What makes sugar, Adderall, tobacco, and alcohol legal while drugs like pot, heroin, cocaine, and meth are not? Is it addictiveness? Impact on health? Racism?

In this episode, we talk to Jay Shifman, the host of the Choose Your Struggle podcast who has experiences coping with addiction to prescription medication and self-identifies as a drug user in long-term recovery.

We talk through the history of drug use, going all the way back to the first drug laws in the 1800s, all the way up to today, and consider what the next steps should be in drug policy evolution, looking at models like the Portugal Model.

By the end, we may not come away agreeing on what our ideal society in terms of drug use should look like, but we all agree that we do need to conduct more research around the root causes of drug problems, given that so much of America's drug policy was rooted in propaganda and scare tactics.

Links:
Jay's podcast, "Choose Your Struggle": https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/choose-your-struggle/id1502017563

Choose Your Struggle website: https://www.jayshifman.com/choose-your-struggle-podcast

Chasing the Scream, a book that documents the history of drug use: https://chasingthescream.com/

The Abstinence Myth, a book about why shame-based recovery models don't work: https://www.adijaffe.com/book

In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: https://drgabormate.com/book/in-the-realm-of-hungry-ghosts/

Carl Hart, a professor of psychology at Columbia University who studies drug use and addiction: https://psychology.columbia.edu/content/carl-hart

The Weight of Air, a book by David Poses that documents his struggle with heroin addiction: https://davidposes.com/the-weight-of-air

The New Jim Crow, a book that exposes the racist roots of the current American carceral state: https://newjimcrow.com/

Link to article talking about how a Nixon advisor knew that the drugs were not the problem: https://qz.com/645990/nixon-advisor-we-created-the-war-on-drugs-to-criminalize-black-people-and-the-anti-war-left/

Music is The Beauty of Maths by Meydän.

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