TRANSCRIPT

CULTURAL BAGGAGE

OCTOBER 23, 2019

DEAN BECKER: Broadcasting on the Drug Truth Network, this is Cultural Baggage.

MALE VOICE: It’s not only inhumane, it is really fundamentally un-American.

CROWD CHANT: No more Drug War! No more Drug War! No more Drug War! No more Dug War!

My name is Dean Becker. I don’t condone or encourage the use of any drugs – legal or illegal. I report the unvarnished truth about the pharmaceutical, banking, prison, and judicial nightmare that feeds on eternal Drug War.

DEAN BECKER: Alright folks, this is Dean. I am glad you have your ears on listening to us here on Cultural Baggage.

Today we are going to have a longtime friend of mine. I don’t know exactly how long I’ve known this guy, I'm thinking at least 15 maybe closer to 20 years he now works with the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) and we're gonna do a little dive into political perspectives, a little bit of talk about presidential candidates – or maybe just one. He is with us now, Mr. Matt Simon. How are you, Sir?

MATT SIMON: Hi Dean. I am doing great.

DEAN BECKER: Glad to have you with us. I feel it important that I talk about marijuana, tests, what’s happening in other countries, studies, and scientific pronouncements over the years but I seldom dive in to politics at all because it is just not an area that I have much expertise in. You have been digging in to at least one of our presidential candidates fairly in-depth have you not?

MATT SIMON: I would have to say you are smart man on that front, Dean. It is tough dealing with the politicians sometimes. Most of my work is in the State Policies Department at MPP where I work with legislature in New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, and a few other states trying to get legislatures to do what other states have done by ballot initiative and that has been quite the challenge; but since I live in New Hampshire I have a front row seat every four years when presidential candidates come to my town and they are everywhere. I can’t avoid it so I have immersed myself in it. Back in 2007 when I first really engaged in the Primary, nobody wanted to talk about marijuana or drug issues at all and we have seen that change completely. This year it has come up quite a lot; it has come up in some of the debates. There has been a huge shift with all of the democratic candidates in support of marijuana legalization which was hard to imagine about a decade ago, with the exception of former Vice President Joe Biden, who I think you want to talk a little bit more about.

DEAN BECKER: I do. I and I think a lot of democrats have the simpatico – he was with Obama, he has got to be a good guy. I think in many ways he probably is and certainly from my perspective he is better than Trump but he was very much a ramrod if you will, back in the 80s and going in to the 90s in calling for the escalation and more punitive long-term sentences including arresting people and taking their things. Am I right?

MATT SIMON: I think you are absolutely right. I was watching CSPAN back in the 90s before I ever got involved in these issues. Back then Biden was Chair of the Judiciary Committee which was in the late 80s. His record definitely goes back to the 80s and 90s so if people aren’t aware of that, I would encourage them to become more aware of it. We have some good articles published (UNINTELLIGIBLE) to describe that history in the background. One of them that is really good is www.vox.com, it was published by German Lopez a couple of months ago on July 31, 2019. If your listeners want to search and find that they can. I have it in front of me and it has some things in it we can go in to.

DEAN BECKER: Sure. Let me interrupt for a moment. I just celebrated 18 years of doing the unvarnished truth about the drug war – 7,300 radio segments so far and at one point –

MATT SIMON: Wow!

DEAN BECKER: -- We had well over 100 stations in the U.S. and Canada, but I think others have developed the courage and they do their own drug war news now but when we did it, we were the original – the only show on the planet that was daring to broche this subject. Over the years we have managed to find allies especially right here in my home city and county. I want to share this with the listeners and give you a chance to perhaps respond, Matt, but it will also give the listeners out there an awareness and recognition that we here at KPFT, the Cultural Baggage Show, the Century of Lies Show has managed to sway the opinions of the police chief, the sheriff, and especially the district attorney. Here is a segment I did with our current district attorney, Kim Ogg. We will be back in just a few minutes. Matt, thank you for hanging on.

MATT SIMON: Absolutely.

KIM OGG: You know we can’t legalize marijuana. The executive branch can use its discretion and the immense authority of the District Attorney in terms of accepting charges or not to change the way we handle marijuana offenders but it is up to our legislature to act responsibly and to really consider the damage being done through the imposition of permanent records against thousands and thousands of people statewide – 10,000 a year just in Harris County alone. We have to look to our legislature to help make it right, especially for those who medically need marijuana.

DEAN BECKER: Exactly. You know I spent some time a few weeks back in Austin and talked with several legislators, senators up there and behind closed doors they get it. It is them developing the courage to say in public or within hearing range what they can say privately behind closed doors. Courage is lacking but it seems to be growing. Does it not?

KIM OGG: Yes it is. You are exactly right, this is a matter of political will and I had hoped that leadership from the front during these critical times in our country on the issue of marijuana here in Harris County would inspire some of our legislators to make the move and at least vote in favor of medical marijuana legalization because I think our Veteran’s, people who have got children with serious epileptic disorders, and others who are suffering with chronic pain really need compassionate alternatives to pharmaceutical relief. I am just hoping that our legislature will look at the success that we are having in Houston diverting people; our crime is not up. So far we have had about ten percent of the people diverted go through our class and we have now started texting our class participants four times a day to remind them “Don’t go to jail, sign up for the class”. We are saving money, police officers time, and we are saving people’s professional lives in the sense that we have stopped limiting their opportunities through the execution of draconian sentencing for small amounts of marijuana. I am proud of what we are doing and I urge the legislature to move forward and if they don’t do it this session than I urge the community, who understands the benefits of medical marijuana to keep the pressure on and keep talking to their legislators and pushing them. Business organizations and associations are for this. There are think tanks on the right of the Republican Party who are for this right here in Texas and its one place where a liberal democratic and a libertarian republican alliance could move this thing through the legislature but they are going to have to have the political will to do it. If it doesn’t happen this session then I hope the community keeps the pressure on for two years from now.

DEAN BECKER: Friends, you have heard some very positive thoughts from District Attorney Kim Ogg of Harris County, Houston, Texas, and I want to thank you once again for your courage and your commitment to making these changes so necessary here in our county. Any closing thoughts, Kim?

KIM OGG: Just that I am so grateful to your audience. I appreciate their vote, their support, and their prayers. This is a big job and it is not one that any of us take lightly. We can see that the District Attorney, through our recent actions has the power to bring important change and reform to our justice system. I know I have that solemn duty. I took my obligation and commitment seriously and I just want your audience to know that I am not going to let you down.

DEAN BECKER: Kim, can I ask a favor?

KIM OGG: Of course!

DEAN BECKER: All right.

KIM OGG: Unless it is a get out of jail free card in which case you better call your defense lawyer, not your prosecutor.

DEAN BECKER: (LAUGHTER) I may have a situation in the next year or two to negotiate, but no. When you gave your speech there at the criminal courthouse about the Mandatory Marijuana Diversion Program (MMDP), I walked up to you and shook your hand. You tell me if I am right. You said, “Dean, you were the trailblazer! You made this day possible”. Is that right?

KIM OGG: I think you were a big part of it, Dean. You represent law enforcement and the community. You have been accused and been through our criminal justice system and I think that you have had the opportunity in your 68 years (now that I know how old you are) to see this issue from many different perspectives. I found that invaluable and your crusade to basically get law enforcement to focus on the issues and the things that we can do to reduce the crime rate and prevent crime. I think for a forerunner to my ability to bring this change to Houston’s drug policies and to our leadership’s perspective, yes, you were an inspiration to me and I want to thank you personally.

DEAN BECKER: Okay. That was the current District Attorney of Houston, Harris County Kim Ogg thanking me for helping me to change the perspective here in this county, this city, and in this state. What many folks don’t realize is that Kim has now decided she is no longer going to arrest people for any bags of marijuana or hemp since they don’t know the difference and that idea has spilled over in to the rest of Texas, and that idea has spilled over in to Oklahoma, Tennessee, and other states as well. Folks that was my impetus, my perspective, my challenge to the logic of doing this forever that helped change the attitude of Kim, of our sheriff, of our police chief, of the past three sheriff’s, police chief’s, and district attorneys.

Today we have a live guest on our show. Mr. Matt Simon out of New England, he works with the Marijuana Policy Project.

Matt, what did you think of that discussion with the D.A.?

MATT SIMON: It was absolutely wonderful, Dean. Thank you so much! I don’t get the opportunity to say that often but all of the work that you have done over such a long period of time lighting fires in people’s minds and helping them think through this issue. As somebody who grew up with the war on drugs in the eighties they cracked an egg in a skillet and told us that this was our brain and we just needed to be afraid.

DEAN BECKER: Yes.

MATT SIMON: That was drug policy. I am working online this morning and I see that Gallup has come out with a new poll and it says that two thirds of Americans are in favor of making marijuana usage legal. This is the second year in a row that the Gallup’s found 66%, two to one support nationally for legalizing cannabis and you have been a big part of that so thank you.

DEAN BECKER: I like to think that I have made a difference not just in Houston, Texas or even in America for that matter. I get feedback from some of my stations up in Canada as well. I used to be on Sirius Radio back in their first years but I think my skills weren’t up to their standards after a while, they found more professional shows. We even had a station in Australia but they were growing weed in the back part of the warehouse and they got busted and the station shut down. It just proves the point that when I first started this a little over 19 years ago stations were picking up the show and playing it on college stations and others around the country without even asking me because like I said earlier, this was the only program in the world that was challenging the logic of drug war. I used to open it with, “Broadcasting from the Gulag Filling Station of Planet Earth, this is Cultural Baggage. The unvarnished truth about the drug war”, because back then Houston was the Gulag Filling Station. Every morning we would have buses show up at the jails and they would load hundreds of people in to those buses and take them to Louisiana, and small Texas towns because our jails were so full. They were sleeping under the bunks on the beds in the hallways! We were so gung-ho for drug war but I helped to end that madness.

The thing about Joe Biden is that he hasn’t backed down. I suppose if he winds up with the nomination I would hold my nose and my ears and close my eyes and vote for him but I don’t want to because he still is a drug warrior at heart. He is the only one who doesn’t want to legalize. He thinks we still need to have the ability to arrest people in order to stop them from their immoral habits I suppose. Your response to that, Matt Simon?

MATT SIMON: I am just going to preface this real fast by saying that any opinions I express are my own and don’t necessarily reflect those of my employer. MPP is all for getting the facts out there on all of the candidates and having voters make up their own mind. That being said, I have talked to a lot of young people in particular who know Joe Biden from recent history and know him as the Vice President under a popular president who many would be willing to brush aside his past without a full examination. To those people I would suggest that yes, certainly the whole country was thinking drug war thoughts back in the 80s and early 90s and certainly most politicians were voting in support of the drug war back in the eighties and nineties but Biden in particular was at the front of that parade.

I am going to mention something from this Vox article which was published on July 31st. 1989 was really the height of the anti-drug politics. George H. W. Bush was President and he had come out with yet another plan to escalate the war on drugs after it had already been escalated several times in the eighties and Biden’s response on national television was “Quite frankly, the President’s plan is not tough enough, bold enough, or imaginative enough to meet the crisis at hand”. He called not just for harsher punishments for drug dealers but to, “Hold every drug user accountable”, and put aside the plan for not including enough police officers, not enough prosecutors, not enough judges, not enough prison cells and seemed to be directly calling for even more mass incarceration. In recent years, Biden has walked back from those positions to some extent. He supported reforms to some degree but he still does not support legalization of cannabis and I think there are far more questions than answers at this point with regard to how much of that from the eighties and nineties he is sorry for and how much he would do differently if he had it to do over.

DEAN BECKER: The British newspapers, the Australian newspapers, the Mexican newspapers, and many of the Canadian newspapers are starting to talk about the need to legalize drugs, not just marijuana. They are starting to talk about the possibility of thwarting the efforts of the cartels. Maybe they can stop the overdose deaths. Maybe they can save money and lives. It is starting to sound more and more like what I have been saying for these 18 years over the airwaves that the logic has always been there; but for people to open their eyes to see it, to observe and to speak about it. It is a wonderful thing.

A couple of the politicians were talking the other day about decriminalizing and going the Portugal way if you will and I am all for that, it is certainly better than what we have going on but it still leaves the cartels and the gangs in charge of production, purity, and so forth. There is room to move and it just seems like Biden could move if he wanted to. Your thought there, Matt Simon?

MATT SIMON: Well he could move, he may move, many believe he will move if he is elected and that is a decision for each voter to make. I am only looking at the facts and the words that have come out of his mouth and I am not entirely seeing it just yet. It is an open question, Dean.

DEAN BECKER: It certainly is and not one that I am willing to gamble on to be honest with you. I had Eric Sterling, a good friend of ours on my show about two months ago and we were talking about those days during the late eighties and early nineties when he was working for Peter Rodino in U.S. Congress helping to right the drug laws and how they got flanged together and it was not Eric’s idea – not his doing. He was more or less just working for them. We didn’t focus too much on Biden during that discussion but he was very instrumental; he was the ramrod on many of those efforts. Was he not?

MATT SIMON: He was very much front and center and one of the key supporters at every turn. It was 1986 – 1988 that the so-called Anti-drug Abuse Acts were passed in Congress and that is where we got that 100 to 1 ratio – the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine which to Biden’s credit he later supported reducing that disparity and now it is at 20 to 1 but that doesn’t seem to be justified by anything.

DEAN BECKER: No.

MATT SIMON: We are a long way from where we need to be and I will tell you what the big takeaway is for me on the positive end is that they may not have a clear idea of what policies should replace the war on drugs but we hear a lot of people in mainstream political discourse, including most of the democratic candidates for President that will now say that the drug war is a failure and will call for alternatives. Some of those alternatives may be better than others and I hope this gets more detailed scrutiny and discussion before people start voting in January, but is has been very encouraging. At the last debate, Andrew Yang said he supported broader decriminalization and Beto O’Rourke has said that as well which has created more of a discussion around those issues which I think is always positive.

DEAN BECKER: Friends once again that was Mr. Matt Simon. He works with the Marijuana Policy Project. His thoughts are not necessarily that of the Marijuana Policy Project itself.

We challenge the world to come on this show and tell me that I am full of it. Show me where I am wrong. Prove that I have missed the mark.

There is no one on this planet that wants to come on this show and challenge my logic or defend this drug war, not for one second. It cannot be done. It is evil, ignorant and extremely stupid. 500 billion dollars a year we give to terrorists if they are brave enough to grow flowers on a mountainside. We spend about ten billion in Mexico where the cartels smuggle cocaine and methamphetamine north where they mix it with all kinds of powders and potions and sell it to our kids at a 17,000% markup with 70,000 of our kids dying each year from drugs off of the black market. Drugs that they have no idea what are in them. What hacks me off more than anything is that every time I hear a Tom Petty song I think about what happened to him. Tom Petty got some bad Oxy. It was counterfeit, it contained Fentanyl and it killed him. The same holds true for Prince. Two miraculous, wonderful musicians who helped generate happiness around the world and they are dead because of the ignorance of prohibition. It just hacks me off, I don’t know how else to say it. We will be back in a moment with Matt Simon.

It’s time to play Name That Drug By its Side Effects. Low blood sugar, decreased appetite, hunger, drowsiness, weakness, dizziness, confusion, irritability, fast heartbeat, sweating, acidic stomach, abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, renal failure, and death. Times Up! The answer: from AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Byetta for diabetes. The drug was originally discovered in the lizard. Hello, Derma Subspectrum.

All right folks, this is Cultural Baggage on KPFT, the Mothership with the Drug Truth Network. We are speaking to Mr. Matt Simon with the Marijuana Policy Project. Matt, what else is MPP up to these days? How are things going up there?

MATT SIMON: Things are going very well actually. We are very focused on state legislatures in my department. We are working on some perspective ballot initiatives as well. It has been very exciting in the northeast just in the last week the governors of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut all met at a summit with a bunch of legislative staffers and they discussed how to move forward regionally on cannabis legalization and on policies dealing with vaping which is the first time anything like that has ever happened that I am aware of. To have governors of states that are not ballot initiative states that see that legalization is not only coming, but is a good idea; they have all expressed support for it. They are meeting to discuss how to best move forward and how to best get their state legislatures to move forward and that has pretty much taken up all of my time. It is very encouraging while at the same time being wildly frustrating.

DEAN BECKER: It does get to be déjà vu all over again. A lot of that goes on. We have a conglomeration of governors that you are speaking of which is a good sign that people are starting to think on this at a higher level both nationally and regionally. I feel that I have been blessed over the years that I have had the opportunity to talk to well over 3,000 individuals that I interviewed over these shows from government scientists like Dr. Donald Tashkin, he works for the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and I had a chance to have a good sit down interview with him a few years back and during that interview he reminded me of a study he had done to determine just how dangerous and deadly cannabis is. They wanted to see how badly it hurt your lungs and your life. They did an in-depth study looking at people who smoked marijuana, people who smoked tobacco and then they looked at people who smoke nothing at all. For some reason they made a determination that those who smoke marijuana were less likely to contract lung cancer than those who smoke nothing at all. This is the interview which is online and in the transcript as well. There are a lot of people who believe marijuana is a medical miracle and for some people it certainly has been. I have seen the stories, I have met the people. I know it is true and while I am not going to say it is a blanket universal salvation to the world; it does have the potential to save many people. Does it not?

MATT SIMON: There is no question about that anymore and anybody who is still in denial about that fact might be on a few state legislatures but it’s really well accepted in all 50 states and the fact that some states still don’t have safe legal access for patients just further underscores the need for continued effort on all fronts. Every time I think about hanging up the spurs and maybe I won’t lobby next year on cannabis, I think of all the states that still don’t have decent laws or that are stuck really in the 1980s. We have a lot of work left to do, Dean. We have come a long way but we have a long way left to go.

DEAN BECKER: We were speaking with Mr. Matt Simon, he is with the Marijuana Policy Project. You can find them on the web at: www.mpp.org.

I just have to ask, to advise, and to hope that you will look at these Presidential candidates. Joe Biden ensures that terrorists, cartels, and gangs make lots of money. He doesn’t give a rat’s ass how many of our kids die from these contaminated drugs.

DEAN BECKER: Once again I remind you that because of prohibition you don’t know what’s in that bag. I urge you to please be careful!

To the Drug Truth Network listeners around the world, this is Dean Becker for Cultural Baggage and the unvarnished truth.

Cultural Baggage is a production of the Pacifica Radio Network, archives are currently stored at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, and we are all still tap dancing on the edge of an abyss.

CULTURAL BAGGAGE

FEBRUARY 27, 2019

TRANSCRIPT

DEAN BECKER: Hello, my friends, welcome to this edition of Cultural Baggage. I am Dean Becker, the Reverend Most High. This past Sunday I went to church, or rather to The Oasis to hear my doctor, Doctor Richard Andrews, give a talk about addiction.

RICHARD ANDREWS, MD: One of the definitions of addiction is that it's a chronic relapsing brain disease with compulsive drug seeking and use despite harmful consequences.

Now that's a key part of the definition, and typically that is in fact part of the definition, and so that kind of raises the interesting philosophical question: if you have compulsive drug use without harm, is that still an addiction?

And I'm not saying I have the answer to that, I've just -- it's something that I'm trying to figure out also.

Now, if you, sometimes it's highly contextual, though, you know, whether something is harmful or not is highly contextual. Whether you even are compulsively using it or not is highly contextual, and this has been shown extensively in the scientific literature, in fact.

But if you're rich versus poor, are you more likely or less likely to have harmful consequences? Well, again, it depends on the circumstances, you know, but, I would say that in general the poor are perhaps more likely to have harmful consequences.

And, in diabetes, is compulsive insulin injecting a disease? You know, it's an interesting question, and, so now here is, and I apologize for the slide being a little bit too busy and the letters are a little bit too small, but I'll review it.

So, and you see in parentheses there, or perhaps you can see it, the older terms for these phrases, in other words, loss of control, there are three different categories, loss of control, physiology, the effects on the body, in other words, and consequences. Those are the three areas in which you may have, you know, you can describe certain things about the person who has come to you for assistance with this.

They are using more drug than they intended, they're unable to cut down. Giving up certain activities that they used to enjoy, craving.

On the physiology side, experiencing tolerance. Now tolerance, unlike the tolerance here at Houston Oasis, in this case tolerance refers to the need to increase your dose of the substance in order to keep experiencing what you were experiencing before.

This is a natural phenomenon with some drugs, and with some people. Even with opioids, it does not occur universally. Sometimes it occurs and sometimes it doesn't. I've, you know, one of the most common reasons people go to doctors is for pain of one kind or another, and there are various different ways to approach pain.

I like to start with what are called non-pharmacologic approaches, which is to say, are you getting enough sleep? Do you need to get some more exercise? Issues like that.

And, but, you know, occasionally, the most effective medication to use is an opioid medication, and when used appropriately and monitored, they tend to be extremely safe, and I've had a number of patients go for years at a time on the same exact dose of an opioid and never change the dose, and they do fine, and it's still helping with their pain.

So, unlike what you might hear, it is not the case that everybody has tolerance with opioids and with other medications. That simply isn't the case.

Now, you do sometimes see that, especially in the case of euphoria, which is of course the most popular side effect.

And then you have withdrawal, in which you have the opposite effects on your body of the drug itself, when you're withdrawing from the drug, you know, instead of feeling calm and having euphoria, you'll have the opposite of euphoria, which is called dysphoria, or in other words feeling bad. Instead of constipation with the drug, you'll have diarrhea. Instead of feeling calm, you'll feel agitated. So that's withdrawal symptoms.

And then on the side of consequences, you may have unfulfilled obligations, interpersonal problems, or find yourself in dangerous situations or having medical problems.

The current definition, then, of substance use disorder is that you have two or more of the things listed, and you feel distressed or you have impairment. And all of those elements are important as part of the diagnosis.

So, why does addiction happen? Well, as you might expect, this is a complicated story that is still not all that well understood. But one of the ones that I wanted to focus on, because I think it's quite relevant and it's fascinating, is adverse childhood experiences, sometimes abbreviated, or the acronym is ACE.

PTSD is sort of, it can happen to an adult or a child, and it would tie in with the, at least for the childhood part of it, tie in with the ACEs or even just a lack of positive experiences, especially in your formative years.

And there was a fascinating study done a number of years ago by people from the CDC together with the Kaiser Group out in California, where they collected data on a huge number of their patients, and they looked at certain things. You can take the study, oh by the way, anybody who would like to have a copy of the slides you can email me at sciencelover@gmail.com, and I'll send you a copy of the presentation.

But if you had childhood trauma, neglect, or abuse, an incarcerated parent, there's a whole variety of different things that constitute Adverse Childhood Experiences, and if you have a certain number of these, and certain kinds of experiences, then that correlates quite well with certain problems, health problems, that people develop, including a risk of addiction or substance use disorder.

A lower income all by itself, you know, can predict a higher ACE score. A higher ACE score predicts earlier drug use and more likelihood of having a substance use disorder, and some studies indicate that a half to two thirds of illicit drug use is explained by a, again, that would be problematic illicit drug use, not necessarily non-problematic.

I'm fascinated by the idea of evidence based policy. Now, there's a nice Wikipedia article on that. Increasingly in medicine, and this did not use to be the case, increasingly in the medical field, if you don't present evidence for your position, your position is automatically deemed weaker.

Now, sometimes good evidence doesn't exist for certain things. If good evidence doesn't exist, then sometimes you do have to fall back on other things, like expert opinion, but it would be nice, increasingly, if we would have evidence based policy.

For roughly a hundred years now, we've had prohibition against drugs, you know, and so, and yet, drug use is not going down, problematic drug use is not going down, to put it mildly. Overdose deaths are rising, and so, despite a hundred years or more of prohibition against drugs, the evidence suggests that it isn't working.

Even proponents of prohibition admit that it isn't working, but they feel the solution is even more prohibition. So, I suggest that rather than having an emotional attachment to one view or another, we look at the evidence. Just like we do in the medical field, or at least the way we should.

And should policemen, should cops be the ones who are dictating health and social policy? Again, I don't have a position one way or the other. We need to look at the evidence, and if the evidence suggests that that really was the best way to go, that putting drug users in jail for simple drug use, if that really was good, then I would be in favor of it.

When I spoke to the Portuguese police about this when I was over there, because I tried to find people who disagreed with the policy, and I, so I ended up talking to, I was able to arrange an interview with the top narcotics interdiction person in the country, and he said, look, when this decriminalization law in Portugal first passed, in 2001, I was opposed to it. A lot of my police colleagues were opposed to it.

But at this point, most of us support it. And he said, look, as a cop, I have to enforce whatever the legislature says the law is. I'm not the one who decides what the law is, that's what the legislature does.

And he said, but I'm also a citizen, and as a citizen, as a member of the community, as a neighbor, I support the law, because I have seen the benefits. And the cops, in other words, are frequently, they frequently discover that they really aren't enjoying being the, you know, the drug police.

You know, that, in other words, and I'm not talking about drug dealing, I'm talking about drug using here, but, you know, they're really not well equipped to handle addiction and overdose and stuff like that. And so frequently, police appreciate no longer being in that realm.

In Portugal, once you're deemed, if you're picked up with drugs in Portugal, and in some other places, once they determine, and they have criteria for this, once they determine that you're a user, not a dealer, then you're automatically shifted over to the health and social sector. Automatically, just automatically.

There's no decision made, all you have to do is decide user or not. If they're a user, they're automatically no longer a police issue. Drug crops are always far more profitable than any other crop, and so when you're dealing with a number of poor farmers, and they have a choice between feeding their family or not, then they're frequently going to choose the very profitable drug crop.

I remember when I went to a tobacco museum at one of the tobacco companies in Virginia, when I lived there, and I was fascinated to see a comment there that in the Virginia colonies, a few hundred years ago, you know, growing tobacco, because it was so profitable, was so popular among the farmers that the colonies started to starve to death, because no farmers were growing food.

And so the Virginia governor had to pass, they had to pass a law saying that the farmers had to grow at least five percent of their territory for food crops. They had to set aside at least five percent for food crops.

And, then, you know, in the middle of the 1800s, of course, you had the opium wars, which are fascinating on so many different levels, but, and that was England growing opium in India in order to sell it to China, and then China saying, well, we don't think that's such a good idea for our population to have all this huge amount of opium coming in, and so the Chinese tried to restrict it, and the British said, no no no, you can't restrict it.

And so England went to war with China to force them to continue to import their Indian opium, you see. And that's where -- that's why Hong Kong was in British hands for all this time, that was part of the loot from winning the opium wars. That's why it was British.

But what's interesting, too, if you go back even further than that, the reason England felt like they had to grow opium in India and send it up to China was because England got addicted to another substance, which was tea, right? The British love tea, as you know, to this day, and that's mildly addictive, and so the balance of payments with China was terrible, you know.

So China was, I mean England was buying all this tea from China, and so they decided to get another drug, and so the whole thing is interesting to me.

So, and then a little bit more, I mean, if you look at the stock market, you'll see all this, you know, breathless discussion of the best stocks to buy and stuff like that, including for the anti-overdose drug naloxone. There are a few different brands, which we'll talk about here.

Drug treatment is a huge industry, and then you have private prisons, of course, you know, one in five Americans are incarcerated because of drug use, and there's been a huge increase in private prisons and private inmates just in the last 20 years.

Very briefly here, I know I'm getting off track, is the first documented hypodermic syringe used was the guy who was the architect of Saint Paul's Cathedral in London, who apparently did a little bit of everything, and in the 1600s, he injected dogs with opium using an animal bladder and goosefeather quills, and I'm not sure if you went to this guy as your doctor, if you had to pay more for a clean bladder or, you know, or not, I'm not sure.

And then shortly after that, a German scientist tried injecting various things into humans, and that didn't go very well, and so, and since I grew up in Spain, I have to mention that the modern two-piece needle syringe combination was invented by a Spaniard.

I strongly recommend, if you're interested in this topic, that you look at the Rice University drug charts. There's a drug policy institute right here in Houston at Rice University, and that has some of the best data, I mean, it's data that is collected by the federal government, where the federal government every year collects survey data on about 120,000 Americans of all different ages, to find out how many drugs are being used and what's the pattern of drug use.

It's absolutely fascinating. I mean, you can go to the federal government website, but it's not as user friendly, and so that's why they are, they make them more user friendly here.

And so it turns out that the evidence is quite clear. This is some of the largest databases in the world for this. Turns out that the vast majority of drug use is in fact casual, occasional, non-problematic drug use.

How many people are addicted to heroin in this country? And there certainly is an increasing problem with all kinds of opioids, with unsafe use of opioids, but in terms of the actual percentage, and now this was up until 2016, was 0.3 percent of the young adult population, you know, one of the -- that's one of the key ages for addiction, is in your 20s, because the brain is still developing and what not.

And by comparison, Portugal before they decriminalized was up to around 1 percent of the population using heroin, or having used heroin, which is considered a huge percentage.

This is a picture of the opium poppy flower itself. There's actually a purely ornamental version of the flower [sic: even poppies grown in household gardens in the US are opium poppies], and opioids versus opiates, what's the difference? Well, opioids includes, is the broader term that includes both natural and synthetic products.

We have our own opioids, of course, every person here is producing opioids on a regular basis. If you twist your ankle, and then after a while you find the pain subsiding, that's your own opioids that are attaching to the parts of the brain that govern pain perception, and that's why the external opioids have an effect on our brain, is because our brain is already set up to experience pain reduction and to a certain extent euphoria.

The opiates in the plant itself, the opium poppy plant, include opium, morphine, and codeine, and as we've discussed, bagels and muffins. When you eat a poppy seed bagel, that really is from the poppy seed, from the poppy plant, and yet it does contain morphine. Okeh? That's why I asked earlier.

So sixty percent of you have had morphine in your bloodstream from eating a poppy seed bagel or poppy seed muffin, but don't worry, the amounts are tiny. Yes, it can cause a positive result on a drug test. Okeh, that's why you have to be a little bit careful about that.

And, semi-synthetic opioids include heroin and oxycodone. That's where you take the morphine molecule itself, from the poppy, and then you modify and create a different product. Heroin by the way was first created by Bayer corporation.

Fully synthetic products are methadone, fentanyl, and carfentanyl. Fentanyl and carfentanyl, because they're so incredibly potent, are causing a lot of the overdose deaths these days.

And, for medical opioids, are they safe or are they deadly? Well, a little bit of both. It's kind of like insulin. It's actually quite similar to insulin, in the sense that, if you're opioid naive, meaning you've never had opioids, external opioids, then a high dose or even a moderate dose can be quite deadly, because one of the effects of these drugs is that it reduces your respiratory drive, and then people stop breathing, and that's where the overdose deaths typically come from.

But if it's increased slowly, this is remarkable because there are very few medicines for which this is true. I remember once a few years ago I had a cancer patient come see me. Now, I wasn't a cancer doctor, I was going to help her with other issues. She was already seeing a cancer doctor, and she had cancer all over her body, as is very common.

She had a lot of pain. And, she was already on fentanyl, because her oncologist, her cancer doctor, had prescribed it, and a month earlier, the cancer doctor had said, you need to increase your dose of fentanyl.

Now, fentanyl, when it's increased slowly, there's a safe way to increase fentanyl dosage, and it's quite safe. But she was afraid, here she was with cancer all over her body, and miserable, and she was afraid to increase the dose because I might get addicted.

And so I increased her dose, I convinced her that it was okeh, she wasn't going to suffer any harmful consequences, and she needed to increase her dose. And so we did that. So, but I decided before, I had used fentanyl once or twice before, in my patients, in other words, and I decided to go back to the books, not that anybody uses books anymore, but I decided to go back to the references and reviewed safe use of fentanyl in terms of increasing the dose appropriately.

And I was reminded right there in the description of how to use fentanyl safely that there is no known upper dose limit. And this is true for opioids in general. In other words, when it's increased slowly, it's not clear, there probably is an upper dose limit, but because, when it's increased slowly and you're under medical supervision, it's a very, very safe class of drugs.

Obviously, if you're buying it on the street, as Dean Becker often says in his radio show, you don't know what's in that bag. If you're buying it on the street and it's not regulated, then you have no idea what's in the bag, and it may well contain fentanyl or carfentanyl, and that's where the deaths come from, because when people don't know what they're taking.

DEAN BECKER: Doctor Andrews went on for quite some time. We'll use some of it for 420s next week.

It's time to play Name That Drug By Its Side Effects! Agitation, paranoia, hallucinations, face chomping, lip eating, heart devouring, brain slurping, ecstasy, suicidality, zombieism. Time's up! The answer, according to law enforcement, from some crazy ass chemist somewhere: mephedrone, otherwise known as bath salts.

MATT SIMON: Yeah, my name's Matt Simon. I live in Manchester, New Hampshire, and I work for the Marijuana Policy Project, trying to make cannabis legal for adult use in New England.

DEAN BECKER: Now, and that's right, you're not just focused in one state, you kind of have a few, you're adjacent to a few states there and you're trying to maneuver things along in several states. Right?

MATT SIMON: That's right. I'm registered to lobby in five states this year, and I keep up with them the best I can. Really, the action so far has been really hot in New Hampshire, where I've lived for twelve years, so, so far that's consumed a lot of my time.

Committee I've been lobbying, the House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee, for 12 years, for the first time just recommended passage of a bill that would legalize cannabis for adult use. It was a 10 to 9 vote, but it was quite history making, and it's been a very difficult committee, so, that goes to the House floor on Wednesday, and it looks like it's going to pass by a good margin, and proceed.

So, we've got a lot stacked up against us in New Hampshire. Our governor is totally opposed to legalization. But, so far so good for this bill. It passed its first committee and goes to the House floor this week.

DEAN BECKER: Well, and I want to bring up the fact of the matter is, this is a result of not just work you've done this year, or last year, or, it's over the years. This is a cumulative effect, that you got, finally got 10 to 9, because those people in that committee are probably the hardcore proponents, or opponents, am I right?

MATT SIMON: It's been a very difficult committee for a long time. We've been fighting in that committee, trying to educate, for a long time, and as we've realized that some of them can't be educated, you know, some of them have been replaced over time.

So, it's an issue that's come up in this committee year after year, and through the efforts of, you know, a lot of people over a long period of time, people calling and mailing and, you know, helping turn the tide against prohibition.

We've won enough of them over to be able to get it out, with a positive recommendation, so ...

DEAN BECKER: And if I'm hearing you right, you have a governor who might be the blocker, who, and we have a similar situation in many states, Texas in particular, our governor and lieutenant governor are, you know, nineteenth century, you know, marijuana doctors, if you follow me.

I mean, they think they know everything, but, this is an example, though, that there is potential for progress, that your governor can just embrace the idea that it's good for the state. Right?

MATT SIMON: Well, our governor's not embracing that idea. It's incredibly frustrating, the governors of Rhode Island, of Connecticut, of New York, of New Jersey, of Illinois, are all asking their state legislatures to pass legalization bills, and Chris Sununu's going the other direction. He's actually invited Kevin Sabet and Project SAM to come to New Hampshire and fight us tooth and nail.

Kevin's going to be here later this week, actually. So, our governor's declared war on us, and the only thing we can do is try to override his veto in the state legislature. So fortunately we can do that, if we can get two-thirds of the House and two-thirds of the Senate, we don't need the governor's support. If he wants to be stuck in 1985, that's his business.

So, that's pretty much where we are.

DEAN BECKER: Well, folks, once again we're speaking with Mister Matt Simon. He's with the Marijuana Policy Project up there in New England. Matt, you say you, I guess, in the smaller states, you can work with three or four or five of them within a given year. Right?

MATT SIMON: Yeah. Yeah, I spend a lot of time in Vermont, over the years, and, you know, they passed the legalization of just limited cultivation and possession last January, and the Vermont Senate, this year, is going to pass a bill, this week, the House will -- sorry, the New Hampshire House will pass legalization on Wednesday, and then probably on Thursday, the Vermont Senate will pass a bill that would create a regulated market.

So, those two have been pretty busy, and then Connecticut, I think we're going to see get real busy in the coming weeks and months. You know, the legislature, the mood's really on to do this, and the new governor is very supportive, but, we haven't seen a lot of action just yet, but it's coming.

DEAN BECKER: And, this is, you know, I hear great news coming out of New York. I know that's, I guess, not your bailiwick, but the point there is that the governor and the mayor and all kinds of important folks are kind of standing tall for marijuana.

It's, I didn't know how to say this, that we can have this tide shift to impress or compel elected leaders like governors and mayors to stand forth, and others can just be so recalcitrant, and back pedaling. It's really puzzling at times. Your thought there, please.

MATT SIMON: Oh, it's certainly puzzling, and it can be incredibly frustrating, but, you know, we, we're not powerless in this, and especially as the polls continue to go our way, we have more and more leverage.

So, if we can't educate a governor or a legislator, we probably can replace that person, and, you know, it's, as long as people are patient and, you know, we're going to have rocks thrown at us, we're going to have lies told about our issue, about us sometimes, but we're right, and if we continue to present accurate arguments and data about how we're right, we will win hearts and minds over time.

And the people we can't convince, we might be able to replace. And that's how it's played out, one place after another. So, I think someday it will be obvious. Someday we'll have ended this crazy prohibition of cannabis and we'll look back and wonder why it took so long.

But, it would have taken a hell of a lot longer if it hadn't been for all the hundreds of thousands of people, hundreds, thousands, I don't know how many, but people who have written, emailed, called their legislators, people who've published letters and op-eds, people that host radio shows, people that do what they can to get the message out.

So, the tide is turning. The boulder has topped the mountain and is now starting to roll down the other side, but we've still got our work cut out for us, and particularly in state legislatures, where so many of the members are in their 70s and 80s, and just really need to be educated on this issue, in a way that isn't stuck in the 1980s.

DEAN BECKER: Oh, you're so right, and I like that thought, that the boulder has made it to the top and it's just starting to go over the edge, but it's going to pick up steam, and some of these politicians better get out of the way. That's for sure.

Well, once again, friends, we've been speaking with Mister Matt Simon, Marijuana Policy Project. Closing thought, website, Matt?

MATT SIMON: MPP.org.

DEAN BECKER: Just enough time to urge you to please visit our website, DrugTruth.net, and because of prohibition you don't know what's in that bag. Please be careful.

CULTURAL BAGGAGE

MAY 24, 2018

TRANSCRIPT

DEAN BECKER: I am Dean Becker, your host. Our goal for this program is to expose the fraud, misdirection, and the liars whose support for drug war empowers our terrorist enemies, enriches barbarous cartels, and gives reason for existence to tens of thousands of violent US gangs who profit by selling contaminated drugs to our children. This is Cultural Baggage.

Hi folks, I am the Reverend Dean Becker. Thank you for being with us on this edition of Cultural Baggage. Today we've got three great interviews, from around the US and up into Canada, talking about this stupid drug war. Let's just get started, what do you say?

It seems like just yesterday I met this young fellow. I think I was in Seattle, maybe it was San Francisco, but we were near some boats and I was talking to this young fellow about marijuana laws, about the drug war in general, and damn if he didn't just take off like a rocket, joined forces with some other drug reformers, and helped to swing the cat so to speak in Colorado, and move things around the US.

He's with us right now, I want to welcome, now with the Marijuana Policy Project, Mister Mason Tvert. Hey, Mason, how you doing?

MASON TVERT: I'm great, Dean, thanks for having me.

DEAN BECKER: Well, it does seem like just yesterday that you got your foot in the water and, hell, you really got things moving there in Colorado. First off, just tell us how are things in Colorado. Is it full of people ODing on weed, what's going on up there?

MASON TVERT: Things are quite lovely. It's, you know, really just business as usual for the state, and adults are simply able to purchase cannabis legally, like they are able to purchase alcohol. It's really not much different for the typical person.

Of course it's created tens of thousands of jobs, so it's certainly changed the lives of a lot of people in that way, and it's generating, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue that's been benefiting state programs at our schools and providing other services that were needed, and, you know, it's really, you know, marijuana was here already, it's not as if it was, you know, dropped into the state the day it became legal. So not much is different, with the exception that it's now a legal, regulated product.

DEAN BECKER: Now, you know, I mentioned early on there that you were involved with many different organizations, heck, you even co-wrote a book, what was it? Marijuana Is Safer, So Why Are We Driving People To Drink? Was that the right title.

MASON TVERT: Correct. Yep.

DEAN BECKER: And that, it kind of generated a wave, a recognition, that the old, you know, the lies, the propaganda, the reefer madness, is losing its luster, very few politicians are leaning in that direction these days. Right?

MASON TVERT: Absolutely. I think that the more people hear about cannabis, the more they learn about it, the more that they see and hear, you know, other people that they know and respect supporting an end to prohibition, the more likely they are to support an end to marijuana prohibition.

You know, a lot of people only heard negative things about marijuana for most of their lives, and it was really just a matter of exposing them to the debate, and letting them hear the other side, letting them see the facts, and once that became pervasive enough, we now have just seen support for prohibition crumble, and there's a desire for a more sensible approach.

DEAN BECKER: Well, even at the federal level, McConnell, Boehner, some of these die-hard, well, no longer die-hard prohibitionists are coming forward and changing the equation as well. Right?

MASON TVERT: Yeah, you know, it's really becoming an industry, much like other industries, and people are going to be seeing these opportunities. This is perhaps the fastest growing industry in the country, the legal marijuana industry, and there are people in, you know, looking into it, and examining the opportunities, and recognizing that there are big opportunities, and that it would be foolish to not get involved out of fear of marijuana in general, and a prohibitionist mindset.

It's, you know, being looked at like any other business opportunity, with potential risks and potential benefits. And it's not surprising that we're seeing former elected officials deciding to get involved in this, as well as current elected officials recognizing that there's really nothing to fear politically if they get supportive.

DEAN BECKER: I think it's actually a vote getter, if they just want to dig down to the bottom of it.

MASON TVERT: Yeah, potentially, I would say that it probably depends on, you know, what office they're running for, where, and, you know, the general makeup of the race, but, it's certainly not something that seems to be hurting anyone politically. It also certainly does seem to have benefits for a whole lot of candidates.

I mean, it's moving toward the point, we're not there yet, but moving toward the point, like, with alcohol. I mean, could you imagine being supportive of a candidate who said they thought alcohol should be illegal, or even a candidate who said they'd never drank alcohol before, or thought it was bad to drink alcohol. I mean, that would be very difficult for a lot of voters to relate to, and, you know, we're going to sooner or later see that type of situation with cannabis as well.

DEAN BECKER: Well, and you know, at the state level, we have a lot of voter referendums, people trying, some states have two or more, as I understand it, we have a situation where many of the state politicians are trying to circumvent or pre-empt these referendums, try to legalize it where the, in a fashion that suits the legislature better than it does the citizenry.

It's a real bundle of energy insofar as people trying to change the marijuana laws at this point, right?

MASON TVERT: Absolutely. I mean, you know, we've always seen lawmakers with a lot of disdain for the ballot initiative process. They don't like the idea of not having that control. But unfortunately, a lot of lawmakers have not been proactive on this issue, so it has resulted in citizens taking it up and moving it forward through ballot measures.

And, you know, if it -- it's great that that's forcing a lot of lawmakers to take it more seriously and consider passing these types of measures, and if they pass measures that are, you know, poorly written or way too restrictive, then they can expect to see efforts to change those laws, through ballot initiatives, and it's really a, quite frankly, I think a great aspect of the, you know, the democratic process in this country, at least in those states that have a ballot initiative process.

DEAN BECKER: You know, it was just over a year ago, my city of Houston came up with a, what they call the Misdemeanor Marijuana Diversion Program, that under four ounces of weed would not result in an arrest or jailing, none of that, they'll just write you a ticket, and whenever possible at the local level I think a lot of local officials, district attorneys, and in the case of New York City, the mayor, are trying to change the perspective, trying to change the number of arrests, trying to do away with much of that reefer madness. Your thought there too, please.

MASON TVERT: Yeah, I think that we are reaching a point where, you know, they can't ignore this anymore, I mean, the number of arrests taking place in a city like New York, the extreme disproportionate impact on communities of color, it's just not something that people are ignoring, the media's not ignoring, and as a result elected officials can't ignore it, and they're having to at least do something about it, and measures like the one in Houston are certainly a great step, and will make people realize that you don't have to arrest and, you know, seriously punish every single individual who gets caught with a small amount of marijuana.

But, there's obviously still room for improvement. We shouldn't see any punishment associated with simple possession of marijuana, this is at least a big step toward recognizing that.

DEAN BECKER: All right, friends, once again we've been speaking with Mister Mason Tvert, now aligned with the Marijuana Policy Project. Mason, what am I leaving out, what would you like to share with the listeners?

MASON TVERT: Well, I think there's, you know, a lot of progress has been made, but there's still a lot of work to be done, and, you know, even in states, whether it's like Colorado or California or Washington, where marijuana's now legal for adults, there's still efforts to paint these systems as being horrific and causing so many problems, when they are not in fact problematic.

We need to make sure that the facts are getting out there. And then of course there's a lot of places where we still need to see changes made, and it's going to be an ongoing battle that's not really going to end at any point. It's going to be, just like with alcohol, constant discussions and debates and fights over certain policy issues to make these laws reflect the facts, and make them more sensible.

DEAN BECKER: All right. Once again, that was Mister Mason Tvert, Marijuana Policy Project, their website, MPP.org.

We're going to shift countries right now. We're going to go north, going to Canada, up in BC, going to talk to my computer guru and to a long time friend, associate, fellow drug reformer, for well over a decade now, and my friend, Mister Matt Elrod. Hey, Matt, how you doing?

MATT ELROD: I'm good, Dean.

DEAN BECKER: Thank you for being with us. You know, Matt, it seems the dam is cracking, you know, there's certainly fissures showing up here and there in the US, we just heard some great thoughts coming out of the UK, and Canada's fixing to legalize this summer, I guess, is the word, cannabis, and there's a reexamination of the whole of the drug war up there as well. Am I right?

MATT ELROD: Absolutely. Yeah, as you mentioned, Canada's got a legalization bill going through the Senate right now, and a companion bill to strengthen drugged driving laws, to allay fears about carnage on our highways when we legalize cannabis.

And, you're right, right on the weight -- on the heels of that, there's a lot of talk in Canada about at least decriminalizing all illicit drugs, in light of the opiate overdose crisis we're facing. And, you know, the voices for -- calling for that are growing louder, the opposition parties in Canada, or at least two of them, have been calling for that. So, it's hopeful.

DEAN BECKER: You know, all the hoopla and the reefer madness that still lingers somehow, that gives the cops and the prosecutors this idea that they -- they really need to crack down on cannabis drivers, when, I think the truth be told there haven't -- hasn't been that many cannabis caused wrecks in the first place, it's just this inherent built-in fear of what might happen. Am I right?

MATT ELROD: Yes, and you know, fear stems from ignorance, and that's what we're facing, is just a lot of ignorance about cannabis. And there's also some deliberate misleading going on from groups like Smart Approaches to Marijuana. Three of the senators who are currently studying our legalization bill made a trip last month, I believe it was, down to Washington to meet with Jeff Sessions, and with Smart Approaches to Marijuana, to get some tips on how to fight legalization.

And they came back with a stack of SAM reports, I guess you could call them reports, SAM propaganda, that makes the case, or attempts to make the case, that cannabis related accidents have doubled in Washington state and Colorado. Now you and I know that what has really gone up is the number of fatally injured motorists who are testing positive, whether or not that caused their accident, whether or not they were impaired when they had the accident, and this is largely due to testing going up, by drivers who are tested more frequently now.

I think where before, if a fatally injured driver tested positive for alcohol, they wouldn't bother doing the cannabis test, because they had their culprit, whereas now they do. So for all those reasons, you know, what we're seeing is an increase in the number of reported so-called cannabis related fatalities.

And this is being deliberately twisted and used to mislead some of the fearful and the ignorant.

DEAN BECKER: That's the hell of it, isn't, leading the fearful and the ignorant, that's been the, I don't know, the cause, and the solution to all of life's problems. Drugs, I guess.

MATT ELROD: You know, it's sometimes difficult to tell who's delusional and who's dishonest.

DEAN BECKER: Right.

MATT ELROD: And for that reason, I try to give such people the benefit of the doubt and think, okeh, this person's just uninformed, but at root I know that there are people like, you know, Kevin Sabet and others who deliberately mislead the public, who know better.

DEAN BECKER: Right.

MATT ELROD: And, and I think some of our senators fall into both camps. Some of them are sincerely ignorant, and understandably fearful, while others are ideologically opposed to the legalization, sometimes for partisan reasons, they just don't want Trudeau to succeed in this endeavor.

And -- or, or maybe they're fighting a culture war, maybe a pothead stole their girlfriend in high school, you know, which is often the case.

DEAN BECKER: Well, and I, of late, I've really come to the conclusion that it's alcohol versus marijuana, and other drugs, but, about a hundred years ago, the alcoholics lost their moral standing, if you will, here in the US, when we had that first prohibition, but then they kind of gained back and meantime they had passed the Harrison Narcotics law [sic: Act], and other anti-drug laws, and it just seems the alcoholics have the upper hand and they're just not going to let go. Your response to that, Matt.

MATT ELROD: Yeah, it's a tough one. I mean, the records show, so, historical record shows that Anslinger et al. wrapped the war on drugs with the end of alcohol prohibition, they had all these drug agents, you know, that they had to keep busy, and, you know, there are a lot of vested interests in drug prohibition, so it's clear that there was a transfer there.

It's also clear that there's the racial element to the roots of drug prohibition in both our countries. And, I think some of that still remains. Certainly, systemically we see that's the way the law is enforced. So ....

DEAN BECKER: Well, here's hoping that you guys get it straightened out, and that the cops and the prosecutors don't take over the whole industry and they let some good folks like Marc and Jodie Emery get involved, after all the hard work they've done. But, the good news is that the Drug Truth Network has a new website design, new ease. Tell folks what's going on with our site, please.

MATT ELROD: Yeah, we've finally gotten you upgraded to a newer version of the content management system running at DrugTruth.net, and this version is much more mobile-friendly. That's, I think, the biggest plus at all, because we were certainly starting to lose people who've become accustomed to surfing on their phones and their personal devices.

So, that's good. While we were at it we decluttered it a bit, I think, made it a little easier to surf around and find what you're looking for. We've added the ability for you to attach images to individual programs, which I think will be helpful for your listeners, to see who they're hearing. And, I particularly like -- you've always had this functionality, but the ability to search the entire website by guest or organization.

In particular because I'm a vain man, and I can see that, with just a couple clicks, all the interviews you've done with me. So similarly, you know, any guest you've had, or any organization they to, NORML, what have you, can link to directly the programs that they've been featured in.

DEAN BECKER: Well, this is all good news, and, you know, and the heck of it is, dear listeners, I worked towards this, Matt has worked towards this, is to educate and to embolden you to do your part to end this stupid god damned drug war.

MATT ELROD: Amen.

DEAN BECKER: Amen.

BILL MAHER: We have this fantasy that our interests and the interests of the super rich are the same, like somehow the rich will eventually get so full that they'll explode. And the candy will rain down on the rest of us. Like there's some kind of pinata of benevolence.

But here's the thing about a pinata. It doesn't open on its own. You have to beat it with a stick.

DEAN BECKER: It's time to play Name That Drug By Its Side Effects! Euphoria, drowsiness, nausea, confusion, constipation, sedation, unconsciousness, coma, tolerance, addiction, respiratory arrest, and death. Time's up! This drug, 80 times stronger than morphine and heroin, is available via schedule two prescription: Fentanyl. For major pain.

All right, as promised last week, we have some more interviews and speeches coming out of the Patients Out of Time conference, which happened just a week and a half ago up there in New Jersey. This is all thanks to Doug McVay, who produces our other half hour program, Century of Lies. But, well, let's just get to it.

MELANIE DREHER, PHD, RN, FAAN: This is really my personal odyssey, from being a scientist to being an activist.

DEAN BECKER: This is Doctor Melanie Dreher.

MELANIE DREHER, PHD, RN, FAAN: And, I think that it's something that many scientists go through, so let me just share with you some of this. Nineteen Sixty-Nine, the summer that Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, and 400,000 of my very best friends were at Woodstock, New York, I was on a mountain top in Jamaica, in a journey of discovery.

I was sent there by my major professor at Columbia University to find out about cannabis. Now, I have to tell you, at that point I had never smoked anything, not even a cigarette. I had never done field work before, although I was a graduate student in anthropology, and I knew nothing about Jamaica. So, I was obviously exquisitely qualified to undertake that study.

And, I was at that time, I was helping my professor, who had just been funded to do a study of the chronic use of marijuana. At that time, all the research had been focused on what happens to you when you smoke, the acute effects of smoking, and no one had really looked at, well, what happens to people after they smoke for years, on a daily or weekly basis.

So that was my job, was to just find out about cannabis use in Jamaica. He had done his field work there, and he knew that it was used. So, I, on that mountain top in that small community, I discovered, and it was the summer of discovery, that cannabis was not only a substance that was smoked and used recreationally, but it had religious connotations among the Rastafarians, in fact it was their sacrament, is their sacrament.

And then of course this rich medicinal use. And that time, and still, herbal medicine is an important part of the Jamaica folks pharmacopoeia, but, as they showed me this bush and that bush, and another leaf, and a tree, they would say, but ganja, which is the Indian word, marijuana, ganja, that is the king of it.

And -- meaning that it was a substance that had so many uses, and could be used in so many ways. Topically, as an edible, cooked in soup, smoked.

And so, I went back with my little report for the summer, and then the next year I went to recruit the sample of men who were going to be in a study of chronic use, the impact of chronic use, a medical anthropological study, and at that point, I very much realized, and this has stayed with me the rest of the time, that -- the rest of my career -- that in fact cannabis really depends, as our -- previous speakers have said, on set and setting.

It's really important to understand the context before you can interpret the results of your research. So, we found, for example, that all of our cannabis users, compared to our non-users, were significantly psych -- on every psychological test, better adjusted.

And, but then when we looked at, when I shared my experience with recruiting, it was very easy to recruit cannabis users. I could hardly find any non-users. So you know that the people who were not using it are already a little weird. You know, there's something different about them, they're not part of normal male social life, so there we go.

And, so, again, it was not -- all we could say with that study is that probably cannabis doesn't do any harm. Then, I went back, and studied the amotivational syndrome. We all know what that was, but in Jamaica, men were using cannabis to work harder. And it was actually distributed to cane workers, who, as a little coffee break to get, sit down, have a smoke, get up and cut more cane, load more cane, sugar cane.

And while I was there I also of course started working with women, and when I first went, very few women smoked. They drank the tea and men were the smokers, men claimed that women didn't have the brains to smoke, so, they had to stay away from those psychoactive properties, but, women were preparing teas, and poultices, and infusions, other infusions, for their children, to keep them smarter, and healthier.

And, really? You're making marijuana tea for your children, three times a day? Yes, miss, it really helps them in school. Well, let's see, so I got funded to do a little study of children, and, comparing the children who drank tea on a regular basis and other children who didn't drink tea. And again, we found out, tea drinkers did significantly better in their studies than the children who didn't drink tea.

But, it had to be put in the context of parents who were willing to share their precious store of cannabis with their children were also the mothers and fathers who made sure their children had pencils and paper and clean uniforms, and went to school on a regular basis.

But it was associated with good parenting, and not bad parenting. And while I was looking at children, I was looking more at women and women who were smoking during pregnancy, and at that time, the United States was still reeling with the thalidomide crisis of the 1960s, very interested in the teratogenic effects of cannabis. And, I though, okeh, this is the time to do a study of the impact of marijuana during pregnancy.

And we tested these neonates, we used standard measures, we had thirty exposed neonates and thirty non-exposed neonates, and once again, the results were counter-intuitive, and our exposed neonates did significantly better on every dimension of the Brazelton neonatal scale than the non-exposed infants. So, here we were, and this became one of my first challenges about the social and political realities of cannabis use. It was very hard to get that study published.

We did get it published in Pediatrics, finally, but it brought to fore the editorial bias that exists in most journals, and has actually been cited, a wonderful article in Lancet in 1989 actually evaluated various studies on not just cannabis, but other drug studies, studies of substances as well, and found that the more positive your findings are, in other words, that actually negative, that cannabis does not have cocaine does not have a bad effect or as serious effect as we thought it would have, the less likely you are to get published.

And, that editorial bias has continued to exist, in my own profession, which is nursing, as well as anthropology.

DEAN BECKER: To dream the American dream,
To lie still and hope
With both of your eyes closed.
To ignore
The nightmare that surrounds you
Just to try, try to reach
The American dream

All right, I apologize, that was me singing, but it's designed to get your attention, to think about this American dream, this dream of an eternal war on drugs, where the number of deaths increases every day, the number of diseases, where the amount of violence, where the expenditure of trillions of dollars just continues and continues on.

Kind of recapping the show, our new web page, designed by Matt Elrod, is up and ready, that's at DrugTruth.net. It's phone friendly, as I understand it we already have an increased number of listenership. You know, share it with your friends, your family, your relatives, and again, I remind you, because of prohibition, you don't know what's in that bag, and I urge you to please, be careful.

Drug Truth Network transcripts are stored at the James A. Baker III Institute, more than seven thousand radio programs are at DrugTruth.net, and we are all still tap dancing on the edge of an abyss.