Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMsquUcea-E
yes welcome back Dr Hart good to see you brother good to be here man pull this sucker right up to you right there it's good to be here I was in Mexico City and um in my hotel room and there's only like two different channels that speak English so I'm forced to watch Fox News and I saw you on the Bill O'Reilly show those cluster [ __ ] shows where they have one person like Bill O'Reilly's the host and then they have all these boxes with all these different people and everybody's talking over everybody and the whole thing only lasts like 3 minutes and they're tackling these complex subjects you got maybe like a half a sentence out before you got interrupted I don't even remember what the topic was it must have had something to do with drugs and addiction they brought you on right yeah I think that episode was uh drugs and texting addiction texting addiction really that's what it was it it it degenerated into texting addiction yeah Jesus Christ um I thought it was marijuana or something I don't it was marijuana initially right uh because we were concerned about well they were concerned about the high the supposed High number of marijuana users the new high number right and then the thing is is that I was trying to make clear that the numbers of marijuana users today is considerably lower than that what they were in 1978 or 1980 and but they weren't aware of the information from from 1978 or 1980 is that like the numbers per capita cuz there's so many more people now no yeah it was percentage of in this case the percentage of high school students who reporting marijuana use in the past 30 days or the past year okay like I've recently found out that there's a 100 million less Americans in 1970 than there are today yeah that sounds about right that is [ __ ] crazy if you really stop and think about that I mean 40 whatever years ago a 100 million less people yeah yeah we're still growing yeah God we're [ __ ] crazy we can't keep this up that's ridiculous so they were they were smoking more pot back then more kids more higher percentage Yeah the highest percentage of Americans who were smoking or using any illegal drug was about 1978 to 1980 about that time period it hasn't been anywhere near that High um today it was probably like
right after the Nixon Administration like that that [ __ ] idiot probably had everybody just doing drugs when you got a president that's that messed up gets busted with you know Watergate and you know all just all the foolishness involved in his administration I bet he led people to drugs well you know there's a whole lot of theories about it but you know one of the theories is that people became distrustful of government and things that government was saying so not only that kids were experimenting in the 60s and the and this was later in the 70 they were still experimented and being distrustful of the government so it's not surprising but the thing is is that even then drug use rates weren't that high really I mean because the people who were using marijuana at the time they're now running the country they're now doing the they're in these responsible positions and and they're doing about as well as previous generations and so um uh it's not a big deal that people use drugs in fact you know I'm working on the new book and the thing is is that what I'm going to argue in new book is that more people should be using drugs like what when you say more people should be using drugs here's the thing about I hate the term I there's two terms that I have a real problem with I don't I don't hate them but I think they're they're they're weighted addiction is one of them and drugs is another one because addiction is like when you start talking about addicting being addicted to texting I have friends that are definitely uh they definitely are inclined to check their phone way too much like they feel compelled when they're in traffic they feel like there's a red light and they'll like oh good let me check my phone like I'm at a red light like Jesus Christ what the [ __ ] is going on but I think that's an Impulse it's just a foolish pattern of thought to call that an addiction and then to call like alcoholism the same thing where you could literally die if you stop drinking well that's crazy that's these are not the same things yeah well you know when we think about addiction it's a simple sort of definition that we use in medicine and the definition is that does it cause you a tremendous amount of distress and is it disrupting your
social occupation or your family sort of functioning that that's kind of it I mean so people can indulge in a behavior every day multiple times a day but they're handling their responsibilities and they are not distressed about this Behavior they wouldn't meet criteria for addiction whereas somebody could like use alcohol or cocaine or some drug once a month or once a week or what have you and then they have all of these disruptions surrounding that drug use and they may meet criteria for addiction whereas I could be using cocaine every day but handling my responsibilities it I'm not distressed by it uh I don't have these problems related to it I'm not an addict even though I'm using it every day so addiction has to do with social disruptions and being distressed not actual amount of use or how many times you're engaged in the behavior but this sort of definition is missed upon many of people in the in the general population yeah most people don't think about it that way most people think that if you don't use it you're an like if you don't say if you do something every day like I I had a friend who was a long shoreman and he worked with this guy that would shoot heroin every day at lunch and that always freaked me out because the guy showed up for work every day on time he was a responsible guy he was married he had children and this guy would get heroin he would cop every morning he would go there and he would sit in his truck and he would shoot up and you know whatever however long that that lasts you know he gets an hour lunch break and he would come back and go to work and I would like every day he goes every day like I did it every day well you know I this past summer the past three months or so I I I was in Geneva I just got back in the States um and I was working in a heroin Clinic where they administer heroin every day 7 days a week twice a day to people who meet criteria for heroin addiction and when I say they administer heroin I don't mean like small doses I mean doses that go up to like a gram a day a thousand milligrams a day a lot more than what people use here in the states typically and and these people who are getting heroin every day a large percentage of them also go to work a large percentage of them um have families and they're taking
care of their responsibilities they this is their treatment and this is a treatment that works for them but their treatment includes two daily doses of intravenous heroin seven days a week you know and and so like when I think about well one of the reasons I went there and I I did this because of the way we think of heroin in this country we think of it as such as evil drug and that's just uh American mythology and that's just wrong that's ignorance and but that's how me many including drug experts in this country think of heroin but that's just we have all of this great technology but we're so ignorant when it comes to many of these drugs so heroin administered intravenously on a daily basis is not it's not devastating No in fact some people would do better by having a daily doses a daily dose of heroin or another opiate um no it's not devastating see even me I would go [ __ ] man that's got to [ __ ] you up like taking heroin every day yeah it's it's it's been this whole journey man since I saw you last time I I've been all over the world and this whole journey to see what people do uh with with drugs and what drugs they're using and how they do it it's been so eye openening even for me someone who has spent their life studying drugs and I'm learning so much more now and but the Swiss experience but the Dutch also do this there are some parts of Germany that does this they have small programs in in the UK they had Small Program there are other countries but the Swiss by far have the biggest program and they've been the most successful they've been doing this for more than 20 years now and they started doing this in response to um uh HIV concern people worried about folks getting HIV so they had to do something had to have clean needles we had to make sure that the drugs were pure um so they were worried about death HIV all of those things and this was the rational response where they put it in a medical Community where people got treatment in in um along with their heroin and they have no plans of going back nor should they because it works boy that's hard for Americans to swallow right and is it because of all the propaganda we've been fed is it because just of misinformation I mean you would say propaganda but even me uh someone who's a a pro drug for the most part person I would say God heroin every
day he's probably going to [ __ ] you up yeah I mean but you you rais a good question is that part of the propaganda I I I don't know I mean obviously there are people who are used who used this as part of propaganda but in part but not I don't think they're trying to use as prop ground I think they're ignorant and they're closed many people but then there are other people just think about some of the films train spotting you think of a number of these films all of those films now can't use that salacious story anymore to grip us it's not reality but it's it makes great films it make great sort of subjects for documentaries when we think about musical Heroes and people who say well they were misunderstood so they used heroin they W that's not I mean they use heroin because it's a rational sort of uh use of the drug when you think about its ability to decrease anxiety its ability to like make people or have people relaxed and just be in a space where they finally can get some peace when you think about all of the things that many of these sort of musical cons or these great artists have to deal with it's rational it makes rational sense the thing that I'm trying to do is how do we how do we allow people to do these things and be safe how do we still keep them safe because people are going to do it that's a fact I mean we've been trying to get rid of heroin or in our country for some T but every year we have 100 or to 200,000 new heroin users every year that number has not changed for 40 years um and I don't expect it to change well if that number hasn't changed but the population is increased how does that work uh well that's why it's like between 100 and 200,000 every year that I mean it's been it's been fluctuating between those numbers and but but the point is that we're going to have a substantial proportion of heroin users new new heroin users these are new heroin users every year and on top of that people don't consider the people that take opiates in pill form that are prescribed by their doctors which is incredibly high and uh I've known many people I've I've close family members that have ruined their lives getting [ __ ] up on pills you know I want to say addicted but now I'm reluctant to say addicted but well maybe some were addicted I mean maybe
that that that describes some people but but please understand the majority of people who use those pills use them responsibly and they know what they're doing but there are people like you said who ruin their lives as a result but the the thing that we have to think about is that if the majority of the users of these pills are fine and then you have this subset the smaller subset who are not it tells you that it's not the pills but by that same token there are still some issues I have with the way we have our pills or or the way we do our pills in this country opiate pills we put a seeda medifin in these pills and which I am not a fan of having the seeda medicine in the those pills because aeto medicine is the number one reason for liver toxicity and so sometimes if people really want to push the dose of their opiate they have to get even more acetamin that would that's the more dangerous of the two in those situ in this situation I think why do they put acetamin in the pill what is the function of it it is stated that they put acetamin in the pill because it's an added pain reliever but I don't think that's the real reason I think the real reason that is in the pill is think of it this way uh on the California highway I think the maximum speed limit is like 65 or 70 now imagine if someone designed some a car and that had tires on it that blew out when you reach 75 miles per hour so it's like this safety valve so you blow out the tires or somebody exceed the speed limit I think a cetapin is in the pills and opiate pills for that reason you take too much you blow out your liver you die really so you think they put it in there for added liver toxicity to make sure people don't take too much of the opiates I think it's in there yeah to discourage the the use of Opus absolutely wow and I think that and I think that's sick and I think that that's a problem because when you think about even other countries like U Geneva or Switzerland you don't see a see the medifin in these medications like they are here you certainly don't have people prescribed like they do here with the aceta medifin you know it's like you don't need that in there if you want somebody to take an additional pain reliever you prescribe it or you tell
them you recommend it but you don't need uh the number one reason for liber toxicity in with opiates I think it's there to have people blow out their livers or to to discourage people from taking more opius so would that be to alleviate their responsibility to to make sure that less people have opiate addictions like what what why that doesn't make any sense to me yeah so it's like okay if you know that you if you if you take too much a cetapin then that would discourage you from taking the the opiate that's what I think the reason is wow that seems weird to me that seems like they would had to have had a paper trail in order to uh I mean it seems like that that has to be something that would be discussed well I think like I said the the stated reason is that it provides an additional pain reliever and I'm saying it doesn't make any sense if you want to have that additional pain re reliever simply give somebody aceta medifin or ibuprofen or something else but you don't need to put it in with with with each other yeah so would they do that to uh make some sort of a proprietary blend or something like that where their pills would be different than others does that make any sense no no because these things are all generic now right there are so there's no one making tons of money as a result of this they're all generic and they all have that stuff in them in the United States you think about you've heard of vicadin MH vicadin is I think uh oxycodone and cetapin peret uh peret actually is oxycodone vinin it's hydrocodone and aceta metapan but all of these per peret Percodan vikin and all of these things have aeda metapan in them wow you know I don't have a lot of experience with uh opiates but I did get a knee surgery once and they gave me this morphine drip they gave me this little thing that you could press anytime you want that didn't have a seed of metap I pressed the [ __ ] out of that button but that did not have that did not that did not that didn't have a seed of metapan and then you like you say you press that button and then you probably needed it and that's cool and and you were successful you're doing your thing you have a successful podcast I mean that's luckily I don't know man if you kept me with that button might be still in that hospital bed no you you you you
you know that's you know this Fu exactly I'm just [ __ ] around but I do have a friend that broke his nose my friend Brendan cha he broke his nose and they uh put him on those pills they put him on oxycontins um after they gave him a a nose surgery and uh his friends wound up taking them away from him after a couple months he was just taking them all day he could have certainly could have like I said man there are some people who get in trouble but the vast majority of people don't but the problem is that people they their simple reframe is that it's these pills it's not these pills so you you think that some people just have that sort of compulsive behavior and that behavior could manifest itself in drinking too much coffee or it could manifest itself and taking those pills or it's essentially the behavior that's an issue more than it is the actual substance or the medicine well you know people overindulge in activities for a variety of reasons and if we really want to understand why do it we have to understand that individual person situation right and often times we're too damn lazy to do that and then it's so much easier just to blame the drug but when we blame the drug there are some serious consequences and that's what I'm saying it's like the consequences is that now we have this new legislation we have this new effort to go at the people who use these drugs and that consequence those consequence are inappropriate and so that's why I try and get people to be like well look at the individual person situation what happened with that person cuz it ain't the drug I assure you that that's it's fascinating that in Switzerland they're doing that is Geneva that's where you said it was well Geneva Zurich burn um yeah throughout the major cities in Switzerland and they're giving them these high doses do they have a program if they want to wean off if these people want to stop doing it yeah so this program is for people who want to stop people who want to continue they also have methadone they have boring they have other sort of treatments as well but they just this is just one of many options that's all and the methadone is what we always heard of in America like the I think I told the story the last time you were here but I used to work play pool at this place that was right
next to a methadone clinic and these people they would go and they'd get their methadone then they'd come over and play pool and they just look like zombies we'd call them methoni that's what we used to call them but they would come over just zoned out and they would just [ __ ] out of it and this guy that I work with was saying um he's like you know that methadone [ __ ] they give him is actually worse than the heroin and I was like that doesn't make any sense why wouldn't they just give him heroin well I mean that's that's the question that the Swiss asked why don't you just give people what they want right and you I mean so there are re there answers to that question I mean you you said that methodone was probably worse it certainly can be for some people because the the halflife of methanol is a lot longer it lasts uh forever it stays in your blood for a long time compared to heroin so some people say well you know I don't want to have a long acting Opia such that it makes me feel kind of slow that's why I want to use heroin as opposed to methodone whereas other people methodone worked for that's fine whatever works um but then there are people who said well just give folks what they want and that's what the Swiss say in in this case with Heroin the there be some heroin users who say I want to get off of heroin I want to do whatever I can do to get off uh because I don't want to shoot a needle for example and methanone works well for them borine works well for them but then there are other people who just say no I want to continue to use heroin with the needle and as an adult you should have that right you should have that option yeah that is the issue right isn't it because if if we can freely purchase alcohol and even more in in a way is the amount of sugar consumption that people in this country especially our consumption of sugar and this is something I've really been focusing on a lot lately because I'm I've been educating my kids about how much sugar is in things it's really hilarious because my seven-year-old was talking to my 5-year-old yesterday and she was like there's nine grams of sugar in that they're having this little conversation about this thing that she wants to drink that's supposed to be healthy she's like reading it there's
nine grams of like to see a seven year- old do that I'm like wow this is kind of cool um but but sugar can [ __ ] people's lives up for sure and I know a lot of people that are addicted to Sugar um not just compelled to eat it but it actually changes their gut Flora you know the actual uh the the Flora inside their body craves this to the point where these people it gets they get crazy for it people get really crazy for sugar and it's just causes all sorts of Health consequences but we no one wants to say hey we should Outlaw candy bar no one should say that right exactly right right same thing with booze right no one no we have we could we all everyone in this room we could drink ourselves to death just with the [ __ ] that I have in my closet over here in that little kitchen we could go in there and just chug those bottles and we'd all be dead they'd find us all dead that's crazy right but we won't do it right exactly I mean but we just drove a car here I mean I could have just driven that car off of a cliff but we don't do that because we adults and we are you know we have some autonomy the same should be true with sugar the same should be true with these drugs but the thing is is that one of the thing that concerns us about sugar is that for so long we've been lied to about the role of sugar in disease um and so people didn't realize that sugar was causing all of these problems and and so people felt like they were misled that's okay now we have better education so now you make these decisions with your eyes open the same could be done with drugs you make these decisions with your eyes open you're an adult you certainly can get in trouble with this particular drug or that particular drug but here's how you do it more safely you certainly can get in trouble with sugar but here's how you can do it in a way that's reasonable and and more safe than not and through education instead of by demonizing things and by Propaganda and I think uh and being moralistic that's you know it's we are very judgmental and moral istic about a number of things and I think that the drug issue is ideal for perpetuating our moralism yeah that's it's it's and it's a weird one too right because don't you drink wine in church you serve wine that's [ __ ] I don't know drug I
haven't been to church in a while I haven't either but I'm pretty sure I'm pretty sure it's supposed to signify the blood of Christ right is that it yeah it's booze they're getting ho hooched up hooched up for Jesus but it's um we just we're we're we're very strange in what we allow and don't allow other adult human beings to do and that uh that really sort of gets to the heart of all this and then we're also very squeamish about the idea of needles and when you say this program in Geneva is super successful and they're giving people intravenous heroin up to th000 milligrams a day I'm like w needles Jesus you know that's that's something the the actual administration of it like the method of administration makes people squeamish yeah you know but we give needs in hospitals we do those sorts of things and one of the things about this program that's nice is that they have clean needles they have clean drugs and so it decreases the likelihood that they would have abscesses and those sorts of things or other sort of bloodborne illnesses or concerns they are decreased in fact people are more healthy being in these programs obviously than not being in these programs um so they they have made me they've convinced me so intravenous heroin can in effect act in a lot of the ways that maybe some prescription drugs like Xanax or maybe some anti-depressants do would they alleviate the anxiety that certain people have oh yeah I mean the heroin sort of or so a number of these people I have to tell you they have psychiatric illnesses it's like some of them have schizophrenia some of them have depression they have a wide range of illnesses just like any other um identified adictive population heroin for example helps people in in many cases control their sort of psychotic behaviors their sort of delusions um and so heroin can be a very useful drug in a wide range of sod for a wide range of symptoms we know this U at least people in medicine know this well let me clarify at least people in medicine outside of the United States know this this isn't this is not anything that's Earth shattering or groundbreaking well what is the difference between the education that they receive outside the United States
and inside the United States just the bias that we have about certain medicines yeah we are we cannot divorce um our drug education from our social control and so when we think about how drugs or drug policy has been used to go out the groups that we don't like and if we are not a part of outg group we just kind of accept this information uncritically and we've been told that people who use heroin they have those issues and they're not like us they're those people and why is why should we question it we don't know them very well and we see people putting a needle in their arm something must be wrong with them and so you can tell all of these incredible stories Physicians believe these stories in this country uh our medical experts or addiction experts believe this sort of stuff but it's not true true it's not reality um and so that's one of the reasons that I travel and I continue to travel and to learn um and I'm learning so much about my biases that I held and that I'm trying to get rid of I'm trying to really just focus on the evidence so in a sense like the United States is very unique in its in its propaganda and unique in its sort of singular view on drugs well given that we we have such a big military it's hard for us to be unique because other countries with our military might and our money we kind of tell them what to think too so we're not unique Canada U Canada is one but all of South America or a large portion of South America even some places in Europe Asia you know a number of places share our screwed up views on drugs because they've been told to share our screwed up views because they get some money for having these screwed up views like we support various programs in Colombia about drugs eradication of drugs and all around the world so these countries share our views but places like Geneva that's really autonomous and there are some other autonomous Nations that actually look at the evidence and see what's best for their population and not what's best for the people of the United States and and and they don't just accept the propaganda without thinking about their population have you seen there's a new TV show Fear The Walking Dead it's like the the new spin-off that's in La I have not no I mean I've been away
you know from the United States so I watched it and I thought immediately of you because there's a character in it that is a heroin addict this young son is a heroin addict and uh while he was in this uh spoiler alert everybody if you're a fan of the show and you haven't watched any of the EP I don't know spoiler alert here it comes fast forward um the kids uh uh a junkie and he's in this this drug den and he's shooting up and this chick he's friends with turns into a zombie and starts eating people's faces and [ __ ] and they sounds like something I should watch yeah it's great stuff well they get him to a they get him to a hospital right he uh they've got him in the hospital for days right he's a little sick at first and then he seems fine and then his uh his withdrawals kick in and his Cravings kicking like [ __ ] days later like days later he can't take it anymore he's shaking he's throwing up all over himself and he falls to the ground he has seizures and throws up on himself but like a day ago the kid was fine a day ago like his face has all the color in it looks normal and I remember what you had said last time you were here that withdrawal is a lot like getting the flu it's like getting sick and then it goes away and everything else is just sort of in your head well yeah you know the severity can can can vary based on the extent how long people been using the drug obviously but yeah it's the flu basically and um you're not going to die and all of these sort of dramatic characterizations that we see on TV it's to sell their product it's really to sell their product and the problem is is that people get educated on that bull on that sort of stuff right yeah you were going to say [ __ ] it's the right way to say it oh yeah is [ __ ] forgot where I thought I was on a rilly my bad if you were on a rilly you would have been interrup it 150 times already we we've already got to 30 commercials yeah this uh this kid in the show his mother actually breaks spoiler alert spoiler alert his mother actually breaks into the school to get pills for him yeah she breaks back into school and then she has to fight zombies and [ __ ] but she she breaks into the school to get pills for her son and she's going to like slowly wean him off with these
pills but the [ __ ] kid was normal just a day ago you know yeah you know man it's too hard for me to watch this stuff I mean I you know on the one hand it's like I'm trying to be a regular Citizen and just you know appreciate art or whatever people do but then on the other hand it's just that I just know the consequences of that rubbish you know the consequence is that it gives some idiotic politician raum detr so they feel like this is their reason for being now and they can go after this drug because they saw it on this awful TV show she TV show is actually really good yeah it's just I think the real issue is um like many people the writers and the producers probably aren't heroin users so their idea is based on the popular mythology the popular culture the idea that we've all been sort of fed by train spotting and all these other films they're sort of just repeating that no I'm glad you you point out that you can have a good TV show but get the drug issue wrong that's a great Point yeah but is real wrong obviously but a lot of us have this idea and like I swear before I met you I mean and and I'm a person who's I'm not averse to drugs I thought of it all as I thought heroin like oh yeah man you can get addicted you do it once you're addicted and then you're [ __ ] it just somehow or another becomes a part of you and that's why I've always had a problem when they start talking about marijuana addiction like how many people get addicted to marijuana because I don't understand what even the mechanism would be for you to get addicted to that yeah I mean uh again if we go back to the definition that I talked to to started with when we think about social disruption disruption of family function work and that sort of thing and it's causing you distress you can clearly see how somebody might be addicted to marijuana a low percentage of people become addicted to marijuana but you certainly can see that yeah somebody might get distressed by their marijuana use fine and so they can meet criteria for addiction but when you compare marijuana addiction to alcohol nicotine cocaine or any other drug it's lower than all the rest of those drugs but certainly it's possible that somebody has some distress and have psychosocial disruptions and functioning so the
disruptions and functioning is what really identifies someone as being an addict but if someone is a person who's using heroin on a daily basis but shows no disruption in their life shows no problems with their their social situation or their job functioning or anything like that but then they get off of it yeah then they're an addict because if they get off of it or they try to quit cold turkey and then they get all [ __ ] up because of that well then you would have to kind of qualify them or well that's just one criteria withdrawal symptoms are only one criteria and you have to have I mean that's only one symptom so you have to have several symptoms in order to meet criteria for addiction but if you only have withdrawal that's not an addict I mean because you can think about somebody who's taking an anti-depressant medication or somebody who's taking Moree for paying all those people can experience withdrawal but we wouldn't call them an addict I mean it's just like withdrawal is just a common sort of drug effect after a long-term use of a drug caffeine withdrawal all of these things are I mean when people have a hangover often times that that's acute withdrawal that's just an acute sort of manifestation of withdrawal symptom but we wouldn't call them an alcoholic simply because they went out and partied for a couple of nights that and so withdrawal is not the not the only criteria that we use to determine addiction but most people would uh and most people would be wrong and that's part of the problem here right cuz they this is they they are looking only at withdrawal with withdrawal is it's not a big deal uh it's only it only becomes a big deal when we're talking about alcohol withdraw from chronic alcohol use or we're talking about barbit withdrawal from chronic use because the person can die outside of those drugs I mean the those are the only sort of more commonly used drugs that we worry about withdrawal the rest is they're you'll be fine people constantly throw around the term addiction then I guess in an incorrect way in a technically incorrect way because um I know a lot of people that I would say are addicted to coffee where they need to have coffee in order to wake up and function yeah but like you said that they they use it wrong
yeah I mean because the coffee is actually helping them to maybe do their job better and not disrupting their job the coffee is even is helping them in their human function well the last time you were here you explained something that really I I never knew either it's that the the thing you just discussed that a withdrawal is actually or rather a hangover is actually your body withdrawing like the compensatory mechanisms your body uses to deal with the alcohol in your system that's what the feeling of being hung over is is your body just withdrawing from that alcohol certainly that that certainly that can be a symptom of withdrawal The Hangover absolutely I mean you you put a foreign substance into your body and your body tries to adjust try to we call it homostasis this is a normal response and then alcohol's halflife is so short that it's in the body and then before your body gets a chance to adjust completely it's gone but your body has already overcompensated and so what you're seeing is this expression in some cases how difficult is this like when you when you if you tried to discuss this to like the Bill O'Reilly crowd like that they're there's a lot of people that are not going to swallow this definition like their idea of Def their definition of addiction is very different than what you're saying you know like before before we went on air you and I was talking a little bit I this past summer I've been all over I mean this past well since I saw you last I've been every I've been all over the globe and one of the things that when I give these talks when people say I heard you on the Joe Rogan show you know all over the world from Vancouver to Brazil to Geneva to the Philippines all over um I know when they say that I heard you on the Joe Rogan show I know that they are thinking people I know that these are people who um look for information outside of the normal sort of source of information and so those are the people who I'm trying to reach the people who are actually grappling and struggling with these ideas and trying to evaluate the ideas for the merits based on their merits and that's it whereas when you talk about the orales and you talk about the politicians and you talk about these people those are the people who I like
talking to least I mean not necessarily O'Reilly himself but some of the people who watch him um um and so I'm trying to reach the general public the people who come who watch your show the people who are into what you do the the common folk who are out there who are who are struggling and they're trying to learn and I think if we reach them the politicians will follow them not the opposite way around and so my least favorite people to talk to are politicians I mean it's as an adult me and you we you like to talk to people who take you seriously particularly when you're respecting them politicians often times don't give a [ __ ] about you they only care about their votes and how they can use you for those votes you know it's insulting to me to talk to people in that way and so I I try to avoid them coming here to this place I know that there will be people out here who listen to you who will struggle with this and but they will evaluate it based on its merits and that's all you can ask is that people evaluate your arguments based on the merits and then you have conversations discussions and you go back and forth and you the best evidence win and everybody understands those rules and those are your listeners that's not the politicians that's not the talk show host those are not those people and so they're they're not the people who I'm trying to reach and and and it helps to keep me saying because because I can't deal with people who don't use evidence or don't play with evidence as part of the rules yeah that's a a great quote that's on your website about uh I make sure that I don't engage in conversations with people that don't abide by The Rules of Evidence that's a great quote and I I agree with you about politicians too because essentially politicians just go where the wind of public opinion goes and so many of them they have a team of people deciding what they're talking about a team of idiots often yes and uh unfortunately those people often times they'll when these politicians they'll get involved in debates or get involved in some sort of a public function where they're discussing something or giving a speech and they can say things that are just absolutely inaccurate and those things
when people aren't really Discerning or they don't have the time maybe to go over the evidence these people take that as fact yeah no you know that's this is why I could continue to be out here because when people make those kind of statements based on no evidence and they're just lies they're just inaccurate the consequences of those lies and inaccuracies are so great and there are so many poor people who pay the price for it that's why I continue to stay out here and I stay out here to call those people out on it and try to embarrass those people I mean I'm a I'm a firm believer in embarrassing politicians when they tell these lies when they make up this information because they are ruining too many people's lives as a result well they're agents of poor information often times whether they want to be or not I think all they want to do is get elected and stay in power and and then serve whoever paid for their campaign that's it that's exactly it it's a terrible system if you think about it that way that's it that's it's a terrible system that's why I'm glad you do your thing and I'm glad that people all around the world are checking you out well now when you're on these travels and you're you're going around the world did you go to Portugal at all did you uh talk to anybody from there I talked to um people there like high officials there but I haven't been to Portugal yet and you know I think you bring up Portugal because they decriminalized all drugs um so too did the Czech Republic the Czech Republic did it before Portugal but we all know about Portugal yeah um and so that's a good thing I mean it's just simply means that people can't um be arrested for drug possessions and and drug possession is considered like a 10day supply of drugs in Portugal which is a good thing and then there are other places around the world that people are doing other Innovative things like in sa Pao uh Brazil the mayor of marage is um paying drug addicts or drug users uh paying them a salary giving them housing um um giving them food three Mills and that sort of thing to make sure they show up for work and they and then if they're coming to work that means they're not getting any other activities and so he's trying to keep his certain areas of his City safe doing that um and then we
talked about the Swiss and we and so there are a number of people thinking about innovative ways to deal with drugs and to treat people like adults and not children like in our country we are still concerned about moralism even though there have been some states that have said as you well know Colorado Alaska Oregon Washington they've said that we're going to legalize marijuana for adults and they have and I suspect California will vote in um um November 16 to see if they're want if they want to do the same thing so despite the sort of uh moralism we still have some people uh out here pushing for Progressive rational adult sort of drug laws and so I I I hope we continue to see this well when I look at the current state of politics in America and I look at um what we call our leaders and the way they discuss drugs I what what I'm looking at is it's almost like they're trapped in an ancient way of thinking that doesn't work anymore because of the internet because of the internet we we have so much access to information now we have we have we have a freedom to actually find the truth so like what you're talking about where people have these misconceptions and then you come on and you give the absolute truth fact-based evidence and you're forced to like examine like why do I have these assumptions in my head why do I have and why do I I mean I I was forced to confront these when I talked to you the first time I was like why do I have these ideas in my head have I really researched them is this uh something that I've am I out there in the field talking to people that are addicts talking to people that are treating them absolutely not no this is just train spotting this is is just you know popular culture politics giving politicians giving speeches that that's all I know of it and I think the our our base of understanding is expanding now I I agree I mean these thanks people like you well thank you I mean because of what you're doing obviously these alternative media forms right I mean when I think about coming to your show U my publicist and those people they wasn't on the book ra radar which is a mistake but I mean we know better now people are are learning now so that's really encouraging to me that we have these Alternative forms of media out
here on on the one hand um but you you made you made a point um uh it's it's it slips my mind now we can we can go on I forgot the point um well about politics being stuck in this oh yeah so as we think about the politician as we think about the politician I think the last Republican debate there were a couple politicians I think J Bush and Christie and they were saying how they would bring the federal government in to change what's going on in Colorado oh that Chris Christie guy yeah yeah yeah those guys and they you know that kind of logic and thinking um I think that if he actually got the nomination that wouldn't happen but I don't know if they have to say these kinds of things but it would be nice if the American people really punish these idiots who say things like that because on the one hand we think about the folks of Colorado taking this vote and the whole issue of states rights and this is what the Republicans say they really like well I don't mean to go out the Republicans or because I think they're the same as Democrats quite frankly uh so it's not that's this is not this is not a a knock on them as a party uh but when people talk about uh states rights right that's what this is the state have decided and so the public the American people should really slam idiots who say things like they're going to go after their state what about this issue of state's rights I mean and and and so I think Republicans and Democrat should really go after these people for saying remarks like that well Chris Christie in particular because a lot of the things that he says are totally inaccurate and then on top of it what is his concern I'm assuming his concern is the health consequences of marijuana use well the health consequences of being a gigantic fat [ __ ] are way worse than the health consequences of marijuana use I mean that guy is morbidly obese and he's talking about people who smoke a plant that makes them happy that's ridiculous the idea that you're going to take that right away from responsible adults like me like I'm I don't know how old he is but I don't think he's much older than me yeah no I feel you no I hear you but I I love your outrage about this I mean but this is this is what Americans have to do yes about heroin M about cocaine but boy
that's a tough sell man that's why I said it it's a tough sell because people think of coke as dudes who won't shut the [ __ ] up at parties want to start businesses with you want to tell you about some [ __ ] that they never really did that's what people think about Coke [ __ ] well they they haven't done coke with people I know damn I need to be around at least people you know that do Coke cuz everybody I've been around that's Coke is an idiot well you know some of the people who do Coke around me are in government so I guess they can pass as idiots too so well it's the same thing with um alcohol right I mean here's a here's an example there was a a guy that I know that's a soldier that uh came back from Afghanistan he's got all sorts of pain and issues from the war and he takes uh uh oxy conon and he's trying to get off of it he slowly weams himself off but he'll take like a couple of day every day and uh he was describing it to me when I was at a bar and my immediate reaction is like wow man that dude's on it right now he seems so normal like and then while I'm thinking that I'm next to people that are drunk off their ass at this [ __ ] bar at the Improv I mean these people are hammered just sloshed and they're probably doing way more damage to their body right there and I'm like wow there poor [ __ ] on pills you know I mean it's it's interesting how we have these categorizations that like the pill the oxycon pill like oh this guy he's got to be [ __ ] up meanwhile to my left there's a bar filled with people just throwing back this liquid poison and torturing their liver and their brain yeah man see this is the new book when it comes out I'm going to have to come here but this is precisely what I'm trying to deal with I'm trying to show people how to use drugs to enhance human functioning experience and so forth now that means that as we get older we may have to change our drug use from something like alcohol alcohol might be a little too toxic on some of our liers as we get older or toxic in other ways for us as we get older in some other drug like oxyon or something else might be more beneficial for you to achieve that goal that you're trying to achieve and that's what the new book is trying to trying to look at to help people change their drug use according to their
age their maturity all of these things and how to keep them safe and also to help them to accomplish that goal that they seek to enhance human experiences when we go to parties we take drugs um we take alcohol in order to as a social lubricant you know but maybe that social lubricant isn't working for me as much these days alcohol disrupts my sleep you know whereas an opiate is perfect you know I can chill I can relax and I can get some great sleep and I can be here to do your show and be bright and bushy tailed and I'm ready to go as opposed to having that dram the night before but have an oxycoton or something else that's interesting you know I think also we're dealing with a a reaction um like when when you're talking about uh people in the 1970s that were doing the a higher percentage of them were smoking marijuana and it could have been a reaction to the nixit administration I think in a situation like that you you get that Preacher's Daughter sort of effect the suppression where people just want to react to that suppression people don't like being told what to do and in in the case of things like cocaine there's that naughty Factor there's the fact that it's forbidden there's this factor that what you're doing is something that's illegal and that makes it more exciting I think that's one of the things that was highlighted by the decriminalization in Portugal and the subsequent effects when they and even in Colorado when you look at the col what what they've shown in Colorado is the lowest instances of drunk driving in I think something like 15 years lowest inance of violent crime that they've had in a long time and no deaths you know they're talking about like one guy uh jumped off of a building when he was high on on pot Edibles listen people make shitty choices all the time whether on pot Edibles or they drink too much Dr Pepper or they have too many [ __ ] Twinkies I mean wasn't there a guy in San Francisco that killed somebody that used Twinkies as a a defense a Twinkie defense yeah it was like a a famous defense because sugar is a drug I think that responsible adults being able to make choices based on evidence and based on on reality and fact that should be the foundation of our society how we treat almost everything Joe man you you
just laid it out with marijuana I absolutely agree with you but just I want to push you to think about heroin in the same way comp in the same way because what you just said about marijuana you're absolutely right but it also applies to these other psychoactive drugs um we just need to make sure people know how to do these things safely I I'm I'm I'm opening my mind to this I just don't have any experience in any of those I was always scared of uh Coke because when I grew up I had uh a friend and his cousin got he became a mess he was selling it and all this dude did was uh do Coke and hang out in his house and watch TV and sell Coke and he lost a ton of weight and he looked like [ __ ] and it's just like he made some bad choices but he could have made those bad choices doing a lot of different things ju just like you talked about the guy who possibly jump jumped out of the building after the Edibles and had some other issues you're absolutely right there are a lot of issues I mean you can I'm sure I mean you can look at my talks you can look at people you can see you be like okay can you tell what drug I'm on can you tell what drug this person is on can you of course you can't right um uh because people are most of us are adults and responsible and know what we're doing what's a good drug to take right before you do the O'Reilly show oh sh um um you know actually with the blockers n you a beta blocker might be helpful uh but you might want to just take a low dose of amphetamine so you can be really alert and attentive and ready to go ready to attack yeah you be ready to go that's that style you know I had uh Peter schift you know who he is he's a he's a financial genius and um very controversial character very very very successful but has these like controversial ideas about economics but I had him on the podcast and I don't know how many podcasts he's done but he started off the show like cuz that's how they do it you know when you got go on those talk shows you got to be able to [ __ ] fire but this show is three hours of just chilling out and talking so about an hour and a half in he starts to slow down I'm like you want a drink it's like yeah I have a drink so we got him with Jack Daniels on the Rocks we and then
and then he got casual about an hour and a half in and it became an actual conversation like I'm I know virtually nothing about finances so I wasn't challenging him I just was asking questions and I wanted to find out you know I wanted to get him to illuminate certain perspectives but he was ready for someone to jump in he was ready to be that split screen thing when you have one person on one side one on the other and they have opposing viewpoints and they're just talking over each other I I understand I sympathize with the cat because I you I know how it is and then before you know it it's over and then you don't really get many of us think that all right it's an our opportunity to educate the American public yeah it's not it's really an opportunity for the host to show how smart they are's a what it is yeah it's all it's just also a lot of just preaching to the choir nonsense and they they want the conflict of two people with opposing viewpoints yelling at each other and calling each other morons and pseudosymmetry is what they want to pretend that each issue has an a certain amount of evidence over here and a certain amount of evidence over here and the and the and the sort of real story is someone in the middle no most issues don't happen like that but that's how non-thinking people can see the world but the world doesn't work like that no it doesn't what was that documentary Jamie do you remember the name of the documentary that I was talking about where these people that were hired to go on and talk about uh Jesus Christ I just watched it really recently what is it mirag men was it mirag men yeah um they were hired to go on these shows and talk about whether it was initially it was whether or not cigarettes and nicotine were bad for your health and addictive and then it became about global warming the same people and they would go on all these different talk shows and just spout out this stuff very loudly and with confidence and that was literally their job they were being hired to do this so they would go on these talk shows and they would just Yap they would just just talk real loud and real confidently and talk over people and their their their function or their career was to try to change opinion with these short little bursts yeah yeah
that's what they do when I don't do that very well yeah well that's why I had to contact you after I saw you on O'Reilly I was like you look so frustrated because that show is just so [ __ ] [ __ ] you know I try not to show frustration I really do so if I did that's not that's not good well I should say knowing you you looked mild perturbed on the outside like if I didn't know you I'd be like that guy handled that really well cuz they just [ __ ] talked over him I mean they give you like I mean I'm I'm not even exaggerating you might have had to talk for you might have got out 20 seconds worth of talking before they were talking over you yeah you know um the thing it's just so perplexing to me that you can be so irresponsible and have this stuff be on the Airways and not get in trouble for it and then what they're doing on many of these shows they're doing more harm to the American Education than more than most people and yet they're not in jail in fact they're being rewarded handsomely for this sort of thing and then we're putting people in jail for these other minor infraction it's distorted man it's something really sick about this system it is and it seems like it's trapped in momentum that these these shows have always existed the way they have you know with these 7even minute segments that go to ad break you know one host loud boisterous guy talks over everybody these shows have been around for so long like that that they're they're a comfortable model for us yeah for some people they're not comfortable for me because I tell you I've been really trying to rethinking like where in where can I live in this world but you know the US is they're making it very hard for me to want to stay here um but you know I have children that I have to raise here but after that I'm out really where you going to go Canada Canada's good [ __ ] no I me no disrespect to Canada I mean uh but I love it up there Canada is really us like man really yeah I mean Vancouver is a little different but the rest of Canada is they're trying to be like the US particularly when it comes to drugs and all of these issues yeah yeah Vancouver is the most open when it comes to drugs yeah I mean
Vancouver I really dig the folks of Vancouver don't they have some sort of a heroin program in Vancouver as well they do it's on the DL it's it's for research purposes but they they they certainly have a program where they're giving heroin and it's a a research project at the University of British FR uh British uh Columbia I was there on Friday night I did a theater there and you could drive by the theater and get a contact high with your window open like literally just driving by it's so marijuana's so open you know that contact hot thing is not kind of it's not real right it's not real I've hot boox People In This Very Room how dare you I'm going to change your research well we we [ __ ] some people up in this room we can do it today right right where you're sitting we have wrecked some people let's let's do it today let's see if it's real I I don't think it's real but you don't think it's real but we can do an experiment here's another reason why I think it's real there's this place in Toronto and uh they have uh I don't want to give them up cuz I don't think it's legal but but they do a comedy show there and they have uh the front is like a bong shop and then the back they have a comedy club and they have no ventilation whatsoever you walk into the back room you are in a [ __ ] cloud of marijuana smoke the the candles are no longer burning on oxygen they're burning on marijuana smoke there's no oxygen in the room you're breathing pot only and you will get high as [ __ ] cuz I have a friend who doesn't even smoke pot and I took him to the show he's like straight edge he was high as [ __ ] he was like dude I don't even know if I could walk and I was like exactly this is this is a reality like you just need to be in extreme situations I'll take you to Toronto right on I'll show you I I bet let's do everyone will [ __ ] you up I guarantee you what we need to do is take someone who's totally clean like someone who doesn't do any marijuana whatsoever and make them sit in that audience and watch an hour and a half comedy show and then get up that's cool let's do it and and then we can also test their your we can do all that stuff yeah let's do it well don't they test positive though if you're at a party I mean can't you uh can't you test positive some of those
more stringent drug tests you know I I know people say that you know but I I haven't seen that I but I I I don't know for sure I certainly haven't seen it but maybe maybe it's possible do you know the issue that's going on right now with the UFC and this guy named Nick Diaz No this is a huge story in the World of Sports because Nick Diaz who was one one of the most popular fighters in the UFC uh and is a a very outspoken marijuana Enthusiast he's also extremely healthy he uh I think he eats mostly vegan except I believe he eats some fish he uh runs triathlons on a regular basis he's swam back from Alcatraz twice he's known for being one of the most fit guys in the sport but he loves marijuana and he smokes it all the time um the UFC has instituted the NADA State athletic commission um has instituted a new uh drug policy in regards to marijuana where they've lowered the uh threshold considerably like much much lower so you literally would have to be high like the day of the fight in order to test positive so he is administered tests from two different organization one of them the world anti-doping agency W and W is a blood test which is much more accurate than what Nevada State athletic commission uses Nevada State athletic commission uses a urine test the blood tests both before and after the fight find him to be under the threshold so he passes but Nevada using their Ur analysis test say that he fails they find him $165,000 and then they ban him from the sport for five years yeah so it's a huge outrage well it should be I mean really marijuana shouldn't even be on any of the even water I know water uh increased their thresholds that's that's requ required to trigger the the penalty which was a good thing um but it it shouldn't even be on water's uh list because when we think about drugs and Performing enhancing drugs clearly people are not using marijuana to enhance performance that's not where they they're using it for recreational purposes and maybe that was the day before or several days before but it certainly has nothing to do with their competition and so it should be off of those lists and I mean this is what people should protest and argue about demonstrate about the NFL the NBA all of these things they should remove
marijuana from that they should also remove cocaine cocaine was it would not be used to enhance performance um but inside the in competition you don't think it would enhance performance as a stimulant uh barely I mean it's such a short lived thing amphetamines can do a better job of that but cocaine would be be barely it really would be I mean but if we start talking about drugs and sports and then we're really being honest um we have to think about why are drugs banned from Sports in the first place I mean and so if we start doing that and then we can systematically go through the illogical sort of reasoning Behind These bands um uh people say well uh we care about the health of the athletes in drugs okay regulate drug use in in sports and make sure that they have a physician and so forth but if you really cared about the health of athletes in sports you ban boxing you ban all of these sorts of things you ban football you you ban all the so that's like that's [ __ ] that's not why you that's not why we care about drugs and Sport not because of the health of the athletes that's just not true well we say the athletes are Role Models why should athletes have an additional responsibility more so than anybody else that's a very good point you know so that's crap and you just go down the list and think about why we ban these things and it just doesn't fit we ban them because of moralism and the war on drugs and that's just inappropriate because we're now starting to see that the rationale on which the war and drugs is built is problematic at best what do you think of a situation like say the Lance Armstrong situation where he's involved in a sport where he tests positive for some stuff I don't even think he did test positive that's right I think they weasel their way around the test so well that he never really tested positive but he ultimately had to admit to using performance-enhancing drugs they strip him of his tour to France titles then on top of that because he was sponsored by the post office he uh gets hit with defrauding the government when you defraud the government they are allowed to sue you for three times the amount that they gave you so if they gave him $30 million they're suing him for $90 million or something crazy like that and
on on top of that once you strip him if you're going to give that title to the next person who didn't test positive for that you got to go down to like 18th Place yep which is hilarious so like my friend Bill Burr hilarious comedian had a a great bit that he did about this on the Conan O'Brien show he was like so basically our steroid it up guy beat your steroid up guy I mean they're all steroid it up every the whole sport is predicated on I mean that's what the this Sport and I've even heard it argued by doctors that doing the tour to France without the drugs is arguably more dangerous for the athletes body than doing it with the drugs well Tor France say always had drugs in it I mean it everyone knows this and so this notion that it's going to be clean or it should be clean it's a pipe dream it's really ridiculous I think that you know the whole Lance Armstrong issue not talking about him specifically but we should allow drugs in sports that's that's what we should do we should just regulate it um um and be honest and upfront about it is that possible do you think that's possible in this in this environment that we're we're in right now of course it's possible it was possible right before we got in this environment drugs drugs were in sports I mean we think about the Olympics for most of the Olympics people were using performance enhancing drugs um that's how we got more elective antibiotic steroids because of the Olympics and East Germans and and that whole sorts of thing but actually they were here in America but it was competition with the old Soviet Union so I think that um uh yeah it's possible it's possible if we are just if we stop being Hypocrites about it and say people say Well it giv some people an unfair Advantage yeah that's a big one now that's a joke that's really a joke I mean particularly when I think about every four years when the Olympics come around and Americans get proud about all the medals we win when we [ __ ] win medals from a country like Switzerland that has 7 million people New York City has more people in it than Switzerland the entire country of course we going to have more medals than Switzerland or some other small country is that an unfair Advantage not yes but hell yes it is but do we talk about that there are some people who have resources
and other people don't have resources we're going to always have this unfair life is unfair well the most unfair advantage in the Olympics in my opinion is when they let NBA players play basketball like Jesus [ __ ] Christ I mean I know we want to win but holy [ __ ] you mean you let Michael Jordan or Lebron James or someone along those lines play in the Olympics against some dude from Czechoslovakia that's kind of [ __ ] up well you know they their argument was that the other countries were allowing their NBA players to play yeah fine I mean but from the outset when you have these huge countries like the US and competing with these other smaller countries who have limited resources come onh are you kidding me and we talk about like Fair advantage and unfair there's also there's people that have natural advantages like LeBron James again like that guy if you look at him that is a genetic freak of nature there are very few people that are ever going to have a body like his right I know but they're in the NBA right but I'm saying even amongst the NBA he sort of stands he's an outlier obviously he's incredibly disciplined obviously he's talented obviously his massive work ethic no question about it obviously he has basketball intelligence that surpasses 99.999% of the people in the game there's all these other things on top but then on top of it he has this [ __ ] race car body you know I mean that like a guy you know you take a you know someone who's less physically talented they're they'll never going to if they both do the same amount of work they both try as hard you're never going to be that guy but you know there are people who have bodies like his and they're not him I mean you you you've seen this throughout Sports where people have these phenomenal bodies but they're not him so it's not only their sort of physical makeup right it's people's Drive their work ethics all of these things I don't think are emphasized enough I mean uh you you and I the thing about we're talking about LeBron James and not Jack Jack Brown because we don't know him but Jack Brown has a hell of a body but we don't know him because he doesn't have the ethic the work ethic he doesn't have the drive he doesn't have
all of these things but you and I can go and look at the NFL uh roster or some roster and we can see some guys who are just built and they just look great and then we don't know who the hell they are right but we're talking about him because this is a selection bias because we see him and he's doing it MH but I I I I don't this the whole genetic thing I need to see some evidence before I I start to talk about genetics I I don't I I don't know to what extent that contributes but what I do know uh is that work ethics and drive and people putting in the work I know that pays off I absolutely know that it certainly does and you you need all those things you can't just have genetics genetics just what is that expression the hard work beats Talent when Talent refuses to work hard is that it yeah and that is that is absolutely the fact when you got a guy like LeBron James who has talent and hard work then you get a superstar and you get that in all sports but the argument being that he does have this Advantage physically that you know the average person with an average body just does not have but the average person in the NBA does they have this body they have they look they can look like LeBron could they know could a lot of them oh yeah I mean there are some guys who are pretty big and uh fast and um those sorts of things well here's a here's a good example in the UFC um in mixed martial arts they used to allow testosterone replacement therapy and it was kind of abused and the way it was abused is the way the male endocrine system works as it's been explained to me obviously I'm not a doctor um when you take testosterone your body stops producing it so what these people would do is they would take it and then uh they would get off of it and their body would have very low testosterone then they would get a blood test and the doctor would say Hey you have low testosterone you need testosterone replacement therapy so we had guys that were in their 20s that were getting testosterone replacement therapy which is kind of crazy they would take it and then they would take large amounts of it and recover much better than other people would they would be able to work harder and train harder and we had some instances and this one guy named vtor Belford who is the poster boy for
testosterone replacement therapy because his career was kind of in a lull he got on testosterone replacement therapy he's a guy who's been fighting in the UFC since 1997 okay and uh he's in his late 30s and then all of a sudden in his late 30s he is [ __ ] smashing people and he looks like a god I mean his body's just chiseled he's got super confidence he's super aggressive attacking and he's just highlight re knockout after highlight re knockout in his late 30s then they take away testosterone replacement therapy the Nevada State athletic commission says you know what this is just uh we don't believe in this anymore we think this is being abused everyone's going to have to get off of it and one of the reasons why they did it is because they tested him out of competition just randomly they grabbed him and he was off the charts like nonhuman levels MH so they they make him get off of it he then fights for the title after he gets off of it and he looks like a shell of himself his body is like soft his like skin is loose like he and he he just doesn't he doesn't have endurance like he just he got destroyed in the first round by the champion and everybody looks at it and goes well see you know this is what happens when you take a guy like that and you get him off the stuff but there's a certain amount of people that look at a guy like that and go man wouldn't you like to see him fight on it wouldn't you wouldn't you like to see what he could do if you kept him on it cuz he seemed like a Monster yeah I mean I know I would I'd like to see you know because if we're going to draw the conclusion that the steroids was the reason that he was fighting like that so now that we did the a portion or the ab portion so now we need to go back to a put them back on the steroids and then and then I'll feel more confident that yeah it was a steroid but the question is though is that an unfair Advantage for him versus the person he's competing against who is clean and natural his opponent Chris Weidman Who's the champion is notoriously clean he's just hard work looks clean you know doesn't look like a guy who does any steroids at all and just works hard he's smart he's tough yeah so yeah so we should give the champion an option to use steroids if he
wants to use them he can do it if he doesn't he doesn't have to but the other guy we should also give him that option and then see what happens the problem with that mixed martial arts as opposed to any other sport is that giving someone testosterone or a steroid is going to allow them to administer damage to their opponent that they might not be able to do without it so their opponent is going to suffer because of it it's a different thing like the ability to deliver a basketball into a net is one thing but the ability to kick somebody in the head is a completely different thing and the idea being that if you give someone EPO for instance which uh expands your endurance threshold you will be able to throw more strikes you'll be able to attack more aggressively without worrying about conserving your gas tank and that you could damage someone in a way that you would not have damaged them naturally I don't see that as a problem I remember when Mike Tyson was knocking people out when people walk in the room on in the ring with him there was always that potential that you might get damaged in ways that def that's right and so I I don't see this as a problem we should let it in into sports and you you know this is part of the the risk of what you do that's it's as simple as that for me and then we should also monitor the athletes and make sure that they are they do have healthy levels and levels that are not going to cause toxicity to them but I don't see that as a problem you know what's interesting conversely guys who have gotten off of it they can't take punishment like there's uh one specific guy and this guy if anybody has an argument for taking it it's this guy his name is Bigfoot Silva and he actually is a giant he has gigantism so he has a tumor on his pituitary gland and he was taking um external what is it exogenous that's how you say exogenous exogenous testosterone and if anybody has an excuse for taking it it's this guy well when he was on it God this guy could take a [ __ ] punch take I mean he he had a this war with this guy Mark hunt this epic five round fight and then when he got off of it he gets hit and he just goes down like it's it's really shocking the difference in his ability to take punishment while on it and then while off of it see you know I have to
tell you I'm a bit outside of my expertise so I don't really know these guys but uh I you certainly have piqu my interest and I want to know more about it because um you know just to be logically con consistent I think that these things should be allowed in sports and if I'm going to have that position i' like to know more about like the things that you're were saying like when he was on it he could take a punch then when he got off he couldn't take a punch I don't know how many years between that in age what role age plays and all of these sorts of things but I like to know more I'm I'm just um I'm just at a disadvantage because I just don't know right I don't know enough of the details about it um but I would uh just challenge people to think about hey what if we allow drugs in sports well one of the things that it does do that it helps it helps recovery and apparently it mitigates the effects of damage it can mitigate the effects of uh of damage that you take not just in in training but also in competition yeah and in that sense it would benefit people but I do see the argument and Ronda Rousey's made it pretty eloquently that if someone is taking uh a steroid if they're they're cheating quote unquote that it's going to allow them to administer damage that they would not have been allowed to do or would not have been able to do with just hard work well I know that's a that's a that's a um that's a conjecture but I don't know if that's true I don't I don't I have no idea if that's true I I understand I understand it's it's the most extreme version of sports fighting is so it's the most extreme consequences for this debate sure and I think that it's a perfect place to start because it is a sport that you're going to get in the ring you better be a man you I mean you better be tough or tough tough woman you better be yeah you have to you can't be um you can't be a wimp getting in that ring so I think that it's a great place to think about this and but the notion that somebody would be able to administer more punishment because they're un ster War I don't know if I accept that I don't know if I accept just I need some evidence to um um to before I come to that conclusion I understand your position I'm I'm pretty sure that's a correct position though the that that you would be able to
administer more um I think if you take very talented athletes that already have all those attributes discipline hard work yeah and then you add steroids you're going to get a more efficient body you're going to get a body that funes more yeah yeah that's that's right but we're talking about delivering blows you you think that people will be able to deliver blows in ways that yeah I do and on top of that I think also with with fighting a big one is confidence and there's something about those guys that are Juiced to the tits they they're confident as [ __ ] cuz they're barely human I mean when you hit these super high hyper human levels of testosterone you get these incredibly aggressive confident men that can do things that they might and then subsequently when they get off that stuff boy their confidence erodes radically and their Instagram Pages start looking like suicidal strippers it's all like motivational quotes and [ __ ] and like you know they they get real weird Joe ultimate experiment that we have to tell people they're on these things and let's see if their confidence is increased right and we can see whether or not it's a placebo effect is sort of confident thing I I mean but I know that they have real physical effects so I'm not denying that at all but I'm the confidence piece it'll be interesting to see whether not somebody will um uh still have this confidence if we give them Placebo and telling them this is what yeah but isn't it fascinating also that we're we're still talking about drugs like that term drugs is just such a weighted and loaded term the fact that that that term could be used for a steroid as well as for aspirin or coffee it's it's it's really kind of unfortunate that we have this one blanket term that applies to psychedelics and as well it applies to testosterone and it applies to heroin I mean there's too many things I actually like that do you do you yeah why why why why don't you like it I mean because when we think about one of the things that bothers me about the Psychedelic kind of movement and God bless them people who enjoy this thing but you know people separate their drug use like the Psychedelic users like I'm using this to go on a higher plane or for some other reason as opposed to the person on the corner who's getting high
it's like you can rationalize your drug use however you want but you're using drugs and it's all the same thing you know so it's like it's a beautiful thing it's like we're all together in this I'm not better than you with my drug use and you're not better than me with your drug I I love that theism of the Psychedelic community that annoys you EXA exactly and or other people I mean this notion like even the marijuana smokers when they talk about marijuana and not talk about crack and not talk about heroin what the [ __ ] is that I mean come on you're doing a drug just like I'm doing this drug and so it's hypocrisy it's the same elitism that is pervasive throughout our society well I think the idea is that when they're doing marijuana or something like that they're they're being like uh responsible they're taking something that makes you more socially aware and Casual whereas when you're doing some spe or some meth or something like that you know you're stealing cars and [ __ ] driving into pedestrians that's how people look at it you're laughing hard man because you know you know I I hear these things right like I have done all of these things right and it's not like I am stealing cars or doing any of these you don't get wacky when you get on the meth no I mean what you know look at me I mean my life re evolves about around my work and you know my idea of a good time is being able to write a new paper to write a book and but that doesn't that doesn't mean that I don't appreciate drugs and drug use and so um and I think this is the majority of drug users in the world of Academia does your stance cause controversy because you know you're obviously a very educated guy very well respected but yet you say this so openly that you enjoy drugs like whereas a lot of people would shy away from that even if they do research on the drugs themselves I've had people that you know even guys that work trying to legalize drugs that are very hesitant to admit their F like Rick doblin I had him on the podcast he didn't want to admit that he had taken provigil before the show which is I mean he did but he was hesitant to it you know and not slamming him at all cuz I love that guy yeah me too he's a great guy but I I found it fascinating that this there was this
like hesitancy to admit that he took something that is so mild like provigil gives you a little bit of energy sure it doesn't alter your heart rate it certainly doesn't alter critical thinking processes but he was hesitant and he's the head of maps yeah see um not to talk about Rick's situation specifically but just in general when people are uh reluctant to say these things that's part of the problem mhm because we need to have people get out of the closet there are so many people who go to jail who get in trouble who lose their job for doing a behavior that well-respected people in our society engage in I've been all over the world and I've been hanging out with some of the more some of the movers and shakers in a variety of society and I have seen them get high and they are responsible people and they are people who I would want my children to be like in many case to some of these folks now um many of those people are closeted but them being in the closet allows this hypocrisy to go on allows us to go at the poor people for doing a behavior engaging in behavior in which many of us engage in something's very wrong with that and that's very for me very hypocritical and I like to look in the mirror as a man as an adult and to say that I live my life as honestly as I can in that regard um and so what kind of man would I be if I wasn't honest about this it I mean I'm the person who has given thousands of doses of these drugs of people and carefully studied their effects written books on this stuff if I can't say this why are you here why am I here right I mean what is I would be embarrassed as a person and I would deserve to be embarrassed as a person because I didn't take the opportunity to help my fellow citizens who are catching hell for doing the same thing that I and others do that would be wrong well kudos to you for taking that stance but I think that's a brave stance isn't and in the world of Academia like how is that how is that uh accepted I I don't I don't know I haven't thought about it all I know is that I have to do my job so I do my job and you know I try and do my job is well or better than my colleagues that's all I can do in those spaces but you know I those are those
are not the spaces that in which I live I mean I work there but I'm trying to be a citizen of the world and so um that's just a narrow aspect of my life that's very admirable and I'm glad you're alive thank you man I'm glad there's people like you out there it's so important I think I really do I think um these conversations where a guy like you who is so educated in the subject can expand people's minds and say say things in such an honest way I think it's just it's very critical because it's because we are so hesitant to admit these things you know I mean uh I run into situations with parents all the time you know I go to school with their kids go to school and then they'll Google me they'll find out uh you how many all the [ __ ] drug talk is the one that that freaks them out the most not the fact that I'm involved in C fighting like that seems fine like they they want to get tickets you know but the the drug stuff is the weird part especially the psychedelics ones psychedelics are the ones that seem to freak them out the most more so even than the pot like DMT like I've more parents ask me about DMT you know this C curious cross-armed so what is this DMT stuff well see you I have children too so you know I get get similar sorts of things I'm sure yeah and you like me are an odd fella you know with your crazy dreadlocks your long fingernails like who's this [ __ ] this guy's a doctor yeah yeah you just hit it on the head so but but you know that's the sort of thing that drives me right that's why when people are sleeping I'm working I mean I'm I'm working around the clock you know uh but I pretend that I'm not you know I pretend like I'm just chilling and you know I'm one of the most uh sort of uptight people you want to meet when it comes to work you know uh I am a yeah I'm a I'm a difficult person to work for cuz you're a workaholic absolutely absolutely but your work is very very important to you obviously yeah absolutely you know it's it's like if you're going to be in the game you got to be in the game to win it yeah well it's also what you're doing is so critical at this juncture because I think we're in a transitionary stage in our culture I think our culture is opening its mind and I think as we said before because of the internet because
we we we we can have conversations like this where no one can step in and stop us it's already too late everything you've said it's all streamed people have recorded it it's being people are listening to it right now there's no way around that people are getting it they're playing it in their car no one can stop it and once that information gets out then they'll Google it a vast majority of the people that are curious about this will start looking into some of the things that you've said and go wow that's [ __ ] true wow this is crazy and then they'll talk to people at work they'll talk to people at the gym they'll talk to people that they're friends with and then it'll expand further and further and further so I think what you're doing is critical it's critical at this juncture so the the fact that you approach it like it's so critical is why you know you're so important well thank you man because you know that's how I try and see it you know it's like I think about like I don't want to let people down by me not working as hard as I can particularly uh when it's so important as you point out for so many people you know because young people older people people always going to get high they're always going to get high so one of the things we can do is we can help them do it more safely and more effectively we can we can actually do that as opposed to saying don't do that come on if you're a thinking person you want to know why right it's more important that kids and people challenge me challenge everyone and they when they challenge us they might actually go and engage in this Behavior okay I have my own kids so that means my kids hear me talking about this so my kids might think well drugs aren't that bad because I heard what my dad said so I have to uh understand that there's a potential that my kids will use drugs too yeah I know that but the thing that I try to do is make sure they're safe and they know what they're doing and also that they understand their role about educating their friends and keeping their friends safe and even educating their teachers like I get my kids say Dad I had to drug talk in class and this is what this person said this teacher said or this person said that the majority of people who use marijuana um go on to use other drugs and become
addicted to marijuana or some other drug so my kid my young kid has to raise his hand and be like um Mr X it's exactly the opposite of what you just said and then the teacher says you know like what evidence do you have for this sort of thing of course my kids they do and he's like well look at the last three presidents of the United States you know and and so he goes on and he educates the teachers in that sort of way uh but you know that's that's a hard thing for a kid to do it and but he feels compelled to do it because he understands that his that's part of his responsibility too there was a great uh a lecture by Terence McKenna once where he was talking about his kid being in class and Terence McKenna is sort of a legendary feature in the figure in the Psychedelic community and his child was in class and the teacher was telling his child that LSD causes brain damage and he said you know no it doesn't cause brain damage the teacher said well who told you that and he said Albert Hoffman and like when you've had a conversation with Albert Hoffman and you're dealing with some [ __ ] high school teacher in Podunk Colorado well it' be interesting if the the teacher knew who Albert hofman was he probably did yeah I hope so I would hope so yeah but it's this The Narrative that the brain damage narrative is a big one and you know like boy there's a lot of things that could potentially cause your brain to not function at its best and some abuse of drugs is certainly on that list but there's a lot of things that we do on a daily basis that are not good for you like like poor diet like a lack of exercise like being stuck in polluted cities like breathing in break dust and [ __ ] exhaust fumes all day all these things are terrible for you yeah but we we really have to challenge the brain damage narrative I mean one of the things that we do is that we we we don't challenge it I mean so like we one of the things when we think about the brain damage narrative it has gained more energy in recent years in part because we have this technology of neural Imaging of brain Imaging but what in fact what has happened with brain Imaging is that brain imaging has become a projection test basically you know what I mean when I say a projection test uh no I don't you know ink bloth test
okay so uh or warhop these sort of psychological test where you throw up some imaged and you ask the person what do they see and then you know you get this sort of they'll tell you their interpretation and then the psychologist has his or her subjective interpretation of what that means that's what brain Imaging in drugs in the sort of a drug field has become it's become a projection test so that means that the sort of what the examiner sees is what um the the test or the the information becomes so it's a subjective sort of view uh subjective view of what the examiner thinks and so you can take brain Imaging for example you can take the data and give it to two different Labs just give the data to two different labs and you don't tell them who the participants are I would bet you um any amount of money that the two Labs would not come up with the same interpretation you know so people think of this is like being hard science it's there and this is what we we see and we know it it's not that way it's it's really it's it's there's a lot of subjetive subjectivity that goes into these sorts of tests and so one of the things we have to do is just push back and ask people when they talk about these drugs causing brain damage where what's the evidence that these are the questions that people have to ask please show me the evidence of the brain damage that you're talking about because it's true amphetamines can cause brain damage nicotine is a lot more dangerous than amphetamine heroin and all the rest of these things in terms of potency and that sort of thing but we take nicotine and doses that we avoid any sort of damage that or most of the damage associated with it we take all of these drugs in doses that causes Euphoria which is way below the doses that causes toxicity so when we start talking about brain damage humans don't usually take drugs in the doses that would cause brain damage because if they did the drug effects become unpleasant and humans won't take it because it's so unpleasant so the notion that these things cause brain damage you need to really ask people to show you the evidence I have not seen the evidence in humans that all of these recre any of these recreational drugs is causing some
brain damage so when they have those scans and they show the brain and they show the effects like when someone's on x amount of you know milligrams of this or of that um what I would always wondered that like what are you seeing when you see like highlighted portions of the brain like what is it just activity in that area so if we're talking most of the studies have been done when people are not on drugs I mean we can talk about when people are on drugs we do that and so what you do you typically do you have like a group of methamphetamine users in one group um and then you have people who never Ed methamphetamine in another group and you image their brain you might do what this thing we call a pet image that was that was popular where you inject a radioactive compound in somebody's body and this compound selectively binds to let's say dopamine cells in the brain and when it binds to the dopamine cells since it's radioactive it lights up and it and then so you can see how many dopamine cells are in a person's brain or a region or you can get an idea of the dopamine cells and how many are there one of the things that has done a sort of uh popular way that it's done is that they say the methamphetamine users have less dopamine receptors than the non methamphetamine users and so that's interpreted as saying methamphetamine caused the methamphetamine users to lose dopamine cells kill cells basically now we don't know what were what was in the brains of the of the methamphetamine users before they use methamphetamine we only know from this one scan that's one problem another problem is is that we don't know what the normal range of dopamine receptors or or are in a in a person's brain so if you look at like your brain versus my brain we'll see differences what does that mean or if you look at the brains of people who never use drugs or anything you'll see differences what does it mean and so we have a wide range just as humans we have a wide range of dopamine cells in each person's brains versus somebody else so you can't say that methampetamine caused these people to lose dopamine cells because we don't know if they lost dopamine cells in the first place and another thing is is that you have this tremendous amount of overlap of dopamine cells in this case in the
methamphetamine users compared to the controls so that means that some people in the methamphetamine group has more dopamine cells than people in the control and vice versa so what does it all mean it doesn't mean what what it typically means is we don't know but what we know it doesn't typically mean is that it caused some brain damage because when you look at these people's functioning cognitive functioning other functioning they look just like anybody else who didn't use methamphetamine that's fascinating um so that's really interesting so the only way to tell would be to take someone who is healthy and doesn't have a history of drug use and monitor them get them hooked on methamphetamine and then see what's happening to their dopamine receptors then you certainly that that could be a way of doing that but that would be really expensive and I don't know if it's j yeah I mean we have these natural experiments already so we think about amphetamine use became big in the 30s and we have this sort of history in the military we still use amphetamines Pilots use Pilots are always on that stuff when they fly missions right to make sure they're sharp right so you you have this history so you just look in the general population and you say all right what is a dopamine related illness you look at a dopamine related illness one of them is parkon disease you lose dopamine cells you get parkon disease do you have higher rates of parkon disease in methamphetamine users and you know uh the bottom line is that you don't generally see this you don't see higher rates of methan a Parkinson's disease in methamphetamine user I mean that's just one thing but you can just look throughout the society and you can uh see various illnesses uh particularly neurological illnesses and see do you have greater rates of this illness in people who reported this type of drug use and you don't really see that and so I um when I hear people talk about the brain damage thing particularly when they show Brain Imaging that's not evidence of brain damage you know when you have animal studies you can give animals amphetamines for every day for their life and then you kill them at at some point and then you look at in at dopamine damage for example you
certainly can see damage when you give amphetamine at doses 30 40 times what humans take yeah you can see some toxicity it's clear but now when you give the doses that are comparable to what humans take over that same period of time you don't see this really yes so the stimulants and the effect of the stimulants don't result and brain damage unless you're at just ridiculous levels absolutely this is the same thing that I worry about with um steroid use you know this is why I want to make sure that we actually regulate it because we want to make sure people are not taking doses that are so large that they might actually be causing some damage and when you don't regulate it yeah you can you run that risk and so regulate it and then you and if you really care about people that's what you would do and then you make sure that you to them regularly to make sure that they don't exceed those levels and you educate them about the potential consequences well a good example of that is probably the bodybuilding Community because if anybody takes steroids at hyper human on Preposterous levels it's bodybuilders and yet very few of them wind up dying from it there are a few cases of guys that were like really big in the 80s and 90s that are now dead from heart attack but if you ever see what those [ __ ] guys look like you realize like these these are not people that are taking normal levels these are not people that are even taking commensurate levels to their peers like a lot of them are taking just these insane insane and some of them have come clean about their routines and what they would use I mean they were just redlining it's they were just redlining their system on a regular Bas they were trying to win and they were trying to and that's a sport where you have to take steroids I mean you you're not going to compete with a Le kany or adorian Yates you're not going to compete with them if you don't take steroids it's a sport that is really you have to it's the only way it works your human body is not supposed to be that big yeah well um yeah my concern is that we should make sure we keep them safe by making sure that they understand what they're doing and how to do it yeah but what how that's a that is a crazy sport when you think about it I mean some
people don't even consider it a sport whatever an activity whatever you want to call it you know because it's not like you're doing anything other than standing there looking big it's weird right cuz you're not you know what I mean it's like you're not trying to run faster you're just standing there is that a sport well you know uh if they think it is that they're competing right it's an activity it's certainly a legit activity and they're competing right yes I guess but the the competition is so subjective it's like you know you look at one guy I mean I don't get it I look at the like if I look at Mr Olympia and there's like the top five guys like they're indistinguishable to me they're all just giant huge dudes I how the [ __ ] does one person win and one person not win I don't get it yeah but you know our ignorance should prevent them from having a sport no no no I'm not saying prevent them from having a sport I'm saying is it a sport yeah no it's an activity but that's my thing our ignorance should prevent prevent them from calling the sport I I mean you know there are some sports that I just don't get and I mean golf is clearly a sport but right is it though my my wrestling coach in high school wouldn't even say baseball is a sport he's like it's a skill game coach Murphy it's a skill game it's not a sport you get tired you get tired when you got to you got to push through it when you're playing baseball get the [ __ ] out of here that's not a sport You' make us run Hills if we said it was a sport okay well you know that's how I feel too but you know the thing is is that my view on this certainly should not be considered you know even though that's that's because of my own ignorance I should not I shouldn't have much of a say so there because of my ignorance M understand even though I have my view but you know my view is less important well in bodybuilding if there is consequences to taking the the the level of steroids that you need to take in order to get that big like didn't Arnold have open heart surgery I think Arnold had heart surgery I'm pretty sure so I think for a lot of those guys but but but Arnold has had a f i mean he his life has been you know I don't know why he had open heart surgery so but I mean clearly he used
steroids he said this but yeah I don't know if that's the reason I mean you know the number one sort of reason that people die in the United States is heart disease and they get that for a variety of reasons many of them have never taken steroids so I most of it it's obesity right isn't it it's obesity poor eating habits a wide range of things genetics lack of exercise a lot of alcohol no alcohol no alcohol I mean moderate alcohol use is associated with lower levels of heart disease and stroke and all the rest of the things why do you think that is it just relaxes people takes a little bit of the edge off and less stress on the body maybe there is a component that has been identified in alcohol that they think is um helpful at getting rid of plaques and that sort of thing but I it's not definitive I don't I don't know is that one of those things where you'd have to take a healthy person and expose them to alcohol and monitor as well same thing methamphetamine maybe well you know it's like if you do a wide range of different types of studies you know because there's no perfect study and but if you have all of these different types of studies and then you have the evidence coming pointing to the same way the same direction it increases your confidence that this is real and that's kind of what happened with alcohol there have been dozens of large studies with thousands of people that have looked at folks who don't drink alcohol those people who drink moderate Doses and those who drink excessive or larger Doses and the moderate drinkers time after the time they are associated with all of these positive outcomes and so it's certainly starting to increase my confidence that it's something real going on where people should drink moderately should drink moderately yeah uh wow that's controversial right pretty controversial isn't it is it I I don't people should take a little heroin they should drink moderately should do some steroids um I'm obviously not really stating your position but isn't U there's a thing in red wine um there's an antiox called Resveratrol isn't that something that they've associated with health as well yeah they were thinking about it was specific to red wine but now they think it's just alcohol in general yeah in a
perfect world Dr Carl Hart if you were the drug Zar first of all why the [ __ ] do we have a Zars aren't they like evil isn't that like a [ __ ] dictator well they they are yeah in a way right yeah if you know anything about what happens with us drug policy you can't help but think that they are evil it's kind of ironic then that we call them the drug Zar instead of the drug chairman or the drug you know overseer or policy coordinator well you have to understand the first drug Zar was William Bennett and I think he he he tuck that title and that's where his he ran with it he's like well I'm a [ __ ] Zar I'm gonna act like one if you were I mean say if uh President Obama or president Trump when he gets into office do that scared the [ __ ] out of here what not really man cuz I same thing I live in this country look at all of these people run this country I mean doesn't care me they're all they're not that different so well I think if anybody would be different it might be Trump I mean he's he's the only one that's financially independent yep yep and that's probably why he's so well and he also has a has a personality and U the other folks who are running for the Republicans don't have personalities that is true yeah and but not this is not an endorsement but know means but this is just the state of fact he he has a personality and personality means a lot in this goofy country yeah um if you if anyway if someone came along and said listen Dr Hart you're obviously very educated in this subject much more so than the average person what do you recommend we do in this country to handle drugs yeah so um the first thing I do um um you know it would be you'd be really hardpressed to have me like work in government for one I just want to state that because um the thing that I love about being academ is that I'm a free man and then in government these people talk about what they can't do because of some other some whatever reason right I don't understand how you look in the mirror when you say you can't do things but if I had some influence on drug policy in this country the first thing I would do was decriminalize all drugs that would be the first thing that would happen immediately um then I would change our educational sort of uh programming in
this country surrounding drugs all of these things that vilify the drug and say that it's the drug that causes that that would be out people who are doing the sort of things that the government is paying for their money would dry up if they didn't change their the way they they're educating that's that's another thing another thing I would do with u police forces uh that I had control over they would when they confiscate drugs they're main mission is not to arrest people the main mission is to keep people safe whenever They confiscated drugs they would test them for adulterant and see what else is in that cocaine what else is in that heroin and it would be published in the local papers it would be published in some local sort of form where everyone would know avoid this type of drug or this packaging because it has this adulterant and that's not safe whereas something else is doesn't have that adulterant so the people would be informed immediately then another thing I would do I would work on um uh legalizing or regulating drug all of these drugs figuring out what would be the best regulated market for marijuana what would be the best regulated market for cocaine what would be the best regulated market for heroin what how do we best regulate ecstasy how do we do this and um that's that's where I would go and we would uh we would uh uh we would get rid of the people in jail who are there because of drug violation St Obama's done a little bit of that he's kind of scratched the surface getting people out of jail that are in for non-violent drug offenses but it's been it was a very small amount of people and it was there was a big ad do about it and I you know I couldn't help but be underwhelmed cuz I think it was only like 65 people or something like that I don't remember what the I think the total now has gone up to like 80 something Jesus Christ there's [ __ ] million people in jail we have 2.3 million but how many of them are in there for you're right you're right you're right insane it's probably half the population right yeah no I'm I'm with you man like you you you've been overwhelmed I mean underwhelmed I have been um disappointed I mean I voted for Obama and uh I was hoping that we get a lot more relief on these things like I mean we the crack cocaine was originally
punished 100 times more harshly than powder cocaine at the federal level it's now pun 18 times more harshly than powder cocaine that doesn't make any sense they're the same drug right that's just racism right is it you know that's or at the very Le RIS targeting economic disparity I mean you're targeting people in in poor communities yeah yeah we our um enforcement of drug laws has been racially discriminatory that's a fact I mean but we certainly can come back to the racism piece uh but I mean so that sort of thing we were expecting Obama to his administration to push for a one to one equating with crack with powder it didn't happen and by the way it's 18 to1 now and then when you look at the arrests of people who are being arrested it's still 80% black it's still this racially discriminatory sort of effect so changing that law didn't have any impact on that that's one thing and then when we think about the people who are being the sentences have been commuted you know he has become the president who has commuted more sentences than any other president isent I think Johnson was uh ahead of him at one point but now he surpassed Johnson but we have to think about when Johnson was President we might have had 200,000 people in jail you know now we got 2.3 million or so so really this is a drop in the bucket and that this is disappointing to me I I am so um uh discouraged uh and um uh it's heartbreaking actually because we thought we would see this president be more bold about these things raise these issues and um some of it is some of these sort of arrests are related to race and and and race racial discrimination is important but one of the things that happens in our country when we start having this discussion or these discussions about racial discrimination is that we still we we're in this Frame where poor black people poor other people white people all these other people in the country who are catching the same hell are not working together as a result of keeping it this conversation tied to the racial discrimination although racial discrimination is important in in a lot of domains and that we should not forget that but there are people there are white poor people catching the same hell for the same or
similar reasons um the reason might not be conspicuously raced but it might be for other reasons um like I said I've been traveling all over this all over the world and I went to Belfast uh Northern Ireland and you got a lot of fans there like the Catholics although they're not really Catholics many of these people are not really Catholics but they're catching hell by uh for similar reasons you know they're being dominated by a British sort of uh occupation if will um and they they have similar problems as poor people have in this country and and so one of the things I try I'm struggling with is that I'm trying to get people to see how poor black people struggles in the US is connected with poor white people's struggle in Belfast their struggles are connected with Poor People's in um in Brazil all around the globe these people have more things in common and then sometimes the conspicuous characteristic of race kind of blinds us from our connection with other folks and and so I'm struggling with how to communicate this in a way that everybody can see hey we're in this [ __ ] together and there are a few elitist sort of people who are benefiting from us going at each other's throat and not understanding and then us also just playing right into it the one of the things about cocaine and heroin and ecstasy as opposed to marijuana is that marijuana obviously is really easy to make you just put it in the ground you water it it grows Harvest it it's simple it's like you see it as a leaf you you don't have to worry about there being a bunch of stuff in it when you talked about what's the word you use adulterant adulterant yeah when someone's taking uh cocaine and cutting it with something else y that that becomes when you look at it it still looks like white powder yep um legalization if we legalized it as opposed to decriminalizing it if you're decriminalizing it what you're doing is you're not Prosecuting people that are using it but what do you do with the people that are selling it and how do you move to an ethical responsible open market for something like this um so when you say what do you do with the people who are selling it what do you mean mean the people who are
currently selling or the people who will be selling people that will be see like if we go to decriminalizing how do obviously that means that you're not going to prosecute the people that are using it but how do they get it yeah so and do we change that so decriminalization thinking about Portugal and the Czech Republic um you still have the illicit markets in those places right and so people have to understand that decriminalization is not to go at the elicit markets uh decriminalization the major reason that you decri izes that you don't want to uh put your citizens in jail and you want to encourage them to get help if they need help so it's about the sort of user and that that's kind of what you're doing but if you're worried about illicit drug markets and you want to get rid of illicit drug markets then regulation is a way to go legal legal regulation and if you're worried about adulterant legal regulation is a way to go because you get rid of the black market and get rid of the potential dangerous compounds that people cut these drugs with that's my major concern that's why I kind of push for now regulating these markets because I'm more afraid of the adulterant I'm not afraid of heroin I know how to keep people safe with Heroin I know how to keep people safe with cocaine but I don't know how to keep people safe with some of the cuts cuz I don't know what they are right and no one knows until you test it and it just seems to me that you're if if we accept the fact that people are doing drugs in this country and we we kind of have right I mean it's not like there's ever been a time in our country that people stop doing drugs even for a month there's never been like a month of no one doing drugs in this country so the entire time our president wouldn't function right I mean do those guys take sleeping pills and stimulants to get going I mean they they they they have to do they really they have to like you think Obama takes sleeping pills all right um I can't say for sure that he does but if you if we had a bet I would bet you a lot of money that he does just because he's so tired because he works so crazy hours he would be I would say irresponsible if he didn't take sleeping pills really of course you need sleep is one of the most important human
functions and I want my president to be getting sleep but when you take sleeping pills doesn't it alter your REM sleep and and [ __ ] with your Cycles some of them certainly can so you try and the on like opiates are outstanding for sleep you're a big fan of the opiates aren't you are you working for the opiate industry are you are you involved somehow but there are there are others that are that that will work and and I'm sure he has some good Physicians I mean you look throughout history the presidents have taken stimulants and sedatives as well they should because they they have to be on these different coast and the time change and they have to it just doesn't make I mean people who have to be in the public eye I assure you they are taking drugs to enhance their Human Experience and function so uh to go back to that there's never been a time it's not like an achievable goal there's never been a time where we've gone a month a week a year whatever without anyone in this country doing drugs so we know that the drugs are always going to exist it would seem to me that this country that's obsessed with making money to the point where we privatized prisons and we allow people to profit off of people being in jail wouldn't it be a better source of income to instead tax legal sales of drugs to make everything legal tax it and then you get the benefit like you got in Colorado Colorado is the first state ever to get more taxes from marijuana than they do from alcohol which is incredible they made more money this year from Al from marijuana than they have from alcohol and alcohol has been around forever if we did that with cocaine and with heroin and with ecstasy and all these other drugs that we know people are already using and we also know people are selling illegally and not paying taxes on it it's not like people are selling Coke and going you know what I'm a coke dealer but I'm a responsible American so I like to pay taxes I made $100 million this year how' you make that money ah [ __ ] hustle you know Hustle and Flow you know how I do No No's going to no one's going to do that so we're missing out on all that tax revenue as a country I mean it's an economically unsound to not Legalize It and tax it if you know for a fact that
people are going to do it yeah it seems economically irresponsible and then the idea of these public or private prisons private prisons are a giant issue in this country because they also Lobby and the the prison unions the prison guard unions and police officers unions Lobby to make sure the drug laws stay in place to make sure they have work it's Insidious it's creepy and it's scary yeah um private prisons now the thing is is that they're all those things you said but understand they only make up 11% of all prison beds in the United States right they're trying they're going to Brazil now and they're going to some other places and and it's important that we are aware of what you just said but we also need to be aware of places like Louisiana I think they have the largest number of prisoners in the country um they have local sheriffs who kind of operate like private prisons so they bid or they get these State prisoners to be housed in their jail and they receive a certain amount of money for having those those prisoners in their local jails so this is a way for the local sheriffs to uh generate income Revenue by taking the prisoners from State prisoners into their local jail jails and so this technically is not private prison but this is certainly unscrupulous and people should be aware of this going on throughout the country as well so private prisons are concerned but also these local jails and local sheriffs they're doing similar things but legalizing drugs though would be financially a huge Boon to our economy yeah I think so um um yeah I think so but uh people will um people um I don't know if that argument alone is is going to be as be compelling I mean I I certainly think it's an important argument not not alone but it's it's something that should be considered especially in the wake of what's going on in Colorado yeah yeah there are people who are saying in terms of Colorado they're saying that yeah Colorado is generating all of this tax revenue but they're having to pay out a lot of it too because they have to enforce this new law and so people are kind of uh distorting on this sort of story but I think over time Colorado and other places is going to show that this is a huge benefit and the benefits far outweigh the risk I think and similar to
what's going on in Portugal where you see the decrease in violent crime the decrease in addiction the decrease in all sorts of different problems decrease in revenues to their prisons and all those things yeah all the negative aspects of that we associate with drugs a lot of it is negative aspects of crime yeah see the thing about Portugal too you have to understand um in places like Portugal Switzerland those kind of places where they kind of take care of their people they are more of a homogeneous society than we are and when you have a place like the United States where we're not as homog like La you guys have every nationality ethnic group rais they're all here not homogeneous at all and so one of the things that the drug laws has has done it has allowed us to separate out those people we don't like and go after them so if we decriminalize it makes it more difficult so you're taking away that tool whereas Portugal the Swiss and those folks they're such homogenous societies they kind of care about the people in their society because the people who are empowered um they see that many of the people who might be uh subjected to these laws they look like them they are them um in our society since it's not a hynous it's easy for us to think about these drug laws being used to go after those people who don't share our value that's that's what we say but they really don't look like us and they're really not us so this can't really happen to us because we know that there are a number of people who who who look like folks who are in Washington and they're using drugs they're using a lot of drugs but they're not subjected to drug policy I see what you're saying and so it's like we have to be honest about why we have these policies in place in the first place they allow us to go after the people we don't like without explicitly saying so so I think overall like as an overview we're we're looking at is uh we have a society that has a lot of ignorance when it comes to both the prevalence of drugs the use of drugs and the effect of drugs and that ignorance is part of the problem and it's it's shaped not just public opinion but also shaped policy shaped how politicians address these issues like like a guy like Chris
Christie that can is allowed to say ignorant stuff the reason why he's not booed off stage when he does it is for a lot of the people in the audience they don't know that what he's saying is unbelievably ignorant yeah and he kind provides the cover for them you know um they kind of support these things because they're not happening to them and that's those other people who don't share their values is what they say but they really don't look like them they don't they don't dress like them they don't go to the same schools they don't do any of these things so Christie when he says that he's saying this because he's representing uh what many of Americans think and he's providing cover for that bigoted ignorance or that uh uninformed perspective so what you're doing now with this touring all around the world and are are you speaking in all these places like what how do you what are you doing yeah you know I I I I spoke at the World Health Organization this past summer um universities in Belfast and London uh Geneva of course uh Brazil just just down there speaking uh I'll be in Canada next month um so just doing all of these these talks I'm trying to have these kind of conversations trying to inform people trying to let people know that they've been hoodwinked all around the world and they've been hoodwinked um particularly countries that follow the US drug policy and try and expose why the countries are following this policy that has had it's having detrimental impact on their citizens how is this received is it universally received or is it there's different places that are more open to it yeah you know in Brazil for example uh they have followed the US wholeheartedly and Brazil has 50% of their population is black right 50% they have like the greatest African population outside of Africa uh they um and Mo and and their prisons their jails are filled with black people and the poor people in the country are black and they the drug policy is being used as a tool to further marginalized this group basically and so when I go down there and speak and I'm brought there by their government often times it's well received even from the ruling class and the government and so it's a conundrum to me quite frankly um that I'm so well
received there by the ruling class um but there are some people who who are uh very interested in changing policy Geneva and those places what I'm saying to them those folks they're like no [ __ ] we know that you know and they their their drug policy is reflected or it's more uh rational go to France they're equally as ignorant as we are and they use their Pol policy just like we do and they're equally AR arrogant as we are um Belfast U they are um they're trying I mean they are their their Catholic population you know they're on the siege basically uh um um Vancouver they feel the message of course um uh Norway all of these people they are responding because they know this is not I'm not um I wish I was brilliant and bright and all those things I'm not you know this is not anything that's Earth shattering they these people know many of the people around the world Colombia went was in Colombia um those people they're politicians they know but they're getting a lot of money from the us to continue this sort of War on Drugs Mexico they know but they're getting a lot of money from the us to continue this War on Drugs hasn't Mexico decriminalized a lot of things they decriminalized everything but nobody talks about it because as I pointed out earlier in Portugal uh a person is allowed to have a 10day supply of drugs before that that triggers some sort of criminal prosecution so you can have a 10day supply of methamphetamine heroin whatever in Mexico you get you trigger a criminal offense when you have just a small amount of something so it's like it's really not decriminalization uh you know it's just they lowered the thresholds that that trigger a criminal process a prosecution and so uh it's it doesn't really play out in the spirit of decriminalization so they're still so they probably did it to appeal to the United States laws or to abide by what the United States is looking for them to do yeah I don't know exactly why they did it but I know they're continuing their War on Drugs um in part because of us um which is a War on Drugs is really a war on people and particularly a war on poor people as we know and I'm against Wars you know and I'm an ex-military person now if people want to see you talk and are you still traveling
or yeah yeah where can they find out about you my website uh Dr carhartt.com and when is the new book coming out new book won't be out until after the presidential election okay all right man well thank you very much you're always awesome really appreciate you coming here be here man I I I really dig what you do and thank you for having me thank you sir I appreciate that very much and follow him on Twitter Dr Carl har on Twitter Dr Carl is it Dr carlh heart.com is your website yeah okay thank you brother appreciate it man thank you good night everybody DN