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Season 3 is here! Today Jay interviews Ethan Nadelmann, the founder of Drug Policy Alliance and the host of the podcast Psychoactive.
Discussing issues of Mental Health, Substance Misuse and Recovery, and Drug Use & Policy with host Jay Shifman, Speaker, Storyteller, and Advocate.
Each week Jay chats with interesting guests as they seek to destroy stigma and advocate for honest, educational conversations that motivate positive change.
You can learn more at https://jay.campsite.bio/.
Choose Your Struggle has been streamed in over thirty-five countries and is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you get your podcasts.
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* Transcription isn't edited for clarity
You are listening to the, choose your struggle podcast, a member of the shameless, a podcast network. Welcome to the choose your struggle podcast. I'm your host, Jay Schiffman on the show. I interviewed people with lived and learning experiences on the subject of. Substance misuse and recovery and drug use and policy.
Occasionally we talked about other topics as well on this week, show interview a long time drug use advocate and the founder of the drug policy Alliance, Ethan Nadelmann, but first kid mental let's go.
some battles of the
yesterday.
Hello, and welcome to the choose your struggle podcast. Welcome back. Um, man, uh, it's great to be back with you all so much has happened since the fall. Uh, when I, when I said goodbye from season two, Uh, with that amazing episode with nosing a Harrison, you heard a lot of it. If you tuned into last week show where it was just me in front of the mic, in the recording booth, which I'm not using today, because as you heard on last week, it's still a little echo-y.
So we've got some work to do there. Um, sort of a very short recap. Uh, you heard from me back in February when I rereleased the incredible conversation with David poses, uh, who obviously is no longer with us, um, that that was a big blow to the entire community. Uh, for me, since, since you last heard from. I moved.
Uh, I'm now in a different office, different house, uh, all that kind of stuff. Um, in, in, uh, actually as I'm recording this, my office is in shambles. We're we're having work done. And I, I had to, uh, ask the, the, the guys working on, on this part of the house to, to leave for a couple hours. So I could do this, uh, intro and all of that.
And, and also, um, got an interview for the show, uh, in, in an hour or so. Um, yeah, that that's happening. Uh, um, but the, the biggest thing is obviously what's coming in two weeks, uh, made it will drop in two weeks. Um, Yeah, that's, uh, man, it's just crazy to me, you know, right before I started recording this, I was finishing up a so nine sort of the mastering of that episode, which means I only have one more to do and then all the shit around it.
But it's crazy that we're finally coming to a conclusion here after, uh, you know, Sarah and I first talked about this last June or July, the work started in August and now it's dropping. So that's amazing. Uh, sort of a scheduling note on that. You're going to hear this episode today, obviously, uh, next week, another normal episode with a great guest.
You're going to love it. And then the week after, uh, we'll be off, uh, that will just be dropping, um, episode one from made it on this feed, uh, as a reminder to everybody to go subscribe to made it, uh, you can find the link in the show notes, a quick note on that. If you're on the mailing list, I was letting a couple of people let me know that the link to this show worked just fine.
The LinkedIn made it for some reason did not work. And what was so crazy is I went and tested that link. When I got those emails to people letting me know, and it worked just fine. It must've been a formatting thing or something in the email. I have no idea. Um, but the, you can find the link to mate. It's a stream in this, uh, in the show notes, go subscribe two weeks, two weeks until that drops.
So today's episode is with a guy, uh, that I have admired for a long time. Uh, he has been in the scenes like honestly, honestly, longer than I've been alive, which is incredible. He founded the precursor to what is now the drug policy Alliance, and then founded the drug policy Alliance. Uh, so he, he, he is the O G in that respect, he is Ethan Nadelmann.
Um, I had to hold back, we, the show could have just been him telling stories for an hour, and I would have been fine with me because he is such an incredible wealth of knowledge and experience. Um, but I wanted, I wanted it to be more than that as you'll hear, Ethan has a great show. It's called psychoactive.
You know, if you listen to made it, I shout out psychoactive in the beginning. Um, it's one of those shows that I actually do really listen to. I love podcasts. I listened to a lot of them. Uh, I've I've read some podcasts that I don't listen to regularly because I like the people who do them or the subject matter or whatever Ethan's show psychoactive is all of those.
I like Ethan a lot. I think he is incredibly knowledgeable on this. The subjects of drug use drug policy. Um, I like the show itself, you know, not, that's not always the case. There are a lot of people who do really interesting work that I find, find the shows that interesting eat. That's not the case with psychoactive.
I love psychosis. And I think that he's, you know, uh, Ethan and I agree on, on way more than we disagree on way more. And even the things that we don't, I I'm interested to hear his perspective because obviously he is an expert in this arena. And so I want to hear where he's coming from with this stuff.
And that's something I admire, uh, about Ethan as a heat. Uh, just kind of throw stuff out there. He is very, um, uh, measured in that respect and really helps people understand where he's coming from. So, um, this is a really great conversation with Ethan. You're going to enjoy this. Uh, thank you for tuning in.
I it's, it's funny. I had to like remind myself what I say. I went to record the theme, uh, and I like forgot how to do that. I, I was like, what do I do on this? What do I, what do I say? It's been so long. Um, and, and if you hear it, it's a little choppy. I'm not quite back to, you know, the, the skills haven't come completely back yet, but hopefully by next week, I'll remember how to do this.
And, um, you know, the, the sign-off at the end of this, I actually stopped, went, oh my God, what is my catch phrase? Oh, it's been a long time, but it's great to be back with you all season three of the chooser struggle podcast is here. Uh, let's get right into it with the incredible, the wonderful, the knowledge of.
Ethan Nadelmann. If you've been following the show for a while, you know, I'm a huge fan of Roadrunner CVD. I used all of their products. Seriously. I run through a tub of their muscle gel every couple of weeks because I'm in my thirties and everything hurts. Their balm is perfect for keeping my skin smooth and healthy, and I mix their CBD flower with every joint, our role to give my high that perfect equilibrium I'm always looking for.
So to change your life with Roadrunner CBD products, go to Roadrunner cbd.com/ref/cys. Again, that's Roadrunner cbd.com/ref ref slash C Y S. And use the code CYS at checkout for 10% off. Trust me, you're going to want to try this out, check them out tonight. If you're liking the show, please consider leaving us a review.
If you're listening on apple, you can leave a review right on your player for everybody else. Check out the link in the show notes. Welcome back to choose your struggle podcast. It's great to be back with you. All you all were in for a special treat today, you know, drug policy Alliance, you were so helpful.
Season one, uh, two seasons go now, which is pretty remarkable raising over $12,000 for that organization. You know, it's very near and dear to my heart. Well, With me today, a very special guest, the man who helped found that organization and is now, look, I'll put it this way. He's forgotten more about drug policy than I will know in my entire lifetime with me today is the one and only Ethan Nadelmann.
Ethan, thank you so much for being here, Jay. It's a pleasure to be on your show. Thanks for having me. So as my listeners know, the first half is always about your story because as a guy in recovery and myself, Nobody gets into this work just by happenstance. You don't wake up and go, you know, I think drugs, I think that's what I'm going to do today.
So let's start off with, with what it was about this subject, what it was about drug policy that called to you. And when did you decide to work in this field? You know, shit, it's funny. I find myself answering that question in different ways as time evolves, you know? And so I guess if I, if I had to think about it, Maybe three key factors are so one would be growing up.
Uh, my father was a rabbi, not an Orthodox rabbi. He was conservative reconstructionist, uh, rabbi, and, you know, and, but we had a fairly religious home and I grew up in a kind of, you know, crazy family, but sort of moral, ethical backing. And the notion that, you know, one should, you know, it was a good thing in life to speak to the better values.
Right. And w I didn't come from a money-making family, uh, you know, nobody in my family. And then my uncle was a professor, my mom's brother. And so this kind of pro you know, professor on the one side who was a bit of a role model, and my father rabbi, a bit of a role model and the other, you know, I thought about being a rabbi, but my dad was so good at doing it.
He was a wonderful speaker. He spoke four languages. He was just, you know, he was a really, he just had a gift for doing. And so I think there was something that, that kind of clicked for me early on that somehow combining my intellectual interests with something I cared about personally passionately, that, that, that, that was something that would probably, I wasn't conscious of it at the time.
But in retrospect, I realized that was part of it. I think the second thing was that, um, you know, I go off to college. I didn't smoke, I never smoked weed. I made like once or twice when I was a senior in high school, I didn't even get high. But then I go, I freshman year in college, I'm at McGill in Montreal.
I grew up in New York, but I went up to the Gilman Montreal for college and I, you know, and I got high with friends and I really liked it. And I was also going out drinking, but it was very clear to me, you know what I mean? The alcohol was a far more problematic drug compared to weed, right? I mean, I know people who smoked too much weed and it was a problem, but alcohol, you know, I mean, you know, ugly stuff could be associated with that.
As there were people getting busted at the. And we had to hide and it just kind of like, what's this about like, why is this illegal? Why are my friends at risk? Why do we have to be scared of somebody got to join in their pocket? We go through the border. I mean, that kind of thing just kind of clicked with me.
Um, and I appreciated the high of marijuana, you know? And, uh, and then when I got into my early twenties, I tried mushrooms a number of times, and I found mushrooms really, you know, not just enjoyable, but valuable in terms of. Some of the creative thinking and, and other other experiences. And then I think going back to that first thing, you know, in wanting to combine my intellectual pursuits in my, uh, and my, my personal passions, I had focused on us foreign policy, the middle east, stuff like that.
And I think. I wrote my first articles. I taught my first class on that, all that, but I kind of was burning out of it. This was early eighties and, and I wasn't taking my, I was doing a law degree and a PhD at Harvard. So that was a big deal, but I wasn't taking myself very seriously. And a friend of mine said, Ethan, you've always been attracted to the kind of deviant side of things.
And, you know, you're into the drug thing. Why don't you just do that? And it was really a backwater issue back in the early eighties. I mean, nobody was really, there's almost nobody in the field of political science looking at it. There were a few sociologists, but even that was kind of not a hot thing.
And so I said, what the hell I'll I'll, I'll start with studying the drug issue. And then it became a whole thing about international crime and law enforcement. And then it was just. Incredible sort of coincidence that as I'm finally finishing my dissertation in 86, 87, the U S drug work goes absolutely crazy.
And all of a sudden the issue that I picked to focus on when I was in my early twenties, I was a backwater issue is now the number one issue in American public opinion all over the media. So that was a kind of fortuitous in my own personal life, not for the country in the world, but for tutors for me.
And I guess I'm a Jew, I think in a way. And then what happens when I. So our teaching at Princeton 87, I write a few articles and I get catapulted into this kind of little 15 minutes of fame thing. And I kind of get helped. I get hooked on this cause I get, I start meeting the people involved in it who are amazing, wonderful, the academics, the activists, the others, because nobody's getting involved in this cause and late eighties, cause it's a cooler, popular thing to do.
I mean, it was really people who were free thinkers, people who were understanding there was something fundamentally wrong here coming from all across the political spectrum from very different experiences with drugs on, but that kind of captivated me and I kind of found my call. Um, and I guess just to finish it off, you know, 89, I hadn't done mushrooms for seven years.
I have a PA put mushroom experience in 89. And it was really at that moment. I think that, um, it wasn't an epiphany, but where things really crystallized for me that this drug issue was going to be central to my life. And that my mission in life was going to be, to teach about drugs and that teaching about drugs and drug policy and all about that would be a vehicle for addressing broader issues in politics in American society.
Um, and then whether I remained an academic or became some kind of activist or journalist or writer or politician that didn't matter so much is that this was going to be the focus. It's a very fascinating story. And there's one thing in particular that I, I relate to in, I also grew up in a Jewish families, go reform Judaism.
For me at least. And this is something that I've heard from a number of my Jewish friends who work in this field, but also listeners is that this topic, you know, But when it comes to Judaism, we, we like to keep things in the community. Right. We, we, a lot of the subjects are ones that we, uh, worked sort of taught, oh, keep that in the family.
Don't talk about this. Was this a struggle for you early on? Was w did you have family forces going, wait, you want to do what? You know, it's funny. I'm not really, I mean, I was always kind of independent minded about this stuff, and I think for my dad, You know, he was kind of intrigued, you know, from my mom, my mom's a biostatistician and she didn't, she didn't really connect all the political cultural sort of stuff.
It was just kind of a weird thing that her rebellious eldest son was, you know, doing right. Uh, but the fact that I was doing it at Harvard or Princeton was kind of legitimising right. I, you know, I had the benefit of having these elite institutions, you know, associated with what it was I was doing, I think for my dad.
Um, I mean, my dad really struggled terribly with two addictions. Uh, one was to cigarettes and the other one was to food. I mean, my dad was, you know, I mean, he was an amazing rabbi. I love my dad, but he was the fattest dad in the neighborhood, you know, I mean, he was five, eight and a half, 250 pounds and he smoked and, and, you know, I was freaked out by smoking from the time I was like 10.
And they showed you that, you know, did a fake long with all the tobacco shit in it and this kind of stuff. So I was afraid for my dad's wellbeing. And I saw what, what I saw, how he could stop smoking. And I saw how the food thing, I mean, his, you know, it was, it was a, uh, I mean, you know, the food, we told him his, his, his mind, which is zoned in like, like, like a junkie in a way.
I mean, it was just, it was, um, and so, and sure enough, at 58 he had a massive heart attack and he was dead, you know, and it was kinda like, we almost, weren't your surprise. And some level, you know, you could almost see that coming. So for me, I remember one time I was sitting out of the back yard with my dad.
I was in my mid twenties. He was in his mid 50. I said, dad, why don't you try the weed? You know, I think he was smoking a cigarette. I was smoking a joint as I had it. Didn't normally do that in front of him, but I was just kind of pushing the envelope with dad and he said, no, I'll get it. Take care, I'll get addicted.
You know? And so, so, so it was really that side drug use, you know, drugs is not really an issue in my family, apart from my dad's addition, addiction to cigarettes, into food. That was really, and the rest of my family, you know, um, you know, not, not really. You know, oh, I will say I've had one family member who just has about the worst relationship with marijuana I've ever seen.
So, you know, whenever all my allies, you know, all praise, the better medical benefits of marijuana to the skies and marijuana has been a really net positive in my life, but I have both friends and people, you know, in my family for whom marijuana has just been a nightmare thing. Not because it led to other things just because they become delusional because they be could brings out elements and personality and habits that are just terrible.
So, you know, I'm always quite conscious to say with marijuana. Yeah. For most people it can be a neutral to beneficial thing in your life. That doesn't mean it can't be a terrible thing for some people. And that's such a good point. We can obviously talk more about the policy in the later in the episode, but you know, as we're recording this just last week, the story made its rounds about the guy who.
Uh, passed away after ODing on caffeine. And it's, it's something similar that, you know, obviously most of these substances are a lot of these substances in the, in the right dosage to the right people. They can be neutral or beneficial, but for the, for some people, it can be very, a giant negative in their life.
But I, I, to, uh, you, you mentioned your father's death and this is jumping ahead. I know that that stuck with you very heavily, and it was a factor when you eventually. Uh, resigned as the executive director of, of the organization that you helped started. So start, so let's, let's go to that now. W w you know, again, my, my fans are, are, are big fans of the drug policy Alliance type.
Take us through the founding of that and how you went from Harvard, our professor at Princeton to starting, uh, the organization that most people associate with drug policy. Yeah, sure. J I mean, I'll try to make it as quick as possible, the sort of thumbnail sketch version, but basically in graduate school, one of my advisors at the Harvard law school, Phil Hyman had been a top guy in the criminal division, in the justice department, and he encouraged me to focus on the internationalization of crime and law enforcement.
So I actually talked my way into the state department, got a security clearance, uh, did a consultancy with the state department's narcotics bureau on dealing with drug related money laundering. I travel all around Latin America, Europe, 19 countries interviewing DEA and, and us and foreign law enforcement, uh, hundreds of foreign laws, law enforcement agents.
And I wrote a book. First dissertation of a book called cops across borders about how police and prosecutors and diplomats deal with crime when it crosses borders. And even though even early on, I thought the whole drug war was ridiculous and counterproductive. I leaned over backwards to give these guys the benefit of the doubt they had opened their doors to me.
I didn't want to sort of betray them by just kind of slamming them. I depicted them as guys. You know, that, that is the bigger picture. What they were doing was kind of no different than the prohibition agents of the twenties or thirties, but I barely made that point. It was really about how do they deal with the challenges in front of them and such.
Right. And so, so, but I also knew by hanging out in the corridor. Government power at that time, you know, that people knew nothing about drugs. I mean, I mean, the people enforcing those had no idea about how we lived it up with these drug lists in the first place. They had no idea that maybe these drugs had been legal back in the 19th century.
They didn't know what mushrooms were. They didn't know the relative risks of cocaine at versus, I mean, they were absolutely ignorant about this stuff. And it really emphasized to me that people just, you know, they didn't know their ass from their elbow, but what they were talking about. And that's, if you pass laws, the next generation, you know, forgets whatever was behind the laws, if there was any kind of real public health thing, they lose sight of the public health rationale for a kind of, you know, a drug law and they just get obsessed with the kind of enforcement element.
Right. So, so I became very conscious of. I think what happened late eighties, drug war goes crazy. You know, I've described it. Oftentimes it's like McCarthyism on steroids. And I published this article in foreign policy magazine, a kind of elite publication, basically saying the war on drugs is doing more harm than good.
I'm not saying we should legalize everything, but we have to be aware of the extent to which prohibitionist policies are responsible for most of what we identify. As part and parcel of the drug problem. And a month later, the new mayor of Baltimore, Kurt Schmoke, who had been the chief prosecutor there stands up at a con uh, mayor's conference who says the same thing.
And then the economist magazine has the same thing. And all of a sudden he and I, and a few other people conservatives like William Buckley, Milton Friedman, the head of the ACLU, IRA glass. There were a couple of ex police chiefs were like, I mean, we're certainly played as like the entertainment element.
Like, and now we take a break from our drug war covers to show you a few oddballs, the Princeton professor, the Baltimore mayor, the right wing ideologies, you know, the ACLU who think that the war on drugs, we should legalize, you know, and even though I wasn't arguing for out full legalization, everything involving reform got characterized as, you know, outright legalization.
But nonetheless, you know, I quickly became, I was just in my young thirties. You know, the most, most desired best paid public speaker in the world, talking about what was wrong with the drug war and speaking from universities to all types of professional associations. Yeah. You know, I mean, you know, I mean, you name it.
I mean all sorts of stuff. And then, um, I started teaching Princeton, asked me to teach classes on drug policy. I did that. I met, I began to meet other people interested in the advocacy movement, an organization called the drug policy foundation was created by two guys in DC, which eventually became part of my drug policy Alliance.
Um, and so this movement began and I started a working group at Princeton of, of distinguished academics, trying to figure out what would be the optimal drug policy. You know, nobody was a libertarian, nobody wanted full legalization, but we were all against the drug war. So I was developing the intellectual side.
I was out there speaking. I was getting involved with their activists and then. You know, and I started thinking about creating my own sort of interdisciplinary center on drugs and drug policy at Princeton, or probably at another university. Um, and then out of the blue, I get a invitation, a lunch from a guy named George Soros, uh, who is not well known there, but, you know, he was a successful financial guy.
He had been supporting human rights causes in South Africa and the, and in the Soviet union. And he had become interested in this issue because he was interested in advancing open society ideals. And so we had. We hit it off. Um, one thing led to another, a year later in 93, I shook hands in 94. I left Princeton.
I started up my Institute initially called the Lindesmith center named after a professor Alfred Lindesmith, who had been the first major American academic to challenge conventional thinking about drugs and addiction and drug policy. And I started building that. And getting involved in, you know, then the opportunity emerged to do some ballot initiatives, one on legalizing medical marijuana, the other one on treatment, instead of incarceration, I got involved.
So all of a sudden my life started to get more political in that way. Um, you know, what I thought would be an interest for a center on the study of drugs that drug policy becomes more and more of an advocacy Institute. Uh, I, you know, I found a way to sort of open up sources, network, the international network to expand harm reduction, basically messing on maintenance, needle exchange, you know, honest drug education type stuff in the former Soviet union, Eastern Europe, it all just kept building and building.
And then, you know, six years after I started the Lindesmith center, you know, you know, it had always been understood. I would spin the thing. So at that point, we spin it out of sorosis foundation. The old drug policy foundation had fallen on hard times. So it merged with my Institute and we create a drug policy Alliance, and that became an independent organization that I then spent the next 17 years kind of building up to be the leading drug reform organization in the world.
By that, by the time I left, we had, I think offices and around seven cities in the U S we had, you know, a $15 million budget. I had a 75 80 people work in for me, a TPA. We had some part of our work was doing international work. Um, and Jamie just basically listened to the stand. The work really fell into three major categories.
The first one third was about really ending marijuana prohibition, right? Legalizing marijuana for medical purposes, decriminalizing marijuana possession, reducing marijuana rest, and especially the racist elements of that. And then finally coming up with a responsible regulatory approach to marijuana for adults that was first, the second third was about really trying to roll back the role of the drug war and mass incarceration because the drug war had really driven mass incarceration in this country, in the eighties and nineties and into the early odds.
And even though its role was beginning to diminish, as you know, as we get closer to now, nonetheless, I mean, there were some state, my own state in New York where the previous state. You know, oh, 40, 45, 50% of all new admissions to prison, where for a drug law violation in the federal prison, it was even higher than that.
I mean, nationally and among women. And, you know, sometimes the majority of all women incarcerated in some places go in there for drug violations. So it was all about rolling back, mandatory minimum drug sentences, finding alternatives to incarceration. Um, you know, you name it, all those sorts of efforts and the last.
Who is about making a serious commitment to treating drug use and misuse as a health issue, not a criminal issue. And initially that meant things like, um, reducing the stigma for people on methadone maintenance. It meant it meant making clean needles available through pharmacies and needle exchange programs.
Then we began to take on very early on the issue of overdose 20 years ago when it was still a relatively small issue, but still growing from 5,000 to 10,000 a year fraction of what it is today, but definitely growing, taking on that, uh, advancing, uh, artists, drug education program based on a sex education model.
Right. You know, which is telling kids, don't do drugs, don't do drugs, don't do drugs. But if you do, there's some things we want you to know so that you come home safely at the end of the. Right. And so those three major strands really became the focus of our work, mostly the U S five or 10% outside of the us.
And, um, uh, you know, it was a, the marijuana one got the lion's share of the media attention because it was dramatic because it was the ballot initiatives. But in terms of the resources, the staff time, my time, I'd say we spend a majority of our work dealing with the other drugs, not with marijuana from, from studying the history of drug policy Alliance, that the different initiatives that you in the organization have played a part in is, is just astronomical.
So thank you for everything that you've done and for the organization, successes there, as I understand it, though, you know, we can look back and say, all right, the, the cannabis issue has come a long way since you got into this, you know, 30 whatever years ago, That's easy to see. However, for some of the rest of us who haven't been in this fight as long, you know, for me, it's been about a decade.
It's harder to see the successes because we're so focused on where we're falling short in your eyes from your 30 years of experience here. What sort of successes do you see that we may be overlooking that or, or I guess it a different way to put that would be, it may be hard for us to see that that success, because we're so focused on what still needs to be done.
Well, I'd say that probably it's not as dramatic. Cause you know, sometimes I say that when trying to turn around the whole mass incarceration system is like trying to turn around an ocean liner, which is even when you pointed a new direction, it still takes a while before you're actually going in a new direction.
But I was just looking at some of the stats that came out. The pew foundation, pew has a very good report that came out some weeks ago and it's really quite revealing. I mean, one of the things that it shows is that on the one hand drug arrests keep plugging away. But if you look at the number of people incarcerated now in state prisons on drug charges, it's really dropped very substantially.
Right? So, so, you know, Madison card, I mean, we know we did sort of go from half a million people. Locked up, um, for everything in 1980, up to 2.3 million as of about 10 years ago. And now that kind of stabilizes began to head down. Right. And you see, in some states it's like in my state, in New York or California range of other states it's really come down substantially.
And even some of those policies have now been embraced and they're leaving the new innovations in some of the rhetoric states, you know, where they were going. Like, we can't keep locking up. People just rate, just bankrupting us. And it's, you know, the is immoral. I mean, they're beginning to get the morality piece of this thing as well.
It's not just about money. So when I look at incarceration and I really think that we've had substantial success, I mean, we, you know, mandatory minimums have been pushed down at the federal federal level. And in many states, alternatives to incarceration have become a much bigger thing. Um, we, we really see a substantial change going on there.
And I, I think that, that I feel very good about it. I mean, it's, it's people don't focus on us. But it has been a substantial transformation on not throughout the entire country, but definitely in many parts and in a big way in places like New York, New Jersey, California, you know, that were real serious mass incarcerated, even though they were seen as more liberal blue states.
Uh, but sometimes we're having even more people incarcerated than even some Southern states. So I think that was one major success, which is our. Very interesting, by the way, I just looked at the stats, TJ, it looks like the number of marijuana rests has dropped maybe from three quarter of a million down to under half a million.
I mean, the cops is amazing. They keep doing it. It's really all about controlling young men, right? I mean, that's the bullshit behind this. So, and, and racking up the statistics and all that. Um, but on the other hand, that's come down, but it's been replaced by white people getting, but mostly white people getting busted for meth.
And so you've seen that sort of triple, so as marijuana risks came down by a quarter million or so in the last 10 years, you see, which is mostly disproportionately black people, you see arrests of, of mostly white people going up for methamphetamine by almost the same amount. So there's still a racial bias because the racial bias between black and white arrests was overwhelming.
So even with this transition, you still see racial disproportionality, you still see race and racism operating there, but it's not as widely disproportionate. It was in the past. And meanwhile, this methamphetamine thing, which is, I think been pretty consistently like 75, 80% white people and like 15% Hispanic or so, you know, has, has been a factor.
I think on the last part of the thing about the whole. Public health harm reduction approach. I mean, if you think about it, when I got going, we had a handful of needle exchange programs around the country, and many of the biggest states would not even allow people to get a sterile syringe in a pharmacy.
And now it's still grossly inadequate, but these programs now exist in hundreds of cities around America. You see them, you know, even places that are somewhat concerted, like Ohio they're there. You saw Mike Pence when he was governor of Indiana. And they had an outbreak of HIV in some of their little towns and, you know, he was ideologically opposed.
But then, you know, he said, he talked to the police chief and had a conversation with God. And so he said, okay to the thing. Right. So I mean, that kind of transformation you see. So I think there, you seeing the response to the overdose epidemic, even though it's been grossly inadequate, Basically Naloxone.
I remember 15 years ago, prosecutors, what we did in meloxone. Well, I mean, you know, you want people to suffer the consequences of their addiction. You know, if they're going to use these illegal drugs, let them die. I mean, it was a subtext and now you have like police chief saying, give us Naloxone, please give it to us, give it to us, give it to us.
You know, we don't, we'd rather, we'd rather save a life. They put handcuffs on, on a, on a corpse. Right? So you've seen a real evolution on the whole Naloxone, the overdose prevention stuff you saw just recently the Biden administration used the phrase harm reduction in Biden's. Was it the state of the state of the union speech that was, uh, even Obama didn't do that.
So that even though, even though he was more sympathetic than Biden was the politics have shifted. If you look under when Trump was first. It was almost no bipartisanship to speak of, but there were two laws that went through Congress in, I think 2018 with bipartisan support that Donald Trump signed into law.
And one of them was to roll back mandatory minimums for drug offenses. And the other one was to deal with the opioid epidemic through, you know, I mean, they could have been more generous, but it was basically a positive approach. And so you think about drug policy reform. We were kind of the third rail of American politics.
So when that nobody wanted to touch Democrats or Republicans for a long time and you get to 2018. Now two major domains of drug policy reform are actually one of the few areas of bipartisanship in the us Congress. So, you know, we have a long way to go and I've talked about how this has gotta be a multi-generational struggle.
And we're probably in the second generation now a drug policy reform, but I'd say all of those things represented very significant reforms and, you know, I could point even like nationals and drug abuse. I mean, I had Nora Volkow on my podcasts. I go active and I gave her a lot of shit about, you know, why isn't she doing this stuff that would really make a difference.
She's spending billions of dollars trying to establish an addiction is a brain disease, but nothing positive has come out of that. That real, almost nothing. That's really helping people. Right. But I see in the last six months or whatever, since Biden's been present, she's been changing her too. Right. You see at the United nations, you know, back in 98, I organized a global letter to the secretary general saying the war on drugs do more harm than good.
But at that point, the rhetoric was, you know, a drug-free world. We can do it. I mean, any Arctic delusional, like what were they smoking type of idiotic rhetoric. And you get to the more recent one, you had general assembly, special session on drugs five years ago. And, you know, Not good, but it's definitely showing you an evolution and greater sophistication of thinking and abandonment of that kind of highly ideological, ridiculous rhetoric towards focusing on this as a real problem.
So, you know, I mean, in the broader world of things, you know, I mean the marijuana things moved almost, even faster than I expected. Um, and I feel very proud of that, but I also have some regrets up in my legacy. Oh, Eastern Edelman, legalizing marijuana. I mean, it's something to be very, I'm very proud of it, but you know, it really obscures the fact that it was like a third of my work and the other, the other successes were less grand, but they actually resulted in, I mean, the other work I was engaged in, on, on, you know, citizen reform and on harm reduction and stuff like that, that's actually saved more lives and reduced incarceration more than the work did on.
Right. And marijuana reduced arrests and help, you know, remove all these other little insidious elements of marijuana, prohibition, our society. Um, but, uh, the other stuff was bigger in terms of affecting people's lives in a more profound way. I'm going to talk more about that work, but before we do, let's take a quick break.
And before we get into the break, if you wouldn't mind shouting out where people can find you, where they can find the podcast, anything you want, my listeners. Yeah, sure. I mean, basically I say, you know, I started this podcast called psychoactive last summer. Uh, we just, uh, completed the recording for the first season.
It's been renewed for a second season and it's available on all the major channels, you know, I mean, apple, Spotify, you know, I heart, uh, you name it. It's a joint production with iHeart, which is one of the biggest platforms in the world. And with Darren Aronofsky, who's a movie director and his protozoa pictures, um, enterprise, you know, he wanted, the way this happened was he, I knew him a little bit and he called me up, said, you want to do a podcast about psychedelics?
And I said, no, I want to do a podcast about all the trucks. So he said, let's do it. So I'm his first effort to produce a podcast rather than a movie. And so I'm having a wonderful time with it and having, you know, people from all around the world and a whole range of subjects and, uh, and slowly building out a, an audience for this around the world.
So that's it. And the other thing that I suggested is you want to see this, a thumbnail sketch of this. They just watched my Ted talk because that's probably a good summary of, uh, you know, my views on this. Thank you for supporting the show here at choose your struggle. We rely on all of y'all to help us end stigma and promote honest and fact-based education around mental health, substance misuse, and recovery and drug use and policy.
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So fineness of choose your struggle.com and find me@jayschiffman.com. And thank you. Thank you for being a part of the choose your struggle family. Choose your struggle.
find us on social media. Check the link in your show notes or search for Jay Schiffman and choose your struggle on any social media platform. You resigned from your leadership of the drug policy Alliance in 2017 in very famously, uh, it w you, you were succeeded by now two women of color, which is, it's almost sad that we have to say this, right.
It's almost sad that we have to, to point out that this is a success. I guess that was intentional. Or was that something that you just strongly believed there was important? We talk about that for a second. Sure. Jay, well, first of all, you know, when I, you know, I had always assumed that I would step down sometime between age 60 and 80, and then I ended up turning, stepping out at age 60.
And for me, I mean, I had actually planned it out, um, from a couple of years earlier because I sort of had gone nonstop round the clock, you know, forever and ever. And like, you know, like most actors, like maybe one week during the summer, I'd go like, am I burning out? Do I need, uh, you know, but what happened in 2015 after I'd been doing this?
I mean, since I started Lindesmith center, it was like 21 years. Um, uh, you know, I noticed those feelings of like exhaustion, like. The bottom list, you know, fountain of passion for this stuff was just not quite the same. And so then what happened was I just started having a set of conversations with my board chair.
I reclassed here who used to amaze cou and with a couple of close friends and a consultant. And I realized that on the personal level, Um, on the organizational level, on the political level, everything was kind of pointing to Ethan. Now's the time to go, you know, on a personal level, you know, I mean, you mentioned the point about my dad, my dad had died at age 58.
I was now at that point 58, 59. And I knew I had no role model in my family for what to do after that. So there was, that was a little bit of a factor, but it was also wanting to have the time to stop and do something different at a young enough age, be able to do that sort of stuff. Um, and, and it was, um, on the organizational level, you know, I felt the DPA, you know, we were in a strong situation.
I, I put money into our reserves, my management team, nine to 10 people on my management team do me for 10 years. I had a really solid board. So I knew that to the extent when, uh, when a founding director steps away, typically the organization goes through some tricky times, unless there's a popular kind of deputy who replaces replaces him.
Right. So I, but I felt like I'd prepare things really well. And then politically speaking. You know, on the marijuana thing, when we won that California should have 2016, it just felt like game over. You know, and at that point there were two elements. One was, you know, the marijuana thing was going to become less about whether we legalized and more about how we legalized and the issues about racial equity, social justice, which were dear to my heart.
But for me, the greater passion was ending marijuana prohibition. It was helping play a role in moving the country from barely 30% of the country wanting to legalize marijuana, 20 years before and marijuana being legal for nothing to getting the point where by 2016, it was. 55% close to 60% saying legalize and, and medical marijuana being legal in, you know, almost two thirds of the state.
And now we've legalized eight states, including California. So it was like, let a next generation take this over on the sentencing reform thing, drug policy reform, which should really be on the cutting edge of criminal justice reform for decades was now even as it was growing, it was becoming ever and ever diminishing part of a much broader criminal justice reform agenda.
And which meant a much more crowded field, more jostling with allies. And I was less engaged, interested in that. And the harm reduction thing was going to be a long-term struggle, but then to speak directly to your question, you know, it was also an era where most of the drug policy reform organizations, and this is probably true of a lot of social justice organizations, but in our case, on, on marijuana, Um, on a, on psychedelics, on harm reduction and drug policy reform, basically white male founders.
Right. And you could look at the broader sociological reasons why it's disproportionately white men who found the social justice organizations, some of which involve issues that disproportionately affect non white people. Right. But you know, whether it's cause we have the privilege, we have the guts, we have the whatever, but it was clearly I looked around me and there was, you know, I could see other founders were beginning to step aside.
Right. And, and especially not like on the psychedelics issue, but other issues you seeing, you know, young people of color or not so young people of color being to step in, it was a transitional point. Right. And by the way, Jay, who was another point here, I wanted to be the first person who thought it was time for me to stay.
Right. And you know, I, I don't know anybody you thought it's always has been there too long. It's time for him to step aside. I, I hadn't even heard rumors about that nor anybody else I know. And I want it to be the first person to say, to sort of, you know, jump the clock, beat the beat people to the punch by saying I'm stepping down, you know, and I had a couple of role models of other people who had stepped out at sort of the top of their game.
It's like you think about a sports athlete, who's at the top of their game. And also they realized that their enthusiasm, or maybe there's still. Hitting, you know, doing top-notch work, but they can feel they're beginning to lose a half step. I want it to step down at that time. And the transition to another type, another leadership was appropriate.
Now, when it came to my successors, I really stepped aside from that, that was really left up to my board chair, our Glasser, and a committee of the, uh, of the board to do that. And I think there was a general awareness that especially with drug policy reform where this, so disproportionately affects people of color, you know, that the time was coming.
So it wasn't an absolute mandate that it had to be a person of color. Right. But I think the sense was that certainly all things being equal and beyond that. And then, you know, we got some qualified, you know, you know, people. And so my immediate successor, Mia, Maria McFarland, um, who had come from human rights, watch on, you know, came, her father was Peruvian.
So, but yeah, you know, that was initially going to be kind of tough for her coming from the outside. Stepping in, but then her successor after a couple of years, who's the current executive director, Cassandra Federighe Cassandra had come out almost out of college. So she'd been at DPA for 10, 12 years, really brilliant, powerful speaker, you know, speaking to the racial justice issues.
She and I had tangled over the racial justice issues internally, but kind of worked out those issues and the interpersonal stuff. So I was really looking at her as really a, you know, a quite likely successor as soon as she got sort of mature enough and experienced enough and that moment of Rosa a couple of years ago.
And I think she's doing a fantastic job of really kind of DPA sort of coming back in a big way. You know, the Oregon initiative, the, the old drug decrim thing, they did a whole range of other issues they're working on, uh, you know, leading the marijuana legalization effort in New York and making it a new model for responsible social equity model, uh, leading it in some other states as well.
So I think it was. You know, although I, as I say, I didn't pick my successor. Um, I was conscious of really trying to focus on Cassandra's potential because there were a few other people who had previously worked at DPA or some others outside who I thought could also be worthy candidates. Um, but I think Cassandra is really kind of an optimal choice.
Another question of your legacy is, is I love that the line you said it's not whether we're going to legalize it. It's how, you know, w we are moving towards a point where, where I think in my lifetime, certainly cannabis will be legal. What is it going to take to a, push that over the finish line, but be help follow that up with other substances?
It is it as many activists, including myself believe going to take, you know, the activist community sort of dragging our politicians by the hand, over the finish line. Or do you think that we are. Uh, ever going to see a situation again, where our political leaders can actually be just that Ima leaders on this issue.
Yeah. I mean, I rarely looked at politicians for leadership. I mean, sometimes you have no choice and some of them actually step up. Um, but if you think about it, most of our major successes happen at least initially through the ballot initiative process, you know, and that was true on marijuana reform. It was true in treatments that of incarceration.
It was true on reforming the asset forfeiture laws. Uh, you know, this is an issue that typically politicians are afraid of their shadow. So even when a majority agree with you, they're, they're really scared about the attack ads. Um, coming at them saying they're soft on drugs or soft on crime, or about powerful law enforcement unions, you know, the prison guards, union, or other folks, you know, kind of coming out against them.
So we really, you know, we use the, with medical. The first six or seven states were through the ballot issue process with marijuana legalization. You know, the first, I think eight or nine or 10 went through the ballot initiative process, um, on the major breakthroughs on treatment instead of incarceration through the initiative process, first of Arizona, then California.
So, and then the politicians begin to see that it's getting a little safer and you get typically Democrats once in a while, a Republican stepping up to the. I think when we look at it, look, I remember with the repeal of alcohol prohibition, right? I mean that involved a massive movement that repealed the only time in American history, that one amendment was repealed to another amendment, the 18th by the 21st, but even so many localities remained dry for many decades.
And I think Mississippi, maybe didn't legalize alcohol for like 20, 25 years after prohibition was repealed. So understand that even when the feds kind of get out of the way. The states go with their own pace. And I think we'll see the same thing here. I mean, now we have one third of the states, including some of the biggest ones that have legalized.
So momentum is, is really strong. People are learning from, you know, what worked and what worked in other states is going to keep happening. Um, you know, what are, you're going to surprise say like Virginia popping up. I didn't see that one coming. Uh, or was it South Dakota voting through an initiative, all those being undercut by their governor.
Um, so, you know, you're seeing this happen even in red states, even in Trumpy or states and things like that. Um, so I think it's just a matter of time, but some states will, you know, be hold outs. You know, it may take a long time, Mississippi just legalize medical marijuana, but it may take a while for them to legalize it more broadly.
And yeah. Other Southern states or, or, you know, Idaho's of the world, you know, that may take a while, but we're heading there and the same, thing's true by the way, in Latin America, Europe, and it'll eventually reach Africa and places like that. So I think marijuana it's just a matter of time. Um, you know, people sometimes think that the marijuana industry played a big role in this happening, but quite frankly, all the time I was doing this right until I stepped down early 2017 marijuana industry was contributing only a tiny fraction of the money.
I mean, one of the other organizations involved was taken more money from them. But, you know, my view is we don't want to raise money from industry till after we've drafted our initiatives, that we've done a good initiative based on good public policy. And that we'll try to get money from them. We're not going to draft the initiative to suit their needs in any particular, you know, profit driven way.
So I think the marijuana thing is clear. Look, psychedelics is just incredible. Um, exciting. I mean, what's going on now? And there's two major strands. One is, you know, the work that my friend, Rick Doblin, the founder of maps, the multidisciplinary association of psychedelic studies initiated 35 years ago, really, which is getting the FDA to approve a and DMA at other organizations now working on psilocybin and possibly LSD, um, basically for psychotherapeutic purposes to deal with not just PTSD, but a whole raft of other sorts of conditions, but where the evidence is really compelling and where you have very skeptical, hard scientists being blown away by the results of the, of the, of MVMA and suicide, but other psychedelics relative to the standard, you know, SSRS and other drugs used for mental health, mental illness conditions.
The second street. Is the decriminalization of, uh, you know, not, uh, either entirely separate or overlapping a bit with the kind of therapeutic environment, a therapeutic piece. And when you look at the Oregon initiative, you know, back in 2020, the Oregon electorate passed two drug reform initiatives. One was the one initiated by DPA, basically the Portugal model in the U S so ending, basically say, nobody's going to go to jail for simple drug possession, and we want to encourage people to get help, whether it's sobriety, help, or harm reduction, help, or whatever it's going to be.
Right, but we're not putting people in jail any more for simple drug possession. Um, and then the second initiative was a psychedelics reform initiative. Um, that included basically it had this element of saying that therapists should be allowed to use these drugs for therapeutic purposes and not necessarily in a total medical environment, you know, opening it up a bit.
So now we're going to see Colorado is going to have an initiative on the ballot. Um, coming up, I think this, uh, this year, and, uh, I'm not sure if some other states will as well, but certainly by 2024, you're going to see a number of states doing both, all drug decrim initiatives, the Portugal model than the Oregon model and new and improved as we learn from the experience of Oregon.
And then there's going to be psychedelics initiatives that either focus on the decrim side or on the medical therapeutic side or that integrate those things. So I think that's going to be. You know, really the next front on these things. Um, you know, I don't hear a lot of people arguing for psychedelics to be sold over the counter.
The way marijuana is. I think there's still a realization that we need to, you know, let's be cautious about this stuff and, you know, and, and the more, you know, Cautionary reasonable people are saying, look, we're making nice momentum here. The media is mostly on our side. The public's getting educated on this sort of stuff.
You know, be careful of letting this thing open up so fast that we get the sort of, you know, pushback like happened with Timothy Leary back in the sixties of, you know, more and more accidents happening. People dying as a result of doing stupid shit when they're high and things like that. So, so I think that's got all there will be, I mean, the pendulum will swing back at some point as it does.
It's going to swing back on marijuana. And I see the old anti-marijuana folks trying to come up with new angles to try to push the thing back. I think the marijuana momentum is so strong. It's not going to make much of an effect psychedelics. There'll be, you know, there'll be some pushback, but I mean, Jay, I think the biggest.
That's out there right now. That's not really part of the American debate is a debate that's going on in British Columbia, in Canada, where, you know, Vancouver relatively progressive city, wealthy city, but they've had it. They had over 2000 people dive in overdose fatality last year. And I mean, it, it it's, it's, it's, it's a desperate kind of situation.
It's mostly fentanyl or fentanyl in combination with stimulants, like cocaine and meth. Right. And, and what they're starting to talk about there, and that if not start it's been a few years, is something called safe. Which is how do you set up systems so that people who are committed to using drugs like fentanyl, heroin, meth, Coke, whatever, you know, the people are gonna use those drugs, whether they're legal or illegal, if they're already committed to using them, and they're going to do a criminally, if they can't do it legally, how do you set up a system that allows those people to get the drugs they want?
Plus of course, the opportunity for treatment and for help and for other services. I mean, those things always go hand in hand in any kind of compassionate, sensible, pragmatic society. How do you allow people to get access to those substances in such a way that it does not present a threat to the broader population?
That's the $64,000 question around what people would call drug legal or drug legalization, drug regulation, or, you know, harm reduction slash slash you know, it's, how do you do that? And so in Vancouver, especially in other parts, I think in British Columbia and there's discussion about this in Canada, how do you do that?
I mean, we know that what's killing people, right? You know, most people use heroin did not die just from using heroin by itself, typically with heroin, unless you've got some extraordinarily powerful sample by and large, you had to be combining heroin with booze or with benzos in order to stop your breathing and die with.
You don't need to combine it with anything, right. It's strong enough, 50 times the potency of heroin per gram or microgram, you know, that people are just, you know, dropping dead like flies now. I mean, it's, that's the thing where you need you, you want to make available, you know, not just methadone maintenance, not just buprenorphine, not just pharmaceutical, heroin, maintenance of the sort you see in Europe and Canada.
Now you want to make available, not just, you know, open access and abundant, you know, good treatment programs. You want to progress for people who want to embrace sobriety in the here and now, and in the longterm, you want people, you know, you want the whole spectrum because we know that when it comes to putting a drug problem behind you, it's a matter of different strokes for different folks.
Right. And we know that with opioids, we know that that's not our buprenorphine, you know, it has the best outcomes for the biggest numbers, but it doesn't work for everybody. You know, people have their own journeys and, and, and, you know, so you want to accommodate that sort of thing. I think that, you know, it's a matter of just getting as innovative and as aggressive about that as possible while at the same time, trying to address issues around housing and issues around mental illness.
I mean, you know, nobody's got a good answer, how you deal with the intersection of mental illness and substance misuse. Right? Nobody's got a good answer. Those are incredibly challenged situations, but I look at places, I mean, for me, a place like the Netherlands is inspiring because not only did they lead the world in a kind of quasi legalization of marijuana 40 years ago, not only were they among the pioneers of harm reduction, but when you look at the results.
There's like the average age of their heroin users. It's like 45, 50 years old. Now there's like no new generation getting into, you know, illicit opioids, right? The death rate from overdose is incredibly low and this is true in some other European countries as well. Now, if fentanyl eventually hits Europe, we see that change.
I mean, it has hit some corners of Europe, but, you know, I don't know when it comes to drug policy. And I think quite frankly, if you look at the approach of places in Northern Europe, not so much the repressive Swedes, but more with the Netherlands parts of Germany, Denmark, maybe Norway is going to some extent.
I think those are actually models for how to have a decent, compassionate society. They're not perfect. They got lots of problems, but they are dealing with multiethnic population. You know, almost to the same extent we are dealing within the U S right. We don't have the kind of social safety net that, you know, they have in those countries.
But I think those elements of both, you know, innovative drug policy together with. More forward, pragmatic social welfare. A policy are really going to be the keys to success in the places that are really struggling here with, um, you know, w w w w w w with drugs, homelessness, mental illness playing out on the streets and in our communities.
Well, I could listen to you talking about this all day, but I guess that's what we got the podcast for. Right? So before we get to the final questions we always finish with please, one more time, shout out where people can find you find the podcast and all the. Sure. Thanks, Jay. Yeah, just look it up.
Psychoactive. It's the podcast, uh, it's on all the major networks and tune in, sign up, subscribe. It's free is I, I regret that it's got ads, but it is one of these podcasts is supported by, you know, by, by, by companies advertising on it. So that's a little weird for me, but you know, I, you know, I appreciate the fact that the sponsors are helping make this available without people having to pay a subscription fee.
You know, Jay, the one last issue I wanted to make sure to talk about in your show is one of the issues that has. There are three issues that are really engaged me since I stopped running drug policy lines almost five years ago. One is this kind of psychedelics Renaissance, which I just find absolutely find it fascinating and psychedelics have played an important constructive role in my own life.
Yeah. I've had a couple of bad trips, even those you learn from. Um, but the second issue is the way in which when it comes to what happened with opioids, where the, you know, 20 years ago, you had all these ignorant doctors, you know, over prescribing opioids oxies and other things for chronic pain. It always, that was inappropriate.
You had the pharmaceutical companies and distributors pushing this stuff. You had patients wanting to gobble this stuff down and sort of get an instant relief on their pain. But now what's happened is the pendulum swung too far, the other. And so you now have people, you know, who have been successfully maintained, you know, dealing with a chronic pain on opioids, you know, for years, if not decades.
And all of a sudden, the doctors are saying, I'm going to cut your dose or take you off it. You have people for whom the alternative methods of dealing with chronic pain aren't working were opioids would make a difference. You now have people committing suicide, right? There was just a very good piece by Maya Salafis, New York times, a couple of days ago.
And I've joined the advisory board of an organization impact NPAC national pain. I think it's advocate center, uh, had it started by Kate Nicholson. I mean, that issue of going back to the battle days 30 years ago when we were not treating pain products, Because, you know, you're not treating pain properly.
People die, prematurely people get highly depressed. People can't function. And even though opioids is not the best way to treat chronic pain for most people, there's still a substantial minority for whom it is the right thing to do. So that's an issue I've become quite impassioned about. And the evidence very strongly backs me up on that.
And the other issue is the issue, the fight over e-cigarettes and tobacco harm reduction, where, you know, I mean, you know, forever and ever, there wasn't much, if you smoke cigarettes, what could you do? There's a nicotine patch or nicotine gum. And that worked for that improved outcome for some people, but along come e-cigarettes and more and more evidence shows.
And this is, you know, even national academy of science, you know, even the center of disease control acknowledges this and not in a bold way, but these are. I mean to take the lead, an example of an e-cigarette may be the most effective smoking cessation device ever created or some of the are competitors.
Right? And now you have also, these are kind of like things like Snus, but in Sweden, like a pouch, you put in your, behind your gums, right. You know, with nicotine in it. And the evidence overwhelmingly shows that these things appear to be anywhere from 90 to 95%, less dangerous and cigarettes. Cause most of the danger, you know, nicotine is what hooks you, but nicotine doesn't kill you.
In fact, it may even turn out to have some medical benefits, right? Vis-a-vis Parkinson's a range of others. Right, but by and large, it's the smoking that kills you. It's the bird particle matter. And what happened was unfortunately with kids getting into jeweling and the e-cigarettes, you had this typical freak out, save the kids, fuck the adults.
Right? So even though a kid getting into jeweling may represent very low risk to their long-term health. But while meanwhile, somebody who's been smoking, you know, into, into their late thirties, forties, it helps usually if they can quit smoking. Um, so this whole debate over tobacco harm reduction. And it's really a weird one because.
But as big tobacco, but the truth is, is that big tobacco is making a lot more money from cigarettes while they're losing money still on all these alternatives like e-cigarettes. And so when I look at the leading anti smoking organizations, the companion campaign for tobacco free kids, I look at Mike Bloomberg, who's the principal, funder he's funding, good harm reduction stuff with respect to illicit drugs.
And meanwhile, there are irrationally opposed to harm reduction when it comes to tobacco and nicotine. And I think the cigarette companies are going, God, Mike, Bloomberg's our greatest ally. He's making sure that people keep smoking, which is where we make our big box by standing in the way of these alternatives.
So I think people need to be aware of the fact that the science overwhelmingly shows. If you see that if you're trying to quit smoking, you should just start trying if one doesn't work, if jewel doesn't work, try, enjoy. If Andrew doesn't work, try something else and try something else. If that doesn't work, try Snus, try, try, whatever works.
Just keep trying. And if you can't, it's best to just quit cigarettes entirely, but if you can't do it, then reduce your cigarettes and get the other thing and try to get to the point where you're no longer smoking the damn cancer sticks. Right? I mean, that's what harm reduction is. Right. And basically in the same way, that kind of an abstinence only ideology got in the way of effective drug treatment, effective harm reduction for so many years, as part of the bigger war on drugs, you see this abstinence only approach and, you know, see, you know, keeping one kid from vaping is worth a 10 adults dying, which very much mimics the kind of whole big drug work being justified as one.
Great big trial protection act. I mean, you know, harm reduction makes sense there and can save more lives. The tobacco fields than it's ever saved, or maybe ever will save an illicit drug areas. Yeah. Amazing points in it. That is, I think one that we're starting to hear a little bit more about, and I really appreciate you bringing up on this again to my earlier point.
You and I could do this for hours and I would happily just let you go. Uh, but I am conscious of our, of our time. So we do finish with the same two questions every time. Uh, the first of which is because this show talks about the subject of mental health a lot. What are, what is your number one? Self-care.
Well, I, I mean, I, I, I would generally say, you know, I mean, I, it's been easier to stay in shape and get exercise and all that sort of stuff. Since I stepped down, I mean, you know, once I stopped running also I lost 10 pounds. You know what, I'm just, you know, I know it was a cortisol, the stress hormone, whatever, but actually my S my, my, uh, usual way of healthy aging is once a week.
Right. I take 10 milligrams of edible marijuana. I grab my headphones and I go have a multi hour deep massage. And that experience is the closest thing I have to meditation in my life. I just float. I listened to music, we all different types of music, you know, whatever the theme might be for that, you know, and I just float and I have a deep massage and it just like come out of there just feeling great.
And it just keeps my, I don't know. I think it's my, I think is my secret sauce to healthy. I think you've got a business venture in there in the future. That's a great idea. I would sign up. Right. And right now, today, all right. The last one we always finish with is we've now spent the last over 55 minutes here and why you're amazing.
We got to listen to the podcast. We got to follow your work, but here is your chance to shout out a couple of people who you follow, whose work you never miss. Uh, you already said by us, all of us. So we both agree is fantastic, but, uh, who else? They have a couple of other people for us. Oh, there's somebody who's much more politically conservative than I am.
And she and I really tangled 20 years ago, she was kind of anti harm reduction the early years. But Sally said. Is, uh, she's at a, you know, somewhat conservative think tank American enterprise Institute, but, um, I think she's really, really, really provocative stuff. And I find that we're align not on everything, but she's a smart, thoughtful thinker on a whole host of issues, including the pain issue and the tobacco issue, um, and a range of others.
Um, I, you know, there's, there's a young journalist writing about psychedelics now, shallow love, um, for vice, who I just think is kind of cutting edge on a whole bunch of these things. I think David. The British drug researcher and UTT, who was briefly the head of British drug policy till he got pushed out because he was too correct thinking.
Um, but I pay attention to what, to what he's doing, um, out there. I think the British story and Mike J um, who I actually recently interviewed, I think it'll be up, you know, he has a new book on Mescalin, but when it comes to a person who's broad thinking about history of drugs and has done many books in history, drugs, and on mental illness, I think, uh, I think he's doing a great job.
I admire. The Columbia professor, who's done two very provocative books and very good research. I don't agree with everything that Carl says either, but he's a good friend. He was on my board at DPA, and I think he's putting out things in a very raw way. That's really provoking people. I mean, he came out as, you know, sharing the Columbia university psychology department while using heroin and even making comments.
Like, I don't understand how anybody could share this department without using heroin. Right. I mean, you know, so he likes being provocative, but I think he's on putting out some bold ideas out there at a very important way. So I mean, those, those are, I mean, I could probably go off a couple of those and more people, but there's some really smart, interesting people, you know, writing about drugs, drug policy, um, of all of all sorts.
Now I'm going to be interviewing. A guy who has a podcast called crackdown Garth Mullins. Who's actually in Coover. And then there's the other podcast, a narcotic, I think it's called. Is it Zack? There's a few Zach Siegel. I think that's another interesting one doing sort of cutting edge, you know, a little more, more, whereas mine goes a little broader.
This one goes really deeply into some core harm-reduction issues, but those are some good ones out there for getting some, uh, creative, uh, ideas and hearing from creative. I cannot wait for the next season. I am such a big fan of the show. And even thank you, not only for your show, but for your years of service in this area, it's greatly appreciated.
Well, Jay, thank you for inviting me on your show. You know, you know, lots of luck with it and lots of luck in your, uh, I guess your, your town of Philadelphia, where there's, you know, issues. And we didn't talk about what's going on in Philadelphia, but, uh, uh, by the way, one of my other forthcoming guests is Filippo Bagua, an anthropologist who spent a number of years studying drug markets and drug selling in Philadelphia.
And so we'll be getting a little bit into the Philadelphia scene, which we already did previously when I had your district attorney Larry Krasner on. So it'll be a different angle, but listen, thanks very much for having me on and best of luck with your podcasts. She was just back for their second season.
I'm so thankful to have bookshop.org as a partner. When you buy a book on bookshop, you not only support this show, you can also select your favorite local bookstore to get some of the proceeds for me, I've chosen. Harriet's a black owned bookstore here in Philadelphia. So next time you need a book, or if you want to check out any of the books we've profiled on this show, go to bookshop.org/shop+c Y S again, that's bookshop.org/shopping/c Y S.
Check them out today. Support us on Patriot. Check us out at patrion.com/choose your struggle or at the link in your show notes. All right, we've come to the end of another episode of the choose your struggle podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in. See, I remember how to do that. Um, either it was great.
Uh, obviously I, you know, worked really hard. Um, the, the goal for kicking off season three was to really start with some heavy hitters, you know? Um, and we, we got that. I mean, the, the, if you look at who was coming down on these episodes, you'll be like, wow, he's really starting this on the top. And that was a conscious goal because I ended season two on such a high note, um, within the Zynga that I was like, I have to keep that going, going into season three.
And obviously, uh, that was the case with, with Ethan and the people who are going to follow him and the next couple of weeks. So, um, Giant. Thank you. D Ethan Nadelmann. Uh, y'all know, I'm such a big fan of his work, obviously, uh, raised money two years ago for drug policy Alliance. I continue to be a donor myself.
Um, they are one of the, uh, partners for, uh, made it you'll, you'll hear an ad for drug policy Alliance, uh, one of the episodes. So, um, yeah, just a giant, giant fan of, of, of that. And was just, I, I found so much what you said. Interesting. I, like I said, in the, in the intro, I could have heard, listened to him, tell stories for hours.
Um, and if you like the conversation that he and I had go tune into psychoactive, because it is that to, to another degree, you know, I mean, I get to talk to Ethan. Ethan gets to talk to former heads of state and, and guys like, uh, people I admire like Carl Hart and Maya salivates and all these incredible people.
So, uh, tuned in psychosis. And reach out to Eden, you know, let them know that you heard him here and that you loved hearing from him. Um, he will appreciate that. All right. Uh, so we have, uh, the way we finished this show, which I had to remind myself with is a reading a card. Um, for those of you tuning in for the first time, I try to leave everybody with two things.
The first of which is a bit of an inspiration, uh, you know it, and then the second one is it's, what's called a good egg. And I'll explain that again in a second here. Uh, the inspiration comes from cards. Uh, some, some, uh, different sources. Uh, it started with just, uh, oh man. What was the name of that company?
Season one, the cards I used all came from the same company, which was a blurt. Oh, this one, I'm using a Carter from them today to the blurt foundation. They put out these cards with sort of inspirational sayings on them. Uh, I have a bunch of those. I, I, that's what I use the sign off from season one, season two, I added another card pack in and season three, I've added another book in to the mix until you'll be hearing some new stuff later in the season.
But today we're going to use a card from blurts, believe in yourself, card pack. Um, we're doing that because, uh, made it as dropping next week more than, than a second. And, uh, the, the process of creation, if any, if, if you're listening and you've somehow made it without ever creating anything, you, you know, it goes with so excited is to beginning.
Um, and then you're, oh, this is okay. This is a little difficult. This is challenging. And then, oh my God, this thing I'm creating is terrible. Um, that's your low moment. And then the next one is a little bit better. It's not, this thing is terrible. It's I am terrible. Uh, but this thing may be okay. And then it's, Hey, actually, this thing is kind of good.
And then, oh my God, this thing is amazing. Um, I am back on the, this thing is amazing level for. Um, I spent weeks at that bottom, uh, like months of this is so dumb. Why am I doing this? This made it, it's going to be terrible. I am terrible. I joke about this on, in, in the, the episode one, the intro to the series, um, that like Lauren had to keep telling me, stop it.
Like you're not terrible because I was so convinced that I just sucked. Um, so this is why we're using that card back. Uh, and we're gonna go with, uh, this card right here. Our mistakes are our mistakes are our teachers now. Sticks with which to beat ourselves mistakes, teach us what we meant to say. Boy, I'm struggling with this in this card is a tongue twister, uh, mistakes, teach us what we might say or do differently.
Next time they allow us to grow, learn and move forward. Um, my apologies for stumbling over that so much. Yes, that is true. Uh, I know that made it is not perfect. I know I was just talking to Sarah this morning about that. She is super excited. She's heard the series and she is very excited. Um, and I am too, but I'm struggling with the fact that it's not perfect.
There are moments that I could fix. Uh, there's a lot I could fix and I have to just keep telling myself, like, it's not going to be perfect. You will keep finding little things like that, that you want to fix. Um, today the thing that was bothering me was the sound quality of certain moments. Um, you know, there's other things like the transcripts, I don't have time to read through all the transcripts.
I just don't. So I they're uploaded with a note that says, I'm so sorry. I did not have a chance to read through all this. Uh, obviously with another month I could probably do that, that kind of thing, but, but I will always find something. Um, but that's okay. You know, made it will draw. Uh, I'm sure people, myself included will point out some, some less than perfect moments.
And that's fine because it's not going to be the only season, you know, made it will, there will be a season two and hopefully it's season three, four or five, whatever. So stuff to learn from. And, uh, yes, as this card said, we, we, we will know what to learn, uh, what to do better next time. So the second thing, as I mentioned is a good egg.
We finished with a good egg. And what that means is, uh, just a good deed to go do this week. And, and, and, you know, they are all over the map. I come up with them, myself. I have a resource online that I use to, but, uh, this one's going to be a little selfish to kick off the season. If you listen to last episode, season the kickoff to season one, you know that, you know, this is a time of change for choose your struggle and made it is something that I've worked.
So, so, so, so, so hard on, so please, this is my ass. This is your good egg for the week. Go subscribe to the made it feed. It is in your show notes. Uh, wherever you're searching, wherever you're listening to this, just search for choose your struggle presents, and you should see them. Uh, stream right there, share it around to, um, if you liked this show, do me the giant solid of posting on social media.
Like, Hey, I'm so excited for this new show. You know, I listened to Jay's other show, whatever, whatever you want to say, but that would mean a lot to me. Um, and, and, you know, it made it is, is a completely different beast with a giant mission of helping raise awareness for this amazing organization that I, that I am lucky to be a part of and also helping change narratives and, and, and, and stigma and all that kind of stuff.
So, uh, please go subscribe to made it, but most of all, most importantly of all, as I remembered that I like to sign off every week with be vulnerable, show your empathy, spread your love and choose your struggle.