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March 17, 2014 - The Joe Rogan Experience

02:11:04

Joe Rogan Experience #469 - Dr. Carl Hart

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01:14:01

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joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Good googly moogly.
		This episode of the Joe Rogan Experience podcast is supported by Squarespace, the all-in-one platform that makes it fast and easy to create your own professional website.
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		Can you learn Dreamweaver?
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unidentified		I don't recommend it.
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		Squarespace.com, enter the code word JOE, get 10% off.
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		That's O-N-N-I-T. If you don't know what Onnit is, if you've never heard of Onnit, it's a human optimization website.
		We essentially sell the best strength and conditioning equipment we can find as far as kettlebells and battle robes, the best protein we can find.
		We have hemp protein, and we're going to talk to Dr. Carl Hart later about hemp because it's one of the funniest things ever that hemp is illegal in this country.
		And it doesn't even get you high.
		That's how stupid we are.
		We have an awesome plant that tastes good, has amino acids in it, provides you with a real complete protein.
		Very easy to digest.
		And it's legal to have, but you've got to get it from Canada.
		We have to pay Canadian farmers to grow it and then bring it over here.
		It's one of the dumbest things ever.
		And it's just one more symptom of this goofy fucking country we live in, ladies and gentlemen.
		But at Onnit, we sell...
		Things along those lines, like the Hemp Forest, we also have the new Warrior Bar, which is a buffalo and cranberry bar done the way the Native Americans did.
		It's really kind of badass.
		It was by the same people that made the Tonka Bar.
		They've started making this new one, the Warrior Bar.
		It's really delicious.
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		The best supplements, the best foods, as far as snack foods like Hemp Force bars, the best strength and conditioning equipment.
		We just try to sell you all the things that we use and all the things that you can use to optimize your physical condition, your mental clarity, And get your shit together.
		Go to Onnit.com, O-N-N-I-T, use the code word ROGAN, and save 10% off any and all supplements.
		Alright, Dr. Carl Hart is here.
		Cue the music and let's get cracking.
unidentified		Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out!
		The Joe Rogan Experience.
		Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Hey man.
		What's up?
		Thank you very much for being here.
		I really, really appreciate this.
		I've admired your work online.
		I've seen a bunch of your videos and read some of the interviews.
		And I think it's incredibly important to have a guy like you out there.
		It's incredibly important for a bunch of reasons.
		Because it's important to spread the truth about drugs and to have someone who's actually intelligent and a real professor who really understands what they're talking about.
		And two, you look like us.
unidentified		Well, thank you, man.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You look like a normal...
		You don't look like some weird stuffy dude.
		You got dreadlocks.
		You look cool as fuck.
		Like, I can hang with this guy, guaranteed.
		Any dude who has dread...
		You can't be uptight.
		Look at your hair.
		It's impossible, you know?
		I think it's very important.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		I appreciate it, man.
		Thank you for having me, man.
		People have been telling me that I've got to come check you out, so thank you.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm glad they connected us.
		That's one of the coolest things about this whole Twitter, social media thing, is that I get to find out about people like you, and I get to be introduced by all these Twitter people that want to get us together.
		So it's pretty badass.
unidentified		Right on.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		I'm happy to be here, man.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, again, I say I'm happy that there's a guy like you out there, because I've learned a lot from what you're doing, and I've learned a lot from some of the interviews that you've had, You know, you've had to kind of confront a lot of the ignorance that people have.
		And it even kind of exposed a lot of my own ignorance.
		And I thought that was really fascinating.
		And one of the things was that you did a John Stossel interview where you were talking about how many people use meth and coke and don't fucking ruin their lives.
		They figure out how to keep it together.
		Yeah.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you know, that's one of the biggest myths is that people think that individuals who use drugs like crack cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin, they think that the majority of the people who use those drugs are addicted and their life goes spiraling out of control.
		They think that because it makes great TV drama, for example.
		And so we reinforce it in our sort of pop culture.
		And also, we can always think of somebody who screwed their life up as a result of drugs.
		But the people who don't screw their life up, they don't talk about it.
		They just go about paying taxes, paying their bills, handling their responsibilities.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's interesting.
		Do you get pressure to not say that ever?
		Because people say, well, hey, you're going to encourage people.
		And what if they go out and they do become addicted to drugs?
		Are you giving them false hope?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, I'm an educator first.
		And so when we think about hiding information or not telling people the truth because we're afraid that they can't handle the truth, that's illogical.
		I can't live my life like that.
		I have children.
		Thank you.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Thank you for saying that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's so important.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		I mean, I have to teach my kids about sex.
		I have to teach them about other potentially dangerous activities like driving their automobile too fast.
		Drugs is just one of those sort of activities, and I'd be irresponsible if I didn't tell them the best information that I know.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's so important.
		That's such an important thing to say.
		I've had that discussion with people before where they would talk about any sort of drug.
		I don't want to let people know.
		I don't want to talk about it because then I'll encourage them to do it.
		A friend was telling me that about heroin.
		He was saying, you know, heroin really is not that bad for you if you don't take too much.
		It's really not that bad.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		That sounds like sex.
		I mean, it sounds like a number of things, you know.
		It's like, we all know this.
		I mean, it's just logical.
		Anything that you overindulge in, you can get in trouble.
		Heroin is not different.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But there's a few that we have, like, these unfair assumptions about.
		Like, crack was the one for me.
		I always heard, dude, you smoke crack once, you're hooked.
		But I met a few people that have smoked crack, and I'm like, wait a minute, you just smoked it once?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And they're like, yeah.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		So, if anybody ever tells you anything about, I did it once and I was hooked for life or I'm hooked...
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		That's a license to stop listening, because nothing in life you do once and you're hooked.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Nothing?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Nothing.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What's the quickest to addict to?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		There are certainly physical addictions, like people do get alcoholism where it actually makes them sick if they stop, right?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so like physical addiction, certainly that's a part of addiction, but that's not the sort of main point of addiction.
		Addiction, the main thing of addiction is like disruption of psychosocial functioning.
		You don't pay your taxes, you don't meet your obligations, those kinds of things.
		But you can get physically addicted to something like tobacco, although it's not life-threatening, but it's irritating.
		But the thing that we see that's more that we think is excruciating pain is heroin addiction.
		For example, we think that if someone is going through heroin withdrawal, They are in such agonizing pain that they are on the verge of death.
		They're not.
		If you've ever had the flu, you've had heroin withdrawal.
		But the only one of the major drugs that we use today that can actually kill us from withdrawal is alcohol.
		And most of the people who use alcohol don't come near experiencing alcohol withdrawal to the extent that it would kill you.
		You certainly can't die from heroin withdrawal.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wow, that's fascinating.
		I've seen a guy going through heroin withdrawal.
		I had a friend who was hooked on heroin and came out from New York to stay with me in California in the 90s.
		And I didn't know it at the time, but his idea was that was how he was going to kick it.
		So he came out to visit me and he was like, Like, he had the flu for a week.
		He just laid around in bed, and then seven, eight days later, he was fine.
		Not fine, but you know.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		It's the flu, basically.
		So if you've had the flu, you've had heroin withdrawal.
		It's not pleasant, and I don't recommend that someone go out and get the flu or heroin withdrawal.
		But the point is that it's not going to kill you, and it's not as excruciating as it's often portrayed in films.
		And so those kinds of things, they just do a horrible job of educating the public or miseducating the public.
		And it wouldn't be bad if, let's just say...
		You do this sort of characterization, and it didn't have consequences.
		The consequences is that we always have these repressive policies that follow.
		And then people pay the price, not so much from the drugs, but from the repressive policies.
		And that's a real concern that I have.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So the repressive policies lead to more prison sentences, lead to more private prisons, lead to essentially people becoming...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's like a form of slavery that's state-sanctioned.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Certainly.
		We have that.
		And it also...
		The major thing that it leads to is this sort of dependency on that economy, like law enforcement.
		There are also treatment agencies.
		There are a number of people who depend on this sort of Industry now or they depend on this approach and it's hard to get out of this approach because right now in the country we're talking about liberalizing drug laws.
		You can't liberalize drug laws unless you give police officers something else to do.
		You can't liberalize drug laws unless you give the treatment industry something else to do and that's one of the things we haven't really talked about in this whole conversation because those people are going to fight to keep their money.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And they sort of are now.
		I mean, that is an issue now.
		Prison guard unions lobby to keep certain drug laws in place.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		They are intense.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So it seems to me like there's a multi-point strategy that has to be hit in order to make a transition between the prohibition that we're experiencing right now and not having all these people completely fighting against it because of their jobs.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Like there has to be some sort of a strategy for taking the resources that are being applied right now to this unsuccessful drug war and doing something healthy for communities.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you know, that's one of the things I wrote my book recently, High Price, and that's one of the things I tried to...
		Well, I told this story.
		It's a memoir and a science book.
		So I told the memoir portion...
		Which is deeply personal, and it's not something that I'm so comfortable doing.
		But I had to do that in order to kind of contextualize the whole drug war and what it all means.
		And also, the science portion is there so people can understand what these drugs actually do and what they don't do.
		And if you have that sort of contextualization and an understanding of the science, now you can probably make some reasonable, logical decisions, some choices about how we should deal with drugs in the country.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Now, when you see something like the country of Portugal, which decriminalized drugs less than a decade ago, right?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		More than a decade ago.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Almost more than a decade ago.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		2001. And their results have been pretty extraordinary.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you know, when you, like Portugal, let's just be clear so the audience understands what decriminalization means.
		Decriminalization is not legalization.
		Legalization is what we do with alcohol and tobacco.
		Decriminalization would be like treating drug violations like we treat traffic violations.
		You can't go to jail or get a felony charge, but you may be subjected to a fine or so.
		That's how they deal with drugs in Portugal, all drugs, from heroin to marijuana to methamphetamine to cocaine.
		Now, when you look at the major indicators, for example, drug use, they have less drug use than we do in this country.
		When you look at drug-related overdose death, they have less than we do in this country.
		When you have the amount of money that they pump into their prison systems and so forth, of course, they're pumping less than we do.
		And so they're doing better than us on all of these major indicators, and they have no sort of plans to Go another direction because they're happy with their current approach.
		And so that's one of the things I argue for in High Price, the book.
		I argue that we should decriminalize all drugs in this country.
		But in order to decriminalize drugs, one of the things we have to also do is we have to increase the amount of realistic drug education.
		Not that just say no stuff that we've been...
		Peddling for a number of years, but real drug education.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's pretty ridiculous to think that you can educate anyone to the dangers or lack of dangers in drugs in a 30-second commercial, right?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you know, but that's not the goal.
		That's one of the things that people have to understand is that those folks who came up with those 30-second spots, their goal was not drug education.
		Their goal was more propaganda and fear-based sort of education, if that's what we want to call it.
		But the goal was not really teaching people about drugs or what drugs really do.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I had a joke in one of my old comedy specials about the Partnership for Drug-Free America because it was funded by alcohol and tobacco companies.
		And I was like, alcohol and tobacco companies going after marijuana is like hookers going after strippers.
		That's really what it's like.
		The idea of alcohol and tobacco companies spending money to try to make marijuana illegal is unbelievably stupid.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		I tell you, bro, if you studied this issue, You'll have a hell of a lot more material for your comedy routine, I tell you.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Because there are so many ironies that you wouldn't believe.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's a brutal one, though.
		Then they call this a partnership for a drug-free America, sponsored by drugs.
		A gang war of drugs.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		The name, a partnership for drug-free America.
		First of all, there has never been a drug-free society ever.
		Nor will there ever be.
		And nor do you want to live in a society that is drug-free.
		And so this whole notion of drug-free, it's ridiculous.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, drugs encompass everything from coffee to alcohol to cigarettes.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It just goes on to acai berries.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		No, absolutely.
		All of these things are drugs.
		And so when people try to make the distinction like Heroin versus something like caffeine.
		The body doesn't distinguish something based on the fact that one's illegal and one's not legal.
		It has biological actions and consequences.
		Both of those things.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Why is it that this is something that's controversial to say?
		What you're saying right now on this podcast A guy who's a distinguished academic saying these things is very controversial.
		Why is that if they are true and you are an educator and you have that philosophy, which I admire greatly, why is that rare?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		For one thing, there are few people in the country who actually know what drugs really do and what they don't do.
		So when you think about, you know, I have 24 years of experience of giving drugs to animals and humans in a lab and carefully trying to understand the effect of drugs.
		That's one reason.
		A number of people just simply don't know.
		Another reason is that people, scientists, for example, are a conservative lot, and they are reluctant to speak to the media, in part because they don't want to get their words twisted or they don't want to appear to be wrong.
		And so, I mean, I respect that at some level.
		And so I think that contributes on the one hand.
		And on the other hand, we've had in this country for a number of years, people who were in control of the narrative were people who had an addiction, parents, law enforcement.
		None of those people are uniquely qualified to speak to this issue, but they have dominated the conversation.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Now, how did you get involved in this?
		You started, you said 24 years ago, doing drug research on animals.
		What led you to want to go down this road?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		So I was in, I tell this story in the book, and so I was in the Air Force back in the 80s, like you mentioned about crack cocaine.
		So I was in the Air Force over in England, 86, 87, 88, and crack cocaine was a big deal in the United States, as you point out, and I grew up in the hood in Miami.
		And Miami was a cocaine capital in the United States.
		And so things that were happening in my community that were not good, high unemployment, crime, all of these kinds of things, I blamed crack cocaine for that.
		And so I thought that if I go to school and get a degree in order to study drugs, the effects of drugs on the brain, I could solve the problems that faced my community or the problems that I thought were in the community, particularly those related to drugs.
		And so I began studying drugs as an undergraduate and then went on to graduate school to study drugs on the brains of animals and to try to figure out the neurobiological mechanisms that were responsible for addiction.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So you just got fascinated by this idea of fixing this issue that you saw in your community and then you just fell into a rabbit hole.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		So when I started, along my journey, my path, I actually got an education.
		And, you know, so as James Baldwin said, you know, the paradox of education is precisely this.
		As one begins to become educated and conscious, one begins to question the society in which he's being educated.
		And that's what happened with me.
		And so along the way, I discovered things like, hmm, the majority of people who use these drugs are not addicted.
		That was one thing I discovered.
		I discovered that many of the things that we said about crack cocaine were just simply not true.
		Like the whole crack baby myth.
		And people said that our generation should be prepared to have an army of kids who couldn't learn because of being exposed to crack cocaine.
		That just simply wasn't true.
		When all the data came out, beginning in the mid-1990s, we realized that that simply wasn't true.
		Other things that I learned that just simply wasn't true, things like one hit of crack cocaine, you're addicted.
		Not true.
		That crack cocaine was different from powder cocaine.
		Not true.
		All of these things I discovered along the way that they weren't true.
		And not only that, I discovered that This wasn't new.
		I went back to the early 1900s and saw the same sort of hysteria, mainly race-based hysteria surrounding drugs, occurred even then.
		And so I thought, what's going on?
		And then that helped me to be more critical about my issue.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is there a difference in the effect of crack cocaine, the physical effect, and cocaine and heroin?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		So, let's think about crack cocaine and powder cocaine.
		The only difference between crack cocaine and powder cocaine is that the powder cocaine has this thing called the hydrochloride salt attached to it.
		That salt prevents it from being smoked.
		Now, you can dissolve the powder cocaine in water and then shoot it in your arm.
		And so you have the effects of cocaine, the onset of the effects within seconds.
		The same is true with crack cocaine.
		The effects are, the onset of the effects are within seconds.
		Now, the biological activity of cocaine is at the base.
		So that hydrochloride portion on the cocaine powder, on the powder cocaine, has no biological activity.
		So that means that crack and powder are the same drug.
		They are exactly the same drug.
		The same effect, same drug.
unidentified		Wow.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So it's indistinguishable to the user.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Indistinguishable.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Now, why is it that they prepare it that way?
		Like, what's the benefit of preparing it?
		It's just so it delivers quicker?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Great question.
		So one of the things that you...
		You might recall Richard Pryor back in the days when he burnt himself with smoking.
		So he was freebasing.
		So he was removing that hydrochloride portion of the salt off of the cocaine base so he could actually smoke it.
		Now, he was using ether, which is highly flammable.
		With crack cocaine, now you no longer need the ether.
		You just mix it up with baking soda and water and the cocaine and you mix it up and you get rid of that salt.
		So ether is no longer needed and it's not as dangerous.
		So that's one of the reasons that we have crack cocaine as a result of that.
		And it also, it made it so you could sell them in unit doses to make the drug appear to be cheaper because you also might recall in the early 1980s, 1970s, you had to buy cocaine powder in bulk and that made it more expensive.
		Crack cocaine made it a lot more simple for people to buy it who didn't have the kind of expendable income that was required before the mid-1980s.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So essentially they just brought it down to bite-sized portions.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		Exactly.
		Rather than selling this whole six-pack or 12-pack, now you can sell one item, one can or one bottle.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I want to talk more about this, but I should just clarify that Richard Pryor changed his story as he got older and actually said that he tried to kill himself.
		He lit himself on fire, apparently.
		I'm a huge Richard Pryor fan, and I know that that was originally what he had said, that he got burnt doing freebies, but I think he changed his story later.
		I actually worked with him a bunch of times right before he died.
		It was a real honor.
		He's a real special dude as far as stand-up comedians go.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I'm with you.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But that style of freebase was a thing that we'd always associated with people that were really, really fucked up.
		Like, the guy's doing coke.
		Oh, well, he's probably going to mess up his life.
		He's freebasing.
		Oh, shit.
		He's gone, man.
		He's basing.
		He's a basehead.
		Right?
		Basehead was the thing.
		Before crack, it was baseheads.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
		I describe a couple of people in the book from my neighborhood who got into freebasing in exactly the same way you just talked about.
		Right.
		Absolutely.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Now, everybody has this idea in their head that crime and that everything escalated and the world changed when crack was introduced.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is that a myth as well?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's a myth.
		Well, let me clarify, because on the one hand, so when crack hit the market, it was first sort of talked about December 1984 in the LA Times, the first time we heard of crack.
		But it didn't become more widely known or available until maybe the mid-1985.
		Now, once crack cocaine hit the markets, what happened was that people were fighting over various new markets.
		Whenever there are new illicit markets, yeah, you're going to get some violent activity until the market settles down.
		That happened with any illicit market, and that certainly happened with crack cocaine.
		Now, there are a number of things that people attribute to crack in terms of crime and all of the sort of downfall of certain communities.
		Unemployment.
		They said that unemployment really rose as a result of crack cocaine being around.
		Now, 1982, the unemployment rate in this country was about 11% for white folks, and it was double that for black people.
		That was before crack, at least two, three years before crack even hit the market.
		Now, during the whole crack era, unemployment has never been as high as 1982. That's number one.
		People said things like, people from my community, crack cocaine was responsible for these mothers, these grandmothers now raising new generations of kids because their daughters were strung out on crack and so now they have to take care of these kids.
		That simply wasn't true.
		It certainly happened in my community, but it happened before crack cocaine was ever on the market.
		It certainly happened in my family long before crack cocaine ever hit the market.
		When we look at other communities, like particularly immigrant communities, if you look at the Jewish community when they came over, the Eastern European Jews, when they came over in the country, The early 1900s, 1800s, and so forth.
		What you see is that you had a similar sort of phenomenon going on in those kind of communities.
		What's his name?
		Irvin Howell, his great book, Land of Our Fathers, or Home of Our Fathers, he kind of described all of these pathological behaviors that happened in that community.
		Many of those same behaviors were attributed to crack cocaine in black people later.
		They were there long before crack cocaine was there, but crack cocaine became the scapegoat.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's a fascinating scapegoat because I bought into it hook, line, and sinker.
		I really thought that there was a difference between the 1980s and the 1990s as far as like when crack was introduced, boom, it took off.
		It was sort of something that was just always discussed as like common fact.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I know.
		I bought into it, too, and that's what drove me to pursue my education in the way I did.
		But as a result of pursuing that education, I discovered that it was not true.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So are these cultural myths the result of politicians, like political campaigns, where they're trying to clean up the streets and they...
		Attributed to certain issues or is it something more widespread?
		Is it the media just running with a narrative?
		What is it?
		How did it get started?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Well, there are multiple sort of factors and players involved.
		So when we think about the politicians, for example, politicians, if crack cocaine is the problem, Never mind the fact that unemployment rate was out of control before crack cocaine hit the market.
		Unemployment was out of control.
		A number of things were already problematic.
		Now you have crack cocaine.
		If you blame crack cocaine, it's really easy to simply say, we'll put more law enforcement, we'll hire more cops.
		We'll put more efforts in controlling these drugs.
		A lot easier to say, we'll lock people up for selling these drugs, for using these drugs.
		In the process, what you do is you create jobs for a select group of people, and then you don't have to deal with the real issues.
		The real issues of unemployment, of deprivation, all of these things you don't have to deal with.
		They're far more complicated.
		And so politicians are happy to buy in.
		Now, one of the things about crack cocaine is that when we think about the law that punishes or punish crack cocaine a hundred times more harshly than powder cocaine and the vast majority of people who got punished under these laws were black eighty eighty five percent of the people even though they don't make up the majority of the users so people say things like well were those laws racist and The laws themselves weren't racist because the Congressional Black Caucus,
		17 of the 21 members, voted for these laws, for these laws that punish crack cocaine 100 times more harshly.
		But the point is that everyone bought into it.
		Parents bought into it.
		Because for the parents, what this meant is that You don't actually have to educate your kids about this.
		You just say that they're bad and stay away from it.
		No education required.
		Even scientists and treatment providers, they all bought into it because you got a problem, we're going to solve your problem.
		So we are needed and we are valued.
		So you have all of these sort of constituencies from society benefiting from the vilification or the scapegoating of crack cocaine.
		All of those things came together nicely.
		And then we think about the rappers.
		They all came into the game too because it's like, I'm conscious.
		I'm going to say that this is a problem in my community and I care about my community and this is the way that I can show it.
		So everybody had a stake in this sort of thing.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wow, that is absolutely fascinating.
		You know, one of the things that I've...
		I've talked to quite a few people about when it comes to issues like real complex issues like drug addiction and violence and poverty, is that once you feed it with any organism, whether that organism is law enforcement or that organism is education, whichever one you feed is the one that's going to grow.
		And once you feed the law enforcement one and you look at this really complex situation, I think law enforcement is important.
		But I think education is probably more important to avoid future law enforcement.
		I think the more education we have, the more nuanced our ability to raise children is, the more we understand that we're all in this together, the less you're going to need law enforcement.
		But when law enforcement becomes this machine that lobbies against the legalization of certain drugs, which when you start looking at the data, there's only one reason to do that.
		And the only reason is that you're trying to stay alive.
		You're trying to grow.
		You're an organism.
		You're trying to eat the sugar.
		You're trying to keep going.
		So you're creating more jobs by putting people in jail.
		It's essentially, no one wants to look at it like this, but it's a form of slavery.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		I think we, in the house I live in, the film, Eugene Drecke's film, I think that's the kind of analogy he was trying to draw in that film.
		Absolutely.
		So I think we get it.
		I think a number of people get that.
		That's exactly what it is.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's exactly what it is, and it doesn't seem like anybody's willing to address it.
		No one's willing to change it.
		There's that very famous speech where Eisenhower gets out of office, and as he's leaving, he addresses the nation, and he warns of the dangers of the military-industrial complex.
		And it's a weird speech, because this is a sitting president, and he's leaving, and he's letting people know, like, there's a machine out here that's growing, and I can clue you into this.
		Like, be aware of this thing.
		This is the same with law enforcement.
		It's the same with private prisons.
		They become organisms.
		They become individual things that are filled with people that are all working for the greater good of the great corporation.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
		And people need to understand the conflict of interest that these folks have.
		And oftentimes when we have these types of discussions, one of the sort of impulses of the media or folks who have these discussions is that they want to invite law enforcement personnel.
		It's like, what expertise do they have to talk about drugs, really?
		None.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		None.
		Well, you remember Ronald Reagan when he was on TV? Maramona may very well be one of the most dangerous drugs we've ever discovered.
		You remember that, or whatever the exact quote was?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		No, no, I know, you know, I try to forget Ronald Reagan, but I hear you.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I had a conversation today about actors with a friend, and we were talking about actors being in politics, like how crazy it is that you let someone who's a professional liar...
		Try to tell people the truth.
		I mean, that's what an actor is.
		They're really good at bullshitting.
		Like, they pretend they're really sad because someone they know just died.
		Nobody fucking died.
		There's cameras all around you.
		There's lights on you.
		You're wearing makeup.
		But you're so good at bullshitting that I'm willing to pay money to see you bullshit.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Well, I mean, let's think about what we consider news in the country.
		And we think about the people who are delivering news.
		They are the same.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They're worse.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They're too stupid to be actors.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Right, right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's what most of them are.
		And here's Bob with the weather.
		Wow, what a day, what a day, what a day.
		The wind's coming in from the northeast.
		And I do these radio tours, and I'm sure you do them as well when you promote your books.
		But you'll hear the same voice over and over and over again.
		Like, somehow or other, these guys have plugged in to what they think is a radio guy.
		And they're playing the role of a radio guy, and it's very strange.
unidentified		Yeah.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, there's a lot of strange things that has happened on this book tour.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So that's the people that we have disseminating information and in some cases running the government.
		The Arnold Schwarzenegger thing was so crazy.
		We're running around telling everybody the fucking Terminator is the governor of the country.
unidentified		That's ridiculous.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		There's so much to say about Arnold Schwarzenegger as it relates to drugs too.
		Particularly when we think about performance enhancing drugs and those kinds of things.
		We know about his use, and then you think about the hypocrisy of it all.
		And that's the thing that's just disturbing.
		If people just call it like it is and say what it is, you actually help people understand what these things do and what they don't do.
		And then you don't have people have all of this cognitive dissonance about...
		It's like, how can I get to that level?
		How can I do this level?
		When you know that those folks did performance enhancing drugs, so now they're saying that you shouldn't do performance enhancing drugs.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's an interesting situation.
		I think there's a real issue with that in sports.
		There's a bunch of different groups that are trying to clean it up.
		Recently, the UFC has made big steps to try to limit the amount of performance enhancing drugs.
		But unless you're watching guys all day, every day, it's really hard to tell without testing them.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, I don't know how I feel about the performance-enhancing drugs thing.
		The thing that I like to know, first of all, is that we get better information on it.
		You know, and I don't want to have this sort of just-say-no attitude towards this stuff without really good information.
		And I don't know if we're there yet.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I agree with you 100%.
		I think the issue that people have, though, is the term natural.
		Natural is an interesting term.
		Is it still natural if you're taking multivitamins?
		What if you've got creatine?
		Is it still natural if you drink coffee?
		Coffee is a drug.
		You're kind of drug using.
		Is it still natural if you use certain types of water that's treated certain ways to make your body process oxygen better?
		Whatever new thing that comes out, is that still natural?
		It gets real weird.
		It's like, should people not be allowed to take any supplements so they just only have food?
		Like, this is what you give them.
		Just plants and animal protein and water.
		And then we monitor what your diet is and then we let you fight.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you know, there are a number of issues going on.
		I mean, the whole notion of, like, natural, I think people need to grow up.
		I don't even know what that means, natural.
		That's not my concern.
		My concern is that if you have performance-enhancing drugs and then people are given a drug in order so they can continue to perform even though they are hurt, that's my concern, that we run further risk of having people being injured.
		But in terms of training and that sort of thing, I don't have so much of an issue with that whole issue of using performance-enhancing drugs, as long as we're doing it in a safe manner in which people understand what's happening.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I think the question is fairness.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's the question.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Fairness?
		Americans annoy me with fairness.
		I mean, fairness, really.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, they're worried that someone is going to cheat and they're going to win when they're taking an illegal drug.
		I mean, it's pretty simple.
		That's the fairness argument.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		That's the fairness argument.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		So when we think about our ability in this country to train better than some of our opponents in the Olympics because we are a wealthier country, is that fair?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		No, definitely not.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		We think about wealthier people whose kids can have access to prep tests before taking the SAT, before taking the MCAT or some other exam, whereas less wealthy people Absolutely not.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		When it comes to combat sports and athletics, though, obviously I have a vested interest in this idea and this debate, but I think there is an issue of two guys have very similar, almost identical economic situations.
		Identical training environments, identical amount of experience in martial arts, and one guy's taking a drug and the other guy isn't.
		That guy has an unfair advantage.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Sure, certainly can be.
		And that's fine.
		Whatever the rules are now, we must adhere to them.
		All I'm saying is that I think that we need to make sure that we study the issue really well so that if one person has access to anything, the other person also should have access.
		But right now, the rules are that you can't.
		That's fine.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		So I totally understand.
		So what you're saying is you think that the rules should be based on scientific evidence of efficacy and of health benefits and risks and all that and have it laid out.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's not.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it really is.
		It is kind of a weird thing.
		Like, you can sell tests.
		Like, on it, we sell a T-plus enhancer.
		It enhances your body's ability to produce testosterone.
		But it's legal.
		I mean...
		There is a bunch of stuff, like creatine.
		Creatine's legal.
		They can't stop you from taking creatine.
		There's a bunch of stuff that, you know, caffeine, they'll let you take a certain amount, but if you get above like 200 milligrams in your system, they go, oh, no, you don't.
		Like, too much.
		It's real weird.
		Natural is a weird word.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		It's a difficult one for me.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		I don't know the performance enhancing world as well as I'd like to, but maybe that's an issue for another book.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's the term natural.
		I got a conversation with a friend of mine and we were talking about pollution and all these different things that people do.
		And we were saying what's really kind of weird is we always think of things that humans make as unnatural.
		But they're all made out of stuff on Earth.
		It's not like we're taking shit from another dimension and creating artificial things.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's like the marijuana smokers.
		They say, well, weed is natural, so all drugs are natural.
		You know, it's like heroin comes from the opium poppy.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Methamphetamine from ephedra-based plant.
		You know, cocaine from the coca plant as well.
		So it's like all of these things are natural, if that's what your definition of natural is.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Even the synthetic versions are created by earth-grown components.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
		The synthetic versions might be better.
		I mean, like aspirin comes from the willow bark, I believe.
		But we have made it synthetic so we can harness the components that we need.
		So that's a good thing.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And that's a drug.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So a drug-free America would mean no aspirin.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		No aspirin.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It is pretty silly.
		No Coca-Cola, either.
		That's a drug.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		We're filled with it.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Our culture's filled with it, and that's such a great point that you made earlier.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Every single culture.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
		So, like, kids who are trying to learn how to think critically, when people present them with things like drug-free, they should really question that sort of thing.
		They should be taught that this is part of critical thinking.
		Drug-free society just doesn't exist, so please don't feed me propaganda.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So that really does exacerbate our issue, right?
		Because with all that ignorance out there, it makes it very difficult to have a real debate about it because people come into everything with preconceived notions.
		I don't know very much at all about chess.
		I don't know who's the best.
		I don't know what the strategies are.
		I kind of know how the things move.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		That makes two of us.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You know what I'm saying?
		But if I came into chess going, oh, no, no, no, you guys don't know what the fuck you're talking about.
		The way to do chess is you gotta just move faster than the other guy.
		I had all this crazy, oh, I've fucking been watching on TV! And you were a chess master, you'd be like, bitch, what are you saying?
		That's not how you play chess.
		The fuck you talking about?
		Crack babies, man!
		The crack economy?
		You're telling me crack didn't ruin our economy, bro?
		Shut the fuck up!
		It's like, people already have this in their head, like, they're already coming to the table with a bunch of bullshit.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Right on, I couldn't have said it any better, man.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's gotta be really frustrating.
		I mean, when you go to cocktail parties, and if I had a cocktail party, I'd invite you.
		I'm a cool guy.
		If you go to cocktail parties and people say, well, Carl, what do you do?
		And you go, well, you know, I'm an academic.
unidentified		I'd say I'm a shoe salesman, man.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's a good way to get out of it.
		I used to tell chicks that I worked for my father's insurance company.
		Because working for an insurance company is so unglamorous.
		But working for your father's insurance company means you're such a bitch you can't even get your own job in an insurance company.
		You're just some ne'er-do-well that lives in his parents' basement.
		And they would be so mean to me.
		It was so crazy.
		I was on television at the time.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		I thought they'd be like, yo, you gotta inherit the company, so I should probably push up.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Nope, nope.
		There was none of that going on.
		I wasn't flashy enough.
		I didn't have enough shit.
		If I was pulling up in a Ferrari and I said that, maybe then they'd be like, hmm, I was driving a Volkswagen Corrado at the time.
		It was shocking how mean people could be because of that.
		We have, you know, certain things that we accept and certain things we don't accept.
		And when it comes to, you know, things that people talk about at cocktail parties and what have you, and if someone comes along and says heroin's not that addictive, cocaine doesn't ruin, a lot of people take it on a regular basis, you're going to encounter a bunch of know-it-alls, right?
		Don't you?
		You must.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Of course I do.
		You know...
		So that means that I have to make sure that I don't engage in conversations with people who don't play by the rules of evidence.
		And so if I engage in those kind of conversations, I'm too old for that, man.
		And so I try to limit my exposure to people who are mainly faith-based in their sort of belief systems.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It becomes a real problem when they're really smart about something else.
		I had a conversation with Michio Kaku once, and we were talking about panspermia.
		It was on the Opie and Anthony show.
		We were talking about the concept of building blocks of life coming in from asteroids, and that might be where a lot of things came from.
		And one of the things that we were discussing was psychedelic mushrooms, because Terence McKenna had this theory about psychedelic mushrooms coming, spores coming from another planet.
		It's very possible that asteroid impacts that carried all the other building blocks for life also carried psychedelic spores, which is why they're so uniquely different from any other planets on Earth.
		And I was asking him if he ever did mushrooms.
		This is my sneaky way of asking Michio Kaku if he did mushrooms.
		But he started going off about it, giving you brain damage and becoming addictive, and I'm like, what the fuck are you talking about?
		It's so unfortunate that he was talking about it ruining your mind.
		Like, I'm trying to improve my mind.
		I'm like, oh, come, sir.
		Please.
		You're like a blind man describing a kaleidoscope.
		And unfortunately, it makes you question all the things that that guy's an expert in.
		Because if you know something to be untrue...
		And here's this brilliant guy who's telling you about the universe itself and the building blocks of matter, and he's so smart, and he's so definitive with his definitions and descriptions of these things, but then he tells you something that you absolutely know to be incorrect, and you go, well, come on.
		This is...
		You're fucking awesome.
		Why are you saying this?
		Like, you're the one who's telling me about the cosmos.
		You're telling me about all these other cool things that I know are amazing and scientifically provable.
		But now you're saying some dumb shit as well.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		I'm with you, man.
		I mean, that's one of the things that we all try to guard against because we all have a limited sort of knowledge base.
		We all do.
		I mean, we can only be experts in so many areas.
		I mean, it just requires so much work to be an expert in anything.
		And so we have to have the humility to say, you know, I don't know that as well, but I'm willing to keep an open mind and learn.
		So you're right.
		I hope that I don't overreach like that on any subject matter because I know drugs very well.
		Other things I know less well.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's such an important thing.
		And a lot of really smart people don't ever want to admit that.
		There's a lot of really smart people that are really smart about one thing, so you question them about things that they're not really smart about, where they don't really have as much information about, they'll bullshit sometimes.
		That's fucking dangerous.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		I'm with you, man.
		And I'm so glad that you exposed that kind of thing, and you highlight the concern related to that.
		But, you know, we have to be able to say, I don't know.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's an important factor in distributing information.
		We have to know that these sources that we reach, whether it's you or any other academic, is 100% honest.
		And there's no ego or fuckery involved.
		And when these guys show a little bit of ego where they don't want to show humility about their ignorance, they ruin the whole thing.
		The whole discussion gets...
		It's very difficult to take them as seriously.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And it waters down all the things that they say that you know are true as well.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's like...
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you know, on the one hand, it's like we should be allowed the latitude to have been wrong.
		But as a result, we should also be able to say, oh, you know, I was wrong and I got this new information that made me see the light.
		And so it's a two-way street.
		You know, it's like people are going to make mistakes.
		And we want them to be able to make the mistakes because in the process of trying to understand something, they might discover something really fascinating or good.
		And so they should be able to make a mistake, but they have to also be able to say, I screwed up.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's really unique, isn't it?
		When people are running for president, we don't want none of that.
		We want no flip-flopping.
		If you're a flip-flopper, we don't want to think that anybody learned from their mistakes and changed their opinion or had some new information come in, they reconsidered their ideas.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Well, the people who say that this guy flip-flopped or this and that, they don't speak for me, and I hope they don't speak for the rest of the country, although they may have the microphone, but I hope people see through that nonsense.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They do, but there are, I think what they're trying to get at, for the most part, I mean, I think we're certainly right when it comes to, like, you can learn, you can change your opinion.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I certainly learned in my life, and even I've recently changed my opinions on things, but I think they're just concerned with bullshit politicians that are just completely playing the breeze.
unidentified		That's right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Like, where is it going?
		I'm going this way!
		I'm pro-abortion!
unidentified		Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		No, no, that's right.
		So you have that issue where people are, like you said, they are trying to make sure they have all the bases covered, and they say one message to one group and a completely different message to another group.
		No, I get that.
		But then there are politicians, too, who actually learn new information to change their mind.
		And then they get called the flip-flopper.
		And that's bad.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Now, when did you do your first research?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Your first research on drug effects?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		I think the first study I published was in 1992. And what was the climate like then in comparison to climate in 2014?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Because we're talking about pre-internet.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Damn, that's pre-internet.
		Al Gore had, he then discovered internet in 92. What?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Al Gore probably already had it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Probably already had a cell phone with it on.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		All right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I think, well, I got on in 94, and I think it's generally considered like 93 was like, when I say pre-internet, like, I think it all started around that area.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Right on, right on.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The attitudes hadn't really changed.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		No.
		I mean, the attitudes around drugs, they haven't really...
		I mean, only until the past year or two have they really started to change.
unidentified		Really?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		A year or two?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		People are starting to open their mind to these issues.
		Maybe we've been hoodwinked.
		Maybe we've been bamboozled.
		But for a long time, I mean, we think about...
		From Reagan to Bush 1 to Clinton to Bush 2, even Obama at the beginning of his first term, attitudes about drugs, they hadn't changed that much.
		I mean, the bottom line was that drugs...
		We're bad.
		And as a politician, what you say is that you're going to be tough on drug users and people who sell drugs.
		And that was popular until recently.
		Now people are starting to say, wait a second, maybe we have...
		Maybe we've been doing this wrong, but that's a recent phenomenon.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What do you attribute the changing of that tide to?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is it just the overwhelming information?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		I think there are a few things.
		I think Michelle Alexander wrote an important book called The New Jim Crow to help people to understand the fact that we now have 2.3 million people in our prisons and largely because of the war on drugs.
		You know, so it's like we have 5% of the world's population, 25% of the world's prison population.
		And then we start looking at the racial sort of discrimination in terms of who's in prison.
		Black men make up 5% of the population or 6% of the population.
		35% of the prison population.
		If you start to look at all of these numbers, I think Americans are like, well, we are fair.
		We are fair people in general.
		And so I think they are disturbed by that.
		I think that helped.
		And I think the fact that my book, I'm a scientist.
		I've been doing this for some years.
		I am on A number of boards, respected scientific boards, I have played the game, mainstream game, and then I'm saying, I've done the studies, and I'm telling you, you've been misled.
		So that has helped.
		My book has helped.
		So I think the economy, the fact that we don't have the kind of money that we once had, particularly in the mid and late 1990s, where we could build prisons and we could put all this money in law enforcement, I think all of those things have helped people to understand that maybe we're doing something wrong.
		And now with Colorado, one of the things, Colorado and Washington, those two states have legalized marijuana.
		And one of the things that's being really talked about is the amount of tax revenues that the marijuana in Colorado is going to generate.
		In this country, ultimately money remains king.
		And so that has Open people's mind.
		You know, I like to think that empirical evidence helps to really shape the way people think, but money is really king.
		And I think that all of these kinds of things, the economy, Colorado, some information, the fact that we don't want to be an immoral people, all of those kind of things are coming together to help people to rethink what we're doing with drugs.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And if you looked at our culture, If you looked at our civilization scientifically and saw those statistics, those unbalanced statistics, at the very least, you would have to say, well, there's an incompetency in engineering their culture.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		If it's not racist, if they're not victimizing a certain percentage of the population that can't defend itself as effectively and taking advantage of them, at the very least, it's a very poor engineering of the civilization.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		I agree, man.
		You know, the thing is, is that this is one of the things, one of the things I did, I actually believed many of the American sort of mythology that we were a fair people that, you know, equal rights for everyone.
		And so I think a lot of us believe that.
		And so I think as a result of us believing that sort of mythology, and then actually looking at the data, I think people are disturbed.
		I think that people are understanding that we're just about 50 years removed from the March on Washington and the famous Martin Luther King speech, I Have a Dream, and that sort of thing.
		50 years removed from that now.
		And then we were all upset about the social injustice that happened during that era.
		And now I think people are understanding that we have our own social injustice happening right before our eyes.
		And then so the question becomes, well, where will history say you were on the issue?
		And I think people are getting it.
		But I think many people were just simply ignorant to it.
		But I think the message is getting out now.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So it's just this combination of factors that are overwhelming.
		The internet providing all this information.
		Colorado and Washington State providing alternatives to the economic situation.
		All the above.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		All of it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It is an issue.
		It's one of the big issues when it comes to the difference between a democratic leader and a republican leader is the way they treat some social issues.
		And that's a big one.
		The way that the Obama administration sort of said that they were going to treat marijuana.
		And then the way they did treat it.
		Which is very different.
		It was very...
		Bush-like.
		It wasn't much different.
		I mean, they've started recently saying that they wouldn't go after these states, but there was a lot of people that went to jail.
		A lot of people did time.
		A lot of people are still involved in the court system.
		I know people, personally, that have been busted.
		And they were doing everything according to state law.
		Fact.
		So, what's that about?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		That's a good one, man.
		You know, I think about when Bill Clinton was elected in 1992, and I remember the excitement that the country had because we thought that the war on drugs and all these things were going to reverse.
		Then it turns out Bill Clinton, under his administration, more people were arrested than any other administration for these sort of violations.
		Until that time.
		And so I think a similar thing kind of happened under the Obama administration.
		It's hard for the Democratic sort of leadership or the Democratic candidate or president to go in a different direction for fear of being considered soft on drugs, on crime.
		Now, I will say this.
		This administration...
		As of late, it's the only administration that said that they were going to change the way that the justice system, for example, enforced mandatory minimum drug laws.
		They said they wouldn't be enforcing those laws anymore.
		They said that sort of thing.
		This administration said that they would leave Colorado and Washington alone, those states that have legalized marijuana, because under federal law, marijuana remains illegal.
		So technically, the federal government can come in and stop that.
		But they have said they're going to allow it to happen.
		They said it's an important sort of experiment.
		And so...
		On the one hand, I certainly wish they would do more, the current administration.
		But when we look at what previous administrations have done, they have done more than any other administration.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		When it comes to drugs.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		When it comes to drugs.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So there have been some horrible things like the busting of these medical marijuana dispensaries.
		Absolutely.
		Is that just a part of what we were talking about earlier, that just the machine needs to be fed?
		It's way easier to do that than to knock on some trailer that's got smoke coming out of it in the middle of the desert and some dude comes out with a machine gun.
		You go into one of those medical marijuana, you get a nice clean bust, you bring in a lot of cash, and if people don't know the racket, it's kind of hilarious.
		Here's what they do.
		They go.
		They arrest you.
		They come in jackbooted with fucking bulletproof vests on and machine guns.
		They hold people down.
		They step on your neck when you're on the ground.
		There's videos of all this.
		I'm not making this up.
		They take all the weed and they take all the money.
		And then they say that they'll be in touch with you.
		They say that they'll review your case, that charges will be pending, they decide when they're going to press charges, when they're going to put your thing into a system.
		So then these people have to decide whether or not they go back to work.
		Do they decide whether or not they go back to work?
		No one's been charged with anything yet.
		You got arrested, they took all your shit, and then they let you go.
		And so you're sitting there, terrified and broke, trying to figure out, is this worth doing more of?
		And the people that work there often quit.
		You've got to find new employees.
		College kids don't like getting boots put to their face and a gun in their back for weed.
		And so this money just evaporates.
		And it's been millions of dollars worth of money.
		It just sort of goes away.
		And you can't get it back.
		It's not yours.
		The weed, it's ours now.
		It just goes away.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		No, I mean, these kinds of things, they need to be highlighted, and people need to really publicize these things because, I mean, as you just described, obviously most of us are horrified at those kind of events, but people need to know.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		I mean, this has been going on in this country for decades.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it seems like there's got to be a way to balance it out.
		There's got to be a way to take all these industries that are profiting off of It being illegal and locking people up and making sure there's, you know, law enforcement officers that are being paid.
		There's got to be a way to shift that into something else.
		And until they do, it's a hard road.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, first of all, we have to have the conversation that it has to be a shift, like you're saying.
		People are not even having that conversation.
		People aren't having the conversation to say, well, what do we do with this machine that we built up over the past several decades?
		I mean, I can think of a number of ways that we can use police officers in different roles than what they've been used currently.
		I mean, I can think about the educational sort of thing.
		Sometimes, let's think about heroin.
		People have been talking a lot about heroin overdose deaths and those sorts of things, saying that heroin is cut or laced with some sort of other compound.
		We can use our police forces.
		For example, whenever they confiscate something like heroin, why not do the chemical analysis and make sure it's posted in those local regions so people understand what the drug actually contained?
		I mean, we can have police outreach doing this sort of thing.
		Okay, you want to avoid this because this compound is dangerous.
		We can do those kinds of things.
		We never do.
		They never tell the public what's actually in the compound.
		If something is in the compound, they say that, oh, it's cut with something.
		Why not tell the public who is more likely to be susceptible to obtaining that type of heroin?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Completely agree.
		But if you were on the Bill O'Reilly show, he'd be like, you're just going to encourage those kids.
		Now they know what they can take and what not to take.
		You're going to do the testing for them.
		Who's going to pay for that testing?
		Our tax dollars are going to go to give them the exact recipe of their heroin that they like.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		So Bill O'Reilly, you know, he was generous enough to have me on his show.
		And so some props to him for that.
		But the thing about the Bill O'Reilly show is that people should not get twisted.
		That is not news.
		That is entertainment.
		And the goal of what he's disseminating is not public education and not necessarily for the public good.
		So if you want to be entertained, he's outstanding.
		But if you actually want information, You're in the wrong place.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wait a minute, man.
		You didn't watch the thing about him talking about God making the tide go in and the tide go out and no one could explain it?
		You didn't see that?
		I watched that and I was like, okay, he's fucking trolling.
		He's trolling.
		He knows about gravity.
		This motherfucker is saying we can't explain why the tide goes in and the tide goes out.
		He knows they can explain that.
		He's fucking with you.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Well, I mean, think about it.
		The guys had the number one news show, quote-unquote, news, in the United States for about 15, 16, 17 years.
		And that's the formula that he's used.
		Why should he change?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		So for him, it's like he might as well be like Stephen Colbert.
		He's playing a role.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's just his role's not funny.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		His role's just designed to scare the shit out of you and get you to want to build bigger borders.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Well, the thing about it is that you and I understand that he's playing a role and he understands he's playing a role.
		But all of these networks like that, they're all playing a role.
		But the thing is, we just don't caricature them like we do him.
		But they're all playing a role.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right, right.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		They bring in so-called experts, but they think that they're the expert.
		And so all of these guys are playing a role.
		It's entertainment.
		It's not news.
		And that's one thing that the public has to understand.
		That's not news.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You can't...
		I mean, they give you news while they're giving you entertainment, but you're absolutely right.
		It's entertainment first.
unidentified		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's why they're wearing skirts...
		That barely cover their vaginas.
		I mean, those women on Fox News, those are some of the hottest legs you can see on television.
		And they're giving you the news.
		And they're crossing their legs back and forth when they're on the couch, hypnotizing you.
		You don't know what the fuck they're talking about.
		Syria or Ukraine.
		Who knows?
		Look at her legs.
		Her legs are naked.
		Imagine if guys wore skirts in interviews.
		It would be the most ridiculous shit ever.
		But somehow or another, you're allowed to see most of this woman's...
		You know, sexually attractive legs.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		You should actually go to the network.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And tell them that?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Or be there live?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		No, no, actually go.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		I don't want to.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I'd get tongue-tied and be able to talk.
		Yeah, it's hilarious.
		I mean, it's a propaganda factory.
		It really is.
		I mean, they're just trying to dance for you and get you to keep tuning in so they can sell shampoo.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		No, I know.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But that's all we have.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I mean, if you don't go out and get your news on your own, if you're one of those people that you get home from work and you turn on the evening news and you sit in front of the dinner table and you watch the evening news, if that's the only way you get your information, like, wow, we're fucked.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's right.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		That's why I'm a college professor.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		To help.
		Yeah.
		I mean, I guess, but that is the future.
		Like, guys like you teaching young people so that they grow up in a different...
		I mean, I think they're growing up in a different environment anyway, don't you?
unidentified		I think so.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		I think we're in a new moment, man, particularly as it relates to drugs.
		This is something that we haven't seen before.
		And the young people today...
		I mean, you see it on Twitter.
		I see it on Twitter.
		Some of the comments and the statements that people tweet at me, I mean, they are a lot more critical about this issue than my generation was.
		And so I am...
		I'm deeply encouraged.
		And so when I speak on this issue, as you pointed out how frustrating it might be to deal with certain people, I'm not really dealing with those people.
		I'm really dealing with the future.
		I'm speaking for history.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And that's really the only way you can change things, is to change the minds of the young people that are coming up.
		The people that are set in their ways, they already have their mortgages that they have to protect.
		Exactly.
		Yeah, they can also justify that it's okay what they're doing because they've always done it, other people are doing it, and it's legal.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So they don't think they're doing anything wrong.
		I had a friend who was a cop who I did jiu-jitsu with.
		He was always telling me, I don't give a fuck if they got a medical marijuana license.
		If I catch them with weed, I'm busting them.
		I'm like, dude, do you fucking listen to yourself?
		You're a good guy.
		Why are you talking like that?
		That's ridiculous.
		You would take me, aren't we friends?
		You'd take me and you'd throw me in jail for no reason?
		Do you know how stupid that is?
		For what?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		But your friend, right?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		You talking to your friend, I'm sure he respects you, so therefore he'd probably reevaluate what he just said.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I hope so.
		I don't think so, though.
		He's fucking crazy, that dude.
		But he's a cop, and he thinks of it as us versus them.
		He's got that mentality, us versus them.
		And when there's a law, it allows that other person to be the them.
unidentified		That's right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		If it's written down, oh, that's the them.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I mean, that's one of the things...
		That happens when people are involved in legal cases, divorces, disputes with their company.
		It's us and them.
		And we go into us versus them mode.
		And cops are in us versus them mode when it comes to drugs.
		They've lived their whole lives as police officers under the thinking that someone who's got drugs is a perp.
		And then they can get that guy, and then that's something that they win.
		They win.
		The guy's in jail.
		That's right.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		They dehumanize the person and so forth and that person isn't really a person.
		And that's a problem.
		That's a major problem.
		I mean, and so you want to make sure that people, we want to encourage people not to behave like that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and it's got to be really hard for the cops as well if this is what they've done always their entire career and then all of a sudden the laws change and they have to adjust.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Well, so I was in the military.
		You know, we haven't talked about that.
		And so I was a cop in the military for a short period of time.
		And one of the things about cops that they're really good at, they're really good at taking orders.
		So they will adjust if it comes down from the top.
		But the pressure has to be put on the top to make sure that the sort of rank-and-file officers follow these orders.
		But they're really good at following orders.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I'm sure they are.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I just would be concerned that it would take a long time to turn that battleship of intent around, change the way they look at it.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Look at Colorado.
		Look at Washington, right?
		The amount of money that those folks are projected to make in terms of taxpayers' money.
		I assure you, you're going to have former DEA agents involved in the marijuana industry, police officers involved in that industry, relatively quickly.
		So when you say it's going to take a long time, no, it won't take a long time.
		All you have to do is just change the orders or the contingency, the contingency in this case, money.
		So you can actually do it if you have a commitment to doing it.
		I don't think it'll take a long term.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's very optimistic.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		When you look at Colorado, when you look at Washington State, do you think that the genie's out of the bottle and that's just going to spread now?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		The genie is out of the bottle and it will depend, whether the genie stays out of the bottle depends on how much tax revenue is generated.
		That's number one.
		If Colorado continues to generate the revenue that they've been reporting recently, the genie's out of the bottle for a while.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Especially in this economy, it's kind of a perfect storm, right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		This screwed up economy when everything's all...
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Especially in this economy, but in the United States, if you're making money, that trumps everything.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		What a freak fucking group of humans we are.
		It's really strange, but it's exciting.
		I mean, I hate the fact that the situation exists as is.
		I hate the fact that just this giant percentage of our population is imprisoned for nonviolent crimes and involve personal choice and either drug use or even selling drugs.
		It's unbelievably hypocritical when you have drugs everywhere you look.
		But at least I'm encouraged that I see this shift in the young people.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, me too.
		I'm very encouraged, man.
		And that's the thing that keeps me going.
		That's the thing that keeps me on the road with this book talking to people about this issue, trying to educate people.
		I mean, because I think that they're going to do it better than we did it.
		And if I could play any role in helping them do it better, let's do it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What's been the biggest resistance out of all these years of studying drugs and studying the reactions of drugs?
		What do you feel has been the biggest resistance or the biggest hurdle that you've had to overcome?
		Because I'm sure it must have been pretty difficult to get this going, especially in the 90s.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you know, so when you say what's been the biggest hurdle to overcome, I'm not sure if you mean professional hurdle or personal hurdle, because, you know, in the book, it's personal and professional.
		And so it all kind of combines it all.
		So I'm not sure exactly where you want to go with this.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, either one, either or, but what I meant is the resistance to your research.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Yeah, so the resistance to the research, the biggest sort of resistance has been primarily from law enforcement community and treatment providers, those two communities, in part because, I mean, I understand that I'm messing with their money at some level.
		But that's okay.
		I expected that sort of thing.
		My major thing is that if I can just get people to focus on the evidence, the real evidence and not the hysteria, not anecdotes, although anecdotes can be important, if I can get people to focus on evidence, I think I'll win them over.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, when I tell people how marijuana was initially made illegal, they look at me like I'm crazy, like I'm making things up.
		And I give them the William Randolph Hearst story and how they used this term, marijuana, that was a wild Mexican tobacco.
		And the people that were making marijuana illegal didn't even know they were making hemp illegal.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Which had been used for thousands of years.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		There was a product called a decorticator that was invented.
		And when the decorticator was invented, it was a more effective way to process the hemp fiber.
		And they were talking about hemp being a billion-dollar crop.
		It was on the cover of Popular Science.
		And everybody was like, well, this is it.
		You know, hemp is going to make a new comeback because now there's a machine that allows people to process it easy.
		And they shut that shit down.
		So quick.
		And that was the original reason why marijuana was illegal.
		It had nothing to do with even the psychoactive form of it.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Well, you just kind of talked about my book.
		You know, that's the sort of theme of the book is that when we talk about these drugs, when we look from marijuana to heroin, what we find is that the illegality of these drugs have less to do with the pharmacology and more to do with these social and economic reasons that you just laid out.
		That's precisely it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What's really interesting is that there are laws in two states, in Colorado and Washington, making marijuana legal.
		Even though hemp has been non-psychoactive and used in this country legally since...
		I mean, you could buy it from Canada, like we do at Onnit, and we bring it over, and it's totally illegal to possess, but you can't grow it.
		They won't let you grow it, which is just unbelievable.
		It's kind of hilarious.
		And that's the real reason why marijuana is still illegal to this day.
		It was all done just to keep hemp out, which is incredible.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so there were...
		And also, one of the things that we have to understand, too, is that there's always this sort of...
		The time when we made marijuana illegal, it was a time when the country didn't really want to have federal laws.
		And so you had to have...
		Fuel.
		And the fuel that we used was related to the Mexicans and black people using the drug.
		So there were a number of people who genuinely believed that marijuana made these folks misbehave and engage in heinous crimes.
		And so people thought that the drug was so awful that any responsible society would ban the drug.
		That component of banning drugs existed before marijuana.
		That's why heroin or opioids were banned.
		That's why cocaine was banned earlier.
		So, yeah, this song has been played over and over.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Who financed Reefer Madness?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Do you know?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Who financed Reefer Madness?
		That's a tough question because I don't know all of the history related to it.
		One of the things that I do know is that the Bureau of Narcotics, headed up at the time by Harry Anslinger, his bureau got more money as a result of going at the marijuana or vilifying marijuana.
		And so I know that played a big role in the driving of making marijuana illegal.
		But in terms of the Hearst family, that whole storyline, I know it slightly, but I don't know it as well as I know the Harry Anslinger story.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Apparently, it was originally financed by a church group under the title Tell Your Children.
		And the film was intended to be shown to parents as a morality tale, attempting to teach them.
		This is from Wikipedia.
		Teach them about the dangers of cannabis use.
		However, soon after the film was shot, it was purchased by producer Dwayne Esper, who recut the film for distribution on the exploitation film circuit.
		Beginning in 1938, 1939, and through the 40s and 50s, the film was rediscovered in the early 70s and gained new life as a satire among advocates of cannabis policy reform.
		So again, it became about money.
		It became a guy who realized he could make some money scaring the shit out of people and sell tickets to this movie.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but also understand now, by this time, when the film really became big, 38, so the drug was already illegal.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		The drug became illegal in 37. And so maybe the film was just capitalizing on the sort of mood at the time too of the country.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right, that people were scared.
		That's kind of interesting, though, that it was originally from a church group and then some dude who made money exploiting these fears.
		Then he started doing it.
		It really kind of goes along with what we've been saying the whole time.
		It's all about the money.
		Follow the money.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Follow the money.
		I mean, in many of these cases, follow the money.
		It's like we all have our price.
		Follow the money.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's so disturbing, though.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's disturbing to hear for some people, that our entire society is being engineered by money.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, it's one of these things that you hope people behave in a moral fashion, you know, despite the fact that we have these sort of interests, these monetary interests.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		But if people are hearing for the first time that it's about the money, well, they are kind of late to the game.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's sort of a duh.
		Duh.
		What do you think about, I don't know if you've ever watched the Vanguard show, the OxyContin Express.
		Did you ever see that episode?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		No, how about you tell me about it?
		I got a lot to say about OxyContin, but tell me about it.
		I don't know the show.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's a great show about the pathway, the highways between Florida and the rest of the country, that Florida's drug use and the OxyContin prescriptions were so high.
		I think Florida had some insane amount, like more than the entire country combined by a long shot of OxyContin prescriptions and people were going down to these pain management centers and they documented the whole process.
		Apparently Florida, since this documentary, has been forced to clean their act up because we talked about it on the podcast and I got a lot of tweets from people with new information.
		It was pretty cool.
		But they had these pain management centers that were built in.
		They had a doctor and a pharmacy right there.
		Hey, my back hurts.
		Here you go.
		Take this paper.
		Go right next door and get your heroin.
		And then people would do it under like 15 different names.
		They had no database.
		So you could go to one doctor and get a prescription.
		Then you go down the street and go to another doctor.
		And they weren't able to exchange information and find out that this guy, this Joe Rogan character, has a hundred different prescriptions for OxyContin.
		He's just driving around all day with a backache.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		You know, like that sort of thing.
		I'm happy that people are concerned about the overuse of any drug, for example.
		But the thing that concerns me about that sort of thing is that when you make these documentaries, they...
		Invariably, they do poor jobs.
		One of the reasons that they do poor jobs is because they highlight these sort of aberrations, the worst-case scenario.
		And then so me, the viewer, we get outraged because we see this abhorrent behavior that's going on.
		And then what happens is that you get this crackdown so severe that people who are in pain who actually need the medication find it difficult to get the medication.
		So it'd be nice if we just had like our routine sort of policing of all of these activities.
		When we find that people are abusing the system, we deal with it.
		But don't exaggerate our sort of punishment to the extent that we're doing more harm.
		So, on the one hand, Folks, if they are using OxyContin, I would much prefer them use OxyContin than that they use street heroin.
		In part because OxyContin, we know it's 100% pharmaceutical grade and the adulterants, there are no adulterants in that OxyContin versus heroin where there are Adulterance in the street-level heroin.
		So on the one hand, you have to think about, we have to weigh all of these sort of potential risks and benefits.
		And oftentimes, it's a one-sided story.
		And that bothers me.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, one of the things they were talking about in the documentary was how Florida was providing the rest of the country with OxyContin.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And that's why it was a big issue.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
		Like I said, I know that Florida had these issues.
		And that's fine.
		And the authorities should take care of it.
		They should do what's appropriate.
		But I hope they don't exaggerate it.
		Because typically that's what we do.
		We go overboard.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that is one of the issues of another article that I was reading on Bloomberg about these pain victims that were trapped in this prescription crackdown.
		And that the amount of OxyContin prescriptions has dropped dramatically.
		Dropped by 97% after a joint U.S. state task force made 2,150 arrests for offenses ranging from improper sales to over-prescription by doctors.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, docs are afraid.
		There are far more good doctors out there who are trying to be responsible than the wayward ones that you describe.
		And the ones who are trying to be responsible, they say, I'm not prescribing these pain meds because I know there's too much potential for risk or harm there.
		Not so much for the patient, but for myself in terms of losing my license.
		Somebody may think that I'm doing this intentionally.
		And so I worry about that, how we crack down too severely.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's the whole point of this one article on Bloomberg.
		And if anybody wants to check it out, that's the name of it.
		Florida Pain Victims Trapped by Prescription Crackdown.
		It's under their health section.
		In 2010, Florida had 90 of the nation's top 100 pharmacies buying oxycodone.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Wow!
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Isn't that where Rush Limbaugh was getting his...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, he was popping some insane number too, that fat fuck.
		He was throwing down like a hundred a day.
		He's got a lot of bulk.
		He's throwing heroin through.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		You know, on the one hand, there's so much there.
		Number one, he was on essentially heroin.
		That's what OxyContin is, basically.
		But yet he was going to work, he was paying his taxes, and he was handling his responsibilities, right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Nobody pointed this out.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		And so when we think about drug users, that's your typical drug user.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's a great example of it because, I mean, who better?
		A guy who's anti-drugs, who happened to be on drugs, and a guy who's a mouthpiece for the right-wing machine, which has always been anti- quote-unquote drugs.
		And here's a guy who's taken...
		Fucking elephant-sized doses of this shit every day.
		He's got his nanny out there running around, or whoever it was, his housekeeper, running around out there buying more heroin for him, and she got popped.
		It's hilarious that that guy was like an anti-drug guy.
		I mean, it's...
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		He's performing.
		You know, that's his show.
		You know this.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		But it's fascinating that those guys exist, that the Bill O'Reilly's, the Rush Limbaugh type characters, the people that really are putting on an act.
		And, you know, Stephen Colbert, everybody thinks of him as, you know, caricature.
		But they're all caricatures.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's how they make their money.
		And you look at Rush Limbell's house, it's a fucking giant.
		It's huge.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		People like what he does.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He's out there golfing every day with a hearing aid now because he apparently did so much OxyContin he fucked up his hearing.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Well, don't blame that on OxyContin, please.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's what Alex Jones told me.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Well, don't blame that on OxyContin.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Alex Jones explained it to me in some pseudo-medical terms and I'll just parrot right back at you.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		No, I mean, you know, when you say the kind of Venom that that guy says, you know, somebody probably hit him upside the head.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		But don't blame that on OxyContin.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is it possible to take so much OxyContin that you go deaf?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		I am not aware of that.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		I am just not aware of that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I would have to do the research here.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		No, I mean, I have been studying this issue for a while, and I just never ever heard of that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I only heard it because of Alex Jones.
		It's not the best...
		He's not even Wikipedia.
		He's a great guy and everything.
		You go deaf.
		Let's see if it's true.
		Let's punch that shit in.
		We live in strange times, you know?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but...
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Alright.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Really quickly, he acknowledged he had gone almost completely deaf.
		No, he's not admitting it.
		Who knows?
		How much Oxycontin?
		Like, what's the LD50 for folks who don't know?
		LD50 is lethal dose, 50%.
		So if you...
		Some drugs, it's very high.
		Some drugs, it's very low.
		Marijuana, it's insane.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		I don't know what the LD50 for Oxycontin is.
		But one of the things about heroin or just any other opiate like Oxycontin is that if you've been using it for a while, that means you can really increase your dose of the drug.
		So, you know, I've seen...
		Heroin users take anywhere from 25 milligrams of that drug to 500 milligrams.
		That's a why and be fine.
		And so it all depends on the user's history of using the drug.
		So I'm not surprised if he's been using a drug for a while that he was using large doses.
		That doesn't surprise me.
		And that doesn't even concern me if he was using large doses if he had developed tolerance.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So if you develop tolerance and you're taking, say, 50 pills a day or whatever he was taking, that's no more dangerous than taking one or two pills a day if you don't have the tolerance for it?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		See, one of the things that people don't talk enough about in terms of drugs is the sort of protective effects of tolerance.
		So when people develop tolerance to any drug, whether it be marijuana, alcohol, heroin, it protects you from some of the toxic effects.
		So you can really push the dose without having harmful effects.
		Let me just give you an example from an animal study.
		One of the things that we reported that was reported in the literature with laboratory animals and methamphetamine is that you give them a whopping dose of that drug, you can cause neurotoxic effects.
		Brain cells die, right?
		Now, if you allow that animal to develop tolerance by giving escalating doses over several days and then you give them that whopping dose, you block the sort of neurotoxic or brain cell death.
		As a result of them developing tolerance.
		So tolerance is important to protect the animal from some of the toxic effects of the drug.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's fascinating.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So the LD50 rate will absolutely change with those who are tolerant to it from continued use.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so the lethal dose will look different based upon the user's history.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so when they say like lethal dose 50% or 50% of the population being, you know, like if you have 100 people and then you give them a certain amount of heroin, 50% of them die.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		As soon as they start taking that heroin, that number changes.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		That number, you know, it's hard to predict when we start talking about people who have tolerance.
		I mean, so when we think about the LD50, we're typically talking about folks who don't have experience with the drug.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And we do physically addict in some form to a lot of drugs.
		You were talking about alcohol being one of the few that if you physically addict to it and you quit.
		Isn't that what happened with Amy Winehouse?
		Didn't they show that her system had nothing other than alcohol in it?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		It had nothing but alcohol, but I'm not sure how she died.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		I don't want to get this wrong.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Some folks do die that way though, right?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Oh yeah, you can die from alcohol withdrawal.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		You die typically from seizures that's caused as a result of the alcohol withdrawal.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So if someone out there is addicted to alcohol, how do they kick alcohol?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Do they have to do it very slowly?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		So if you develop dependence on alcohol, you should probably be admitted to a hospital in order to receive benzodiazepines, something like diazepam or Valium, which acts in a similar way as alcohol, but it's longer lasting.
		So the body has a chance to detoxify.
		The benzodiazepine slowly leaves the body, whereas alcohol abruptly leaves the body And then that's what causes the seizure activity and those sorts of things.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What is the physiological effect of the alcohol leaving the body and then the seizure?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What causes the body to just...
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		So when...
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Have you ever had a hangover?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		That's alcohol withdrawal.
		Really?
		Yeah, that's alcohol withdrawal.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I thought it was dehydration.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		It's part of alcohol withdrawal.
		Dehydration is part of it as well, but that's like the mild symptoms of alcohol withdrawal.
		But when you think about the severe sort of alcohol withdrawal, you're asking about what happens with the seizures.
		So the idea is that alcohol, what it does is that it suppresses much of the brain activity.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You're telling me, man.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		It is just suppressed.
		And then for long-term use of alcohol, it really suppresses a number of brain cells.
		And then all of a sudden, because alcohol's half-life, the time at which half of the drug leaves the body, is only about an hour.
		It's really quick.
		So the half-life is so short, once the alcohol has left the body and it's been depressing the central nervous system, the brain activity, now all of a sudden those cells fire wildly, uncontrollably, and that's what causes the seizure activity.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's unbelievably fascinating.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So it's also unbelievably fascinating that it's been proven that alcohol actually suppresses the use of the mind, that the mind can't work as well.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Well, I don't want to say that strongly.
		It certainly depresses certain neurons, a number of neurons.
		So like when you think about it, when you are anxious, if you're anxious and And you have some alcohol, if you have a benzodiazepine, it's suppressing certain type of activity.
		And so that's a good thing, and you might actually function better.
		Because if you think about going to a party or having some event, and you're so anxious where you can't, Perform as well, and you maybe have a drink, and now you're calm, and you might actually be more social, and you might actually perform more better in that situation.
		So I don't want to say that it's just sort of generalized bad effect on your behavior or the brain.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So at certain low dosages, it can be beneficial, but at high dosages, it does shut down certain functions of the brain.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Like, there's very few people that would score as well on their SATs after five shots of Jack Daniels.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I think that's one of the things we've been really good at public education.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Most people know that they shouldn't do shots before taking the SATs for that reason, right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Can you imagine if it made you smarter?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, I can't imagine anything that makes you smarter besides studying and working hard.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Good for you.
		That's a very good way to say that.
		That's so true.
		But it's interesting, though, when you think about the idea that this is one of the most popular, if not the most popular recreational drug in the world, and one of the most popular, the only big time sanctioned one in America, where you don't have to have a sickness.
		Almost every drug that we have...
		That it's a prescription drug, whether it's good for you or bad for you, dangerous, incredibly potent, whatever it is, you have to get a prescription.
		There has to be a reason for it.
		You don't need a reason to get fucked up on booze.
		There's Mikey's bar, and you walk on in, give me a double and a beer, and then boom, 20 minutes later, you're drunk.
		We don't need any...
		No reasons.
		No doctor.
		Nobody has to hold your hand.
		You don't have to write anything down.
		You don't have to give the guy your name and phone number.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		So I'm trying to figure out, are you saying that's a bad thing or a good thing?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I'm fascinated by it.
		I'm neither.
		I'm not saying it's a good or a bad thing.
		If I had to say, should it be legal or illegal, I would say absolutely legal.
		I've enjoyed alcohol many times in my life.
		I don't have a problem with alcohol.
		But it is very telling and fascinating that that is the one drug that we chose.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Well, it is for a number of reasons.
		I mean, when you think about it, how we do alcohol, we take it orally.
		And so it's the only drug that we take orally that you can feel the effects almost immediately.
		And so when you're at a party, you don't have to wait for the onset of the effects to happen.
		It happens almost immediately.
		And you control the intoxication simply by taking more or less of the drug.
		You can't do that with other drugs orally.
		And that's one reason that that's the case is because alcohol essentially has no barrier, blood-brain barrier.
		Like those other drugs, they have to cross the blood-brain barrier.
		With alcohol, there's essentially no barrier for alcohol.
		The pharmacokinetics or pharmacology properties of the drug makes it very convenient for a recreational drug.
		That's another important reason that it's legal.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's a good point when you consider like if you were going to open up like a mushroom store and everybody would come in and sell mushrooms, you'd give them the mushrooms and be like, come back and hang out in an hour and 20 minutes because for the next hour, you know, nothing really is going to happen.
		You're just going to start sweating.
		But alcohol, one shot, two shot, you're feeling it in 15, 20 minutes.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you're doing it through the oral route.
		So when you take a drug orally, some of it will be broken down before it reaches the brain, which is a good thing because that means that you don't have such large doses being shot into your vein or smoked in your lungs into the brain.
		And so it's kind of protective in that way.
		And so those pharmacology properties, I can't think of another drug that has such good properties.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I couldn't think of another drug either.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		If you were doing marijuana, the issue would be that you would get people around you high as well through secondhand intoxication.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's not only that.
		You have to actually smoke it, but there are better methods now.
		You've got vaporizers and that sort of thing, so you can smoke marijuana more discreetly, and as these sort of methods are developed, it might become a more social drug, but we still have the issue of Getting large amounts into the bloodstream, therefore into the brain, in such a rapid succession.
		And that's the thing that worries us in terms of safety.
		And so people need to be able, need to be educated on how to make sure that they don't take too much of a large dose at once.
		And once you do that, you can help people be safe.
		But alcohol, don't have so much worry about it.
		The thing that we try and prevent people from doing has been shrinking because of Having large amounts in such a rapid amount of time.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That it's just your body can't process it quickly enough?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's just, well, you know, toxicity occurs primarily because of the large amounts in a rapid sensation, a rapid sort of, in rapid order.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But what about, I mean, the other big issue with alcohol as opposed to marijuana is coordination.
		Drastically affects coordination.
		Drastically affects your ability to move correctly, your response times.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it all depends.
		Dose, again, you know, so it all depends how much people are taking.
		You know, like all of these drugs, one of the things I try and point out, the most important thing about drugs is dose.
		You know, is you increase the dose, you increase the likelihood of toxicity.
		Because there are doses in which you can take all of these drugs safely and accomplish whatever task you're trying to accomplish.
		But it's all about dose.
		So when we say general statements about what alcohol does or what cocaine does, we have to be cognizant of dose.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What about drinking and driving, though?
		When you see the limits, I don't remember, what are the current national limits?
		They've varied a little bit, and I actually think they've lowered them in certain places.
		Do you think that they're fair where they're at right now?
		Do you think they should be adjusted?
		What are your thoughts on that?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		No, I think they're fair.
		I mean, they're the best we can do.
		And then we also have those roadside tests and those kinds of things.
		It's the best that we can do.
		And I think we're doing a really good job at sort of alcohol-related drinking, I mean, driving problems.
		When we look at what issues we had in 1960s compared to what we have now, the number of accidents and deaths related to driving have dramatically decreased, all those sorts of things.
		In part because of our education, because of what we're doing.
		So I think we're going about that quite well and appropriate.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What about tolerance in relates to that?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Because for a person who doesn't drink at all, if they have a point, whatever, and then you get some dude who's just hitting it hard every night, and he's only had one or two beers, but if he gets pulled over, he's going to test too high, but his tolerance might be so that he would be fine.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		You're absolutely right.
		And that's one thing that these sort of criteria don't account for is tolerance.
		But a good lawyer who has to defend someone should probably bring in tolerance, particularly if their client is tolerant to the alcohol effects.
		But good luck.
		That's a tough one because people think that they have this...
		It's a definite measure and it tells them something.
		And it really doesn't without understanding tolerance.
		But you're absolutely right.
		That's a great question.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So a universal number like that is inherently unscientific, knowing the understanding...
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		A universal number like that does not apply to everyone.
		It does not consider tolerance.
		That's right.
		But it's the best that we have currently.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The hand-eye coordination drills.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		That's the thing.
		It's the behavioral tests that are important.
		You want to see how behaviorally impaired the person is.
		Because if you have that in combination with the blood levels, then you have an increased confidence of what you're seeing.
		But if you have, for example, somebody testing over the limit based on their blood, but their hand coordination, they pass a sobriety test, Then you're less confident in what that blood level means.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		That makes sense.
		Is there any other variables as far as a person's ability to pass a hand-eye coordination test when they're drunk?
		I mean, athletic ability, things along those lines.
		Because some people, they could barely bend down to touch their shoes, whereas other people are yoga masters.
		If you've got a yoga master fucked up, he might be able to just put his foot over his head while he's hammered, and the cops would be like, this guy's sober.
unidentified		Yeah.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's right.
		You know, if people have practiced with the test and they know how to do it really well, then maybe they're not impaired driving as well.
		I don't know.
		But yeah, all of those issues that you bring up, man, those are complex issues.
		And those are issues that the society has to struggle with, but they won't struggle with it because it's too complicated.
		And it's just nicer to have a number.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Now, how does a state like Florida become this weird aberration?
		How does a state like Florida have so many, like they said, 90% of all the oxycodone pharmacies, the pharmacies that are making it and selling it?
		How does that happen?
		How does one state just go haywire?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		I don't know the Florida law, but I'm sure it's related to the permissiveness of their law.
		I think that that's the thing that contributed to this.
		I mean, they probably were allowed to set up pain clinics in a way that...
		You didn't require much sort of oversight.
		So whenever those kind of things happen, there's a potential for abuse.
		So I would probably guess that's what happened.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I was also wondering if maybe it might be some of the remnants of the cocaine era of Miami.
		Did you ever see Cocaine Cowboys?
		You ever see that documentary?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I'm from Miami.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Cocaine Cowboys and Cocaine Cowboys 2. Shout out to my friend Billy Corbin who made those movies.
		I met that dude.
		Very nice guy.
		And really, really fascinating documentaries that cover the whole cocaine era of Miami where one year the graduating class of the police academy, every single member either wound up dead from murder or in jail.
		For corruption.
		Like they were just crazy and making money off of coke and coke is moving in and out.
		And I had always wondered if maybe that had something to do with like sort of the echoes of this pervasiveness of drugs in that state.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Wow, man.
		You know, I haven't lived in Miami or Florida since 1984. Florida is a bizarre state in general, you know, so I have to say that I'm outside of the scope of my expertise when it comes to trying to understand Florida.
		I don't understand Florida.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, they said that there's more banks per capita in Miami than any other city in the country, and that is directly related to their ability to process money that was coke money.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, I grew up in that era, you know, the late 70s and early 80s, and the Scarface era, you know, 1980 was a peak murder rate in this country.
		You know, one of the highest murder rates was in 1980, in part because of the cocaine sort of thing.
		Mind you, long before crack, but nobody's really talking about that.
		And so, yeah, I know that era, and I know that cocaine was a big deal in Miami.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		My friend Steve did his residency in Miami, and it was during that era.
		And he's got just crazy stories of violence, of just people coming in, just all fucked up.
		And a lot of it was drug wars.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How did that all of a sudden happen?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Do you know the history?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		New drug markets.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How did these drug markets open up?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I mean, what took so long that it took the 1980s for them to get over here?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think, well, the story that I've heard, and I haven't researched this to the best of my ability, so this is only what I've read superficially.
unidentified		Okay.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Is that there was a crackdown on marijuana, a big crackdown in the 70s on marijuana.
		And then so the drug cartels brought in cocaine because it was smaller weight and you could make more money.
		And then so that was about the time when cocaine started to flood the U.S. markets.
		That's what I've read as far as that goes.
		But like I said, it's a superficial read of my understanding of it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So really, all crack cocaine was was like the second wave of cocaine.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's like cocaine came when they figured out there's an opening because of marijuana crackdowns, and then they said, well, we've got to figure out a way to get it to people that can't afford to buy a brick.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, no, absolutely.
		Some industrious dealer figured out how to cook cocaine and mass-produce it in ways that people could smoke it at cheap unit doses.
		I mean, that's brilliant, quite frankly.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it is when you think about it that way.
		But that person is brilliant, whereas whoever rigged the laws in Florida to allow OxyContin to come in and we look at that and we go, well, this person, this is corruption.
		What they've done is terrible.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, I don't know the law, so it's hard for me to speak on the specifics of that.
		And so, I don't know.
		I don't know.
		The person could have had a great idea and probably meant well.
		I don't know.
		But it certainly doesn't seem to be playing out as well as we would have liked.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Now, when you start to do these studies and you're in the 1990s and you're finding things that are contradictory to what we normally consider to be culturally accepted ideas about these drugs, what happens?
		Do you get resistance from people in universities?
		Do you get resistance from your peers?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		No.
		You know, how science works is that you publish these stories.
		One study doesn't mean as much as multiple studies.
		And so you publish one study and it's like, that's a great finding.
		Cool.
		Let's see if you can replicate it.
		Let's see if you can extend it.
		Let's see if other people can replicate it.
		And if other people can replicate it, you can extend the findings.
		Now you feel more confident in what you're finding.
		And so that's kind of what happened.
		Over the years, I built on my findings and then it increased my confidence so much so that I thought that I should write a book in order to make sure the public understands what's happening.
		Because when you publish in the scientific literature...
		Five people read your paper, if you're lucky.
		You know, there's not many people who read the literature, besides those few people who are interested in your area.
		And so as I increased my confidence in the findings, I thought I wanted to publicize it because I thought what we were doing with drugs was inconsistent in terms of policy and the way we educate and treat drugs was inconsistent with the science.
		And the way that you communicate with the people was to write a book, a trade book.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Now, how's this book been received?
		Is there any, like, have you had a debate about it?
		Has anybody ever said, I challenge you on your ideas, these are not correct, this is not true?
		Have you ever had to, like, sit down with Ann Coulter or anything along those lines?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Well, I don't think she's qualified to be challenging me, quite frankly, about drugs.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But she would do it anyway.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I know.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		She might embarrass herself if she did, I assure you.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I don't know if that's possible.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		There have been people who...
		Who may say that they have some trouble with the conclusions that I draw, but the scientific community and the general public have been welcoming and it's been a breath of fresh air for most people because people already know this.
		The things that I'm saying about drugs like the fact that the vast majority of people who use drugs What's groundbreaking is that it's being said in a public forum, because it's never been said in a public forum.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's always been the exact opposite.
		It's always been the propaganda and What's really refreshing about what you're doing is the fact that you're pushing fact first, regardless of how it's going to be accepted.
		You're just saying, look, I'm a scientist.
		This is what's going on.
		And we have to really accept that in order to figure out what we're dealing with.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, man.
		You know, science actually saved me.
		I mean, the data.
		The focus on what do the data say saved my life.
		You know, without science, I'm not here.
		And all I can do I mean, there are people who are smarter than me.
		There are people who are more articulate than me.
		There are people who are more wealthy than I am.
		But the great equalizer are the data.
		Whatever the data says is the position that I take.
		And as long as I do that, I'm okay.
		I can say anything publicly.
		I can be in public.
		Nothing intimidates me as long as I am on the side of the data.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that is so important, and that's not what's been thrown around.
		It's been, what ideology do you prescribe to?
		What are your thoughts on free will?
		What are your thoughts on a person's ability to handle certain things that other people can't?
		That's what the discussion's always been, almost more philosophical.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I know.
		As long as discussion is at that level, and now we can engage in this Exchange of ignorance.
		And that's what we've had.
		So in this case, what I'm trying to do is make sure we avoid the exchanges of ignorance and making sure that if people engage in this conversation, that they have some expertise, some skills, some knowledge, and not just some emotion.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Now, in a perfect world, would drugs be decriminalized or would they be legalized?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so in High Price, in the book, I argue that all drugs should be decriminalized.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		I say they should be decriminalized and then we should have this corresponding increase in realistic education.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Now, when things are decriminalized, then that means that people can be fined.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		They may be subjected to fines.
		You don't necessarily have to be fined, but just like a traffic violation, you might get a fine or you may not get a fine.
		But the one thing that's important here is that they don't go to jail and they don't ruin their lives as a result of having a felony conviction.
		Because when we think about the last three presidents, Barack Obama...
		George Bush, Bill Clinton, all three of those guys used illegal drugs.
		Clinton marijuana, Bush marijuana, he's widely suspected of using cocaine.
		Obama used marijuana and cocaine.
		All I'm saying is that let's make sure that the society has, everybody in the society has the same opportunities as those guys.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Now, in a decriminalized situation as opposed to a legal situation, how do we decide where the revenue comes from as far as tickets?
		Isn't that an issue?
		Because then it becomes a money thing again.
		You can charge people a ticket for having marijuana.
		Marijuana is decriminalized and all of a sudden we're getting tickets left and right for weed.
		It's like a speeding thing.
		It's like putting a 25 mile an hour speed limit on the highway when you know everyone's going to break it.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		No, no, that's exactly right.
		And so that's where we have to be smart as a society in terms of thinking about the administrative fees or the fines that we would charge people.
		Well, we set limits to make sure that we don't become excessive.
		For example, the greatest amount of fine that you can give someone, let's just say it's $25 or some amount that is not prohibitive and an amount that police departments can't depend upon for their budgets.
		And that money shouldn't be allowed to be used to support police budgets.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's an interesting way of doing it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Are you completely opposed to legalization?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		No, no, no.
		I mean, I am not completely opposed to legalization.
		My concern here is that the country, we're too ignorant right now for legalization.
		Not that people will go out and do some dangerous things related to drugs, but if you legalize drugs now, what will happen is that you will have the detractors say things like Any ills in the society is going to be blamed on the drugs.
		And we're so ignorant, we're susceptible to believing that.
		So before legalization, I'm arguing that we have this increase in education about what drugs do and don't do.
		So people cannot be susceptible to being hoodwinked like that.
		I'm arguing that the education provides an inoculation, if you will.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So you're saying we can't handle the truth, essentially.
		What you're saying is that we need this decriminalization step before we get to a legalization.
		We couldn't just jump right into legalization.
		It would be too much change, pandemonium, people would go crazy, fear, people would use propaganda to set people against it, you know, to go against it.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so I'm thinking about, well, I'm not saying that it would be pandemonium.
		We have Washington and Colorado right now.
		Mark my words, there will be studies coming out of Washington and Colorado showing that young people in those states do more poorly on whatever measure you want to have as a result of marijuana.
		The data won't support that conclusion, but that's what people are going to be drawing from those data.
		And so this is my prediction right now.
		As a result of people's ignorance about marijuana, And that's marijuana, a drug that we have a lot more experience than with heroin.
		But mark my words, you'll see those studies come out.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Now, isn't it problematic that marijuana is legal in two states, medically legal in what, like 18 or something now?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		About 17 or 18, yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But still a Schedule I substance, which means that it has no medicinal value.
		Whereas for folks who don't know, heroin and cocaine are both Schedule II, which is kind of silly.
		Schedule I also includes all of the non-lethal psychedelic variants like psilocybin, which the LD50 rated something fucking crazy.
		Marijuana, it's like 1,500 pounds inside of 15 minutes.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so to be clear, heroin is a Schedule I drug, not a Schedule II. What is Schedule II? Methamphetamine is Schedule II. Schedule II is methamphetamine.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Cocaine is Schedule II? Cocaine is Schedule II. Morphine is Schedule II. So how do they get Oxycontins in then?
unidentified		Schedule II. Those are Schedule II. But it's heroin.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's an opiate and they act at the same brain receptor.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		So your puzzled look just kind of explains or it typifies Americans' drug education because you were right when you said, but it's heroin.
		Exactly.
		But a better analogy is that morphine and heroin are essentially the same drug.
		Like I explained the difference between crack and powder, that's morphine and heroin.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's why I was, I'm sorry.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so morphine, heroin is just morphine with an acid group attached to it.
		They're the same drug.
		And so the fact that drugs are legal, you and I talked about this earlier, It has less to do with the drug's biological activity or pharmacology and more to do with the social conditions that were surrounding the legality of the drug, more so than pharmacology.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's interesting.
		So cocaine, which is a Schedule II, is crack a Schedule I? Crack is a Schedule I, yes.
		Oh, it gets squirrely, doesn't it?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's very squirrely.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So heroin, crack, bad, Oxycontin, and, you know, all the other variants.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so the thing people have to understand is that these schedules are largely based on politics.
		They're more political than pharmacology, although...
		We say that they're largely based on pharmacology, but some of this stuff, as you're pointing out the inconsistencies in our logic, and you don't even study this.
		You just are just pointing this out, and you can see the flaws in our thinking, and you're absolutely right.
		So the scheduling thing is largely social, political, cultural.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's fascinating.
		I had always assumed that heroin was scheduled, too, just because I knew that Oxycontins were prescribed.
		I didn't know.
		And then the crack, the whole thing totally makes sense.
		What is the medicinal use of cocaine?
		Because there's medicinal cocaine.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so let's think about it.
		If you've ever gone to a dentist, right, you might have had Novocaine put on your gums.
		Without cocaine, you don't have Novocaine, because cocaine was the first local anesthetic, right?
		That's one.
		But cocaine today is used primarily in minor surgeries in order to restrict the blood flow so people can operate in that environment.
		That's what it's mainly used for.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So lidocaine also related to cocaine?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Lidocaine is related to cocaine, that's right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I had my nose fixed, and they threw some lidocaine up there, and they had the packing up there, and then they sprayed lidocaine, and I was fucked up all day, man.
		I mean, it was a weird feeling.
		I wasn't high, you know, it wasn't like a cocaine high, but I was like, wow, I don't feel good.
		And I knew it was that lidocaine shit.
		I was like, I think I would rather have just felt the pain than to have all this weird stuff in my system, you know?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but without cocaine, you don't have the local anesthetic properties of lidocaine because it's a modification of the cocaine structure.
		Now, how difficult would it be to get these drugs that have these insane LD50 rates and have a wealth of medicinal benefits like marijuana and get them out of Schedule I? I think marijuana, there's a lot of movement now for marijuana to be moved away from Schedule 1 to Schedule 2. I think if the public continues its pressure, I think it'll happen.
		But the public has to be vigilant, and they have to continue its activity and intensity.
		Otherwise, it won't happen.
		We sometimes think that these things are based mainly on medicine and the medical community, scientific community.
		The public has an important role to play here.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So, public opinion and public, the tide, which way the tide is going is very important.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Now, when you have something like marijuana that doesn't hurt people, that doesn't kill people, and then you hear, like you'll hear on TV, people come on and start talking about withdrawal symptoms and people that have withdrawals from marijuana.
		Are there physical withdrawals from marijuana?
		Is it possible?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I think I've published maybe, along with my colleagues, maybe 10 papers on marijuana withdrawal.
		So we have actually shown and demonstrated marijuana withdrawal.
		Now, I should say, in order to see marijuana withdrawal, you have to have people who smoke the drug every day, damn near every day, in multiple joints per day, and then you abruptly stop them.
		Now, you don't see marijuana withdrawal in everyone, but you certainly can see some marijuana withdrawal in some people.
		And when I say marijuana withdrawal, it's about like nicotine withdrawal.
		You know, people, they have sleep disruptions, they have eating disruptions, they are more moody.
		These are more psychological sort of issues.
		Certainly not life-threatening, but it's unpleasant.
		You know, if you can think about having withdrawal from tobacco, you probably have a good idea of marijuana withdrawal.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So it would be as strong as tobacco withdrawal?
		Because tobacco withdrawal is a huge one.
		Oftentimes, it's connected to being as bad as heroin.
		Is that nonsense?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		That's an exaggeration, yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Goddamn cigarette smokers.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's an exaggeration.
		Now, when we think about, again, I want to emphasize, when we think about marijuana withdrawal, it's only seen in the heaviest users, and it's not seen in even...
		All of the heavy users.
		And so it's something that you certainly can observe, but it's not common.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And so when you talk about these absolutely extreme versions of people that are smoking multiple joints a day, every day, and then they stopped abruptly, then they just feel like shit for a little while?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's it?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's it.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		No danger.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		No, I mean, you'll be fine.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		You're not in any physical danger.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is part of it your brain just scrambling because all of a sudden it's not high anymore?
		And you're like, what are we doing?
		What the fuck is going on here?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Maybe that's the better way to put it.
		You know, I was just trying to think of some scientific way of saying, but I think that might be a better way of just saying, you know...
		Think about it this way.
		Whenever you engage in some activity heavily for some extended period of time, and then you abruptly stop...
		You know, your body, particularly when you take in some substance, your body adjusts to that substance being there.
		And now that substance is abruptly removed.
		And now all the compensatory mechanisms in your body and your brain are overactive.
		And so that's part of the reason that you have the withdrawal symptom.
		But eventually the body resets and goes back to its homostasis, its normal sort of balance.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Except in extreme examples like alcohol where you have to do something to bridge the gap.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, alcohol, it's too traumatic.
		I mean, with marijuana, one of the nice things about marijuana is that it stays in the body relatively long, so the half-life of marijuana can be as much as 24 hours.
		Now, that allows the body to slowly detoxify, whereas with alcohol, it's gone within an hour, and it's like this abrupt shut-off.
		You're shut off, and now all of these compensatory mechanisms are hyperactive.
		Whereas with marijuana, these compensatory mechanisms are active, but they have an opportunity to slowly adjust.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's fascinating.
		So that's such a unique piece of information that the hangover effect is a withdrawal from alcohol effect.
		I had always thought that it was just dehydration, but I'd always wondered, why is it so strong?
		You've got to get really fucking dehydrated to get the kind of feeling that you get when you have a hangover.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Particularly, you know, just think about it.
		You're pumping all this alcohol in your system.
		People who have hangovers, all this alcohol.
		And as you get older, you don't need to pump that much in.
		You're pumping all this alcohol in your system, then all of a sudden it's gone.
		It stopped.
		And then your body was just adjusting to the drug being there.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So compensatory mechanisms are really, that's the mechanisms behind addiction.
unidentified		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That you're trying to reintroduce the drug to keep those compensatory mechanisms satisfied?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		No.
		Let me try.
		How can I think of it?
		Let's think about heroin.
		That's an easier one for me.
		We think about heroin.
		One of the things that heroin is really good at, and it's used medically for this reason, it had been used medically for this reason, is that it stops diarrhea.
		So people who have diarrhea that can cause death, for example, you give them heroin, it makes you constipated.
		That's a compensatory mechanism of heroin, right?
		So that's a compensatory mechanism of the body having it.
		I'm sorry.
		The compensatory mechanism of the body is that it tries to counteract the sort of constipation that heroin causes.
		So it has to get the juices flowing again, if you would.
		The body tries to do that.
		When the heroin abruptly leaves, these overactive mechanisms now causes someone to have diarrhea because it was trying to get the system going.
		So the body is just trying to correct itself to be where you need to be because you need to go to the bathroom and the body is trying to make sure that happens because heroin is blocking that ability to do that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's absolutely fascinating.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Now when you do heroin for long periods of time, like how long does it take for these compensatory mechanisms to really set in to the point where you hit a withdrawal syndrome?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		For heroin.
		For heroin.
		It all depends.
		So if you only are using the drug intermittently, you don't have to worry about the body becoming, the compensatory mechanism becoming so active that you have to worry about withdrawal symptoms.
		It's only when it's a constant sort of administration of the drug, constant levels of the drug in the body that the body compensatory mechanism become hyperactive.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is that the case with cigarettes as well?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Because you ever see that movie The Insider with Russell Crowe?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		I did.
		It was funny.
		It was a comedy.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		No, no, no, no, no, no.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It wasn't a comedy.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It was about the guy who worked at a cigarette company who was a scientist?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		No, I know which one you're talking about.
		It was based on the 60-minute interviews and that sort of thing, right?
		The 60 Minutes did an interview.
		Yes, yes, yes.
		I do know it.
		Yes.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It was all the guy who was talking about the 500-plus different chemicals that the government allows them to put in cigarettes that are all directly related to addictive.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, well, tobacco has about 4,000 chemicals in it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Jesus.
		Yeah.
		Well, natural tobacco or...
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Natural tobacco.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so natural tobacco has 4,000 natural chemicals in it.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		About 4,000, yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The additional chemicals that the cigarette companies put in, which is what this scientist was highlighting, the guy who Russell Crowe played, what's going on there?
		Like, how were they able to do that?
		Like...
		When they're adding these things to cigarettes that make it so that you become more addicted more quickly, how are they doing that?
		What are they doing?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		You know, there have been so much said.
		For example, there are chemicals that I understand that they were trying to add to tobacco to make It more readily released the nicotine.
		There are chemicals being added to tobacco for flavoring, they say.
		There are a variety of sort of things, but I don't know exactly what you're getting at in terms of Why they add the compounds in terms of addicting people?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, this is just from what I got from that movie.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The movie, Russell Crowe plays this scientist who's testifying about how they had designed cigarettes to be much more addictive.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so one of the things that I think it was illegal to manipulate the nicotine content in the tobacco cigarettes because the tobacco company said that tobacco is a natural product, you know, so they don't do any manipulations.
		That was one of the things.
		But then it was found out that they had...
		They had been growing this high nicotine strain tobacco somewhere in South America.
		And so that was one of those sort of issues related to this.
		The tobacco company understands pharmacology, or they understood pharmacology in terms of designing the cigarette.
		And the goal, one of the major goals, is that if you want to get someone addicted to a drug like tobacco or nicotine, Is that you want to make sure you can release the nicotine in a more rapid, efficient way to hit the lung and to the brain.
		And I think the argument was that tobacco had figured out how to release the nicotine more rapidly.
		And then one of the major theories in addiction work is that the more rapidly a drug hits the brain, the more addictive the drug is.
		And so, I don't know if all of that has been demonstrated, but I know a lot of this has been said, but I don't know what has actually been demonstrated in terms of what the tobacco company did and what scientists say.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So it's all in dose and frequency, and that's how the compensatory mechanisms get set off.
		And so even heroin, which we've all thought that you can't do once, you'll go, man, they'll get you.
		You can, and you could probably do it twice, but you can't do it every week.
		You can't do it like every day for a couple weeks.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		If anybody out there have taken Vicodin, Percocet, Oxycontin, All of those drugs, you've taken those drugs for pain or whatever reason and then your pain is over and you go back to your life and you do your thing.
		You have essentially taken a low dose of heroin.
		And so the notion that someone can't take heroin more than once without becoming addicted That's just voodoo.
		That's silly.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's 1937. But what about people that do take pills, and I have a relative, and he hurt his back, he was a construction worker, hurt his back, started taking pain pills, and became fucking a total junkie.
		He was responsible, he had a family, got divorced, wound up being this crazy liar, pill popper dude.
		Like, what's that?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, those are the toughest questions that people ask me, right?
		Because on the one hand, it's like, it's not the drug, I assure you that.
		So when you talk about him becoming a liar and becoming all these kinds of things, I don't know the guy.
		But the fact is, is that we know that people do become dependent on these drugs for whatever reason.
		I don't know whatever the reason was for him.
		But there can be a variety of reasons.
		A lot of times people become addicted on these drugs because they have co-occurring psychiatric disorders, because they have lack of better options, because they have other issues that's going on.
		I don't know, but I have to understand this guy's complete situation.
		But it's a fact that people do become addicted, some people, but the vast majority don't.
		So we can't blame the drug.
		What we need to do is more systematically understand what's going on with that person.
		And then we can figure out what's going on.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's so important, what you just said, because it's always, I mean, what I just did.
		I gave you this anecdotal story about this guy.
		Well, I know a guy who ruined his life.
		And then, well, maybe he would have ruined his life anyway.
		And he would have.
		He was a fucking idiot.
		I know the guy.
		Just so you're dead right.
		Your observation is correct.
		He was always looking for excuse his whole life.
		If he had to run seven laps, he would run six and pull his ankle.
		I've got to sit down.
		He's just that guy.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Does he listen to the show?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He does.
		Tough shit, bitch.
		You know who you are.
		He is who he is.
		It's not good for everybody else if you try to babyfuck them.
		You've got to do what you've got to do.
		That guy was always that guy, and so when he got hooked on pills, he blames his whole life on pills.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		I mean, that's one of the things that frustrates me in this sort of mission to educate the public is that People blame drugs for some of their shortcomings and some of the things that are not their shortcomings.
		It's not their fault.
		But we don't get to figure out what's really going on when you simply blame the drug.
		So there are two crimes that are committed in that case.
		We don't get to figure out what's going on in your situation and then you're restricting access to the drug for other people who may do it and need it responsibly.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And also, it's an incredibly complex discussion and we're breaking it down to these very simple terms that may or may not apply.
		My friend who I told you about that had a problem with heroin, who came over to my house to detox, his family was crazy.
		When I got to know him better and I sort of understood his family's medical history, I understood what was going on.
		He was self-medicating.
		There was a psychiatric issue in his family.
		And it was not just one person.
		So this guy was self-medicating.
		And I think that's often the case.
		And I think that's one of the great tragedies of what happened during the Reagan administration when they started releasing people out of the streets, homeless people that were interned before that.
		They were in mental institutions.
		And they changed what defines a person as mentally incompetent.
		Like, look, you wipe your own ass.
		Can you feed yourself?
		Get out of here.
		And they just kicked them out in the street.
		And you have a bunch of people walking around talking to themselves that used to be in hospitals being cared for.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		No, absolutely.
		You raise all of these complex issues.
		And I just hope that the public...
		As a result of this show, your show, and other things that are going on, I just hope that they ask these tough questions and that they are critical in their own sort of views about these things because we can all learn as we go forward.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think it all really comes down to people like you.
		And if it wasn't guys like you providing the data and doing the hard work and sticking your neck out there and doing all these shows and doing Bill O'Reilly and...
		You know, disseminating the actual facts and the data and doing so confidently, and I think it's awesome, man.
		I really appreciate it, and I appreciate you coming on the show, too.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Thank you, man.
unidentified		I enjoy it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Very, very important.
		So, folks, please support.
		Go buy his book.
		It's called High Price.
		You can get it at High Price.
		Is it High Price the Book?
		HighPriceTheBook.com.
		I'm sure you can get it on Amazon, right?
		Do you have an Audible version of it as well?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Audible version.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Did you read it?
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		No.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Damn it, they always do that, man.
		Steve Rinello, my friend, wrote a book, and they did it to him, too.
		They hired some fucking actor to read his book.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		No, I know, man.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's whack.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's your book!
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		I'm going to make sure I tell my editor that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Next time, tell that editor, shut your mouth.
		I want to hear...
		The guy who wrote the book, read the book.
		I want to hear the woman who wrote the book, read her book.
		Man, I don't want someone else reading your book for you.
		That's stupid.
unidentified		Right on.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		You got enough juice, so this will happen next time.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's gotta happen.
		Whoever it is out there making those audiobooks, get your shit together.
		Dr. Carl Hart doesn't need anybody reading his book.
		Silly freaks.
		Alright, go buy the book and follow him on Twitter.
		It's Dr. Carl Hart on Twitter.
		That's H-A-R-T. On Twitter, and thank you, man.
		That was awesome.
dr carl hart ▲ ● ▼		Thank you, man.
		It was a pleasure meeting you.
		My friend, good friend Chris Ryan, told me I had to come hang out with you, so thank you, man.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I love Chris Ryan, and we do a podcast once a month together.
		We don't have a name for it yet, but what we do is, for folks who've listened to the ones with Duncan and Chris Ryan and me, we do my podcast, next is Duncan's, next is Chris's, and we just keep doing it, so we do one a month together.
		We have no name for it.
		We need a new name.
		But he speaks very highly of you as well.
		I really appreciate you being on.
unidentified		Thank you.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It was awesome.
		Dr. Carl Hart, ladies and gentlemen, thanks to our sponsors.
		Thank you to Squarespace.com for sponsoring our podcast.
		I should know that fucking URL by now, but of course I don't.
		Sponsor copy.
		Squarespace.com.
		Use the code word Joe.
		That's for 10% off your first purchase.
		Go to squarespace.com and use the code word Joe.
		Squarespace, an all-in-one platform, an easy way for you to design your own website and do so in a really impressive manner.
		Thanks also to Stamps.com.
		Go to Stamps.com, click on the microphone, and enter in the code word J-R-E for our special offer.
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		Alright, we will be back tomorrow with Amber Lyon.
		She's going to tell us a fascinating tale of her entrance into the world of psychedelic trips.
		And Matt the Terrorist Sarah, former UFC welterweight champion, will join us tomorrow at 3pm as well.
		So, Much love to everybody.
		Thank you, everybody who came out in Dallas.
		We had a great time.
		It was so cool.
		And we'll see you soon.

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