00:00:10.940The drug war has not actually reduced the number of drugs, the volume, the frequency
00:00:16.860of use, the geographic spread of use. On any of those metrics, the drug war has failed.
00:00:25.120More people are using today than ever before. More people are using more dangerous drugs.
00:00:29.180drugs continue to get more dangerous in unregulated contexts. As MAP's Director of Policy and
00:00:35.740Advocacy, Ismail advocates to eliminate barriers to psychedelic therapy and research, develops and
00:00:42.560implements legal and policy strategy, and supports MAP's governance, non-profit, and ethics work.
00:00:49.320Ismail earned his JD at the University of California Berkeley School of Law in 2016
00:00:54.940after receiving his bachelor's in philosophy from California State University, Fresno.
00:01:01.000Ismail has previously worked for the ACLU of Northern California's Criminal Justice and Drug
00:01:06.900Policy Project and Berkeley Law's International Human Rights Law Clinic. Ismail is licensed to
00:01:12.760practice law in the state of California and is a founding board member of the Psychedelic Bar
00:01:17.380Association. He also currently serves on the board of the SAGE Institute, contributes to
00:01:23.760Kakruna's Institute Council for the Protection of Sacred Plants, and participates on the Advisory
00:01:29.480Council for the Ayahuasca Defense Fund. He has also previously served as chair of the Students
00:01:35.660for Sensible Drug Policy Board of Directors. Ismail is passionate about setting the sustainable
00:01:41.040groundwork for a just, equitable, and generative post-prohibition world.
00:01:45.840well ismail thank you so much for being on the show and joining us in the conversation today
00:01:55.940absolutely thank you so much for the invitation and i'm super excited to have this conversation
00:02:01.080me too and i was going over my notes and there's so many ways we could start this but i was
00:02:09.520really drawn to this quote, particularly in an article called colonization laid the groundwork
00:02:17.520for the drug war. And that's on the fix.com. And the quote is decolonizing drug use on a personal
00:02:26.260level means returning to intentional relationships with these substances that are grounded in respect,
00:02:32.420reciprocity, and reverence. It means contextualizing one's relationship to drug use within the
00:02:38.280paradigms of colonialism, patriarchy, and violence, and becoming aware of the spectrum
00:02:44.200of intentions behind self-dosing from healing to worship to personal growth.
00:02:50.380I know this is a really big quote to start with, but it really spoke to me because I think it's
00:02:57.200getting to a deep root that I want to explore with you. And if there's anything in that quote
00:03:06.020that you want to pull out to begin with I'd love to just hear what is coming up for you in this
00:03:12.340moment yeah thanks so much for bringing that in we wrote that a few years ago and it's really nice
00:03:20.320to hear it reflected in that way you're right there's a lot in there both kind of on a logistical
00:03:31.360cultural level like what does that even mean how do we even do that and then there's also like the
00:03:35.520deep personal kind of implication of it so I'll just share a couple things about that quote and
00:03:41.560concept that might be a helpful story I love that we're going just deep right away this is truly
00:03:45.680like some of the most important aspects I think of this whole bigger picture conversation around
00:03:50.560drugs and drug use and drug policy and what do we shift and how do we shift it and but going back
00:03:58.900to the quote one thing that really I would say has influenced my and I wrote that with a colleague
00:04:06.200Justice Rivera and we also had another good friend Paola Khan who contributed a lot to that
00:04:12.360conversation and one thing that like was really coming up at the time that we wrote that article
00:04:19.120and that it came together was this sense that you know in the west in America in the global north
00:04:27.640You know, there's a lot of ways to characterize it. There's this kind of entitlement toward consumption. And, you know, Gabo Mate calls it kind of like the hungry ghost, pulling from the kind of Buddhist concept of this hungry ghost, this spirit inside of us that's completely impossible from being, or it's impossible to satiate it.
00:04:47.920I can just consume and kind of loses a relationship with what it's consuming it's it's kind of an endless void, if you will, and I think that you know, we have started to wake up to that kind of hyper consumers and within the context of you know our use of gasoline and fossil fuels, or the way we navigate food or the way that we think about just consumption of resources in general.
00:05:14.920But what I found is that there's less of an awareness around that, or at least less of a connection that I had seen between that kind of entitlement toward consumption and how we think about drugs and drug use and trying to layer those things together.
00:05:33.060So that's to say not to recreate kind of an abstinence only prohibitionist framework around drug use, but one that actually incorporates the reality of it happening, while also holding the critique around and the concern around kind of entitlement, dissociated consumption is a hard thing to, is a hard, you know, needle to thread because I think that there's this sense that, you know, truthfully, people who use drugs,
00:06:03.060especially illicit drugs, are highly marginalized and tend to be ignored unless it's, you know,
00:06:09.860there can be used to bring in some sort of political point or cultural point. I think that
00:06:14.800from a social safety net perspective, we have really failed people in our communities who
00:06:21.800have problematic or chaotic relationships with drugs. And I think that thinking about
00:06:27.160how to relate to our consumption of these substances and you know maybe we can double
00:06:33.160click on the use of the word drugs in the first place there's a lot of ways to think about that
00:06:36.720which we can go into maybe later but just thinking about the kind of desire and the actual act of
00:06:43.100consuming substances for a variety of reasons and trying to understand well what what are the things
00:06:48.480that motivate that use on an individual level on a social level on a culture level and then how do
00:06:54.920we bring some sort of balance back. So we're not just hungry ghosts consuming all of the everything
00:07:01.940all at once, just to just to feel something or whatever it is, you know, whatever it is that
00:07:06.180we're seeking. And I say that I want a very important caveat that I'm myself a person who
00:07:12.060uses drugs. I've been part of underground and above ground drug using communities for more
00:07:17.540than half of my life. So I see this as someone who's totally embedded in this conversation,
00:07:21.540but also curious, how do we expand beyond the current assumptions and norms that have really
00:07:29.740permeated this conversation about drugs and substance use and treatment and recovery and
00:07:36.600healing and all of those important things. So I'll start there for now.
00:07:42.220Thank you. There's so much to that response. I'm wanting to follow up on
00:07:49.380something around, I think you said dissociative consumption and also just what is a drug
00:07:59.140that those two things really stood out for me amongst others. Maybe we could go into the
00:08:07.040definition of drugs and drug use and then go deeper from there. Cause I do think that that
00:08:14.180is an interesting question that I don't think that I necessarily ask myself often is what is
00:08:20.840considered a drug and why and by whom right yeah this this is a question that could be its own
00:08:28.000very very long conversation so I'll I'll give a you know just some thoughts about my answer and
00:08:36.820um see see how we can go from there but basically so it's helpful to throw out a few different
00:08:44.500words i think that the word drug is kind of easy because it's usually used in kind of the
00:08:50.980legal regulatory system there's the association which is both kind of the drugs like quote unquote
00:08:59.060drugs of abuse or drugs that people are scared of you could say the ones that are illegal and
00:09:04.180and that people kind of use to stigmatize people and then there's the drugs that are good like the
00:09:08.420ones where when you're going down the street and you see like the drugstore like oh these are
00:09:11.860pharmaceuticals or these are these are healing drugs so it's it's good that we're asking this
00:09:17.460question because even the use of the word does not itself provide so much clarity about what
00:09:24.740exactly we're talking about usually when i'm describing what people call drugs i usually just
00:09:32.020stick to kind of a more technical term like substances which is maybe technically accurate
00:09:38.020but it's not it doesn't really have the the weight of of the implication of the baggage
00:09:45.540but i i think that it's helpful because when speaking with a lot of different kinds of
00:09:50.740audiences which in my work as an advocate i tend to do it's it's usually helpful to
00:09:55.940start somewhere kind of plain and technical and then like emerge into a cosmology as it reveals
00:10:01.620itself you know in a conversation with someone but the other the other word i want to name here
00:10:08.260is uh medicine uh and you know sometimes you have it described as plant medicine or sacred medicine
00:10:14.740and that's also a powerful word that also has you know kind of like drug its own significant
00:10:21.220implications um if the implication toward the word drug you know as used in popular culture is
00:10:28.100well it's probably bad for you or or can be harmful i think that the implication for the
00:10:33.700word medicine is the opposite it's like well it's probably good for you and it can be helpful
00:10:37.940of course neither of those definitions are as clear as i think any of us would like them to be
00:10:42.580but i recognize that with especially within the world of kind of the psychedelic ecosystem as it
00:10:47.940emerges and maybe this is true of drug policy a little bit more generally the use of the word
00:10:53.780drug or medicine are sometimes interchangeable although that's not universally true from like a
00:11:01.780cultural competency perspective you could say because there's certain situations in which
00:11:06.900using the word drug like if you're describing something like ayahuasca on the amazon or the use
00:11:11.540of peyote you know in the northern central and south america northern hemisphere you really
00:11:18.660you shouldn't be calling those drugs they're not really drugs they're never really conceived that
00:11:22.580way um they're really treated like medicine or sacred tools um but people use the drug use use
00:11:28.100drugs to describe them because they contain you know presently illicit scheduled substances so
00:11:33.220the government might call them a drug even though literally nobody who use them calls them that and
00:11:38.580And on the flip side, you've got this word medicine, which, on one hand, I think it's, of course, really exciting.
00:11:45.000It's the field that I work in around, you know, bringing awareness to the positive potential impacts of some of these substances that are currently considered drugs and their, you know, medical or healing or therapeutic value.
00:12:01.060but I also see the shadow side of that where people think that oh just because you can call
00:12:05.880the medicine means you can do with them whenever you want or as much as you want or however you
00:12:09.980want and I think that the word medicine doesn't always actually include within it the kind of
00:12:18.880element of respect or reverence or really relationship that one might want to have with
00:12:23.600these substances um which goes far beyond just is this a thing that I'm using to treat
00:12:29.680you know an issue that I have so that's a very long-winded way of saying I think it's hard to
00:12:35.560draw the lines between drug and substance and medicine but for the purposes of this conversation
00:12:41.140I tend to focus on presently illicit substances so drugs that are in schedule one or in other
00:12:47.560drug schedules and that tend to have an element of criminalization either at the international
00:12:52.840or at the domestic level and I think again for the sake of this conversation the element of
00:12:58.060criminalization is quite important because so much of the conversation about how do we utilize drugs
00:13:04.540or substances or medicines in society how do we change that relationship has to do with well where
00:13:10.220are things at now and what that looks like is a scheme of prohibition and criminalization that has
00:13:14.940been built over the last 500 years depending on who you ask and how you ask it so maybe that's
00:13:20.700helpful maybe that's more complicated i'm not sure i think it's both i think it's helpful and
00:13:27.260more complicated. And I really appreciate understanding or at least beginning to think
00:13:36.200about the difference between substances, medicine, and drugs. And maybe you could lay out some
00:13:42.600groundwork for us right now on prohibition and where we're at now. And we can start to get into
00:13:51.740criminalization and all of the issues and suffering and disconnection that comes from that.
00:13:57.740Totally. The abridged version or the rapid fire version of everything that's happened in history
00:14:04.720about drugs goes something like this. People have used various substances of all kinds over
00:14:11.200the course of history for a ton of different reasons. Connection with divinity, connection
00:14:16.820with community political physical spiritual emotional healing of all kinds um also you know
00:14:25.060all kinds of ceremonial and ritual use that i think cuts in a lot of different directions they've
00:14:30.980people have used substances to make them better at fighting or hunting or war they've made it
00:14:36.180they use substances to make them more fertile or better at sex they've used substances to
00:14:42.260escape and dissociate so there's a huge huge huge kind of universe of like why people have altered
00:14:47.940their states over the course of history that may be outside of the scope of this conversation but
00:14:52.340i think it's important for people to know that this is just it's not new of a concept that this
00:14:58.260has been happening and and i think that like that said that our relationship kind of culturally and
00:15:04.820politically with drugs and these substances has changed significantly over time even if the
00:15:09.540reasons for use have stayed somewhat consistent um across the world i'll be in different contexts so
00:15:16.820the short version is that you know when we learn about the kind of kind of conquering of the new
00:15:23.780world like the beginning of european western european expansion and what we kind of know
00:15:28.900as the colonial era and what happens in that context once happened in that context a lot of
00:15:34.340that history includes rightfully the story and the narrative of the attempts by mostly European
00:15:45.380kind of economic religious political forces on anything from coercing to forcing to genociding
00:15:57.940to enslaving people of both the quote-unquote new world as well as of the African continent
00:16:04.340for the purposes of creating this kind of industrialized world that we now live in,
00:16:09.700although I'm not sure how much of that was predicted, you know, that early on.
00:16:14.820But the important thing that that's less known in that process, or as fleshed out in many cases,
00:16:21.540is exactly how that cultural genocide that led to the possibility of such a radical
00:16:29.540cultural and social shift occurred and so much of that had to do with the kind of eradication the
00:16:36.660demonization of the spiritual practices at the center of a number of communities and while it's
00:16:43.780not true that every single indigenous person or tribe or community that existed in north and
00:16:52.420South America at the time of early conquest um used psychedelics or used plant medicines talk
00:17:00.020of their states there are quite a few that did and there's good evidence that in the early days the
00:17:05.300the Catholic Church the kind of royalty the political forces and so on actively avoid actively
00:17:11.460demonized and um undermined and attempted to destroy these kind of cultural containers which
00:17:18.340often did include the use of these plants and many substances to converse or convene
00:17:26.500kind of engage with community and what that means is that what i like to say is that kind of the
00:17:31.460the original vision of the war on drugs kind of goes to the name of the title of the article like
00:17:35.940the original vision of the war on drugs the kind of mass uh kind of the coercion into a hegemonic
00:17:42.420cosmology, one that actually did not include the possibility that these sacred plants could
00:17:50.060connect a person to, you know, divine wisdom, or to some sort of collective cultural consciousness
00:17:57.240was just off the table. And that demonization and eradication of those practices means that
00:18:03.260the many people, myself included, who, you know, consider ourselves or were of like a diasporic
00:18:10.800identity where our ancestry comes from places that have been colonized or from people that
00:18:15.960have been genocided that means that this kind of understanding of how to engage with substances or
00:18:23.820medicines or sacred practices in these ways were pushed underground and overwhelmingly you know
00:18:29.240in some cases completely eradicated but in many cases pushed underground and now as we start to
00:18:35.420see a few things happening at the same time both a resurgence of understanding of psychedelics
00:18:40.600and entheogens and these plant practices and the possibility that comes from them in general while
00:18:47.000we're also experiencing this really beautiful kind of like re-understanding of the cultural
00:18:53.000contact between the kind of global north or the west or industrialized society and our families
00:19:00.280our relations that are still part of the kind of tribal system and i use that word intentionally
00:19:07.640in the sense that in the united states the conversation about an awareness around
00:19:15.560indigenous people native americans and their tribal affiliations and the sovereignty of those
00:19:20.440tribes and the way that we navigate indigeneity as a whole is also experiencing a simultaneous
00:19:27.320resurgence and awakening in popular culture in a way that i feel like hasn't happened for quite
00:19:31.480some time so when you put those two things together we suddenly have this awareness that
00:19:36.280um whoa like this global drug control system that has been built out of the eradication of these
00:19:43.120practices has now very successfully created a highly restrictive highly criminalized framework
00:19:49.120um that continued that process first you know affecting these these belief systems that I
00:19:55.680described before and then flash forward to the 1800s suddenly you have the U.S. criminalizing
00:20:00.580opium use because it was association with Chinese immigrants that were coming into the west coast to
00:20:06.100build the railroads flash forward 50 years later you have the kind of criminalization of people
00:20:14.620at the border with Mexico Mexicans who were suddenly associated and of course black people
00:20:19.960who were suddenly associated with with marijuana and cannabis flash forward another 30 40 years
00:20:25.480and you've got the 60s in the beginning of the association of course with with heroin and jazz
00:20:31.520music and the white hippies and the anti-war movement and that takes us to 1970 the 1971 the
00:20:38.140passing of the controlled substances act and in that decade the 60s and 70s you also see kind of
00:20:43.700a simultaneous restriction occurring at the international level so even though some of
00:20:48.200these large companies some of whom kind of got their foot in the door you could say before the
00:20:53.880U.S. was even a country by the late 1800s were, you know, making plenty of, you know, money or
00:21:02.000financially gaining from this drug trade. And then in the early 1900s, mid 1900s, you have a sudden
00:21:08.940restriction of that. And then kind of the international community following the U.S.'s
00:21:13.900lead and restricting, creating a prohibition based framework. And in the last, so now, so I say all
00:21:20.320to say that like you know people know about and they think about the war on drugs you know it's
00:21:23.920something that i think has really in mass incarceration these concepts have definitely
00:21:27.760entered for good reason um like popular consciousness um but i think that those those
00:21:34.800stories often start about 50 years ago and i think it's it's good to have the context of what was it
00:21:39.600like 500 or 150 years ago and how do these kind of frameworks affect us today and then how does
00:21:46.560that bring us to where we are now which is okay we've looked back and now there's i think a pretty
00:21:53.840wide sense i've been using the word multi-partisan to describe it because it feels like it's not just
00:21:59.360both sides of the political aisle but it's a little bit beyond that even but a multi-partisan
00:22:03.600sense the war on drugs as we know it has failed but not so much clarity about where to go so
00:22:08.720that's kind of a little bit of the the groundwork you could say for how we ended up here politically
00:22:33.760how will you believe in something that you had to escape how will it appear
00:22:40.640to be here on the same old street will you let the garden go how good will it feel to be free
00:22:49.580and will you believe it's true on the day they say it's done feel the relief will it ever come
00:23:03.120what a history lesson and yeah I'm just letting that sink in a bit and thinking about
00:23:23.900this quote from ACLU against drug prohibition and it's quote drug law enforcement consumes more
00:23:32.480than half of all police resources nationwide, resources that could be better spent fighting
00:23:38.440violent crimes like rape, assault, and robbery. The steep climb in our incarceration rate has
00:23:44.360made the U.S. the world's leading jailer, with a prison population that now exceeds
00:23:49.2802 million people, compared to approximately 200,000 in 1970. Nonviolent drug offenders
00:23:57.500make up 58% of the federal prison population, while drug imprisonments are a leading cause
00:24:04.180of rising local tax burdens. They have neither stopped the sale and use of drugs, nor enhanced
00:24:10.360public safety, end quote. Right. Yeah. And I think that sometimes it's challenging for us
00:24:23.520as just, you know, people trying to go through life and in our everyday lives to not understand
00:24:35.600all of the consequences of what these drug laws actually do and how they impact our culture,
00:24:43.460our communities, and just all of the different consequences that come from this.
00:24:51.640in this quote alone really just sitting with the prison industrial complex and how much money
00:25:00.580is made off of imprisoning people for a non-violent drug offense right and then you think of how many
00:25:12.720billions of dollars the prescription companies make on their legal drugs but you know clearly
00:25:21.580this is by design. Clearly there are people in power who are benefiting so much from controlling
00:25:32.480populations, drug use in a way that is neither healing, helpful, or creating safer communities.
00:25:44.020So yeah, I just would like to hear your thoughts on the connection with the prison industrial
00:25:49.580complex and, and what other consequences you're seeing from this type of drug control?
00:25:59.480Yeah, yeah, no, totally. I mean, the first, I feel very grateful that the conversation about
00:26:07.660criminalization and the prison industrial complex has really hit the mainstream. Now,
00:26:14.400that's not to say that I'm so optimistic in the short term that so much will change but
00:26:20.220it's true like the the kind of flip side and the one of the clear benefits of operating
00:26:28.100the drug control system as it currently does is that it's highly lucrative from a revenue
00:26:36.960generation perspective for the actors that are involved in it and
00:26:47.120when thinking about exactly how to respond to or solve this problem it's quite important to touch
00:26:54.880on these points that you made because it's not there's the level of the problem and dilemma that
00:27:01.840exists purely by virtue of needing to understand how to transition away from a punishment-based
00:27:12.000kind of punitive framework of establishing consequences for a behavior. And that goes
00:27:18.880beyond drugs and drug consumption, but it absolutely impacts that. But it also forces
00:27:25.360us to confront this other question, which I think you have posed really well in your question,
00:27:29.760which is, or in your inquiry, which is, well, what happens when people really want to keep this
00:27:34.300system going? Like, even if we know the way that it's, it's failing, it's preventing from,
00:27:40.380well, it's failing in so many ways. And I'll just enumerate them really quickly. I mean,
00:27:43.960for one, the drug war has not actually reduced the number of drugs, the volume, the frequency of use,
00:27:52.400the geographic spread of use, like on any of those metrics, the drug war has failed.
00:27:58.320more people are using today than ever before more people using more dangerous drugs drugs
00:28:03.420continue to get more dangerous and unregulated contexts you know our overdose crisis is
00:28:11.360I mean we know this it's at the highest it's ever been so we know that those aspects of it
00:28:16.540are there but of course then on another level the war on drugs was an absolute success because it
00:28:23.340did in fact insofar as part of the reason was to incarcerate and impact you know all these different
00:28:30.220communities they named earlier then it's been quite successful in the sense that um it has extracted
00:28:36.940billions and billions of dollars from the government and from individuals through fines
00:28:40.700and revenue in the creation and maintenance of the prison system it has in fact decimated
00:28:48.300entire communities for generations which again insofar as that was a goal of the original
00:28:54.620architects of the war on drugs then it was a success insofar as it consolidated power wealth
00:29:04.780control within you know certain highly regulated systems like the pharmaceutical industry
00:29:12.220while also completely failing to eradicate and in fact it really created the modern paradigm of
00:29:21.740organized crime that we know of today it was also I guess both a success and a failure which
00:29:27.640is to say that like as we think about where we're at just taking an honest accounting of that
00:29:33.780reality I think it's helpful to think about where to go and what to do next but
00:29:39.180there's no question that there's repair needed. And I think that when we think about future
00:29:45.580paradigms, it's not just a question of, well, what's the regulatory or political framework
00:29:51.760that's better than the way we've been doing it? That's a significant part of the question.
00:29:55.940But I think one thing that's also real is that it's difficult and maybe even unethical to think
00:30:02.960about where should we go from here if we're not simultaneously and very seriously thinking about
00:30:11.920what have we done and I say we very broadly here I don't personally think that you know I or you are
00:30:18.880necessarily complicit in this system that I suspect that we and so many people in our
00:30:23.680communities have been fighting for a long time but certainly as the U.S. government and its
00:30:28.340influence on global policy, the US, you know, and other countries around the world that have
00:30:33.960really leaned into this kind of framework of criminalization have absolutely caused
00:30:38.540horrible, significant impact on individuals and communities that I think ought to be
00:30:43.460acknowledged, if not before, at least part of, as part of thinking about like what happens from
00:30:50.840here. So I guess bringing it full circle, like, again, even if people see, oh, well,
00:30:55.200mass incarceration has failed to prevent the problems that we identify it's failed to quote
00:31:02.880unquote rehabilitate people so they're actually ready to re-enter society if anything most
00:31:07.720many stints with prison and incarceration undermine that ability and make it harder for
00:31:13.000people to re-enter into society and as like you know quote unquote productive members
00:31:17.780and yet we are we are we are still needing to figure out well what do we what do we what do
00:31:24.660we do? And what does it mean that, you know, we actually do have a responsibility to kind of
00:31:31.800figure that out, at least in some way or another? Yeah. I'm thinking about
00:31:38.940going back to the beginning of our conversation and this term dissociative use, or maybe that
00:31:51.040wasn't exactly it but and I'm thinking about that and addiction and gosh I have so much
00:32:01.080compassion and forgiveness for us as humanity and for myself individually when it comes to this
00:32:09.060topic because so much of our lives we've been conditioned to consume that was the word consume
00:32:17.160dissociatively and consume without thinking and fill that hungry ghost void in us. And,
00:32:26.480you know, that's very much by design. And so many of our childhoods from being born on have been
00:32:34.520shaped by this conditioning. And it's also no surprise that we find ourselves so addictive
00:32:46.800to this type of consuming, whether it's drugs, substances, food, purchasing things on Amazon,
00:32:56.280social media. I mean, the list goes on and on of what we find ourselves addicted to.
00:33:03.580There is a question I have around addiction to medicine, but I want to get to that in a minute
00:33:08.400after we kind of start here. So yeah, I guess I'm just sitting in these questions,
00:33:17.580these kind of broad topic questions around dissociative consumption and addiction
00:33:23.580and where you see us collectively in this moment. And of course we could speak to drugs,
00:33:32.920drugs and substances specifically, which I think we should, but also just wanting to leave room for
00:33:39.100the topic of addiction in general, because I think it's so much more than
00:33:44.760just addiction to drugs at this point. Right. Yeah. I mean, it's such a big topic and it's so
00:33:53.720sensitive because it has so many layers to it. And maybe the first thing I'll say is that in the
00:34:01.500same way that it's helpful to kind of flesh out our understanding of drug versus substance versus
00:34:07.060medicine I think it's also useful practically speaking to kind of tease out the difference
00:34:12.540between addiction or dependency or habitual use and kind of different practices around drug
00:34:18.300consumption and we don't need to go totally down that rabbit hole but I just say that to say that
00:34:23.340there's there is definitely a a tenor of difference in different kind of patterns of use
00:34:31.860and because of the way because of just generally I think the lack of nuance around the conversation
00:34:40.960on drug use and addiction in general it's you know popular culture kind of broader society
00:34:47.100doesn't really necessarily have that level of detail in its schemas um so i do think it's good
00:34:53.820to differentiate those things because it's not necessarily true that someone who uses something
00:35:02.860every day for example is necessarily addicted according to a definition that has
00:35:09.820and according to a definition in which addiction is persistent use despite negative consequences
00:35:18.380just as one example and not saying that that's like the correct definition but it's one one
00:35:22.860definition and and i would say that that's very different from someone who's taking something
00:35:28.140on a maintenance level because they have symptoms that they're trying to manage and that requires
00:35:35.260them to take something every day which might look like a physical or a psychological dependence
00:35:41.660but may not be an addiction in the sense that they are utilizing this tool to function and that that
00:35:49.980functioning may not actually be harmful for them or their relationship with society in fact it could
00:35:56.020be the opposite it could be beneficial but i think what happens is that we have because we haven't
00:36:01.580really flesh these things out. And because we're in this underlying default of that kind of
00:36:07.340dissociated hunger ghost mentality that we were talking about earlier, it's very easy for those
00:36:12.500lines to blur. And I think it can be challenging for people to maintain their own boundaries,
00:36:19.080just on a personal level, when that use and attempts to use or patterns of use are not
00:36:26.720as clear and when everything around us is telling us just consume keep going you know don't pause
00:36:36.460then I can see how it's easy for otherwise you know benign or innocuous habits or
00:36:44.260dependencies that start out due to health needs like become something that
00:36:49.640can start to have a negative impact and just speaking directly to it I mean we are in the
00:36:55.060period right now of the most overdose deaths in history. It's now one of the primary leading
00:37:02.980causes of death for multiple age groups. And there's a lot of reasons for that. There's
00:37:09.500just the sheer concentration and availability of extremely cheap drugs that are very hard to dose.
00:37:18.460I don't like even calling fentanyl itself like a dangerous drug per se, because even though it's one of the leading causes of overdose, fentanyl as a molecule is only as dangerous as the person who's using it or their lack of education of the person that's using it.
00:37:34.900fentanyl is used in medical situations literally every day all the time and it's used safely but
00:37:42.180you know the average person does not have this the kind of training or expertise to
00:37:47.420utilize in a safe way and as a result we've got both deaths from accidental overuse as well as
00:37:54.540what people are kind of calling drug poisonings which is to say when one someone's looking for
00:37:59.340one drug and they get something else you know adulteration and it's too simple it would be too
00:38:05.220easy to say well our fentanyl overdose crisis is because everyone's getting it mixed into their
00:38:11.240drugs like there's lots of people now that are using it intentionally because it's what they're
00:38:16.580looking for because it provides the relief from sickness or withdrawal or whatever it is that
00:38:22.880they need but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't think about you know what is the paradigm in which
00:38:29.240people are landing at having to so consistently be in a dynamic and in a relationship with a drug
00:38:38.260that also puts them so close to death and so so far away from help um at least when it comes to
00:38:46.160what's available in the social kind of system that exists so while in the backdrop of that kind
00:38:52.980of crisis, overdose, and which I think is, of course, very tied to the crisis around
00:38:57.740suicide and mental health in general, I think about like, well, what are the ways in which we
00:39:05.460can bring more awareness and attention to our tendencies of use? But then how do we actually
00:39:10.960apply that in kind of what I would say is a crisis response situation? You asked, you know,
00:39:14.920in your question, Ayanna, like, where are we now with that? I think the answer is that we're in a
00:39:18.700crisis. I don't think that there's a way to sugarcoat it. And while I do think that setting
00:39:24.160really strong social groundwork can help, I feel like the types of interventions needed are more
00:39:31.460significant than what are currently available for most people. I have a friend who asked me
00:39:38.060recently about microdosing, and they were describing a situation of a friend of theirs who
00:39:44.220is dealing with a pretty severe addiction and dependency and you know I thought about it for
00:39:50.320a second and to be clear by the way I'm not like a medical professional or don't consult in this
00:39:56.860way but I was thinking about it and I would it just kind of brought up this feeling for me where
00:40:00.100you know like I'm excited to see that people are talking about microdosing I think that there's a
00:40:05.540lot of benefit that can come from it especially when paired with other contemplative practices
00:40:10.420but some people that are really suffering that are dealing you know with severe addiction or
00:40:17.100severe dependency or so on like the type of interventions needed are more significant they're
00:40:22.940more um I have the word in my head I have right now is dramatic I don't know if that's the right
00:40:29.640word but they're definitely they require a kind of a sharper more direct more specific response
00:40:35.680than what i think we want to do i don't think that there's i think there's an appetite to change
00:40:43.080this society like society and kind of like this consumption dependency addiction dynamic
00:40:48.840both with drugs and in general but i fear but i fear and feel like even with that motivation there
00:40:55.520isn't there isn't a clear idea of like what does that intervention look like like we can
00:41:01.820bring in more crisis response and education and harm reduction and so on those are needed
00:41:06.640but we're in a pretty tough spot and people are highly desperate highly in need and not getting
00:41:12.360the social help or the help that they need through their kind of social safety nets so until i think
00:41:17.080we can do some of that groundwork and also have kind of a acute crisis response situation i think
00:41:25.180we're gonna we're gonna stay in this loop for a while unfortunately i know that's not very
00:41:29.120optimistic of a response, but it's kind of how I feel right now.
00:41:59.120I'm not looking great, I'm beautiful, but I have faith.
00:42:05.660My mind's like ice, I share the truth now, that's how I know that I've been done.
00:42:17.380I used to wear my heart on my sleeve, now I'm covered in the steel.
00:42:25.220it's really complicated and fascinating in a kind of twisted way to begin to unravel
00:42:46.300all of the moving pieces of what it takes to get these you know and I'm still I'm still learning
00:42:53.960how to say drugs substances medicines and really differentiate regardless they all are moving across
00:43:00.920the world at all times and where their origin is how they're created how they get to people i mean
00:43:10.280it's really um gosh so much movement and so many people along the way
00:43:17.260are impacted and harmed and i guess i'm thinking about this question around medicine use and
00:43:31.460of course i think that there is and can be so much beauty and healing with folks utilizing
00:43:40.080these medicines, so many of them being ancestral to indigenous cultures, but I also see a very
00:43:49.620large movement that has these types of spiritual bypassing vibes. And a lot of these medicines are
00:44:02.280sometimes being used as party drugs or a type of way for the privileged people in the world to feel
00:44:11.540a certain way that that isn't maybe shooting up heroin or doing something that kind of has like
00:44:18.560a classist negativity lens on it you know you could be going to a party and maybe you think
00:44:28.660or, or, or a gathering or whatever people want to call their, um, coming up coming together's
00:44:35.680right. Um, and so I'm, I'm just really sitting with the intensity of when folks use medicine
00:44:43.160in a spiritual bypassing type of way. And I'm sure many of them never consider
00:44:51.900the pain and the suffering that it's causing to even get that medicine to them to take as a quote
00:45:00.480like spiritual a journey or something like just the implications on the earth on resources on
00:45:08.000humans um so i just want to kind of speak to the i don't know if it's hypocrisy but it's kind of
00:45:16.020like a icky feeling of how can we talk about this in a good way? Because I think for a lot of folks
00:45:22.220listening, definitely for me myself, I have seen these types of circles and it's alluring and
00:45:29.220can be invitational to certain people. But I think that we need to really be aware and not
00:45:36.320fall into the feel-good, just the feel-good aspect of taking medicine
00:45:44.920and not always in a way that is really accountable.
00:45:50.120Right. I actually think that that's the scientific term, icky feeling.
00:46:00.040Yeah. I mean, no, I really agree with you. And it's interesting because it's kind of
00:46:06.040cut both ways in the sense that it's true that a lot of the conversation about psychedelics
00:46:12.360and plant medicines in particular has kind of like operated through the container of
00:46:22.040relative relatively more privileged people who have engaged with the work in a
00:46:30.540some cases a more ceremonial framework that has in this like weird 20 you know post 2020 reality
00:46:43.720led us this place where there is some level of like respect insofar as there's like a ceremony
00:46:52.380you know the thing about ayahuasca i think is so fascinating one thing is is that it has traveled
00:46:57.880with the ceremony it's quite difficult to drink to find ayahuasca really really anywhere certainly
00:47:02.280in the us and most of the world where you're not utilizing it in a ceremonial context that that
00:47:08.520that's one thing i think is like really beautiful that most people are working with it are working
00:47:13.320with it in some sort of ritual or ceremonial context however of course it comes with the
00:47:16.840baggage that you just i think very accurately described which is well okay so who has the
00:47:22.280access proximity privilege resources to actually participate in this globalization
00:47:31.160of ayahuasca or other other substances and i think that point that you made is really great
00:47:35.080which is like are people thinking of the cost of getting something to them and this is true
00:47:40.680with ayahuasca and apply medicines it's also true with heroin and cocaine and it's a little bit edgy
00:47:46.280within the drug policy community kind of to talk about some of this stuff because people see
00:47:52.280identifying some people, I didn't say everyone, but some see the kind of identification of
00:47:57.480the cost of production or getting a drug to a user as a form of like shaming of use. And
00:48:06.900unfortunately, I understand where that comes from, but I think it's really important to
00:48:12.440see the whole story kind of to the point that you're just making to see, to understand
00:48:17.260the true cost or the true kind of accounting of the resources needed to get something from
00:48:24.940one place to another. By the way, like, I mean, going back to the very beginning of this
00:48:27.760conversation, this question about where things come from is absolutely relevant to everything
00:48:33.320we consume. It's relevant to the food, to the gasoline, to the electronics, you know, like,
00:48:39.000this is a broadly relevant question. It's not just relevant to drugs, but I'm going to stay
00:48:42.920focused on drugs because that's what we're talking about. I just want to just acknowledge
00:48:46.380that this is you know this question of like how do we get how do the things get to us like why
00:48:52.540do we have such incredibly convenient lives like that is truly a question and I think that's you
00:49:01.140know maybe an easier um inquiry for those of us that live in like dense urban areas and are like
00:49:07.980surrounded by like every single resource we could ever possibly need with very little reason to
00:49:13.820question well why do we have access to all these things but bringing it back to the drugs i think
00:49:17.820your point about kind of privilege and access is absolutely true and i think that it has to do with
00:49:22.780some very practical elements as in um you know people who are seeking like alternative or you
00:49:30.620know i don't love the phrase alternative healing but alternative health care but things that fall
00:49:35.820outside of the realm of kind of western medicalized health systems like those are not always available
00:49:45.020to everyone and i think as we look toward this kind of transition away from what we now know
00:49:52.700as the war on drugs in the current drug control scheme whether that looks like any number of
00:49:56.940policy changes medicalization of some psychedelic substances decriminalization of personal use
00:50:04.140legal regulated adult use in certain cases in any of these situations that we're
00:50:08.380you know i think starting to contemplate this question about you know how do we repair the
00:50:13.340harms and how do we ensure access are too critical to actually figuring out like what that next step
00:50:19.420is because if not then kind of as you said we end up in this dynamic where we're just consuming
00:50:25.100things because we have access to them not questioning why we have access to them in the
00:50:30.460first place and then by not questioning and by kind of allowing the narrative to be
00:50:38.540or preventing the narrative from deepening or not going deeper into like what's going on there
00:50:44.700even if we don't want to becoming complicit ultimately in these oppressive systems in which
00:50:49.980in order for you or your friends or whoever to have your like fun night out we have to participate
00:50:57.900in a literal blood economy like that is the reality of the situation for some substances
00:51:04.220and some use so it's not that oh suddenly the users need to feel more ashamed and stigmatized
00:51:11.260than they already are it's really not that and also it's like we should be tracking these things
00:51:16.540so so when we do seek solutions how do we do that collectively you know there's a conversation
00:51:21.660that's now starting to hit the mainstream in Colombia about what would it look like if the
00:51:30.280country of Colombia actually legally produced and regulated cocaine instead of letting that
00:51:34.580entire economy exist entirely within the realm of organized crime, which by the way overlaps a lot
00:51:41.160with government. I mean, organized crime and the government unfortunately tend to go hand in hand
00:51:46.380around the world. This is not just a Colombia problem. This is true. Corruption is a kind of
00:51:50.840a universal reality but I bring that up to say that like you know the idea of like a country
00:51:56.840like Colombia seriously considering the legal production regulation and sale and you know maybe
00:52:01.220even export of cocaine is quite a big deal because so far the lack of doing so has put
00:52:06.980so much of that power in these extrajudicial forces that then are in this like wild
00:52:14.020um like dog eat dog kind of vicious cycle dynamic between law enforcement and these
00:52:22.600um kind of underground economies that ultimately i think harm basically everyone involved like
00:52:29.220they're not good for any any of these actors except for maybe maybe whoever is making all
00:52:34.120the money off of it but that that you know that's ultimately a huge minority of the people that are
00:52:38.240involved. So the idea that we could be looking at a global system that considers the production
00:52:44.800and the consumption gives us the possibility, to your point earlier, Ayanna, around
00:52:50.100can there be a version where we are able to support access, education, and so on without
00:52:56.720having to succumb to these kind of same dynamics? And how do we do so in a way that doesn't
00:53:02.540perpetuate the bypassing that happens, where it's like, oh, well, it's great that I can get my
00:53:06.740ayahuasca or it's great that I can get my sacred plant medicine and do my personal healing
00:53:10.960but then like to what extent is that person's seeking a personal healing which by the way is
00:53:16.840a beautiful thing like the individual seeking of kind of mental health equilibrium is like truly
00:53:21.960something to be celebrated but it needs to be seen in context and like we can't just be like
00:53:27.280well those of us that have access to these tools like well we get to do our individual healing but
00:53:32.280good luck to everyone else I think that there is a an inherent connection there which I think
00:53:36.620we can, you know, people ignore it for a while, but I think it comes around eventually. It's hard
00:53:41.300to not, you know, kind of try to see through this, what some people call like psychedelic
00:53:46.920exceptionalism. And sometimes people are like, well, if we're not thinking about all of our,
00:53:52.760you know, all of the drug users in our community, then we're not really going to the root of the
00:53:58.580problem here so yeah i want to talk a bit about the dark side of legalization and regulation
00:54:08.360as i've seen it at least in the cannabis industry i have been living in northern california for the
00:54:20.420past decade in what some may call the Emerald Triangle and have my neighbors and people that
00:54:31.220I know have been growing illegally, have been able to support their families and their homesteads and
00:54:37.980are growing the cannabis outside and try to use regenerative practices. Now, of course, that is
00:54:44.000in no way saying that everybody has been doing that in the illegal context for the last, you
00:54:51.540know, however many decades, there's been also rat poison and death and abuse and all sorts of
00:54:58.220strange things happening, growing cannabis illegally too. But what I saw happen with the
00:55:04.140legalization of cannabis, and let's just say in California is it went from something that was
00:55:11.920underground that was more expensive per pound. So the farmers made more money, the trimmers made
00:55:21.220more money. Everybody along the supply chain seemed to make more money. So people didn't
00:55:28.680have to grow as much to make the same amount as what's happening now with legalization, which is
00:55:34.620with the legalization and the regulation, it's really expensive to grow legally now.
00:55:42.540So a lot of the small farmers have been cut out and who gets to now pay for the permitting,
00:55:49.260who gets to grow marijuana, it's corporations, it's people that have money to invest in the
00:55:58.100legal process. It's also because it's so expensive to now set up a grow. And because it's also
00:56:06.540legalized, the middleman is making more money. The grower is making less money. So then the grower
00:56:12.580feels pressure to have to grow more and more and more and more. And then that puts the pressure
00:56:17.480on the earth because then it's like, well, if it's outside, you got to pump them with fertilizers to
00:56:21.880make sure you get the same amount if it's inside you're using so much electricity and soil uh you
00:56:29.820know from bags and or not soil you know so there's just watching just with cannabis alone how much
00:56:38.760has shifted i think negatively with the legalization regulation i want to talk about
00:56:45.620that and i think to me a second point to this which i don't want to lose the first point because
00:56:50.980I really want to hear what you have to say, but I think for those of us who want to use
00:56:56.480plant medicine specifically, and we want to feel elevated or connected, we have to consider how
00:57:07.360are these plants being grown? It's like when a plant never even sees the sun and it's being
00:57:15.420sprayed with all these pesticides and, and who knows what else and just all of the inputs in
00:57:22.780the soil or not. And then we're trying to ingest that in a good way. It just seems like, whoa,
00:57:31.400we had the pause. Like, yeah, it's cool to go into dispensary, but how is this even being grown?
00:57:36.780And if we're trying to have some type of spiritual moment with it, it's like this plant itself has
00:57:44.220been really, I think, abused just in the way that it's even being grown. So I know that's kind of
00:57:53.620a, those are two very big questions, but they kind of all just came out at once. So please take it
00:57:58.720however you want to. Yeah, no, thanks. I appreciate it. And there's totally a link between those two
00:58:04.040things for sure. I mean, well, first of all, I'll start from your last point. I mean, the growing
00:58:10.440of cannabis indoors is so much more resource it requires so much more resources on so many levels
00:58:19.020electricity the space the coverage and so on and I don't maybe you know this I don't know for sure
00:58:26.620if this is the case but my understanding is that of course some cannabis some indoor cannabis
00:58:34.040growing has occurred partially because of the ability to control the environment and thus
00:58:38.940presumably lead to like a stronger you know certain stronger expression but I think my
00:58:45.680understanding and I don't I'm curious I wonder if I'm wrong about this but my understanding is that
00:58:49.960the the mass consumption or excuse me the mass production of cannabis indoors was also partially
00:58:56.580a result of prohibition in the sense that when you can't grow it outside you have to hide it
00:59:02.980so I think that there's probably a I guess a win-win there where it's like okay yeah you can
00:59:07.340control it more but also that means you can hide it so i do i do suspect that there's some sort of
00:59:12.380connection between what you're describing like this like cannabis just being a good example of
00:59:18.180a plant that you know can be grown from tip to tail without seeing the sun at all um which now
00:59:25.080that you say that it's kind of like a kind of freaky to think about um yeah it's a little bit
00:59:31.360strange and sci-fi and like not a good way. But so there's that on like the growing level. So
00:59:39.300that's absolutely true. And I think that kind of tying your questions together around
00:59:43.420like legalization or regulated access or regulated use and what the cost of that is. I think this is
00:59:51.200a challenging question for me because on one hand, I really understand the instinct that
00:59:57.920you know, early cannabis advocates have had and in many ways still have around the issues we were talking about earlier. Like there was a sense that if we could just change the laws that we'd prevent the government from continuing to criminalize people in the same way, thus starting to undermine and maybe even eventually transform the kind of the way that our society deals with, in this case, cannabis, but really any drug going forward.
01:00:27.400So I do feel like I understand and I really support it and support the kind of instinct to, I mean, really just like find a way to transition away from prohibition, which on one level means no longer arresting people.
01:00:44.920I mean, one thing that happened in California with Prop 64 when it was passed in 2016 that I think was quite a huge deal was that the smell of cannabis could no longer be used as probable cause.
01:00:57.400That is a huge, it's a small change that makes a huge, has a huge impact because so much of kind of secondary searches or other issues have come out out of this question of like, what is it, you know, is there probable cause for a search?
01:01:13.300if there's probable cause for a search and you can't fight it then suddenly a person who may
01:01:18.220just have like a broken taillight or whatever um is suddenly you know it's so much more risk than
01:01:24.320they should be and i think that that to me is a net positive from a the question of like legalization
01:01:29.140but it comes at that major cost that i think you very accurately identified which is wait a minute
01:01:34.080like suddenly legalization means permission to commodify and commodification means that
01:01:40.100is subject to these market influences that have really corrupted so much of other kinds of
01:01:46.180resources and brings us back to the very beginning of this conversation and kind of just turns it
01:01:50.960into another product to be consumed by the hungry ghosts you know that are buying it and i think
01:01:55.680that that is that's very scary and i agree that that's something that i think is a major cost
01:02:02.000legalization to me it makes me wonder about like what's the trade the trade was okay we're not
01:02:06.900to have any more people arrested for possession of marijuana or cannabis here in the us and there
01:02:12.180will be more leniency and flexibility around how we do that um and the trade-off for that
01:02:19.380to make it palatable to voters or to you know the legislature depending on the state and
01:02:25.380california was the voters but how much does it have to look like every other industry
01:02:32.420and it's every other industry that's doing all the things that we don't want to see with these
01:02:35.540beautiful plants and i think that that is a big question i still i don't know the answer i wonder
01:02:41.860a lot like probably literally every day actually like what is the trade-off that we're doing here
01:02:46.900is it worth it is it better for something to be criminalized for people to be taking risks to have
01:02:52.740their families torn apart because they want to engage with something or is it better for this
01:02:57.140to be part of the kind of traditional commercial market industry logic that unfortunately rules so
01:03:04.100much now i also want to recognize that that's a little bit of a false dichotomy i don't think
01:03:07.860it's true that we just have two options um in fact i think a big part of like my personal work um
01:03:15.060i should say my professional work although personal too um does in many ways boil down to
01:03:20.100how do we actually go beyond these paradigms and i'm not i certainly don't have the answer but i
01:03:25.300do feel grateful that i think the kind of leading edge of the drug policy reform conversation
01:03:30.020is incorporating all of these questions you know like this question about the commercialization of
01:03:35.020cannabis is a huge question that is as far as i can see being thought being thought thought through
01:03:40.940by basically everyone that i that i know and associate with in the psychedelic and drug
01:03:46.220product drug policy world which i which i appreciate because you know we're asking the
01:03:50.840same questions that you just said which is like okay well yeah legalization has some of these
01:03:55.580benefits but like what about the things that have happened like what about these multi-state
01:03:58.760operators what about the monopolization what about this like weird industrial cannabis
01:04:05.180manufacturing world that we've been where where that we found where now yeah you can buy cartridges
01:04:11.160you know in most cities in california thc cartridges but what you're buying is like a
01:04:17.540frankenstein of like oil and terpenes and thc and it's like oh is that what we really want here is
01:04:23.480that is that what we're going for do we want these like weird frankenstein products that are just
01:04:27.420you know seeking the lowest common denominator and um i don't i don't think so and and i but
01:04:35.600i also wonder like you know how much how much of this is the adjustment period like is there a
01:04:40.300version of reality where our drug policy reform scheme allows us to create like the paradigm of
01:04:46.420our dreams which to me looks like i don't know fair trade plant-based um organic mdma and like
01:04:54.820community gardens where people can teach each other to grow mushrooms and do ceremony and do
01:05:00.600ritual together and regenerate the land and probably also billions of dollars from the
01:05:04.960federal government for reparations and restoration of rights after the war on drugs you know there's
01:05:09.820a list there there's a laundry list of things i would like to see and i think we'd like to see as
01:05:13.380we transition into this future but i think you're right for now like we kind of got to see all the
01:05:18.720ugly parts as we as we build out this other infrastructure because unfortunately there's
01:05:23.600just like an adjustment period I guess you could say between the paradigm that we're currently in
01:05:30.380which we're trying to fit these new ideas into and then like the infrastructure that we're trying
01:05:35.300to create which I think will take a little bit more time but will be worth it it'll be worth
01:05:41.280doing in the end even if it'll take I think generations truly to really get it down I don't
01:05:46.600know if that answers your question that was just kind of responses to the metaphor yeah I mean what
01:05:51.340I'm honestly feeling is we need a part two because there's so much to talk about but yeah I would like
01:05:58.120just to open the floor to you to speak to anything that's still on your mind that we haven't gotten
01:06:03.320to in this conversation knowing that we're going to need a second conversation I hope that you'll
01:06:08.540be available at some point because yeah we're just I feel like just scratching the surface so
01:06:13.980yeah I just want you to close us out in whatever way feels the best for this conversation this
01:06:21.160beginning totally yeah thank you for for the space to have this conversation i we touched on so much
01:06:29.160and yet we really scratched the surface and i think that that's kind of what you're saying i'd
01:06:33.500be happy to come back and have a longer more conversations with you because there's just so
01:06:37.080much in it but i guess i'll just close here by saying or kind of you know pause here you could
01:06:42.680say by saying that we're in this um you know i've been working in the drug policy reform world for
01:06:48.880um I mean professionally for about seven or eight years and personally for way twice that long um
01:06:56.840as you know just being a street harm reductionist you could say or kind of community harm reductionist
01:07:02.360and learning as I went with my own experience with my own um kind of like personal growth
01:07:08.580processes from a very young age and what I've noticed is that we're in a paradigm in which
01:07:14.180The worlds of our past, the ways that we think things have to be done, and the worlds of our future, the kind of what we're emerging into, are clashing or kind of suddenly coming together.
01:07:33.300Or overlapping, maybe that's really the word that I'm looking for, overlapping.
01:07:37.560And people look back and they look at this war on drugs, they look at this global drug control scheme and they're like, wow.
01:07:44.180uh that really isn't working you know that's not cool but then they look forward and it's
01:07:49.620not really clear where we go from here so i feel like this conversation that we had today
01:07:53.940all of these kind of all of this really like this whole inquiry is really around well what are the
01:07:59.780ways that we want to do it differently in the future and i just want to encourage listeners
01:08:03.540or people who are have their own relationship with drugs or are close to people that they love
01:08:08.260who have you know sometimes complicated or maybe even really positive relationship with these
01:08:12.020substances to start to imagine like what do we want this to look like i think that we're in a
01:08:16.740period of great growth and transformation and can in fact make these changes if we're want to and
01:08:22.180if we're ready to um and i think that that puts us in a position of great power in some ways like
01:08:33.940as a community and as a group of people who are thinking about this but i just like i really want
01:08:37.940to encourage people to be really visionary because now is really the time to do that even as we can
01:08:42.740navigate all the harms and pain and suffering and oppression that we're all kind of simultaneously
01:08:48.820navigating so i think just thinking of it in that like long game framework multi-generational
01:08:54.820framework is really helpful and then i think finally saying that um there is an emerging
01:09:03.780care infrastructure that's being built out within the psychedelic field, you know, with
01:09:07.600therapists and practitioners and people who are really thinking kind of to the very beginning
01:09:11.560of our conversation, Ayanna, like, how do we engage with these substances outside of
01:09:15.940the hyper-consumerist kind of cycle that so many people feel stuck in?
01:09:21.180And I think that, you know, bringing it back to that is like, there is a way to be in really
01:09:27.660respectful reverence to these incredibly powerful tools in a way that you know promotes
01:09:34.940like a generative outcome for us all instead of one that kind of pushes us further down this
01:09:43.060very scary vortex that we that I feel like you know some people feel like we're slipping into so
01:09:49.360not to end on such an existential note or anything but maybe we'll get more into the
01:09:55.420fun stuff next time too absolutely no I mean I'm with you and I think ending on that note feels
01:10:02.460real and it feels honest and I think we need that from each other because if we don't start from a
01:10:08.680place of honesty it's really going to be hard to have fun authentically yeah and like truly have
01:10:15.380fun because we are consenting to what we're doing in a right in a like a respectful way I mean I
01:10:24.140I, gosh, there's just so much that was spoken to in this time together. And I also just want to
01:10:31.440close out by saying that I'm appreciative that the conversation felt so de-stigmatized
01:10:39.140around usage. I think that shaming each other or ourselves only makes our relationships
01:10:49.880more challenging with whether it's the substances or with ourselves or with each other and