can dissolve the powder cocaine and in water and then shooting in your arm and so you have the effects of cocaine on side of the effects within seconds the same is true with with with crack cocaine the Effexor onset of a sex affects are within seconds now the biological activity of cocaine it's at the base not that that's all that hydrochloride portion on the cocaine powder on a powder cocaine has no biological activity whereas so so that means that crack and powder are the same drug they are at exactly the same truck the same effect Sandra

what's the benefit of preparing it is just to deliver a quick request so one of the things that you you might require call Richard Pryor back in the days when he got he burn you burn himself with some wood smoke so he was freebasing it so he was removing that hydrochloride portion of the salt off of off of the cocaine base so he could actually smoke it now he was using ether which is highly flammable with crack cocaine you don't now you no longer need that you throw you just mix it up with baking soda and water and the cocaine and you mix it up and you get rid of that salt to eat there is no longer need it and it's not as dangerous so that's one of the reasons that we have crack cocaine as a result of that and also it made it so you can sell them in unit doses to make the drug appear to be cheaper because you also might recall in the early 1980s 1970s you had to buy cocaine powder and bulk that made it more expensive crack cocaine made it a lot more

simple simple for people to buy at who didn't have the kind of expendable income that was required before the mid-1980s that's right exactly six pack or 12 pack now you can sell one item one can of one bottle in the store as he got older and actually said that he tried to kill himself he let himself on fire parently she was Richard Pryor fan and I know that that was originally what he had said that he got burnt doing pretty bad so I think you change the story later I actually worked with him a bunch of times right before he died was there a real honour is a real special dude as far as I stand up comedian scale that style of like Freebase was a thing that we know is associated with people that were really really fucked up like the guys doing coke oh well you know it's probably a mess up

he's freebasing o'shit he's gone mad his base needs a basehead right Bayside was the thing before crackers they said absolutely that describes a couple people in the book for my neighborhood got in freebasing in exactly the same way you just talked about right absolutely everybody has this idea in their head that crime and that everything Escalade in the world changed when crack was introduced is that a mess as well let me clarify because it's first sort of talked about December 1984 in the LA Times the first time we heard a crack but it didn't become more widely known or available until maybe the mid-nineteenth made 1985 once a crack cocaine hit the markets what happened was that people were fighting over various new markets Whenever there are new elicit Market see how you going to get some

violin activities into the market settles down that happened with any enlisted Mark and that's certainly happened with crack cocaine now one of the things that people at their number things that people a tribute to crack in terms of crime and all of the disorder downfall of certain communities unemployment they said that unemployment really Rose as a result of crack cocaine being around now 1982 the unemployment rate in this country was about 11% of white folks and it was double that for black people that was before cracked at least two to three years before crack even hit the market now doing the whole crack your unemployment has never been as high as 1982 that's number one people said things like people from my community crack cocaine was responsible for these mothers these grandmother's now raising new generations of kids because their daughters were strung out on crack and so now they have to take care of these kids that's it

he wasn't true certainly happened in in my community but it happened before crack cocaine was ever on the market certainly happened in my family long before crack cocaine ever hit the market when we look at other communities like particular immigrant Community you if you look at the Jewish Community when they came over to the Eastern European Jews when they came over in the country the early 1908 or 18 hundreds and so forth what you see is that you had a similar soda phenomenal going on and those kind of communities it what's his name Urban how his great book land about fathers A Home of Our Fathers he kind of describes all of these pathological behaviors that happened in that Community meaning of those same behaviors were attributed to crack cocaine and black people later but it's not they were there long before crack cocaine was their butt crack cocaine became the scapegoat escapegoat because I bought into it Hook Line & Sinker I really thought that there was a difference between the 1980s in the 1990s as far as like

practice introduced took off it was something that was just always discussed as like, in fact yeah I know I bought into it drove me to pursue my education in the way I did but as a result of Education I discovered that it was not true of politician like little campaigns or clean up the streets and they attributed to certain issues or is it is it is something more widespread is it the media just running with a narrative what it what is it how to get started the factors and players involved so we think about the politicians for example politicians if you crack cocaine is the problem nevermind the fact that unemployment rates was out of control before crack-cocaine hit the mark hit the market unemployment was out of control a number of things were already problematic now you have crack cocaine if you blame crack cocaine it's real

easy to Simply say will put more law enforcement will hire more cops will put more effort and controlling this trucks a lot easier to say we'll lock people up for selling these drugs for using these drugs in the process what you do is you create jobs for a select group of people and then you don't have to deal with the real issues the real issues of unemployment of deprivation all of these things you don't have to do what they're far more complicated and so politicians are happy to buy it now one of the things about crack cocaine is that when we think about the law that punishes or punish crack cocaine a hundred times more harshly than powder cocaine and the vast majority of people who got punished under these laws were black 80 85% of the people even though they don't make up the majority of the users so people say things like what were those laws racist and the laws themselves more racist because the black Congressional Black Caucus 17 of the 21 members voted to for these

these laws that punish crack cocaine a hundred times more harshly but the point is is that everyone bought into it parents because you don't actually have to educate your kids about this you just say that they're bad and stay away from it no education required even sciences and treatment providers they all bought into it because you got a problem we're going to solve your problem so we are needed and we are valued so you had all of these are the constituencies from society benefiting from the vilification or the scapegoating of crack cocaine all those things think came together nicely and then we think about the rappers they all came into the game too because it's like I'm conscious I'm going to say that this is a problem my community and I care about my community and this is the way that I can show it so everybody had a stake in this sort of thing that is absolutely

one of the things that I've talked to quite a few people about when it comes to issues like real complex issues like drug addiction and and violence and and poverty is that once you feed it with any organism organism is law enforcement or that organism is education whichever one you feed is the ones going to grow and once you feed the law enforcement one and you look at this really complex situation I think law enforcement is important but I I think education probably more important to avoid future law enforcement like the more I think the more education we have the the more nuanced our ability to raise children as the more we understand the other We're All in This Together the less you going to need law enforcement but when law enforcement becomes this machine that lobbies against the legalization of certain drugs which when you start looking at the data there's only one reason to do that in the only reason is that you are trying to stay alive you're trying to grow your an organism you tried trying to eat the

trying to keep going so you creating more jobs by putting people in jail it's essentially no one in the house I live in the film Eugene Drake he's feeling that I think that's the kind of analogy he was trying to draw in that film absolutely so I think we get it I think the number of people get that that's exactly what it is yeah it's exactly what it is and it doesn't seem like anybody's willing to address it no one no one's going to change it there was that very famous speech for Eisenhower gets out of office and as he's leaving addresses the nation the warns of the dangers of military industrial complex and it's weird speech because this is a sitting president he's leaving and he's letting people know if there's a machine out here that's growing and I'm I'm letting I can pull you into this be aware of this time this is same with law enforcement it's the same with private prisons they become organisms they become individual things

are filled with people that are all working for the greater good of the individual of the of the great Corporation absolutely in people need to understand the conflict of interest that these folks have and often times when we have these type types of discussions one of the sort of impulses of the meteor or folks who have these discussions that they want invite law enforcement Personnel in Psych what expertise do they have to talk about drugs really remember Ronald Reagan when he was on TV. I'm a very well be one of the most dangerous drugs or whatever the exact quote when I know you know I try to forget Ronald Reagan but I hear you it's the conversation today about actress with a friend we were talking about actors being in politics like how crazy it is that you let someone who's a professional liar try to tell people the truth mean that's what an actor is a really good at bullshiting like The Pretender really sad

someone I know just died nobody fucking daughter's cameras all around you those lights on you wear makeup but you're so good at bullshiting that I'm willing to pay money to see you bullshit and let's think about what we got consider news in the country and we think about the people who are delivering news yet they are the same as most of them are you know and here is the weather wow what do you promote your book but you will hear the same voice over and over and over again like some kind of these guys have plugged into what they think is a radio guy and they're being there playing the role of a radio guy that's very strange yeah there's a lot of strange things that has happened on this book to her so yeah that we have disseminating information and in some cases running the government you know the Arnold Schwarzenegger thing was

crazy you know we're running around telling everybody to fucking Terminator is the governor of the country that's ridiculous you know it's relation to drugs to when we think for Tuesday we think about performance-enhancing drugs nose got the thing you know we know about his shoes and then you think about the apocracy of it all and that's the thing that's just disturbing if people just call it like it is and say what it is you actually help people understand what these things do and what they don't do and then you don't have people have all of this cognitive dissonance about this like how can I get to that level how can I do this level when you when you know that those folks performance-enhancing drugs so now they're saying that you should do performance-enhancing drug yeah that's an interesting situation I think there's a real issue with that in sports there's a bunch of different groups are trying to clean it out recently the UFC has made a big step

to try to limit the amount of performance-enhancing drugs unless you're watching guys all day everyday it's really hard to tell without testing them well you know I don't know how I feel about the performance-enhancing drug testing the thing is that I like to know the first of all this that we get better information on it you know what I don't want to have this sort of just say no attitude towards this stuff without really good information and then I don't know if we're there yet I agree with you 100% I think the issue that people will have though is the the term natural and unnatural and interesting term because his it still natural if your taking multivitamins but what if you got creatine is it still natural if you drink coffee coffee is a drug the kind of drug-using is it still natural if you use I in a certain types of water that's treated certain ways to make your body process oxygen better bring whatever new thing that comes out is that still natural if it gets too gets real weird like she should people not be allowed to take any supplements or they just only have food I just would you give them just plants

an animal protein and water and then we monitor what your diet is then we let you fight yeah you know there are a number of issues going on becoming the whole notion of like natural I think people need to grow up I don't even know what that means natural that's not my concern my concern is that if you have performance enhancing drugs and then people are giving given a drug in order so they can continue to perform even though they're hurt that's my concern that date that we run further risk of having people being injured but in terms of training and that sort of thing I don't have so much of an issue with that whole issue of using performance-enhancing drugs as long as we're doing it in a safe manner in which people understand what's happening at the question is fairness that's the question you know Americans are they annoy me with Sharon is I mean really come on someone is going to cheat and they're going to win when they're taking a kneel

new drug that's the it's pretty simple that's the fairness think about our ability in this country to train better than some of our opponents in the Olympics because we are wealthy or country is that fair no I mean just think about wealthy or people who who is kids can have access to a prep test before taking the SAT before taking the MCAT or some other exam where is less wealthy people can't afford those cats is that fair absolutely no issue fairness is come on right when it comes to Combat Sports and Athletics though obviously I have a vested interest in in this idea in this debate but I think there is an issue of two guys have very similar almost identical economic situations identical training environments identical amount of experience in martial arts in one guy steak and dragon the other guy isn't that guy has an unfair advantage

sure certainly can be but you know the thing and then that's fine whatever the rules are now we must adhere to them all I'm saying is that I think that we need to make sure that we study the issue really well so that if one person has access to anything other person's also should have access but right now the rules are that you can't that's fine right so I understand so what you're saying is you think the rule should be based on scientific evidence of advocacy and of health benefits and risks and all that and have it laid out and absolutely not absolutely it is kind of weird thing like you can sell test like that we sell a t + enhancer and answers your body's ability to produce testosterone but it's legal I mean there is a bunch of stuff that would creatine creatine is a bunch of stuff that you know what caffeine know what you take a certain amount but if you get above like 200 mg in your system they know you don't like too much is real weird Naturals a weird word

I know you know it's a difficult one for me I don't know the performance-enhancing world it's well as I'd like to but you know maybe that's an issue for another book natural conversation with a friend of mine we were talking about pollution and all the different things that people do in and we were saying what's really kind of weird is we always think of things that Youmans make is unnatural but they're all made out of stuff on Earth it's not like we're taking shit From Another Dimension and creating artificial things marijuana smokers they say we just natural so does all drugs heroin come from the Opium poppy methamphetamine from ephedra base plant you no cocaine from the Cocopah a plan as well so it's like all of these things are natural what if that's what your definition of naturalist synthetic versions are created by Earth grown components absolutely the synthetic version might be better I mean like aspirin comes from the

willow bark I believe it's like but we have made it sent synthetic so we can harness food components that we need so that's that's a good thing and yes Countryman code mean no aspirin no aspirin no Coca Cola either that's right we're still with it that's such a great point you made earlier every single culture absolutely it's always like the kids who are trying to learn how to think critically when people present them with things like drug-free they should really question that sort of thing that they should be taught that this is part of critical thinking drug-free societies just doesn't exist so please don't feed me propaganda that really does exacerbate right because it is with all that ignorant out there it makes it very difficult to have a real debate about it because people come into everything with preconceived notions like I don't I don't know very much at all about Chess

I don't know who's the best I don't know what the strategies are I kind of know how the things move that makes two of us talking about like the way to do chest as you got to just move faster than the other guy is crazy and the Kraken Kraken ruin our economy broke shut the fuk up it's like people already have this in their there already, to the table to bunch of bullshit any better man got to be really frustrating when you go to cocktail parties and if I have a cocktail party invite you seem like a cool guy that's a good way to get out of it I still chicks that I work for my father's insurance company because it working for insurance companies

I'm glamorous working for your father's insurance company means you such a bitch you can get your own insurance company that lives in his parents basement and they will be so mean to me it was so crazy that's what I was on television today to be like yo you know if I was green I said that maybe then they will be like I was driving a Volkswagen Corrado at the time I just it was just shocking how many people could be because of that we have certain things except in certain things we don't accept and when it comes to you know things people talk about a cocktail parties when have you and if someone comes along and says heroines not that addictive cocaine doesn't ruin lot a lot of people taking it you're going to encounter a bunch of know-it-alls right don't you you must of course I do you know so that means

Cajun conversations with people who don't play by the rules of evidence and so if I ain't gay tonight if I can gauge nose kind of conversation I'm too old for that now and then so I try to limit my exposure to people who are who are mainly database and they're so the book the belief system problem when they're really smart about something else and we were talking about panspermia was on the Opie and Anthony show on the concept of the building blocks of Life coming in from asteroids and that that might be where a lot of things came from and one of the things that we were discussing was was psychedelic mushrooms is Terence McKenna had this theory about psychedelic mushrooms coming spores coming from another planet is very possible that asteroid impacts that carry all the other building blocks for life also carried psychedelic spores which is why they're so uniquely different from any other plants on Earth and I was asked him if he ever did mushrooms my sneaky way of asking meet you at

roasted mushrooms but he started going off about giving you brain damage and becoming addictive answer please your ears you like a blind man describing a kaleidoscope in it unfortunately it makes you question all the things that that guy's an expert in cuz if you know something to be untrue and yours is really a guy who's telling you about the universe itself in the building blocks of matter and he's so smart and he's so definitive with his his is definitions and descriptions of these things but then he tells you something that you absolutely no to be incorrect and you go what come on where's this is your fucking awesome why you saying this like you're the one to tell me about the cosmos you were telling me about all these other cool things that I know are amazing and scientifically provable but now you're saying some dumb shit is well I mean that's one of the things that we all try to guard against because

we all have our limited sort of knowledge base we all do I mean we can only be experts in so many areas I mean it's just requires so much work to be an expert in anything and so we have to have the humility to say you know I don't know that as well but I'm willing to keep an open mind and learn so you're right I hope that I don't over reach like that on any subject matter because I no drugs very well other things I know less well that's such an important thing and a lot of really smart people don't ever want admit that you know there's a lot of really smart people are really smart about one thing so did you question about things they're not really smart about where they don't really have as much information about the bullshit sometimes that's fucking dangerous I'm with you man and I'm so glad that you highlighted the concern related to that but you know that's why we have to be able to say I don't know yeah it's it's it's it's important factor like in distributing

Nation we have to know that these sources that we reach whether it's you or any other academic is a hundred percent honest and there's no Eagle fuckery involved and when these guys show a little bit of ego where they don't want to show humility about their ignorance they ruin the whole thing the whole discussion gets its its debt very difficult to take them as seriously that's a little bit and it Waters down all the things that they say that you know where true as well it's like yeah you know I'm the one hand it's like we should be allowed the latitude to be to have been wrong but as a result we should also be able to say yo you know I was wrong and I got this new information that made me see the light and so it some it's a two-way street you know it's like people are going to make mistakes and we want them to be able to make the mistakes because in the process of trying to understand something they might discovered some really fascinating a good and so he should be able to make a mistake but they have to also be able to say I screwed up

Lainie Kazan it when people running for president we don't want none of that we want no flip-flopping if you're a flip-flopper we don't want to think that anybody learn from their mistakes and change their opinion or had some new information come in the reconsider their ideas for the people who say that this guy flip flop door does not they don't speak for me and I hope they don't speak for the rest of the country although they may have the microphone but I hope people see through that nonsense for the most part mean I think we're we're certainly right when it comes to like you can learn you can change your PIN I certainly learned in my life even recently changed my opinions on things but so you have that issue like you said they are trying to make sure they have all the bases covered they say

one message to one group in a completely different message to another group I know I get that but then there are politicians to who actually learn new information to change their mind and then I get called the flip-flopper and that's about now when did you first when did you do your first research your first like research on drug affects I think the first study at Publix was in 1992 and what was the climate like then in comparison to climb in 2014 we were talking about pre-internet yeah that's free internet I'll go ahead and he didn't have already had it had a cell phone with a knife in 94 and 93 was like when I say pre-internet like I mean all started around that area around drugs they haven't really big I mean only until the past year or two have they really started to

Beyonce people were too yeah people of like starting to open their mind to these issues like my maybe we've been hoodwinked maybe we've been bamboozled but for a long time I mean we think about from Reagan to Bush one to Clinton to Bush to email Obama the beginning of his first term attitudes about drug they haven't changed that much I mean the bottom line was that drugs were bad and as a politician what you say is that you going to be tough on drug drug users and people who sell drugs and that's that was popular until recently now people are starting to say wait wait a second maybe we have maybe we've been doing this wrong and but that's a recent phenomenon that you what do you attribute the train changing that tied to is just overwhelming information I think there are few things I think Michelle Alexander the new Jim Crow

tell people to understand the fact that we now have 2.3 million people in our prisons and largely because of the War on Drugs you know so it's like we have 5% of the world's population 25% of the world's prison population and then we start looking at looking at the racial discrimination in terms of who's in prison black men make up 5% of the population or 6% of the population 35% of the prison population you start to look at all of these numbers I think Americans are like when we are fair we are fair people in general and so I think they are disturbed by that thing that help and I think the fact that my book I'm a scientist I've been doing this for some years I am on number of boards respected scientific boards I have played the game mainstream game and then I'm saying I've done the studies and I'm telling you you've been misled so that has helped my book has helped and I think that so I think

the economy the fact that we don't have the kind of money that we had we once had but if we in the mid late 1990s what we can build prisons and we can put all this money and law enforcement I think all of those things have helped people to understand that maybe we're doing something wrong and now with Colorado one of the things Colorado and Washington those do states have legalized marijuana and one of the things that's being really talked about is the amount of tax revenues that the marijuana in Colorado is going to generate in this country ultimately money remains King and so dad has open people's mind you know I like to think that empirical evidence help the really shaped the way people think but money is really cool and I think that all of these kinds of think the economy Colorado some information the fact that we don't want to be an immoral people all of those kind of things are coming to

go to help people to rethink the what we're doing with drugs and saw those statistics those of unbalanced statistics at the very least you would have to say well there's an incompetency and Engineering their culture if it's not racist if it's not if it's if they're not victimizing a certain population of the percent of the population that can't defend itself as effectively and and taking advantage then at the very least it's a very poor engineering of the civilization I agree man you know the thing is is that this is one of the things you want to do things I did I actually believe many of the American soda mythology that we were Affair people that you know equal rights for everyone and so I think a lot of us believe that and so I think as a result of us believing that sort of Mythology and then actually looking at the data I think people are Disturbed I think that people are understanding that

we are just about 50 years removed from the March on Washington in the famous Martin Luther King speech I Have a Dream and that's what I think 50 years removed from that now and then we were all upset about the social injustice that happened during that era now I think people are understanding that we have our own social injustice happening right before our eyes and then so the question becomes will where will history say you were on the issue and I think people are getting it I think I but I think many people would just simply ignorant to it but I think the message is getting out now so just as combination of factors that are overwhelming the internet providing all this information Colorado and Washington State providing Alternatives the economic situation all the above is it is an issue with one of the big issues when it comes to the difference between a Democratic leader and Republican leader is the way they treat some social social issues and that's a big one that the the way that

Obama administration sorta said that they were going to treat marijuana and then the way they did treat it which is very different was very much like it was it wasn't much different I mean started recently sang that they wouldn't go after these states but there was a lot of people that went to jail a lot of people did time lot of people still in involved in the court system I know people personally that have been busted and they were doing everything according to state law fact so what was that about that's a good one man you know I think about when Bill Clinton was elected in 1992 and I remember the excitement that the country had because we thought that the war on drugs and all these things were going to reverse them turns out Bill Clinton under his administration more people were arrested in any other than the ministration for the soda violations in until that time and so I think the assembly thing kind of happened under the Obama Administration

it's hard for the Democratic sort of leadership or the Democratic candidate or president to go in a different direction for fear of being considered soft on drugs on crime now I will say this this Administration as of late is the only Administration that said that they were going to change the way that the justice system for example enforced mandatory minimum drug laws they said they wouldn't be enforcing those dogs anymore they said that sort of thing this Administration said that they wouldn't be you Colorado and Washington along those states that have legalized marijuana because under federal law marijuana remains illegal so technically the federal government can come in and stop that but they have said they were going to allow it to happen they said it's the important sort of experiment and so on the one hand I'm certainly certainly wish

you would do more the current Administration but when we look at what previous administrations have done they have done more than any other Administration when it comes to drug money comes to dry so there have been some horrible things like the busting these medical marijuana dispensaries but is that just a part of what we talked about earlier than just a machine needs to be fed and they it's way easier to do that then knock on some trailer that's got smoke coming out of it in the middle of the desert and some dude comes out with a machine gun and you know those medical marijuana bust you bring in a lot of cash it's it's kind of hilarious here's what they do they go they they arrest you they come in Jack booted would fucking bullet proof vests are machine guns they hold people down a step on your neck when you're on the ground is videos of all this and I'm making this up they take all the weed and they take all the money

and then they say that they'll be in touch with you they say that they'll review your case that charges will be pending they decide when they're going to press charges when they're going to put your thing into the system so many people have to decide whether or not they go back to work do they decide whether or not to go back to that they no one's been charged with anything yet you got arrested they took all your shit then they let you go and so you're sitting there terrified and broke trying to figure out if it's worth doing more of and the people that work there off and quit you got to find new employees college kids don't like getting boots Put to their face and you know who I'm driving their back and so they do this money does evaporates and it's been millions of dollars worth the money it just sort of goes away and then you can't get it back it's not yours it's ours now it just goes away no I mean these kinds of things needed to be they need to be highlighted in people need to really publicize these things because I mean. You just described obviously most of us are

horrified at those kind of events boat people need to know I mean this is been going on in this country for decades seems like there's got to be a way to balance it out just got to be a way to take all these industries that are profiting off of it being illegal and locking people up and making sure there's no law enforcement officers are being paid this got to be a way to shift that into something else and it till they do it's A Hard Road but we have to have a conversation that it has to be like you were saying and people are not even having that conversation people aren't having the conversation say well what do we do with this machine that we built up over the separate past several decades I mean I can think of a number ways that we can use police officers in different roles than what they've been used. Currently I mean I can think about the educational sort of thing what sometimes let's sing about heroin people have been talking a lot about heroin

overdose deaths and no source of thing saying the heroin is cut or lace with some sort of other compound

we can use our police force of four examples whenever they confiscate something like heroin why not due to chemical analysis and make sure it's posted in those local regions so people understand what the drug actually contain I mean we can have police Outreach doing this sort of thing okay you want to avoid this because this compound is dangerous we can do those kind of things we never do they never tell the public what is actually in the compound if if something is in the compound they say that always cut with something or why not tell the public who is more likely to be sub ceptable to obtaining that type of heroin completely agree to give them their heroin that they like so Bill O'Reilly you know he was generous enough to have me on the show and so don't props to him for that but the thing about the Bill O'Reilly show is that people should

I get twisted that is not news that is entertainment and the goal of the what he's disseminating is not public education and not necessarily for the public good so if you want to be entertained he's outstanding but if you were actually wanting information you're in the wrong place wait a minute man you didn't watch the saying about him talking about God making the tide go in at I go out no explain it you didn't see that I watch that and I was controlling these trolling he knows about gravity this motherfucker saying we can't explain where the tide goes in the tie goes out he knows they can explain that was fucking with you but let me think about the guys had the number one new show quote unquote news in the United States for about 15 16 17 years and that's the formula that is used why should he change right so for him it's like he might as well be like Stephen Colbert he played a role they just his rolls not funny his Rose design scare the shit out of you and get you want to build bigger borders

Roland he understands he's playing a role but all of these networks like that they're all playing the role and but the thing is we just don't caricature then like we do him but they're all playing a role so-called experts but they think that they are the expert and so all of these guys are playing the world it's entertainment it's not news and that's one thing that the public has to understand that's not news you can't give me the give you news while they're giving you entertainment but you're absolutely right It's Entertainment first yeah that's why they're wearing skirts that barely cover their vaginas I mean those women on Fox News those are some of the hottest legs you can see on television and they're giving you the news and they're crossing their legs back and forth when they're on the couch hypnotizing you you don't know what the fuck you're talking about Syria or Ukraine who knows look at her legs wide sure her legs are naked like magic guys wear skirts and interviews of the most ridiculous shit ever but somehow or another you're allowed to see most of This Woman's

you know she's actually attractive legs you should actually go to the network and tell them that or be there live I don't know that it's it's hilarious I mean it's it's it's propaganda Factory one really is really just trying to try to dance for you and get you to keep tuna in so they could sell shampoo I mean I know exactly that's all we have mean if it's if you don't go out and get your news on your own if you're one of those people that you get home from work and you turn the clock you turn on the evening news and sit in front of the dinner table and you watch the evening news if that's the only way you get your information like wow we're fucked yeah that's right that's why I'm a college professor that is like the future guys like you teaching young people so that they grow up in

this is something that we haven't seen before any young people today I mean you see it on Twitter I see it on Twitter some of the comments in the statements that people tweet at me I mean they are a lot more critical about this issue than my generation so I am deeply encouraged and so when I speak on this issue as you pointed out how frustrating it might be to deal with certain people I'm not really dealing with those people I'm really dealing with the future, I'm speaking for history and that's really the only way you can change things to change the minds of the young people that are coming up the people that are set in their ways they already have the mortgages that they have to protect that's yeah they did can also justify that it's okay what they're doing because they've always done it other people are doing it and it's legal try so they don't seem to do anything wrong I had a friend was a cop I did you get to it was always tell me if I don't give a fuck what they got a medical marijuana license if I catch you with weed I'm bussing I'm like to do you fucking listen yourself you're a good guy why you talking like that that's ridiculous you would take me aren't we friends you take me to tell me a joke

just stupid that is your friend your friend I'm sure he respects you so therefore you probably reevaluate what he just said I hope so I don't think so fucking crazy but he's a cop and you know he he just he thinks of it is US versus them you know he's got that mentality US versus them and that when there's a law that allows that other person to be the them I don't know if it's written down also does that mean as far as things that that happens when people involved in legal cases divorces you know disputes of the, it's awesome them and we going to US versus them cops are in US versus them mode when it comes to drugs they have live their whole lives as police officers under the thinking that someone who's got drugs is purp and then they can get that guy and that's something that they did they win they win the guys in jail and they went outside to dehumanize the person and so forth and that person isn't really a person and that's a problem that's a major problem I mean none in so you want to make sure that

people we want to catch people not to behave like that yeah and it's got to be really hard for the cops as well if this is what they've done always their entire career and then all sudden the laws change and they have to adjust well so I was in the military you know we haven't talked about that and so I was a cop in the military for short. Of time and wanted to things about cops that are really good at and they're really good at taking orders so they will adjust if it comes down from the top but it has to pressure has to be put on the top to make sure that the disorder of rank-and-file officers followed followed these disorders but they think they're really good at following orders

I'm sure they are I just would be concerned it would take a long time to turn that Battleship of of intent around change the way they look at it look at Colorado look at Washington write the amount of money that those folks are projected to McIntosh taxpayers money

I assure you you're going to have former DEA agents involved in that marijuana industry police officers involved in that industry relatively quickly so when you say it's going to take a long time no it still won't take a long time all you have to do is just change the change the orders or the contingency the conditions in this case money so you can actually do it if you have a commitment to doing it I don't think it'll take a long time that's very optimistic when you look at the Colorado State do you think that's the Genie's out of the bottle and it's just going to spread now the genie is out of the bottle and it will depend whether the genie stays out of the bottle depends on how much tax revenue is generated that's number one of Colorado continues to generate the revenue that they've been reporting recently the Genie's out of the bottle for a while especially in this economy it's kind of a perfect storm right this is screwed up,

everything's all that's right especially in this economy but in the United States if you're making money that trumps everything freak fucking group of humans we are it's really strange but it's exciting I mean I I hate the fact that the situation exists as is I hate the fact that legit just as giant percentage of our population is in prison for non-violent crimes involve personal choice and drug dealer drug user even selling drugs it's it's unbelievably hypocritical when you have drugs everywhere you look but but at least I'm encouraged that I see the shift in the young people have me too I'm very encouraged man and that's the thing that keeps me going that's the thing that keeps me on the road with this book talking to people about this issue trying to educate people I mean because I think that they're going to do it better than we did it and if I could play any role in helping them do it better let's do it what's been the biggest resistance of all these years of studying drugs

I'm studying the reactions of drugs was he when he feels been that the the biggest resistance of their biggest hurdle that you've had to overcome cuz I'm sure it must been pretty difficult to to get this going especially in the 90s yeah you know so when you said what's been the biggest hurdle to overcome I'm not sure if you mean professional hurt hold of her to a personal Hertel because you know in the book it's personal and professional and see what all kind of combines at all so I'm not sure exactly where you want to go with this week either one either or but I what I meant as the resistance to your research yeah so the resistance of the research the biggest soda resistance has been primarily from law enforcement community and treatment providers that those type of those two communities in part because I mean I understand that I'm messing with their money at some level but that's okay I expected that sort of thing and my major thing is that if I can just get people to focus on the

but it's the real evidence and not the hysteria not anecdotal know any jokes I can be important if I can get people to focus on evidence I think I want them over when I tell people how marijuana was initially made illegal they look at me like I'm crazy like I'm making things up but I give him the volume Randolph her story and how they use this term marijuana that was a wild Mexican tobacco are you wasn't into the people that were making marijuana illegal didn't even know they were making hemp illegal call the decorticator that was invented in when the decorticator was invented it was a more effective way to process the hemp fiber and they were talking about him being a billion-dollar crop it was on the cover of Popular Science and everybody was like well this is it and I already have his going to make a new come back cuz now there's a machine that allows you to process it easy and they shut that shit down so quick and that was the original reason why marijuana is illegal it had enough

what to do with even the psychoactive form of it well you just kind of talked about my book you know if that's the sort of theme of the book is that when we talk about these drugs when we look from marijuana to heroin what we find is that the elect a legal legality of these drugs have less to do with the pharmacology and more to do with these social and economic reasons that you just laid out that's precisely it was really interesting that there are laws in two states in Colorado and Washington making marijuana legal but even though Hamp has been non-psychoactive and used in this country legally since you could buy it from Canada like we do it at on it and bring it over and it's totally legal to possess but you can't grow it like they won't let you grow it which is just unbelievable it's it's kind of hilarious and that's the real reason why marijuana is still illegal to this day was all done just to keep him pout which is incredible yeah so there were

so what are the things that we have to understand too is that there is always the sort of the time when we made marijuana illegal it was a time when the country didn't really want to have federal laws and so you have to have fuel in the fuel that we use was related to the Mexicans and black people using the truck so there are a number of people who genuinely genuinely believe that marijuana made these folks misbehave and engage in a heinous crimes and so people thought that the drug was so awful that we we would that any responsible society would ban the truck so bad component of banning drugs existed before marijuana and that's why heroin an opioid some opiates warband that's why cocaine was banned earlier so yeah this this year this song has been played over and over

who financed the Reefer Madness who finance reform that's a tough question because I don't know all of the history related to it one of the things that I do know is that the Bureau of Narcotics headed up at a time by Harry anslinger his bureau got more money as a result of going after marijuana Abilify marijuana and so I know that played a big role in the the the driving of making marijuana illegal but in terms of the Hearst Family that whole storyline I know it's slightly but I don't know it as well as I know the Harry anslinger story it was apparently a church group under the title tell your children and film was intended to be shown to parents as morality tale attempting to teach them it's from Wikipedia teach them about the dangers of cannabis use however soon after the film was shot it was purchased by producer

Dwayne esper recut the film for distribution on the exploitation exploitation film circuit beginning in 38 1939 and through the forties and fifties the film was rediscovered in the early 70s and gain New Life as a satire among Advocates of cannabis policy reform so again it became about money Family Guy who realize he can make some money scaring the shit out of people and sell tickets to this movie also understand now by this time when the film really became big 38 so the drug was already a legal to drug became illegal in 37 and so maybe the film was just capitalizing on the soda mood at the time to of the country people are scared that's alright that's kind of interesting now that it was from a church group and then some dude who made money exploit these fears then he started Heights it's really kinda goes along with what we've been saying the whole time it's all about the money follow the money if I don't have money I mean in many of these cases follow the money is

we all have our price follow the money that's so disturbing now that's disturbing to hear for some people but it's all the entire societies be engineered by money well you know it's one of these things that you hope people behave in a moral fashion You know despite the fact that we have these sort of interest is monetary interest but if people are hearing for the first time that it's about the money and well they are kind of late to the game so it's sort of a duh duh what do you think about I don't know if you were just watch the Vanguard show the Oxycontin Express ever see that episode about the pathway the the highways between Florida and the rest of the country that Florida's drug use in the Oxycontin prescriptions were so high I think floor

I had some insane amount like more than the entire country combined by a long shot of Oxycontin prescriptions and people are going down to the Pain Management Center they document of the whole process apparently Florida since this documentary has been forced to clean your act up cuz we talked about it on the podcast I got a lot of tweets from people with new information that was pretty cool but they had his pain management centers that were built in the eye doctor in the pharmacy right there and my back hurts here you go take this paper go right next door and get your heroin and then people would do it under like 15 different names they had no database so you go to one doctor and get a prescription and you go down the street and go to another doctor and they weren't able to exchange information if I doubt this guy is Joe Rogan character has a hundred different prescriptions for Oxycontin driving around all day with a backache you know you know that I'd like that sort of thing I'm happy that people are concerned about the overuse of any drug for example

about the thing that concerns me about the hole that sort of thing is that when you make these documentaries they invariably they do poor jobs one of the reasons that they do poor jobs is because they highlight do you sort of aberrations to the worst case scenario and then so me the viewer or we get outraged because we see this app Horan Behavior that's going on and then what happens is that you get this crack down so severe that people who are in pain who actually need the medication find it difficult to get the medication so it be nice if we just had like our routine sort of policing of all of these activities when we find that people are abusing the system we deal with it but not get EX don't don't exaggerate our sort of punishment to the extent that we're doing more harm so folks if they are using Oxycontin I would much prefer them use Oxycontin than that.

U Street heroin in part because Oxycontin we know it's a hundred percent pharmaceutical grade and the adulterous there are no adulterants in that Oxycontin versus heroin where there are adulterants in the street-level heroin so on the one hand you have to think about we have to wait all of these so the potential risks and benefits and often times it's a one-sided story and that bothers me one of things they were talking about in the documentary was how Florida was providing the rest of the country for with Oxycontin that's why I was a big issue Florida had his issues and that's that's fine and then an idiot thority should take care of it they should do what's appropriate but I hope they don't exaggerate it that's because typically that's what we do we go overboard yeah that is one of the issues of another article that I was reading on Bloomberg about these pain victims that were trapped in his prescription Crackdown and that the amount of Oxycontin prescription says dropped

Matt Eclipse drop by 97% after a joint US state task force made 2150 arrest for offences ranging from improper sales to over prescription by dr. yeah docs are frayed you know I mean to just sit there a good doctors out there who are trying to be responsible then Wayward ones that you describe the ones who are trying to be responsible they say I'm not prescribing these pain meds because I know there's potential for too much potential for risk or harm they're not so much from for the patient but for myself and turned on losing my license somebody may think that I'm doing this intentionally and so I worry about that how we crack down to severely that's the whole point of this saw one article on Bloomberg if anybody wants to check it out that's the name of it Florida pain victims Trap by prescription Crackdown it's under the health section in 2010 floor

I had 90 of the nation's top 100 pharmacies buying oxycodone

isn't that where a Rush Limbaugh was getting he up he was popping some and say number to that fat fuck you thrown down like a hundred a day you know and heroin through you know I'm the one hand it's like it's there so much their number one he was on essentially heroin that's what Oxycontin is basically but yet he was going to work he was paying his taxes and he was handling his responsibilities right yeah nobody was nobody pointed this out and so when we think about drug use it that's your typical drug user that's a great example of it because me who better a guy who's anti-drugs who happen to be on drugs and a guy who's a mouthpiece for the right wing machine which is always been anti quote-unquote trucks and here's a guy who's taking fucking elephant size doses of this shit everyday he's got his Nanny out there running around or whoever

was his housekeeper running around out there and she got popped it's hilarious that that guy was like an anti-drug guy I mean it's his face before me you know it doesn't it says show you know this but it's fascinating. Those guys exist that the Bill O'Reilly The Rush Limbaugh I'll type characters that people that really are putting on an act and you know Stephen Colbert everybody thinks of him as you know this you know characterture caricature but they're all caricatures huge people like what he does. There golfing every day with a hearing aid now because he apparently did so much oxy Connie fucked up his hearing you explain it to me and I'll just repair it right back at you

hit him upside the head but don't blame that on oxycontin is it possible to take so much Oxycontin ego death I would have to look do the research here no I mean that I have been studying this issue for a while and I just never heard of that so I only heard it because of Alex Jones. It's not the best though it's not Wikipedia Channing Wikipedia he's great guy you go deaf let's see if it's true change times you know yeah but alright really quickly technology done almost completely deaf

who knows what it how much Oxycontin look what's the ld50 for functional ld50 is lethal dose 50% so if you some drugs it's very high some drugs it's very low marijuana it's insane I don't know what the ld50 for Oxycontin is but one of the things about about heroin or just any other opiate like I could continents that if you've been using it for a while that means you can really increase your dose of the drug so you know I've seen heroin users take anywhere from 25 mg of that drug to 500mg that's a y and be fine and so it all depends on the the user's history of using the truck so he could I'm not surprised if he's been using the drug for a while. He was using large doses that doesn't surprise me and that doesn't even concern me if he was Luke using large doses if he had develop tolerance so if you develop tolerance

50 pills a day or whatever he was taking that's no more dangerous than taking one or two pills a day if you don't have the times for the things that people don't talk enough about in terms of his dips or protective effects of tolerance so when people develop tolerance to any drug Weatherby marijuana alcohol heroin it protects you from some of the toxic effects so you can really push the dose without having harmful effects of me just give you an example from an animal study just one of the things that we reported that was reported in the literature with laboratory animals in methamphetamines that you give them a whopping dose of that drug you can cause neurotoxic affects brain cells die right now if you allowed at animal to develop tolerance by giving escalating doses over several days and then you give them that whopping dose you block to sort of neurotoxic of brain cell death as a result of them developing tolerance of Tolerance isn't

to protect the animal from some of the toxic effects of the drug that's fascinating so the ld50 rate will absolutely change with those who are tolerant to it from continued use the lethal dose will look different based upon those users history okay so when they say like lethal dose 50% or 50% of the population being you know like if you have a hundred people and then you give them certain amount of heroin 50% of them die soon as they start taking that heroin the number changes that's right that number you know it's hard to predict when when we start talking about people who have tolerance I mean so when we think about the ld50 we typically talk to my folks who doesn't do don't have experience with the drug and we we do physically addicted some form to a lot of drugs that you're talking about alcohol being one of the few that if you physically addicted to it and you quit did not is not want to have with Amy Winehouse didn't they show that her system had nothing other than alcohol in it had nothing but alcohol but I'm not sure how she died.

I don't want to get this wrong oh yeah you can die from alcohol withdrawal typically from seizures that's cause that's result of alcohol withdrawal so if someone out there is addicted to alcohol how do they check out call the they have to do it very slowly yeah so if you develop dependence on alcohol you should probably be admitted to a hospital in order to receive benzodiazepines some like that has a Pamela volume which acts in a similar way as alcohol but it's longer lasting so the body has a chance to detoxify the benzodiazepine slowly leaves the body where is alcohol abruptly leaves the body when that's what causes the seizure activity notes or something what is the physiological effect of the alcohol leaving the body and then the seizure look what would cause it to cause the body to just so when you have you ever had a hangover yes that's alcohol withdrawal so what happened yeah that's alcohol withdrawal it's partly it's part of alcohol withdrawal

this is part of it as well but it's that's like the mouse symptoms of alcohol withdrawal so but when you think about the severe or sort of alcohol withdrawal that you're asking about what happens with the seizure so the idea is that alcohol what it does is that it suppresses much of the brain activities much of the brain activity telling me man it is just suppress and then for long term use of alcohol it really surprises are number of brain cells and then all of a sudden because alcohol is half-life the time at which half of the drug leave the body is only about an hour it's really quick so the half life is so short once alcohol is left the body and it's been depressing the central nervous system the brain activity and all of a sudden those that sells fire wildly uncontrollably and that's what causes the seizure activity that's unbelievably fast staining so it's all so unbelievably fascinating that it's been proven that alcohol actually suppresses the use of the Mind

mind can't work as well well I don't want to I don't want to say that the strongly but it certainly depresses certain neurons of the number of neurons when you think about it when you are anxious if you're anxious and and you have some alcohol if you have a benzodiazepine it's suppressing certain type of activity and so that's a good thing and you might actually function better because if you think about going to a party or having some event and then you so anxious where you can't I perform as well and you maybe have a drink and now you're calm and you might actually be more social and you might actually perform or better in that situation so I don't want to say that it does that it's just sort of generalized bad effect on your behavior on the brain it does shut down certain functions of brain like there's very few people that would score as well on their SATs after 5 shots of Jack Daniels

yeah I think that that's one thing we've been really good at public education most people know that they shouldn't do shots before taking the SATs for that reason right do you measure made me smarter yeah yeah yeah I can't imagine anything that makes you smarter besides studying and working hard good for you that's a very good way to say that that's so true but it it's interesting though when you think about the idea that this is one of the most popular from the most popular recreational drug in the world and one of the most popular the only big-time sanction one in America where you don't have to have a sickness almost every drug that we have another prescription drug weather is good for you or bad for you dangerous and Eileen incredibly potent whatever it is you don't need a booster just there's my keys bar and you walk on and give me a double on in a beer and then boom 20 minutes later you're drunk you know we don't need any

no reasons no doctor Nobody Has To Hold Your Hand you have to write anything down you have to give the guy your name and phone number to figure out if you send that the bad thing or good thing fascinated by it I'm neither I'm not saying it's good or bad thing if I had to say should it be legal or illegal alcohol many times in my life and I have a problem with alcohol but it is very telling and fascinating that that is the one drug that we chose well it is for a number of reasons I mean when you think about it how we do alcohol weed we take it orally and so it's the only drug that we take orally that you can feel the effects almost immediately and so when you're at a party you don't have to wait for the onset of the effects to happen it happens almost immediately and you control the intoxication simply by taking more or less of a drug can't do that with other drugs or early and soda that's one reason that that's it is that that's the case is because alcohol essentially has no barrier blood-brain barrier

like those other drugs they eat they have to cross the blood-brain barrier with alcohol just their centrally no barrier for alcohol so you can the pharmacokinetics our pharmacology properties of the drug makes it very convenient for a recreational drug that's that's another important reason that it's legal that's a good point when you consider like if you were going to open up like a mushroom store and everybody come in so I might give the mushrooms if I come back and hang out an hour and 20 minutes cuz for the next next an hour are you no not really is going to happen he's going to start sweating you know but alcohol One Shot Two Shot you're feeling in 15 minutes so when you take a drug or leave some of it will be broken down before it reaches the brain which is a good thing cuz that means that you don't have such large doses being shot into your vein or smoke than your lungs into the brain and so it's kind of protective in that way and so those formula pharmacology properties just

I can't think of another drug that have such good properties well it's not only that you have to actually smoke it but we are better methods now you got vaporizers and that sort of thing so you can smoke marijuana more discreetly and as the soda methods are developed it might become a more social drug but we still have the issue of getting large amount into the bloodstream therefore into the brain in such a rapid succession and that's the thing that worries Us in terms of safety and some people need to be able need to be educated on how to make sure that they don't take too much of a large dose at once and once you do that you can help people be safe with alcohol don't have so much worried about it the thing that we try and prevent people from doing this binge drinking because of having large amounts in such a wrap it.

out of time they just your body can't process it quickly now because of the large amount and a rapid sensation that's a rapid Auto Rental Rapid order but what about it mean if a shoe with alcohol as opposed to a marijuana is coordination drastically affect coordination drastically affect your ability to move correctly your response times all depends dose again you know so. Depends how much people are taking you know like all of these drugs are one of the things I try to put out the most important thing about drugs is Dos you know is you increase the dose you increase the likelihood of toxicity because there are doses in which you can take all of these drugs safely and accomplish whatever tasks you're trying to accomplish but it's all about dos so when we say General statements about what alcohol does with cocaine does we have to be cognizant of Dos what about

drinking and driving though what is the the when you see the the limits on a mountain but it would the current national Ms in our lives married a little bit and actually can give them in certain places do you think that their Fair where they're at right now do you think they should be adjusted what what it what are your thoughts about the best we can do and then we we also have those were roadside test and those kinds of things it's the best that we can do and I think we're doing a really good job at sort of alcohol-related drinking I mean driving problems when we look at what issues we had in 1960 s compared to what we have now the number of accidents and deaths related to driving have dramatically decreased all those sorts of things in part because of our education because of what we're doing so I think we're going about that quite well and appropriate what about tolerance and relates to that

cuz for a person who doesn't drink at all they have a point whatever and then you get some dudes just hitting it hard every night and he's only had one or two beers but if he gets pulled over he's going to he's going to test too high but his tolerance might be so that he would be fine you're absolutely right and that's one thing that these sort of criteria don't account for his tolerance but good lawyer who has to defend someone should probably bring intolerance at a particular if their client is tolerant to the alcohol affects but good luck that's a tough one because people think that they have this definite measure and it tells them something and it it really doesn't without understanding tolerance but you're absolutely right that's a great question so Universal number like that is it inherently on scientific understanding a universal number like that is not does not apply to everyone it does not consider tolerance that's right but it's the best

that we have currently other than your other hand eye coordination drills since I saw those are that's the thing that are important for the hearing impaired person is because if you have that in combination with the blood levels then you you have an increased confidence of what you're saying but if you have for example somebody testing over the limit based on their blood but their hand coordination they pass a sobriety test then you're less confident in what that blood level means ride that make sense is it is there any other variables as far as a person's ability to pass a hand eye coordination test when they're drunk mean laugh Ledic ability things along those lines for some people they could barely been down to touch their shoes where's other people or yoga master master fucked up and you know maybe I will just put a sweater over his head while the cops Bill I just got sober

how to do really well then maybe they are there not impair driving as well I don't know but yet all of those issues that you bring up man do are those are complex issues and those issues that the society have to struggle with it but they want to struggle with it because it's too complicated and it's just nicer to have a number that is a state like Florida become this weird aberration how does the State of Florida have so many but they said 90% of all the oxycodone up pharmacies of pharmacies that are making and selling it how does that happen how does one state just go Haywire you know I don't know the Florida law but I'm sure it's related to the person I'm sorry does soda permissiveness of their law I think that that's the thing that contributed to this I mean I date they probably were allowed to set up paying clinics in the way that you didn't require much sort of oversight and then so whenever those kind of things have

when you know there's a there's a potential for abuse and that's why I would suggest I would probably guess that's what happened I was also wondering if maybe it might be some of the remnants of the the cocaine era of Miami about how did MC Cocaine Cowboys documentary Cocaine Cowboys to shout out to my friend Billy Corben the made those movies I'm not that dude very nice guy and really really fascinating documentaries that cover the whole cocaine era of Miami where one year the graduating class with Police Academy every single member either wound up dead from murder or in jail for corruption like they were just crazy and making money off a Coke and Coke is moving in and out and I had always wondered if maybe that had something to do with like Truth The Echoes of this pervasiveness of drugs in that state

I haven't lived in Miami of Florida since 1984 Florida is a bizarre stayed in general I know so I have to do I have to say that I'm outside of the scope of my expertise when it comes to trying to understand Florida I don't I don't understand Florida what they said that there's more Banks per capita in Miami than any other city in the country and that is directly related to their ability to process money that was coke money yeah I mean I grew up in that area late 70s and early 80s and Scarface Arrow you know 1980 was a peek murder rate in this country you know one of the highest murder rates was in 1980 in part because of the cocaine so to think mind you long before crack but nobody's really talking about that and so yeah I know that and I know that cocaine was a big deal in Miami but my friend Steve did his residency in Miami and it was during that era and he

just crazy stories of violence of just people coming into all fucked up and it was a lot of it was drug wars yeah how did that all the sudden happened did you know the history new drug Marcus you know how did the stock markets open up man what took so long that it took the 1980s for them to get over here well I think the story that I've heard and I haven't researched is to the best of my ability so this is only what I've read superficially is that there was a Crackdown on marijuana a big crack down in the seventies on marijuana and then so the drug cartels broaden cocaine because it was smaller way and you can make more money and then so that was about the time when cocaine started to flood the US markets that's what I've read as far as that goes but like I said it's a superficial read of my understanding of it so really all crack cocaine was was like the second wave of cocaine

chain came when they figured out there's an opening because of marijuana cracked and then they said dealer figured out how to cook cocaine and produce mass-produced it in ways that people could smoke it at cheap unit doses I mean that's that's really a quite frankly you know but that person is brilliant where is whoever rig the laws in Florida to allow oxycontin's to come in and you know that that's not what we look at that and we go well this person this is corruption and I know this is this is what they've done is terrible well you know I don't know the law so it's hard for me to speak on the specifics of that but then so I don't know I don't know the person could have had a great idea and probably meant well I don't know but it certainly doesn't seem

be playing out as well as we would have liked know when you start to do these studies and you know it you're in the 1990s and you're finding things that are contradictory to what we normally considered to be culturally accepted ideas about these drugs what what happens do you get resistance from people in in universities to get resistance from your peers you know how science works is that you published you stories one one study doesn't mean as much as multiple studies in so you publish one study and it's like that's a great fine and cool let's see if you can replicate it I see if you can extended let's see if other people can replicate it and nip if other people can replicate it you can extend the findings now you feel more confident in what you're finding and so that that's kind of what happened over the years I bill. I built on my findings and then an increase my confidence so much so that I thought that I should write a book in order to make sure the pub

understand what's happening because when you published in a scientific literature five people read your paper if you're lucky you know people there that's not many people who read the literature besides those few people who are interested in your area and so as I increase my confidence in the findings I thought I wanted to publicize it because I thought what we were doing with drugs was inconsistent terms of policy in the way we educate and treat drugs was inconsistent with the science and the way that you communicate with the people was to write a book a trade book now or never said I challenge you on your ideas he's not correct it's not true have you ever had like sit down and Coulter anything along those lines

well I don't think she's qualified to be challenging me quite frankly about drugs but she would do it anyway yeah I know I show you but they're happy as possible there have been people who who made say that they having trouble with the conclusions that I draw but the scientific community and the general public have been welcoming and it's been a breath of fresh air for most people because people already know this the things that I'm saying about drugs like the fact that the vast majority of people who use drugs are not drug addicts that's not really that the groundbreaking to people who actually no drugs and people were critical that's not groundbreaking groundbreaking is that it's being said in a public forum cuz it's never been said in the public forum it's always been the exact opposite

it's always been the propaganda and what's really refreshing about what you're doing is the fact that you are pushing fact first regardless of how it's going to be accepted that you just saying like this is I'm a scientist this is what's going on and we have to really accept that in order to figure out what we're dealing with science actually save me I mean the data the focus on what do the date of say save my life and you know without science I'm not here and all I can do I mean there are people who are smarter than me there are people who are more articulate to me there are people who are more wealthy than I am but the great equalizer are the data whatever the data says is the position that I take and as long as I do that I'm okay I can do I can stake anything publicly I can be in public I don't nothing intimidates me as long as I am on the side of the data yeah that's that is so important and that's not what's been thrown around it's been what ideology

did you prescribe to what you know what it what is it what are your thoughts on Free Will what are your thoughts on a person's ability to handle certain things and other people can't that's what the discussions always been more as long as discussion is at that level and and now we can engage in this exchange of ignorance and that's what we've had you know it's so in this case what we when I'm trying to do is make sure we avoid exchanges of ignorance and making sure that your people engage in this conversation that they have some expertise and skills some knowledge and not just some emotion now in a perfect world drugs decriminalized or would that be legalized criminalizing in we should have this corresponding increase in realistic education now when things are decriminalized then that means that people can be fined that's right they they may be subjected to five

you don't necessarily have to be fine but just like the traffic violation you might get a fine or you may not get a fine but the the one thing that's important here is that they don't they don't go to jail and they don't ruin their lives as a result of having a felony conviction cuz when we think about the last three President Barack Obama George Bush Bill Clinton all three of those guys used illegal drugs Clinton marijuana Bush marijuana he's why they suspected of using cocaine Obama use marijuana and cocaine all I'm saying is that that's make sure that the society has everybody in the society has the same opportunities as it's those guys in a decriminalized situation as opposed to a legal situation how do we decide where the revenue comes from as far as like tickets is not an issue when because then it becomes a money thing again charge people a ticket for having marijuana a marijuana decriminalized in all suddenly getting tickets left and right for weed

like a speeding thing like it's like putting a 25 mile an hour speed limit on the highway when you know everyone's going to break it yes as a society in terms of thinking about the administrative fees or fines that we would charge people well we set limits to make sure that we don't become an excessive for example the greatest amount of fine that you can give someone that's just say it's $25 or some amount that is not prohibited in an amount that they eat that police departments can't depend upon for their budgets and that money shouldn't be allowed to be used to support police budgets that's an interesting way of doing it completely opposed to legalization Wheatley opposed to legalization my concern here is that the country we're too ignorant right now for legalization not that people will go out and do some dangerous things related to drugs but if you legalize drugs

what will happen is that you will have the detractors say things like any ills in the society is going to be blamed on the drug Runner so ignorant we're susceptible to believe in that so before legalization I'm arguing that we have does increasing education about what drugs do and don't do do it so people cannot be susceptible to being Hoodwink like that I'm arguing that the education provides an inoculation if you will so you're saying we can't handle the truth essential this week wouldn't just jump right into legalization it would be too much changed pandemonium go crazy fear people use propaganda to set people against I'm thinking about well I'm not saying it'll be pandemonium we have Washington and Colorado right now

mark my words there will be studies coming out of Washington and Colorado showing that young people in those states do more poorly on whatever measure you want to have as a result of marijuana the study of the data won't support that conclusion but that's what people are going to be drawing from those data until this is my prediction right now as a result of people's ignorance about marijuana and that's that's marijuana a drug that we have a lot more experience than with heroin and but mark my words you'll see those stitches come out is it a problematic that marijuana is legal in two states medically read a little more like 18 or something else I'm still a schedule 1 substance which means that it has no medicinal value where is for folks don't know heroin and cocaine are both scheduled to which is kind of silly schedule one also includes all of the night

lethal psychedelic variance like Scylla syban which the ld50 rated some fucking crazy marijuana it's like 15 lb inside a 15 minutes like heroin is a schedule 1 drug not scheduled to what is Twin scheduled to methamphetamine a schedule to schedule to get those schedule but it's heroin yeah it's an opiate and they act at the same brain receptor so you're you're you're you're you're puzzled look kind of explains or it it it it typifies Americans drug education could use when you exactly a better analogy is that morphine and heroin are essentially the same drug like I explain the difference between crack and powder that's morphine and heroin that's why I was

the NASA group attached to it the same drop and so the fact that drugs are legal you when I talked about this early earlier has less to do with the drugs biological activity of ecology and more to do with the social conditions that were surrounding the legality of the truck more so than pharmacology cocaine which is a schedule 2 is crack a schedule 1 crack at the schedule yesterday very squirrely so heroin crack bad Oxycontin and you know all the other variance actually based on politics there more political than pharmacology although we say that they're largely based on pharmacology but some of the stuff as you're pointing out the Incans

Open Season analogic and you don't even study this you just are just pointing this out and you can see the flaws in our thinking and you're absolutely right so the scheduling thing is largely social political cultural that's fascinating assume that heroin was scheduled to just because I knew that oxycontin's were prescribed I didn't know and then the crack that the whole thing totally makes sense to know the medicinal use of cocaine cause there's medicinal cocaine yeah so let's think about it if you've ever gone to a dentist right you might have had novocaine put on your gum without cocaine you don't have novocaine cuz okay what's the first local anesthetic right that's one look okay today is used primarily in minor surgeries in order to a restricted blood flow so people can operate in that environment that's what it's mainly use for soy lidocaine also related to cocaine nose fixed and they

the packing up there and then they spray lidocaine and I was fucked up all day man I mean it was a weird feeling that I wasn't High you know it wasn't like a cocaine high but it was that lidocaine shit I was like I think I would rather just felt the pain then to have all this weird stuff in my system you know yeah but yeah without without cocaine you don't have the local anesthetic properties of Lidocaine because it's a modification of the cocaine structure how difficult would it be to get these drugs that have these insane ld-50 rates and have a wealth of mint medicinal benefits like marijuana and get them out of schedule 1 I think marijuana there's a lot of movement now for marijuana to be moved away from schedule 1 2 scheduled to I think it if the public continues its pressure I think it'll happen but the public has to be vigilant and they have to continue its activity and intensity otherwise it won't be it won't happen you know like

we sometimes think that these things are based mainly on medicine and the medical community scientific Community the public has an important role to play here so public opinion and public the dodo the tide which way the tide is going is very important yes now when when you have something like like like marijuana that doesn't hurt people that doesn't kill people then you hear what you hear on TV people come on SO talking about withdrawal symptoms and and people that have withdrawals from marijuana are there physical withdrawals from marijuana is it possible I think I'd published maybe along with my colleagues maybe 10 papers on marijuana withdrawal so we have actually selling a demonstrated marijuana withdrawal now I should say in order to see marijuana withdrawal you have to have people who smoke the drug everyday then there everyday and multiple joints per day and then you abruptly stop them now you don't see

marijuana withdrawal and everyone but you certainly can see some marijuana withdrawal and some people and when I say marijuana withdrawal it's about like nicotine withdrawal you know people they have sleep disruptions they have eating disruptions they are more Moody these are more psychological sort of issues certainly not not life-threatening but it's unpleasant you know if you can think about having withdrawal from tobacco you probably have you have a good idea of marijuana withdrawal so it would be a strong as tobacco withdrawal because tobacco withdrawals a huge one like off of times it's connected to being as bad as as heroin well that are nonsense message exaggeration yeah racing end now when we think about again when I die I want to emphasize when we think about marijuana withdrawal it's only seen in the heaviest users and it's not seeing an even all of the heavy

and so it's something that's that you certainly can observe but it's not common and so when you talk about these absolutely extreme versions of people to smoke in multiple joints a day every day and then it stopped abruptly then you just feel like shit for a little while that's it that's right that's it that's right no danger no I mean you'll be fine there's and you're not in any physical danger is part of it your brain just scrambling the garage also does not high anymore and you like when we doing what the fuck is going on here like maybe that's the better way to put it you know I was just trying to think of some scientific way of saying but I think that that might be a better way I'm just saying you know what you think about it this way whenever you engage in some activity heavily for some extended. Of time and then you abruptly stop you know your body particular when you think take and some substance your body adjusts to that substance being there and now that substance is abruptly remove and not all the compensatory mechanisms

your body and your brain are overactive and so that's part of the reason that you have the withdrawal symptoms but eventually the body resets and goes back to his homeostasis is normal so the balance accept extreme examples like alcohol will your body desire you have to have to do something to alcohol marijuana one of the nice things about marijuana is that it stays in the body relatively long so the half life of marijuana can be as much as 24 hours now that's a allows the body to slowly detoxify where is wood alcohol it's gone within an hour and it's like this abrupt shut off your shut off and now all of these compensatory Mex in the mechanisms are hyperactive and whereas with marijuana these compensatory mechanisms are active but they you have an opportunity to slowly adjust that's fascinating so that's such a

that's such a unique piece of information that The Hangover effect is a withdrawal from alcohol affect strong like a fucking dehydrated to get the kind of feeling that you get when you have a hangover alcohol in your system people who have hangover you don't need to pump that much in pumping all this alcohol in your system then all the sudden it's gone it's stop and then your body was just adjusting to the drug being there so compensatory mechanisms are really that's the that's the mechanisms behind addiction that you're trying to reintroduce the drug to keep those compensatory mechanisms satisfied I think that's an easier one for me we think about heroin one of the things that heroin is really good at and its use medically for this reason it happened use magically for this reason is that it's not

diarrhea so people who have diarrhea that can cause of death for example you give them heroin it makes you constipated that's a compensatory mechanism of heroin right so that's a that's a compensatory mechanism of the body having it what notes are the compensatory mechanism of the body is that it tries to counteract the sort of constipation that heroin causes so it has to get the juices flowing again if you would the body tries to do that when the heroin abruptly leave these overactive mechanisms now causes someone to have diarrhea because it was trying to get the system going so the body is just trying to correct itself to be where you need to be because you need to go to the bathroom and the body is trying to make sure that happens because heroin is blocking that ability to do that starts absolutely fascinating now when you do hair

for long periods of time like how long does it take for these compensatory mechanisms to release it into the point where you hit a withdrawal syndrome for heroin for Harold it all depends so like if you only are using the drug in the intermediate method Lee you don't have to worry about the body becoming the compensatory mechanisms becoming so active that you have to worry about withdrawal symptoms it's only when it's a constant sort of administration of the drug constant levels of the drug in the body that the body can pit story mechanism become hyper active. The case was cigarettes as well because you ever see that movie with Russell Crowe I did it was funny, the scientist on a 60 Minute interviews and that's what they write the 60 minutes

yes it was all the guy who was talking about the 500-plus different chemicals at the the government allows him to put his cigarettes at her all directly related to addictive well tobacco has about 4,000 chemicals in it Jesus or natural tobacco so Natural Tobacco is 4000 natural chemicals not 4000 chemicals that the cigarette companies put in which is what this scientist was highlighting the guy with Russell Crowe play what what's going on there like how are they able to do that like when they're adding these things to cigarettes that make it so that you become more addicted more quickly how are they doing that what are they doing you know there have been so much said for example there are chemicals that I understand that they were trying to add to Tobacco to make it more readily released of the two more readily release the nicotine there chemicals being a

how to take the back off or flavoring they say there are a variety of sort of things but I don't know exactly what you're getting at it in terms of why they add the the cotton the compounds in terms of Addicting people from what I got from that movie so the movie Russell Crowe plays the scientist who is testifying about how they had design cigarettes to be much more addictive yeah so what are the things that I think it was illegal to manipulate the nicotine content in the tobacco cigarettes because the tobacco company said that tobacco is a natural product you know so they don't do any manipulations that was one of the things but then it was found out that they had they had been growing these high THC this High nicotine strain tobacco and somewhere in South America and so that was one of those sort of issues related to this

the Tobacco Company understands pharmacology or they understood pharmacology in terms of Designing the cigarette and the gold one of the major goals is that if you want to get someone addicted to a drug like tobacco or nicotine is that you want to make sure you can release the nicotine in a more in a wrap it efficient way to hit the long until the brain and I think the argument was that tobacco have figured out how to release the nicotine more rapidly and then dude one of the major theories in addiction work is that the more rapidly a drug has to bring the more addicted to drug is and so I don't know if it if all of that has been demonstrated but I know a lot of this has been said but I don't know what has actually been demonstrated in terms of what the tobacco company did what what what scientist say and frequency and that's how the compensatory mechanisms get set off

and so even heroin which we've all saw that you can't do once you go man go get you you can and you can probably do it twice but you can't do it every week and do it like everyday for a couple weeks if anybody out there have taken Vicodin Percocet Oxycontin all of those drugs you've taken those drugs for pain or whatever reason and then you your pain is over and you go back to your life and you do your thing you have essentially taking a low dose of heroin and so the notion that someone can't take heroin more than once without becoming addicted that's just a voodoo that's silly that's 1937 but what about people that do take pills and I have a relative and he hurt his back music construction worker hurt his back start taking pain pills and became fucking a dunk a total junkie he was responsible your family got divorced lot of being is crazy liar Pill Popper dude

what's that the dogs are the toughest questions that people ask me right because on the one hand it's like it's not the drug I'll show you that so when you talk about him becoming a liar and becoming all these kinds of things I don't know the guy but the fact is is that we know that people do become dependent on these drugs for whatever reason I don't know whatever the reason was for him but there could be a variety of reasons a lot of times people become addicted on these drugs because they have kerkering Corcoran psychiatric disorders because they have lack of other up better options because they have other issues that's going on I don't know but I have to like understand this guy's complete situation but it's a fact that people do become a dick to some people but the vast majority don't so we can't blame the drug what we need to do is more systematically understand what's going on with that person and then we can figure out what's going on because it's always mean what I just did I gave you

anecdotal story about this guy what is correct he was always looking for excuses whole life you know if you had to run 7 laps would run 6 and pulls ankle and he's just that guy and then you know bet you know you are He Is We as you know it's not good for everybody else if you try to help me now baby fucking you got to do what you got to do that that guy you know was always that guy and so when he got hooked on pills and you know how I found pills I mean that's the thing that's that's one of the things that frustrates me in this sort of Mission to educate the public is that people blame drugs for their for some of their shortcomings and some of the things that are not their shortcomings it's not their fault but we don't get to figure out what's really going on when you sent

blame the truck so there are two crimes that are committed in that case we don't get to figure out what's going on your situation and then your restricting access to the drug for other people who may do it I need it responsibly and also it's an incredibly complex discussion and we're breaking it down to these very simple terms that may or may not apply my friend were told you about that a problem with Heroin who came over my house to detox his family is crazy he even got to know him better and I understood what is there was a psychiatric issue in in his family and it was not just one person so he this guy was self-medicating and I think that's often the case and I think that's one of the great tragedies of what happened during the Reagan Administration when they start releasing people out of the streets homeless people that were in turn before that they were in mental institutions and they changed what defines a person is mentally

pamphlet Mike lucky wipe your own ass can you feed yourself get out of here and then kick them out in the street and you have bunch of people walking around talking themselves that used to be in hospital being cared for ya no absolutely you you raise all of these complex issues and I just hope that the public as a result of this show your show another things that are going on I just hope that they ask these tough questions on that date or critical in their own sort of views about these things cuz we can all learn as we go down to people like you and if it wasn't guys like you providing the data and doing the hard work and ended sticking your neck out there and doing all the shows did Bill O'Reilly in the actual facts in the data and doing so so confidently and I think it's awesome man I really appreciate it I appreciate you come on the shuttle to and I'm very very important so Fox please support go go by his book is called high price you can get it at high price is it high price the book high price the book.com I'm sure you can get on Amazon right

audible version I know imma make sure I tell my editor the next time I want to hear the guy who wrote the book read the book I want to hear the woman who wrote the book read her book man I want someone else reading your book for a stupid I know you got enough juice so this will happen next and whoever it is his book silly freaks go by the book and I'll follow him on Twitter it's dr. Carl Hart on Twitter that's haart on Twitter and thank you man I was awesome is the pleasure meeting you my friend good friend Chris Ryan told me I had to come hang out with you so thank you man once a month together. We don't have a name for it yet but what we do

is for folks who've listen to the ones with Duncan and Chris Ryan and me we do my podcast next is Duncan's next is Chris's and we just keep doing what you want a month together but he speaks very highly of you as well. I really appreciate you not think was awesome dr. Carl Hart ladies and gentlemen thank you to squarespace.com for for sponsoring our podcast I should know that fucking URL by now but of course I don't sponsor copy squarespace.com use the code word Joe that's up for 10% off your first purchase go to squarespace.com and use the code word Joe Squarespace and all-in-one platform and easy way for you to design your own website and do so in an in a really impressive fact matter also to stamps.com go to stamps.com click on the microphone and enter in the code word JRE for our special offer

no risk trial plus $110 bonus offer which includes a digital scale and up to $55 of free postage that stamps.com and use the code word JRE we're also brought to you by onnit.com it's Onnit makers of Alpha Brain use the code word Rogan and save 10% off any and all supplements all right we will be back tomorrow with Amber Lyon going to tell us a fascinating tale of her her entrance into the world of psychedelic trips and Matt the terror Serra former UFC welterweight champion will join us tomorrow at 3 p.m. as well so much love to everybody thank you everybody who came out Dallas we had a great time it was so cool and I will see you soon much love