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042 - Psychedelic Law

May 01, 2018, 68 min read

Program Notes

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Guest speaker: Noah Potter

Date this lecture was recorded: April 2018

A lawyer specializing in psychedelic law and a New Yorker who witnessed the heyday of Yippie activism in Sin City, Noah Potter shares his thoughts on the past and the future of the movement.

 
New Amsterdam Psychedelic Law
Noah Potter, Counsel
Noah Potter on LinkedIn

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Transcript

00:00:00 ►

Greetings from cyberdelic space.

00:00:19 ►

This is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in Psychedelic Salon 2.0.

00:00:30 ►

And before we get to today’s featured interview, I’d like to let you know that longtime salonner Trevor Oswalt of East Forest now has his own podcast, and a few weeks ago he and I had

00:00:36 ►

a conversation that is, well, it’s now online in his podcast series, and I’ll link to that

00:00:42 ►

in today’s program notes at psychedelicsalon.com.

00:00:46 ►

Also, I want to be sure that you remember that next Monday, May 7th, at 6.30 p.m. Pacific

00:00:52 ►

Time, is our next Psychedelic Salon First Monday Night Zoom Conference, and you’re invited

00:00:59 ►

to join in or just lurk if you prefer, And I’ll put a link to the information about that in today’s

00:01:06 ►

program notes as well so that you don’t need to install the Zoom application. You just click the

00:01:11 ►

link and join us through your browser. As you know, I’ve been hosting these Zoom conferences

00:01:17 ►

on every Monday night for the Patreon supporters of my writing projects. And I’m pleased to say

00:01:23 ►

that out of these conversations, a few

00:01:25 ►

things have begun to happen.

00:01:27 ►

And one of those things is that our little group has decided that there needs to be a

00:01:32 ►

single place where we can all find information about festivals, conferences, local groups,

00:01:38 ►

and other items of interest to the worldwide psychedelic community.

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Now, in the past, I tried to consolidate the Arrowhead and MAPS conference listings,

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along with information that I received from some of our fellow salonners.

00:01:51 ►

But, as I told my Zoom friends,

00:01:54 ►

it just took more time than I was able to put into that little project.

00:01:58 ►

But our group came up with another solution,

00:02:01 ►

and so what we’ve decided to try is to post all of that information in a

00:02:05 ►

spreadsheet that’s available on Google Docs. And as of now, we’ve listed over 20 conferences,

00:02:12 ►

10 festivals, 7 local societies, 3 social events, 3 initiatives, 7 podcasts, and 12 online resources,

00:02:21 ►

and they’re all in separate tabs so it’s easy to find. And I’m sure that there are

00:02:25 ►

many more such events that need to be listed, so we’ve made this document public that anyone can

00:02:30 ►

add to. And yes, we’re aware that somebody may vandalize that document someday, but until that

00:02:38 ►

happens, we’re going to leave it open and available for you to add to the document as well. The link is one of those long gobbledygook URLs,

00:02:46 ►

so I’ve added it to the top of the psychedelicsalon.com homepage under the title

00:02:52 ►

Events of Interest. So check it out and add to it if you can.

00:02:58 ►

So now I’m ready to listen to today’s interview that Lex Pelger did with Noah Potter, who is a lawyer

00:03:06 ►

specializing in psychedelic law. Just to put this into a little better perspective, I began

00:03:12 ►

practicing law myself in Houston, Texas in the summer of 1972, which was just one year after

00:03:19 ►

that criminal, Richard Nixon, had begun the so-called war on Drugs. And at the time, my partner and I specialized

00:03:26 ►

in real estate and business law, and so we would refer any prospective clients who were charged

00:03:32 ►

with crimes, well, we’d refer them to other lawyers who specialized in criminal law. Now, not long

00:03:38 ►

after I joined the firm, one of my partner’s clients had a friend who was charged with possession of marijuana and who needed an attorney.

00:03:47 ►

Well, my partner spent the best part of several days calling friends and acquaintances trying to find a lawyer to refer this person to.

00:03:56 ►

Because back then it was really that difficult for us to find even a single lawyer who was willing to stand up and work on drug-related cases.

00:04:06 ►

single lawyer who is willing to stand up and work on drug-related cases. Now, here we are 46 years later, and we’re about to listen to an interview with a lawyer who focuses on helping people who

00:04:11 ►

become victims of the government’s war on people who use drugs that aren’t patented by those

00:04:17 ►

companies who are donating the campaign funds, you know, the bribes to the congresspeople who are responsible for keeping this insane policy of prohibition in place.

00:04:28 ►

Well, it’s been a long road to get here and there’s a long way to go,

00:04:32 ►

but I think we should all be very grateful for people like Noah Potter who are willing to represent people like you and me.

00:04:39 ►

So now here’s Lex Pelger who will introduce today’s program.

00:04:53 ►

I’m Lex Pelger and this is the Psychedelic Salon 2.0.

00:05:01 ►

Today we talk with Noah Potter, a lawyer and psychedelic activist out of New York City.

00:05:05 ►

He studied addiction while at Columbia University and from there he began to discover the psychedelic culture of New York. That gets him mixed up

00:05:10 ►

into one of the great activist hubs of America when he meets the Yippies of 9 Bleecker Street.

00:05:17 ►

There he learns from old cowboy heroes like Dana Beal and gets to see the glory days of

00:05:21 ►

New York City activism. Noah went on to become a respected lawyer who was asked to join the New York City Bar Association’s Committee on Drugs and the Law.

00:05:31 ►

You can see his writings on psychedelics and the law at his blog, New Amsterdam Psychedelic Law.

00:05:37 ►

Today we’ll hear about how he came to his interest in this topic,

00:05:40 ►

and his musings about what the legal framework might look like

00:05:43 ►

in a world with a more sane policy towards psychedelics and other psychoactives.

00:05:54 ►

Noah, thanks so much for joining us on the show.

00:05:57 ►

Well, thanks for having me. Appreciate it a lot.

00:05:59 ►

So you were a poli-sci major at Columbia, and you actually were interested in drugs

00:06:03 ►

even at that time. You wrote your senior thesis on substance abuse treatment?

00:06:08 ►

Yep.

00:06:08 ►

Those were the days.

00:06:09 ►

I graduated in 95, and the world was different.

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There were no blogs or podcasts or psychedelic societies or psychedelic storytelling or anything

00:06:21 ►

like that.

00:06:23 ►

I’m from the world of before the internet, if you can imagine such a thing.

00:06:28 ►

I had gotten caught up in a resurgence of psychedelics in the late 80s, 89, 90.

00:06:40 ►

After eight years of Reagan and in the middle of four years of bush senior really

00:06:46 ►

bad scene um all around and uh i i had the perception that um in in a sense i guess

00:06:59 ►

there’s really not my i came out of it’s very highly subjective and idiosyncratic, not recommending this to the general public, but, you know, I came out of it with the conclusion that if you’re not going to engage with psychedelics, whatever movement, attempt to better the world, you know, save people, save living things, engender compassion, minimize destruction in the environment,

00:07:28 ►

try to keep everybody safe and alive, all that kind of thing.

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You know, you’re going to be limited if you don’t engage a psychedelic paradigm.

00:07:35 ►

I wasn’t thinking in those terms.

00:07:36 ►

I was thinking more in terms of, you know, there’s all this important work to be done in so many different causes,

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but where’s the psychedelic stuff?

00:07:54 ►

And I didn’t really discuss it with the idea so much that psychedelics were important as a, in a sense, a political consciousness and a political organizing phenomena.

00:08:00 ►

I don’t know, I didn’t know the people who were on that wavelength.

00:08:05 ►

And it was very rare.

00:08:07 ►

The drug policy issues were lifestyle on the planet.

00:08:32 ►

I was not aware of MAPS, for example, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic

00:08:38 ►

Studies had been formed a few years before.

00:08:41 ►

But I’m a kid in Southeast Pennsylvania and there’s no internet and it didn’t occur to me to go out and look and see who else was organizing.

00:08:50 ►

Now, there were other people out there.

00:08:52 ►

I didn’t look for them.

00:08:54 ►

Like I said, it didn’t occur to me. In my, I guess in the spring, early summer of my sophomore year, I encountered the Ibogaine movement, the political organizing and this, like, you know, political

00:09:27 ►

consciousness that had been beaten down and driven underground.

00:09:30 ►

And at that point, I said, well, I got this great opportunity to do stuff.

00:09:34 ►

Now I have a reason for my education.

00:09:36 ►

And so I began doing research.

00:09:40 ►

I researched and wrote on several issues as an undergraduate and as I finished off in

00:09:44 ►

my junior and senior year.

00:09:46 ►

And what was it like to be exploring something like substance abuse treatment at a place like Columbia that can be a little bit more on the conservative side around things like this?

00:09:56 ►

You know, I kind of like ran with a radical crew in my time there.

00:10:00 ►

I mean, I was not hanging out with like, you know, straight and normal people.

00:10:04 ►

And the thing is, there’s a very strong anti-authoritarian population, a critical and activist population.

00:10:11 ►

There’s lots of that going on. You know, I’m obviously even dating farther back into

00:10:16 ►

the 60s, a long tradition there. So I wasn’t really, I wasn’t dealing with any kind of

00:10:21 ►

conservative perspective. And people I was with whom I was interacting were generally very positive on the issue of drugs, shall we say.

00:10:31 ►

I mean, yes and no, because the thing is that the straight left, I mean, the campus, you know, there was a straight left.

00:10:38 ►

There wasn’t really much of a, you know, alternative style.

00:10:43 ►

You know, it was a very, very straight kind of political orientation.

00:10:48 ►

And so we didn’t tell it, you know, drugs wasn’t an issue.

00:10:50 ►

Drugs was subsidiary to other issues like class and race,

00:10:54 ►

but it didn’t have its own independent identity.

00:10:57 ►

But nonetheless, you know, there were no problems there with the population.

00:11:03 ►

And I did my study in, you know, I was an independent study,

00:11:10 ►

basically, from my own credit, that I had a political science advisor. No problem there.

00:11:16 ►

I mean, it’s a policy issue. It’s a somewhat obscure, you know, it’s like an obscure backwater.

00:11:24 ►

So, you know, no problem with doing research on it.

00:11:27 ►

And so how was it then finding this community around cannabis and psychedelics after your study?

00:11:33 ►

Well, no, I’m saying that it was the encounter with Dana and the surviving elements of the Yippie movement

00:11:41 ►

and the drug organizing, that’s what gave me the focus.

00:11:46 ►

That’s where I said, okay, let me do something with my time here.

00:11:48 ►

If I hadn’t encountered the activists, it wouldn’t have kicked me off to do the things

00:11:55 ►

that I did subsequently in my education and what I’m going to do now with activism.

00:12:01 ►

I simply wouldn’t have gone there because i and i i guess i i needed to

00:12:05 ►

see the history and that there had been organizing before me and there was this you know it was a

00:12:10 ►

this hidden world with lots of opportunity to do things um so but when i encountered them is like

00:12:16 ►

it was like being you know it was quite an amazing experience uh in you know to be experiencing

00:12:22 ►

new york city in City in the 90s,

00:12:26 ►

as opposed to now it’s become Disney World,

00:12:29 ►

and interact with long-term committed serious activists and organizers,

00:12:38 ►

and to come into contact with the network of people in the cannabis legalization movement.

00:12:45 ►

Dana was highly networked.

00:12:47 ►

He was one of the senior founders.

00:12:49 ►

So all kinds of people were passing through 9 Bleeker.

00:12:52 ►

And I had the ability to become aware of this network

00:12:55 ►

and became aware of the movement,

00:12:59 ►

the cannabis legalization movement of the 70s

00:13:02 ►

that had to go underground under the 12 years

00:13:05 ►

of the Republican just total zero tolerance, militarized policy. And I said, wow, this is

00:13:13 ►

amazing. There’s a totally hidden history. And actually, I would say that even now,

00:13:19 ►

to a very significant extent now, I don’t think people are aware of the heritage and what transpired, you know, prior to 2012, let’s say, or prior to 2000.

00:13:31 ►

I mean, prior to, wow, 2000 was a million years ago.

00:13:33 ►

Oh, this is a great wave of legalization.

00:13:35 ►

2000 was a big deal.

00:13:36 ►

Then it was 2012.

00:13:37 ►

It was always going to happen.

00:13:39 ►

And then it was, you know, it was just a matter of time and et cetera, et cetera.

00:13:42 ►

It was like, well, you know, there’s a lot of stuff that transpired before then.

00:13:46 ►

And so there was the remnants of the 70s movement.

00:13:51 ►

And it was, in a way, it was really quiet for a while because the domestic situation around was so grim,

00:13:59 ►

especially with drugs in particular, that there wasn’t really a lot to do there.

00:14:05 ►

You were like in serious lockdown.

00:14:07 ►

I mean, Ethan Nadelman, I think, started getting public in his analysis

00:14:12 ►

in the mid-’80s and into late-’80s, but, you know, is like few and far between.

00:14:18 ►

He was just about the only person who I can remember engaging the public space.

00:14:23 ►

I mean, he was the first person to really, to,

00:14:25 ►

to, you know, crack, cross through into, into public discourse. But, but, you know, anyway,

00:14:33 ►

so the answer to the question is, it was an amazing, liberating, enlightening experience.

00:14:39 ►

I felt like I had been reborn in, you know, to like, have my eyes open.

00:14:44 ►

Wow. and just a

00:14:46 ►

quick sign for people don’t know Ethan Nadelman is became the founder of the

00:14:50 ►

drug policy later name was a drug policy alliance and one of the major movers and

00:14:54 ►

shakers but that Noah got to interact with Dana Beal who is one of the most

00:14:58 ►

colorful and I think I mean he can he can drive some people crazy because he’s

00:15:01 ►

bullheaded but it also means he’s the reason that so much has changed.

00:15:05 ►

And so I was wondering if you could tell us more about 9 Bleecker Street, that kind of infamous center of cannabis and other types of activism in New York.

00:15:15 ►

What can I say?

00:15:15 ►

There’s no way to describe it.

00:15:18 ►

It’s like the fabled Camelot, the mythical, mystical place that was in, you know, words don’t do it justice.

00:15:29 ►

It just was.

00:15:32 ►

I mean, it’s like, you know, it was like living in the epicenter of radical history.

00:15:38 ►

I mean, yeah, I really don’t know what to say.

00:15:41 ►

I mean, you know, you had to be there.

00:15:44 ►

It was just, it was a teleport.

00:15:48 ►

It was a portal into another world and another time

00:15:52 ►

to be plugged into, I guess,

00:15:57 ►

an authentic manifestation of the hardcore 60s radical culture in New York City.

00:16:07 ►

It was all that.

00:16:09 ►

People coming and going from all over the country,

00:16:13 ►

all over the world, people just show up.

00:16:15 ►

They’re like, hey, is Vanna there?

00:16:19 ►

And the ability to participate in those conversations

00:16:23 ►

and of all different kinds of people.

00:16:27 ►

Some people whose names, you know, people just pass through and the big recollections.

00:16:33 ►

You know, there was activism.

00:16:35 ►

There were people.

00:16:35 ►

And it was like, you know, it’s a yippy place.

00:16:39 ►

So one of the things, you know, not to link the thoughts, but, you know, if you’re going to be in the drug, at least back in the day before everybody and his brother joined the movement, you had to be kind of off, in a sense, to be part of the drug scene. of political organizing around the people who are off the charts in terms of uh cultural identity

00:17:08 ►

and uh and sensibilities and so you know and and so um so there’s a lot of characters who floated

00:17:16 ►

through um it was it was chaotic it was totally beaten down i mean it was like i don’t know if

00:17:22 ►

i think dana did vacuum the second floor.

00:17:26 ►

I have a vague recollection of it, but there were cats everywhere, you know, because Dana and Alice kept a house full of cats.

00:17:32 ►

They were all over the place.

00:17:35 ►

You know, there were the old, the old overthrow newspapers lying around.

00:17:39 ►

And I actually didn’t realize how many overthrow newspapers and the extra times there were until we had to clear out the house in 2014 uh you know because there was the thing i don’t know if people know

00:17:51 ►

what nine bleaker was but nine bleaker was the headquarters of the uh latter era the era of the

00:17:56 ►

yippy movement um you know when a whole crew of people came in after abbyman and Jerry Rubin. It was a part of, it was a stop.

00:18:08 ►

It was one of the houses in the network of old, of new left houses around the East Village.

00:18:16 ►

So that’s the background on that, but it ended up going into foreclosure.

00:18:22 ►

And I worked on the attempted to, I attempted to intervene a little bit late in the process.

00:18:28 ►

Fortunately, we didn’t get very far.

00:18:30 ►

You know, it was a very, very difficult situation.

00:18:33 ►

And the plaintiff got the place through the foreclosure.

00:18:38 ►

But in the process, we needed to clear out the place.

00:18:42 ►

So, I mean, it was like an amazing excavation

00:18:45 ►

of ancient artifacts and materials.

00:18:48 ►

But part of that was to find these just stack upon stack upon stack

00:18:53 ►

of Yipster Times, overthrow magazines.

00:18:56 ►

And there were like, you know, literature from all different eras

00:18:59 ►

that was stacked up and lying around, you know,

00:19:02 ►

old posters from radical protests against Reagan throughout the 80s.

00:19:10 ►

What a time.

00:19:11 ►

And so then from your vantage point in New York City,

00:19:15 ►

what was it like to watch drug policy and cannabis and psychedelics start to come to the forefront, especially legally?

00:19:23 ►

I mean it’s a great – well, I mean to break up the forefront, especially legally? I mean, it’s a great, it’s, well, I mean,

00:19:25 ►

I don’t mean to break up the question a little bit.

00:19:27 ►

I mean, to see the movement grow,

00:19:31 ►

to see it evolve is a very exciting thing.

00:19:33 ►

I mean, it’s like, hey, you got friends now.

00:19:35 ►

We’ve got company here.

00:19:36 ►

There’s all this stuff going on.

00:19:38 ►

You’re going to like, you know, kindred spirits.

00:19:41 ►

And, you know, I was doing a lot of different things.

00:19:44 ►

I was working on, you know, my career. I was trying to do the activism engagement kind of, you know, as I could and with a professional and a family schedule.

00:20:08 ►

well clued into what was going on from like, you know, 2004, 2005, when I got back into drug policy up through, you know, the few years that I was the chair of the committee, the Committee on Drugs

00:20:16 ►

and Law at the City Bar Association. But my perception is it was around, it was like February,

00:20:22 ►

April, May, whenever Open Cannabis had their first meeting.

00:20:25 ►

And this is just my perspective.

00:20:27 ►

There might have been stuff going on, like, you know, you might have been doing the stuff, I’m sorry to say, that was really cutting edge and I just missed it because I wasn’t networked.

00:20:33 ►

But my recollection is that right early, like spring of 2014, just like all hell broke loose.

00:20:42 ►

And all of a sudden there was Open Cannabis, there was Occupy Weed Street,

00:20:46 ►

there was High and Wide,

00:20:47 ►

there was Cannabis and Hemp Association,

00:20:50 ►

there was MJBA was doing stuff.

00:20:54 ►

It was like, boom!

00:20:56 ►

It was like, you know,

00:20:57 ►

somebody had dropped a green bomb,

00:21:00 ►

like in Aronofsky’s Noah movie, right,

00:21:03 ►

where he throws the seed and the huge forest sprouts up

00:21:06 ►

or some variation thereof is like all of a sudden places bursting at the seams with uh cannabis

00:21:12 ►

academic and like you know and then women grow comes in on top of that cannabis cultural

00:21:16 ►

association joe bondy has a uh i know a podcast going every fr. It’s very inspiring.

00:21:25 ►

It’s a great thing to see.

00:21:29 ►

You know, I mean, I guess I have,

00:21:31 ►

it’s wonderful.

00:21:33 ►

It’s really great to see the activism.

00:21:36 ►

And there’s like, there’s a movement now.

00:21:38 ►

I mean, you know, the goal,

00:21:40 ►

I would think that as a general for a political organizer,

00:21:41 ►

your goal is to unite your people.

00:21:44 ►

You know, I mean, that was one of the, that was the very first thing that Dana said to unite your people. You know, I mean, that was one of the,

00:21:45 ►

that was the very first thing that Dana said to me, like, you know, I mean,

00:21:49 ►

early on he said, you got to basically divide your opposition,

00:21:54 ►

build a coalition, you know, and that’s it.

00:21:58 ►

That’s the name, the name of the game. Or, you know,

00:22:02 ►

I think he said, let your, your idea build a coalition. Like, that’s what it’s

00:22:06 ►

about. It’s about unifying people to the extent possible to work towards a common goal. Now,

00:22:13 ►

I will say, you know, a thousand distinctions. That was the message of the guy who was organizing

00:22:19 ►

Charlottesville. The message was unite the right. Like, hey, guys, let’s figure out how we’re going

00:22:24 ►

to get to where we want to go. We have common interests you know your your enemy is my enemy

00:22:29 ►

and you know we have stuff in common um so that’s kind of the name of the game whoever

00:22:35 ►

whichever leader can arise and unite the unite the nobles will be the king i guess or the new king

00:22:41 ►

so in you know that’s part of the question, I think, certainly for cannabis.

00:22:47 ►

I mean, the entire drug policy reform movement.

00:22:51 ►

Now, cannabis has gotten so big and multifaceted and consists of so many constituents.

00:22:58 ►

It’s complicated, but it’s not so bad, I think, because I think the dangers are so present and potent that people more or less like want to back each other.

00:23:11 ►

Yes, I know, sticking together, I would think, perceiving that there’s still a clear and present danger.

00:23:18 ►

But the, you know, it’s good to have this movement,

00:23:25 ►

this population.

00:23:26 ►

I think it’s really a critical time in New York

00:23:29 ►

and great to the extent that it’s possible

00:23:32 ►

to organize together

00:23:33 ►

in some kind of coordinated way.

00:23:36 ►

It’s a critical moment

00:23:37 ►

in terms of the evolution of drug policy here

00:23:39 ►

or the potential evolution

00:23:41 ►

depending on what happens with the legalization bill

00:23:43 ►

that’s pending,

00:23:45 ►

Liz Kruger’s proposed legislation.

00:23:52 ►

So it’s a great thing. I think the potential is great.

00:23:55 ►

And I guess to connect to the ideas, what I was saying earlier,

00:23:59 ►

is that I have a concern that people don’t know history.

00:24:04 ►

I have a concern that people don’t know history.

00:24:10 ►

And I was definitely concerned going into the election all through the summer and fall of 2016.

00:24:14 ►

People don’t know that you can have a bear market.

00:24:15 ►

Things can come down.

00:24:16 ►

Things go up.

00:24:17 ►

Things come down.

00:24:20 ►

Things can come down hard and shatter.

00:24:25 ►

And people don’t – I mean, I could be wrong I mean maybe you know I don’t get out enough

00:24:26 ►

and there are people who are totally onto this

00:24:28 ►

and this is a kind of subjective

00:24:29 ►

conversation I just missed it

00:24:33 ►

but

00:24:33 ►

I don’t think people understand

00:24:36 ►

how there was a coup in a sense

00:24:39 ►

within I mean

00:24:40 ►

there’s a dramatic

00:24:42 ►

back and forward movement

00:24:44 ►

in drug policy reform.

00:24:46 ►

And drug policy reform is an amazing little petri dish of weird ebbs and flows because

00:24:52 ►

you’re the intersection between mental health, criminal justice, international policy.

00:24:59 ►

It’s like this, it’s a very volatile area.

00:25:04 ►

But, you know, there was a people thought cannabis legalization was coming down.

00:25:09 ►

That’s the problem.

00:25:10 ►

People are like, yeah, it’s going to be legal because they were in the Carter administration.

00:25:13 ►

And all of a sudden, boom, basically there’s a coup in a sense.

00:25:17 ►

And their opposition, what was going by the name of the Parents movement and then became the prevention movement. So in a sense you have the political doctrine or you have a,

00:25:26 ►

a public health doctrine of prevention that gets turned into a repurposed as

00:25:34 ►

public order and public safety, right.

00:25:36 ►

Enforced by the police and the inside, the criminal justice system.

00:25:40 ►

So, but they had a constituency that came in that organized the,

00:25:44 ►

the parents movement that

00:25:46 ►

morphed into something huge um basically found a bunch of allies in the federal government

00:25:53 ►

right and they are all like getting really friendly in after the election and that’s

00:25:58 ►

what part of my concern now is that if you if you have any recollection of reagan

00:26:02 ►

um things didn’t happen immediately.

00:26:06 ►

This is year one of Trump.

00:26:08 ►

We haven’t even been through

00:26:09 ►

a full year of Trump. We’re literally like 11

00:26:11 ►

months. We’re in the first 11

00:26:13 ►

months of the administration.

00:26:16 ►

And people don’t

00:26:18 ►

remember. It was basically like

00:26:19 ►

a counter-revolution.

00:26:21 ►

Reagan came in as a white backlash

00:26:24 ►

counter-revolution against the chaos in as a white backlash counter-revolution against the chaos

00:26:26 ►

of the, quote,

00:26:28 ►

chaos of the 60s and 70s.

00:26:30 ►

I don’t know if people are

00:26:31 ►

seeing where we are as this

00:26:33 ►

wave coming at us

00:26:36 ►

like a ripple from the massive

00:26:38 ►

shock of the counter-culture,

00:26:40 ►

the psychedelic culture,

00:26:42 ►

of the 1960s.

00:26:49 ►

People laughed at kevin sabbath sabbath like i mean kevin sabbath was like the the loyal opposition throughout all the the obama

00:26:57 ►

administration like the in this you know this big the the um i, the, um, I don’t know, the total transformation of the public image of cannabis

00:27:07 ►

that happened over the eight years of the Obama administration. Kevin Savage was like the last

00:27:12 ►

person out there. And he’s not the only person in the anti-cannabis movement. There’s a whole

00:27:16 ►

crew of people in the anti-cannabis movement, but he was the only one out there whom I was,

00:27:20 ►

there was really making a public face. I mean, it’s kind of like, you know, the counterpart to

00:27:24 ►

Ethan Nadelman in the sense of like the person who was the

00:27:27 ►

go-to guy is always quoted. He’s the expert.

00:27:30 ►

So you don’t laugh at him because he’s still there.

00:27:34 ►

He’s still organizing and that, you know, you don’t, don’t,

00:27:37 ►

don’t believe your own propaganda and,

00:27:41 ►

and discount your opposition just because you seem to be doing well.

00:27:47 ►

So you’ve got to move.

00:27:50 ►

And I guess that’s why the issue is it’s time to start really thinking through

00:27:56 ►

and manifesting what common points there are in drug policy, the drug policy field,

00:28:07 ►

the drug policy reform movement.

00:28:19 ►

Yes, and that’s part of the reason I really enjoy your work, especially writing on the blog, is it gets into that nitty-gritty of what this policy might actually look like.

00:28:31 ►

We have a lot of people like, well, people shouldn’t be going to jail for it, and it should look like this, and it should be free and open. It’s like, well, there is what might be perfect in a utopia, but there’s also what can be accomplished in this atmosphere and under this kind of legacy of laws that we have.

00:28:35 ►

And you’ve been writing about this a lot lately.

00:28:36 ►

And I’d be curious to hear more about your writings about the – even just the questions that you’re asking about what psychedelic law might look like

00:28:46 ►

and what fields of law be involved.

00:28:49 ►

Okay, yeah.

00:28:51 ►

Well, thank you for all the kind words.

00:28:54 ►

And you’re right, it’s more questions.

00:28:58 ►

I mean, I guess that’s what it got.

00:28:59 ►

I mean, I have great regrets that I don’t have more proposals, specific proposals to make.

00:29:06 ►

I mean, that was a time management issue and being like, you know, on the ball ready for this moment.

00:29:11 ►

But, you know, better late than never, I guess.

00:29:14 ►

And so it is, it’s a set of questions.

00:29:17 ►

And I guess, look, I call the blog an open source thought experiment.

00:29:23 ►

And, you know, that’s what it is. It’s an open source thought experiment. I know that’s what it is it’s an open

00:29:26 ►

source thought experiment is a collaborative matter to ask the

00:29:32 ►

questions again right I mean a question is a statement right you just you just

00:29:38 ►

turn it around you know you know being you say you what’s the issue here what’s

00:29:43 ►

this what you know what do we make of this?

00:29:45 ►

How do we handle this?

00:29:46 ►

What does it mean?

00:29:47 ►

How are we supposed to react in a particular situation?

00:29:49 ►

And then you take the question mark away and you turn it into a sentence.

00:29:54 ►

And you might just have a bunch of drop-down lines

00:29:56 ►

and you start projecting what you do in a particular situation.

00:30:00 ►

Okay, so without, you know, to reel it back from being poetic there,

00:30:05 ►

situation okay so without you know to reel it back from being more poetic there um people who the the the excuse me the perspective that it should just happen

00:30:16 ►

naturally you know government does need to get involved this is a matter of my right to do this uh civil liberties um etc i mean i hear it and

00:30:29 ►

i’m saying you and you just you know characterize it i guess is somewhat utopian and yeah sure

00:30:34 ►

exactly it’s utopian but you know more my line of thinking is does anything work that way like

00:30:41 ►

oh you know there’s freedom of speech. There’s speech laws.

00:30:48 ►

You really don’t get to say whatever you want.

00:30:50 ►

There are legal limits on what you’re allowed to say.

00:30:51 ►

So you’re going to tell me that I have powerful psychoactive substances

00:30:54 ►

and the government’s like, oh, my bad.

00:30:56 ►

You want to drop acid

00:30:58 ►

and play in the middle of the train tracks?

00:31:00 ►

I’m sorry.

00:31:01 ►

This is only me. Who am I to get involved?

00:31:03 ►

Or whatever. You want to get behind the wheel of a car? Oh know okay go for it you know what i don’t really get involved in

00:31:08 ►

such things well obviously those are insanely extreme cases but who in their right mind is

00:31:16 ►

going to allow a society i mean a society to function without any normative rules governing the actions, people’s actions around the powerful psychoacoustics.

00:31:29 ►

What? Okay. So, but, you know, and I actually wrote an article for Chacruna, if I’m pronouncing

00:31:38 ►

it correctly, a really phenomenal website run by Bia Labate in Brazil. I wrote a piece I expect is, I understand

00:31:49 ►

is going to run fairly soon, and on the psychedelic markets of the future. And I mean, you know,

00:31:58 ►

just to quote myself, I guess, or to speak out the analysis, law, I would say, is a set of relationships.

00:32:08 ►

Whenever you have two phenomena,

00:32:10 ►

when you have one phenomena,

00:32:12 ►

you don’t need a law because it just is.

00:32:14 ►

The thing is.

00:32:15 ►

Once you have two phenomena,

00:32:17 ►

they relate to each other.

00:32:19 ►

And I would venture to say,

00:32:21 ►

I would humbly submit,

00:32:22 ►

that the name of that relationship is law.

00:32:26 ►

You know, you have laws of physics.

00:32:28 ►

I mean, it’s not my area.

00:32:30 ►

I’m just going to get poetic again here.

00:32:32 ►

But the law is a relationship.

00:32:36 ►

So people relate to each other.

00:32:39 ►

And an example is if you’ve ever lived with anybody else there are probably rules that govern the bathroom right

00:32:45 ►

and the kitchen and you know you some things you’re allowed to leave in the sink and some you’re not

00:32:48 ►

so there’s a law there there’s two people there’s people two three however many people interact

00:32:53 ►

each other and they need to set up a set of norms right i mean unless we’re all i don’t know i don’t

00:32:59 ►

know what the psychological term is for being entirely in your own head and nobody else exists right then

00:33:05 ►

you’re conscious of other people and so you i mean i guess so i mean okay they could be and i’m saying

00:33:11 ►

i’m saying like literally like nobody else exists you know these are like people talking at me but

00:33:18 ►

i’m the same i’m i’m everything okay so that if that soci good. So that’s the term. But otherwise, you’ve got to formulate norms, which may become standards, which may become rules, which may become law, which may or could not.

00:33:35 ►

You pass from informal relationships to highly formal relationships. So relationships that are so formal that if you act in a certain way, the other person

00:33:45 ►

has the ability to drag you into court and get a judgment against you and like, you know, take your

00:33:50 ►

properties. Like it gets to be that level of severity. Criminal law, that’s pretty severe,

00:33:55 ►

but you have criminal laws for reasons, you know? I mean, are you going to tell me that

00:34:02 ►

nobody intervenes in the bullying when the big kid is bullying the little kid?

00:34:07 ►

Like you don’t get involved?

00:34:08 ►

No, you get involved.

00:34:09 ►

You’re like, hey, stand against the wall or whatever.

00:34:10 ►

Well, that’s, you know, and I’m sorry to say it’s a gross reductionist or like, you know, characterization.

00:34:18 ►

Maybe people are not ready to hear.

00:34:21 ►

But in an ideal sense, a premise of the system, that’s criminal law.

00:34:29 ►

Now, I mean, that’s the theory of what’s going on.

00:34:34 ►

You know, the just impulses of society are being applied as necessary to maintain order.

00:34:40 ►

Okay, so that’s not what happens.

00:34:41 ►

But that’s the premise.

00:34:43 ►

maintain order. Okay. So that’s not what happens, but that’s, that’s the,

00:34:45 ►

that’s the premise. And again,

00:34:51 ►

you’re just going through walking through different possibilities of what it means to have law and regulation in society. So the short answer, I’m sorry,

00:34:55 ►

there’s a bit extended. The short answer is I don’t see a totally unregulated

00:35:02 ►

market. Like, and I, and I And I just, it doesn’t,

00:35:06 ►

there is no market like that.

00:35:09 ►

And to go to the point,

00:35:10 ►

the piece I wrote is Psychedelic Marches of the Future

00:35:14 ►

because I’m thinking and I’m speaking in terms of markets.

00:35:18 ►

We’ve discussed in the past

00:35:20 ►

the idea that the perspective,

00:35:24 ►

and the point is not the idea that it’s not to be a monopoly,

00:35:28 ►

not to dictate this is the way, this is the way, folks, you know what.

00:35:32 ►

But there’s a multitude of perspectives,

00:35:36 ►

and I’m offering this one to say there are other perspectives.

00:35:39 ►

You know, there’s a criminal, there’s a racial equity perspective. There is, you know, a civil liberty, civil rights, the cognitive liberties perspective.

00:35:55 ►

There’s economic opportunity.

00:35:56 ►

There’s cannabis.

00:35:57 ►

A lot of this stuff is playing out with cannabis.

00:35:58 ►

It’s just kind of starting to manifest in the psychedelic scene.

00:36:02 ►

I mean, I guess I don’t get out there so much.

00:36:04 ►

So I’m seeing it happen from afar, but I’m seeing it a lot more,

00:36:08 ►

a lot more discussion.

00:36:10 ►

But it’s really played out a lot in cannabis.

00:36:12 ►

So you have multiple paradigms,

00:36:16 ►

but I’m going to offer another paradigm,

00:36:17 ►

and that’s the market regulation paradigm.

00:36:20 ►

And that the inquiry for all of the, well,

00:36:24 ►

we’re talking about psychedelics. And this is across the board for all of the, well, we’re talking about psychedelics,

00:36:25 ►

and this is across the board for all psychoactive substances,

00:36:28 ►

and really it’s about all products that travel in commerce.

00:36:33 ►

And, you know, I put out the analysis before

00:36:35 ►

that a psychedelic substance is, it can be many things,

00:36:41 ►

but from a really, really technical perspective,

00:36:44 ►

it’s merchandise,‘s a a good that

00:36:47 ►

travels in commerce people make it they buy it they’re wholesalers they distribute it people

00:36:54 ►

the individual consumer purchases and uses it and it’s a good that travels in commerce all

00:36:59 ►

different kinds could be sacred it could be a sacred good to travel and commerce. Different possibilities.

00:37:06 ►

But that’s the

00:37:07 ►

I would offer as the context

00:37:09 ►

because

00:37:10 ►

that’s kind of the way things

00:37:13 ►

work.

00:37:17 ►

Real estate

00:37:17 ►

is not a good to travel and commerce, but there’s

00:37:19 ►

market for real estate

00:37:21 ►

and there’s

00:37:24 ►

some controls on it. Some people would like more, but, you know, there are, I mean, all of these products and services are governed by, you know, rules governing, I would say, the marketplace.

00:37:51 ►

Likewise, and you come at it from the market perspective, I think it’s easier to break down the system into manageable parts.

00:37:58 ►

And again, you know, the cannabis evolution and cannabis is a very helpful model. I’m not going to say that it’s it’s the model.

00:38:02 ►

And I think that’s a problem potentially problematic fallacy

00:38:05 ►

to assume that all substances must be treated the same one model must work for

00:38:11 ►

all in some way I think that needs to be checked out and assessed first before

00:38:16 ►

making such a categorical conclusion so the the market focus that we see from

00:38:24 ►

cannabis I mean there’s all kinds of issues that come out.

00:38:27 ►

On the user side, the question of testing for impairment using a motor vehicle, that’s a demand side consideration.

00:38:36 ►

The individual consumer pesticides is on the supply side.

00:38:42 ►

is on the supply side.

00:38:48 ►

The supply side, the whole evolution of the supply side,

00:38:53 ►

what we see that the big deal is the legalization of the supply side.

00:39:00 ►

I mean, I guess pesticides is the one that comes to mind primarily.

00:39:10 ►

There’s the public safety concern on the supply side in terms of the inability to use the banking system on the part of the businesses.

00:39:18 ►

You break out, identify who the people are, the players in the market, and look at how they interact.

00:39:22 ►

And the fundamental policy concern is risk.

00:39:24 ►

What everybody wants to know is, is this going to hurt me? Okay, it would be great if it helps me, but I definitely don’t want it to hurt me.

00:39:29 ►

So how could this thing that you’re proposing to introduce my life hurt me?

00:39:35 ►

And there’s a lot of work to be done on that.

00:39:40 ►

There’s work to be done on that in terms of cannabis, all the more so in terms of psychedelics.

00:39:46 ►

So if you can focus in and make realistic assessments about potential risk, I mean, it’s only the polite thing to do.

00:39:56 ►

I mean, you know, the psychedelic movement of whatever size it is shares the planet with 7 billion people.

00:40:01 ►

And presumably you’re asking them to make really significant, allow for significant changes in society. society you know i kind of owe it to them to like you know hey this is good this

00:40:09 ►

would be good for you it’s not any bad for you so you know but but the the the format for doing that

00:40:15 ►

i think is through the market regulation model and this is not original because i haven’t looked

00:40:23 ►

at the literature lately but when I was

00:40:25 ►

studying this as an undergraduate the paradigm of drug control on the

00:40:29 ►

controller side at least at the time is market regulation because how do they

00:40:35 ►

analyze what they’re doing they analyze it the classic terms of the market

00:40:39 ►

supply and demand the federal drug Array, which is aka the budgetary arrangement,

00:40:48 ►

who gets a piece of the money, was broken out into two concepts, supply reduction and demand

00:40:54 ►

reduction. Everybody knows you’re trying to like, you know, it’s actually interesting they said

00:40:57 ►

reduction, not elimination. That’s kind of funny. But that was the term, that was the verb, reduction. The supply reduction focuses on the huge expanse, the array of phenomena that go into bringing the product to the market.

00:41:17 ►

You got the supply side, you got the product, and you got the demand side, the consumer.

00:41:22 ►

And the goal is to get from the supply side to the demand side.

00:41:26 ►

And the goal of the government is to interrupt that flow of the product,

00:41:30 ►

optimally at the source.

00:41:31 ►

So you go and, you know, like spray Paraquad on ganja fields in Mexico.

00:41:38 ►

Okay, so that’s really, you know, that’s pretty direct.

00:41:40 ►

Go kill the plant.

00:41:43 ►

Interdiction at sea, et cetera.

00:41:46 ►

Cops on the street.

00:41:47 ►

That’s all in a rubric of, well, maybe not the cops on the street, but the cops who are breaking up the distributorships, the distributors, distribution rings.

00:41:57 ►

That’s about stopping the product from getting to the market.

00:41:59 ►

That’s the supply reduction.

00:42:01 ►

Demand reduction is the name for dare and just say no and

00:42:08 ►

partnership drug for America people get funding channel parents like you know

00:42:13 ►

the drug testing putting people in jail you know that’s a form of demand

00:42:19 ►

reduction because you’re you know you’re disincentivizing them, supposedly, from getting involved,

00:42:27 ►

forfeiting people’s benefits.

00:42:32 ►

No, it’s demand reduction, because you’re trying to encourage people,

00:42:34 ►

hey, don’t do this, this is bad, don’t consume.

00:42:38 ►

So that’s, I should have said, just working off the government paradigm.

00:42:42 ►

You know, I have no shame in that.

00:42:44 ►

I think it’s the appropriate thing to do.

00:42:45 ►

Work off the, you know, analyze them.

00:42:48 ►

I mean, you want to move beyond that.

00:42:50 ►

I mean, the first thing to do is to engage with the prevailing, the governing paradigm.

00:42:55 ►

So, you know, and then go with it.

00:42:58 ►

Turn it into something else.

00:42:59 ►

And that’s actually, I think, the goal.

00:43:01 ►

But start with the paradigm.

00:43:03 ►

And in a sense, so it’s, it’s good.

00:43:05 ►

You know, that’s what, how they analyzed it.

00:43:09 ►

They did not analyze it in terms, when I say they, I mean, there’s the great shapeless,

00:43:15 ►

faceless they.

00:43:16 ►

I mean, I’m saying colloquially the people who have, were still around, but they were the architects, the dominant voice and orientation

00:43:29 ►

on drug policy up until, I guess, say 2008 or really more 2012, when Obama, I think, was free

00:43:36 ►

to do what he wanted with drug policy. They didn’t phrase the thing as, hey, there’s this

00:43:42 ►

like amazing substances, like unbelievable, like, wow,

00:43:46 ►

you know what they can do? Let’s figure out how to, you know, figure out what we can do with them.

00:43:50 ►

So I’m positive. No, they didn’t go there. They went somewhere else. And the somewhere else they

00:43:56 ►

went, the paradigm is the market, their own version of the market. So we turned that around.

00:44:05 ►

Okay, so fine.

00:44:06 ►

So you had one version of a market.

00:44:08 ►

You wanted to maintain an illegal market.

00:44:10 ►

So if we’re not going to do the illegal market anymore,

00:44:13 ►

well, let’s figure it out.

00:44:15 ►

Again, there’s the supply side, supply chain,

00:44:20 ►

and there’s the consumers.

00:44:24 ►

It is.

00:44:25 ►

I mean, it is a powerful paradigm, especially because you do have to engage what the opposition is doing.

00:44:32 ►

But I also know that I can hear a lot of people thinking out there just the antipathy to treating psychedelics or cannabis like this just because they are so holy to people.

00:44:47 ►

100%.

00:44:48 ►

Yeah.

00:44:49 ►

100%.

00:44:49 ►

And sometimes it’s just so tricky.

00:44:52 ►

Actually, especially what you were saying about cannabis and being cautious about applying that directly to psychedelics

00:44:57 ►

because cannabis is even weirder in the sense that it’s an industrial product.

00:45:01 ►

It’s an agricultural product.

00:45:03 ►

It’s a food product.

00:45:04 ►

It’s a medicine. It is a recreational recreational toxicant it’s a sacrament uh psychedelics in one sense are are

00:45:11 ►

less widespread than that they can do more weird things in your brain but they’re not

00:45:15 ►

um all these different things sure and it’s going to be absolutely absolutely absolutely i’m i’m

00:45:20 ►

yeah well no it’s an it’s an i i think that that’s a very – that’s a potent point.

00:45:29 ►

And let me say, to jump in on that, that I would – and part of the complication is that these are all hybrid products.

00:45:39 ►

They don’t fit any of the normal – the established concept of what a product is.

00:45:46 ►

fit any of the normal, you know, the established concept of what a product is. They just, they don’t, they don’t, that’s the thing. They don’t, they trigger, it’s like they, they, it’s like they

00:45:50 ►

trigger too many neurotransmitters, not to be able to suppose to trigger all these neurotransmitters,

00:45:55 ►

you know, at the same time. It’s like, oh, hey, well, what’s going on here? So they don’t fit

00:45:59 ►

easy classifications, exactly like you were saying about cannabis, you know, on the psychedelic

00:46:04 ►

aspect and these problematic colloquial terms, you you know you and i have to sit down and figure out some

00:46:09 ►

terminology here but you know just going with the colloquial terms cannabis as opposed to

00:46:14 ►

psychedelics and psychedelics being this patch all vague category um but but they are, you know, the psychedelics, I guess, also are hybrid products to the extent that you can have a substance that may be construed as sacramental or, you know, it’s it’s physical and emotional simultaneously.

00:46:50 ►

Like what? Like, I didn’t think you could have a drug like that.

00:46:55 ►

So that’s the problem is that the problem is that they it’s the the proverbial breaking the mold.

00:47:04 ►

They don’t they don’t fit. It’s the square. It’s the square peg in the round hole or the mold. They don’t,

00:47:05 ►

they don’t fit.

00:47:05 ►

It’s the square.

00:47:06 ►

It’s the square peg in the round hole or the other way around,

00:47:09 ►

whichever it is.

00:47:11 ►

And that’s,

00:47:12 ►

that’s part of the reason for the complications we’re having,

00:47:16 ►

I think.

00:47:16 ►

And let me say,

00:47:17 ►

people are saying,

00:47:18 ►

well,

00:47:19 ►

no,

00:47:19 ►

it’s like,

00:47:19 ►

Hey,

00:47:20 ►

you can’t do this.

00:47:21 ►

You can’t talk about my,

00:47:22 ►

my sacrament like that or whatever,

00:47:24 ►

or,

00:47:24 ►

you know,

00:47:24 ►

all of a sudden you want to hand the keys over to government when we have enough problems with

00:47:28 ►

them already they’ve you know they’ve forfeited their they have no moral authority here like you

00:47:34 ►

know um yeah i mean i mean i mean okay but um you know you you gotta got to do something with them.

00:47:49 ►

You can look at the system as being a corrupted version of an ideal.

00:47:58 ►

The ideal is still there.

00:48:01 ►

Now, if it’s a bad ideal, then time to move on. If it’s a good ideal or it’s got the

00:48:10 ►

potential for good in it and you can draw that out, then do that and engage with the system,

00:48:16 ►

the belief that you can get back to positive ideals. You have a positive ideal of freedom of freedom, free exercise of relation

00:48:26 ►

and freedom of speech, et cetera, and freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures, et cetera.

00:48:34 ►

Okay. So what’s like, you know, great idea. of availability. How do you want the substances to be made available? Let me say billboards? Maybe you’re not branding a product, although presumably somebody could, you know, Snoop Dogg’s proprietary version of MDMA.

00:49:24 ►

somebody that’s wanting to go there, but is that, do people, are people okay with commercialization and promotion because you allowing it to happen, you know, you’re letting people do their thing.

00:49:29 ►

So is that okay? Or I mean, did somebody step in and say no, I mean, and I guess the bigger picture

00:49:34 ►

and then the circle back is that my, my sense is the problem we have is that nobody can at the

00:49:43 ►

moment can really project what something like this will look like.

00:49:47 ►

It’s like we’re walking into the future facing backwards.

00:49:54 ►

And because these are all hybrid products of some kind, there is going to need to be an evolution, a legal evolution, I suppose.

00:50:06 ►

evolution, a legal evolution, I suppose. I mean, as long as cultural evolution, anthropological,

00:50:11 ►

sociological, whatever, all these perspectives need to change, presumably to accommodate this new phenomena, or not a new phenomena, but a phenomenon of which they don’t have a

00:50:17 ►

relationship in living memory. You know, again, this is the massive amnesia of psychoactive

00:50:24 ►

substances and prior, you know, before like the turn of the 20th century and the ascendance and dominance of biological medicine and, you know, industrial chemistry, I guess.

00:50:39 ►

We need to do trial and error.

00:50:42 ►

And again, it’s the risk assessment. Coming at it from a risk assessment perspective.

00:50:47 ►

Now, as I’ve proposed to you in the past,

00:50:49 ►

my question is, would you want Charles Manson to be your trip guide?

00:50:53 ►

And if you wouldn’t, how do you try to keep that from happening?

00:51:01 ►

Do you need some kind of ability to do a legal intervention of some kind if you find out

00:51:08 ►

that Charles Manson has become somebody’s trip guide? Do you say, hey, folks, let’s sit down

00:51:14 ►

and talk about licensing criteria? People don’t like the idea of a licensing. But I mean, look,

00:51:19 ►

this is where, I mean, there’s some really nice pieces, as I said, great stuff on the Czech Runa website.

00:51:27 ►

And to refer people to an article that Professor Walsh wrote on the topic of basically psychedelic legalization.

00:51:39 ►

Excuse me.

00:51:42 ►

And I picked this up in my article as well and I know I thought it was a very

00:51:48 ►

very you know useful starting point I’m a place a place I wish it to embellish

00:51:55 ►

and there’s already a practice and brick Doblin has made this comment as

00:52:02 ►

observation as well the thing about these

00:52:05 ►

substances is there’s lots and lots and lots of people using them and like figuring out how to use

00:52:12 ►

them and creating living living in subcultures there’s there’s decades of uh user experience

00:52:21 ►

when it comes to that and that’s what that’s that’s like, you know, the modern psychedelic movement, let’s say start, let’s say 1965 plus,

00:52:27 ►

but for the plants or the biological, the psychedelic biologicals,

00:52:33 ►

those have been around and used for thousands of years.

00:52:35 ►

So like you’re going to come along and say, no, it’s not safe to use. Uh,

00:52:40 ►

what? So the, the, the, the,

00:52:44 ►

the global piece that comes out of that is that if people already have

00:52:49 ►

knowledge about how the thing works then you gotta defer to their experience and their knowledge

00:52:56 ►

um just because like like there’s people who have experience with you like not listen to them i mean then that’s actually part of the the the thought control construct of uh of drug law i mean very specifically particular

00:53:12 ►

manifestation um i will quote myself and i will refer people to my piece mad men rule you on my

00:53:18 ►

uh october 2012 piece in which i attempt to deconstruct the DEA’s legal theory for maintaining cannabis prohibition.

00:53:31 ►

The way that they maintain the order, they maintain the prohibition structure,

00:53:37 ►

is by saying, we will consider no evidence except that which we deem acceptable.

00:53:40 ►

I mean, that’s what people, you know, people do that.

00:53:41 ►

There’s rules of evidence.

00:53:45 ►

But they say, you know, we’re not going to consider any anecdotal evidence you want to tell me that it it’s like you know but your cancer intermission oh that’s

00:53:50 ►

nice oh that’s kind of cute oh really you think so well if you don’t have a randomized double

00:53:55 ►

blind clinical trial you know you know please doors that way so the and that is in a very kind

00:54:02 ►

of cold and clinical aspect that’s the way they maintain prohibition.

00:54:07 ►

You can say, I don’t care what you say.

00:54:09 ►

I want you to meet my standards.

00:54:12 ►

My standards require that you put out about a billion dollars to get FDA approval.

00:54:19 ►

But hey, if you really care, you’ll figure it out.

00:54:22 ►

Like, you know, if you really care, you’ll figure it out.

00:54:30 ►

But that’s, you know, when I say they, again, the faceless, nameless, proverbial they,

00:54:36 ►

I’m talking about the DEA and the FDA working according to the test that’s in place.

00:54:42 ►

But that’s a problem because there’s lots of evidence.

00:54:43 ►

There’s experience.

00:54:47 ►

There’s real- life practical experience so it’s particularly with the with the psychedelic botanicals or I mean sorry the psychedelic biologicals to include

00:54:51 ►

animal derived psychedelics and fungi it makes no sense not to consult with the

00:55:03 ►

people who have a direct knowledge and he he’s like, duh, I mean, what better source of information do you have than them?

00:55:10 ►

And that goes to, I mean, this is all great, like big picture flowery stuff.

00:55:15 ►

But in practice, what that means is you, you know, you, uh, I mean, the, the most just neutral maybe, um, concept is that of the

00:55:29 ►

voluntary association. You got people who get together to do something together, or they’ve

00:55:35 ►

got some kind of common interest. They’re a voluntary association of people. So I guess

00:55:39 ►

the paradigm, uh, of the, the social club or a collective, guess you know in a sense that’s what it

00:55:46 ►

is it’s you if you have entities the groups of people self monitoring with

00:55:55 ►

with some kind of best practices I mean it’s got to be open to some kind of

00:56:00 ►

scrutiny you can’t tell me if you didn’t have a group of people who can go get

00:56:03 ►

together you know,

00:56:05 ►

set themselves up

00:56:06 ►

in a space,

00:56:07 ►

members only,

00:56:08 ►

and start dosing people

00:56:10 ►

and nobody’s allowed

00:56:11 ►

and it goes on there.

00:56:13 ►

I just, you know,

00:56:14 ►

hey, I mean,

00:56:14 ►

it’s great.

00:56:15 ►

It’s magical.

00:56:16 ►

It’s beautiful.

00:56:17 ►

I love it.

00:56:17 ►

But I’m just not seeing

00:56:20 ►

the state

00:56:21 ►

going for that right now.

00:56:23 ►

At least not now.

00:56:24 ►

Maybe someday, you know, know but i mean we can

00:56:28 ►

contemplate that reality but it’s the the the skeleton for that doesn’t exist yet and if you’re

00:56:38 ►

realistic i’m sorry i shouldn’t say that’s know, judgmental and so on to say realistic, you know, my bad. But, I mean, I think looking at the relative balance of power and, you know, who has the penitentiaries and who has the criminal forfeiture laws, etc., you know, and who has the guns and everything else.

00:57:06 ►

Like there’s a power imbalance.

00:57:10 ►

So if you want to make this thing happen, then work with it.

00:57:18 ►

And be adapted in the form of, I guess, best practice organizations.

00:57:28 ►

And there is a group now, a legal network,

00:57:31 ►

forming under the auspices of MAPS,

00:57:34 ►

the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies.

00:57:37 ►

You can talk to Natalie Ginsburg and Ismael Ali.

00:57:41 ►

So, you know, and then I guess, you know, I, I, I mean, there’s people, I

00:57:47 ►

mean, I don’t know if we have a psychedelic accounting association.

00:57:50 ►

I mean, maybe we should, I don’t know if it’s really necessary.

00:57:52 ►

You know, I don’t know if accounting is like really kind of on that, that, that wave, that

00:57:57 ►

wavelength, but, um, doctors, social workers, lawyers, um, you know, I mean, there’s a gentleman, I don’t remember his name,

00:58:08 ►

here in Brooklyn, he’s an architect, and he’s thinking in terms of psychedelic-friendly

00:58:13 ►

structures. I mean, I guess, like, particularly for, you know, environments in which to,

00:58:17 ►

we should have a psychedelic experience, whether, whether overt, like, quote, therapeutic, or quote,

00:58:23 ►

sacramental, and again, we come down to the question of the relationship between the two.

00:58:28 ►

But it’s great, you know, that you offer your best practices

00:58:34 ►

that have been used in a collective.

00:58:40 ►

So, in a sense, it’s been tested.

00:58:42 ►

You have some kind of test, not just some person that shows up and is like,

00:58:44 ►

hey, this, this

00:58:46 ►

thing I do all by myself.

00:58:47 ►

Um, but when there’s activities and standards and practices, um, that, that, uh, that, uh,

00:58:55 ►

um, in, in diffusing the society group of people, then it’s, you know, say, Hey, look,

00:59:02 ►

you know, we’ll show you how it’s done anyway.

00:59:05 ►

then it’s, you know, say, Hey, look, you know, we’ll show you how it’s done anyway. So that, that, and that’s, I think part of, uh, we can’t, we can’t really conceive the future.

00:59:14 ►

We just got to like build it one step at a time, but doing it cautiously because, you know,

00:59:22 ►

nobody wants this thing to blow up.

00:59:25 ►

And that’s what I’m saying about the timing.

00:59:27 ►

This is not even one year into the Trump administration.

00:59:32 ►

There’s a gentleman sitting doing two life sentences

00:59:36 ►

in the federal penitentiary in Arizona, I think,

00:59:40 ►

William Leonard Picard.

00:59:42 ►

And he put out a book, Rose of paracelsus recently and he

00:59:46 ►

i mean it’s it’s incredible it’s it’s a plug for the book it’s like wow it’s that’s an it’s

00:59:52 ►

intense piece of literature um but he he portrays several points the hair’s breath difference

00:59:59 ►

between utter dystopia horror and um you know you know, kind of like, you know,

01:00:08 ►

I get Walden, it’s a really good day.

01:00:10 ►

Hey, another really good day.

01:00:12 ►

Wow.

01:00:12 ►

Hey, great.

01:00:12 ►

You know, love it, folks.

01:00:14 ►

Peace and love.

01:00:16 ►

Peace and blessings. It’s like, recognize the, you know, it could be, I mean, is it 1937 or is it 1967?

01:00:34 ►

You know, it could be both.

01:00:35 ►

It could be either, it could be neither.

01:00:37 ►

But I assume nobody wants this thing to blow up.

01:00:44 ►

There’s a big change.

01:00:46 ►

There’s lots of possibilities.

01:00:49 ►

But remember, things have crashed before.

01:00:52 ►

So what that means is people are coming forward with knowledge

01:00:56 ►

and offer the knowledge, share the knowledge,

01:00:57 ►

and demonstrate that the phenomena of psychedelics are a net benefit

01:01:03 ►

and not a net loss or net risk you know

01:01:07 ►

i mean the people the people this is psychedelic societies that are doing the days of the days of

01:01:12 ►

community service well that’s a good idea it seems like a good idea to me i mean you know

01:01:16 ►

that’s the message like hey we’re we’re good this is good we you know this is uh we’re productive

01:01:23 ►

members of society uh we’re in that benefit. So anyway, that’s all.

01:01:28 ►

Yeah, that makes sense. And the cyclic nature of this, it’s the importance of listening to our elders.

01:01:34 ►

So much of this stuff is repetitive, going back decades or centuries.

01:01:38 ►

And so the last question I wanted to ask you before I let you go, as someone who’s been an activist and organizer,

01:01:43 ►

what would you say to people out there who

01:01:46 ►

want to get involved and want to do

01:01:47 ►

something? What would be your recommendations

01:01:50 ►

for getting started on

01:01:51 ►

helping make a difference in your little

01:01:53 ►

niche

01:01:55 ►

that you might be interested in?

01:01:58 ►

Well, are you talking about

01:01:59 ►

this psychedelic law and policy

01:02:02 ►

thing that I’ve been discussing and talking about generally?

01:02:04 ►

I think generally.

01:02:05 ►

What would be your advice to someone out there

01:02:06 ►

who may be young and hungry to do something to change the world?

01:02:10 ►

What advice would you have for things to pay attention to,

01:02:14 ►

people to work with, how to use their skills?

01:02:18 ►

It’s difficult to answer that question

01:02:20 ►

because it’s so individualistic.

01:02:21 ►

It depends on the individual, I think.

01:02:23 ►

I mean, obviously, everything does. but it depends on what age you are. It depends on where you live. It depends

01:02:30 ►

on what your aptitudes are. You know, if you’re a certain generation, like, I’m not really directly

01:02:39 ►

answering your question, but kind of like, you know’m just free associated with the idea that comes to mind like in a sense um the elderly population is i is really actually a very significant

01:02:53 ►

consideration because you have a massive population the whole population is aging i guess because of the public health trends and longevity,

01:03:05 ►

longevity medicine and so on.

01:03:09 ►

So, and they use a lot of meds.

01:03:13 ►

So maybe part of the question, I mean, this is something I think is,

01:03:16 ►

I mean, I personally think is critical,

01:03:18 ►

but this is something for somebody to do is to start thinking about how do

01:03:22 ►

you, how do you administer how do you how do

01:03:27 ►

you administer a powerful psyche engaging substance with somebody who’s

01:03:37 ►

60 70 80 years old like try to explain to them you know and like like try to explain to them, you know, and like, like what to expect,

01:03:46 ►

what not to expect and so on. I mean,

01:03:49 ►

if somebody wants to go into social work,

01:03:52 ►

go to social work school and try to develop that. I mean,

01:03:55 ►

and I’m speaking very academic terms. I mean, because obviously that’s,

01:03:58 ►

you know, that’s been my perspective. I mean, in terms of advocacy,

01:04:04 ►

I don’t know. I mean, the sky’s advocacy, I don’t know.

01:04:06 ►

I mean, the sky’s the limit.

01:04:07 ►

I’ve always, you know, there should be a psychedelic prisoner support organization,

01:04:11 ►

collecting people’s stories, giving the opportunity to communicate with the outside world,

01:04:18 ►

check looking after their needs and so on.

01:04:22 ►

You know, I mean, that’s a not-for-profit philanthropic undertaking in terms of like,

01:04:26 ►

you know, the, I guess, the for-profit side, if to the extent that you’re, if you’re going

01:04:31 ►

to have something analogous to the, and this actually, I mean, I’m like, I don’t know how

01:04:35 ►

much time I have to keep going here because, you know, triggering another thought.

01:04:39 ►

I guess really it all comes back to the risk.

01:04:42 ►

You know, where is there a place where you can come and say,

01:04:46 ►

now I’ve figured out how to handle a particular aspect of this problem.

01:04:49 ►

Like, you know, as I’ve said to you in the previous conversation,

01:04:52 ►

the people are doing psychedelic harm reduction work, like at Burning Man.

01:04:56 ►

I haven’t had direct experience, but I understand it from afar.

01:04:59 ►

And the dance safe people are trying to minimize risk.

01:05:02 ►

They’re doing harm reduction.

01:05:02 ►

And the dance safe people are trying to minimize risk.

01:05:04 ►

They’re doing harm reduction.

01:05:11 ►

That’s a prime example of saying there’s a problem.

01:05:12 ►

I see a potential problem.

01:05:14 ►

I can figure out how to solve it.

01:05:18 ►

And I guess another piece of this then as well, as we discussed much earlier,

01:05:20 ►

is go in and try to figure out where the commonalities of interest there are

01:05:25 ►

between the different elements of the drug policy reform scene.

01:05:32 ►

And, you know, that’s a, I mean, I guess it’s kind of like a no-brainer matter.

01:05:37 ►

And I’m actually going to throw something in here,

01:05:39 ►

and I know there’s a lot of controversy about this,

01:05:43 ►

as to whether you treat all substances the same, you know, whatever the rationale for that, or do you distinguish between them?

01:05:51 ►

And I say you need to distinguish between them because they’re not all the same.

01:06:05 ►

is to be able to distinguish the substances,

01:06:08 ►

at least for the general public.

01:06:15 ►

We must break away from the mental lockdown of the scheduling system and the inane scheduling paradigms.

01:06:20 ►

It was like there’s no metrics, no rationale, no accounting for the dose.

01:06:32 ►

Like, hello, you know, putting cannabis, LSD, and heroin in the same legal category, I don’t understand what that means.

01:06:40 ►

So you got to distinguish the substances, and at a minimum in terms of, like, toxicity.

01:06:44 ►

But let’s talk, I mean, let’s talk about therapeutic benefit. Let’s just come at this

01:06:46 ►

from a perspective of, like, if I come in and tell you that Ibogaine has a potential to interrupt

01:06:53 ►

a pattern of problematic use of opioids, I’m not doing this here, folks. The substances are

01:07:01 ►

working on each, working on and potentially against or with each other.

01:07:06 ►

So respect that.

01:07:09 ►

And don’t tell me all substances are the same because they do different things.

01:07:12 ►

It’s kind of like market share.

01:07:15 ►

The idea is you want to switch market share over from alcohol and tobacco over to cannabis and whatever else.

01:07:21 ►

Give them a fair shot to do their thing in the market.

01:07:31 ►

I mean, that’s an inquiry in which someone can engage from all kinds of different perspectives and all kinds of different disciplines.

01:07:33 ►

Yeah, it is the hard part.

01:07:35 ►

There’s a lot of places, but hopefully we can all work together and move the ball forward.

01:07:39 ►

So I want to thank you for…

01:07:41 ►

Oh, go ahead.

01:07:42 ►

Hey, go to law school.

01:07:44 ►

Figure out a way to go to law school.

01:07:46 ►

Seriously.

01:07:47 ►

Yeah, it’s a place we need people.

01:07:48 ►

Get a legal education.

01:07:50 ►

Yeah.

01:07:52 ►

It is.

01:07:52 ►

It’s not my path, but I’m glad people like you and others are doing it, our buddy Danny Miller as well.

01:07:59 ►

Yeah.

01:07:59 ►

So thank you for your work and for your writings on the subject and for sharing here today.

01:08:05 ►

Okay. Be well. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Yeah, so thank you for your work and for your writings on the subject and for sharing here today. Okay, see you later.

01:08:06 ►

Bye-bye.

01:08:06 ►

Bye-bye.

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