01/20/21
This week on Century of Lies we look at the people who are being appointed to key drug control policy positions within the new Biden administration.


This week on Century of Lies we look at the people who are being appointed to key drug control policy positions within the new Biden administration.
This week on Century: Faith, Community, and Harm Reduction. We hear from Naomi Burke-Shyne, Executive Director of Harm Reduction International, about The Global State of Harm Reduction; we hear more about harm reduction from Ricky Bluthenthal, PhD, Associate Dean for Social Justice and a Professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine and the Institute for Prevention Research at the Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California; plus, some thoughts about recent events from former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Health Poverty Action recently held a webinar series entitled “A World With Drugs: Legal Regulation Through A Development Lens.” On this edition of Century of Lies we hear a portion of the most recent webinar in that series, which was entitled “Community Participation and Legal Regulation.” Speakers include Ann Fordham, the executive director of the International Drug Policy Consortium, who facilitated the panel; Charan Sharma, a Program Manager with the Drug Use & Harm Reduction Alliance in India; and Emma Campbell, an activist with the Alliance for Choice in Northern Ireland.
The European Monitoring Center on Drugs and Drug Addiction has been holding a series of panel discussions on the impact of Covid-19 on drug markets and on people who use drugs. EMCDDA’s most recent webinar was entitled “Covid-19 induced recession and drug related problems. On today’s show we hear from two of the panelists, Doctor Bruno Casal Rodriguez, a Professor of Applied Economics at the University of A Coruña in Spain; and Doctor James Windle, a Lecturer in Criminology at University College Cork in Ireland.
This week on Century: The Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression recently held a People’s Hearing Against Racist and Political Repression. We hear from some of the speakers including Frank Chapman, a leader of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression and a field organizer and co-chair of CAARPR; Troi Valles, a Chicago area activist, writer, and actress who’s an experienced community organizer and member of Black Lives Matter Chicago and Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression; and Berma Escamilla, one of the family members speaking out against police violence. Plus, the Reverend Sarah Howell-Miller, Associate Pastor at Green Street United Methodist Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, introduces a new training guide called the “Spirit of Harm Reduction: A Toolkit for Communities of Faith Facing Overdose.”
The city of Vancouver, BC, is asking the Canadian federal government for an exemption to national drug laws in order to allow the city to decriminalize simple possession of currently illegal drugs. On today’s show we hear from Donald MacPherson, Executive Director of the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition, and from Annie Foreman-Mackey, a first year medical student at the University of British Columbia.
Special "Oregonization" program with Doug McVay, Brian Bennett & Host Dean Becker. Discussion on what will it take to motivate the masses to seek an end to drug war.
Oregon Ballot Measure 110, the Drug Addiction Treatment and Recovery Act, was approved overwhelmingly by voters in the November general election. On this edition of Century of Lies we speak with Haven Wheelock, MPH, one of the chief petitioners for Measure 110, about the vote and what it means for the future of drug policy reform. Plus we hear from Lisa Sanchez, Executive Director of México Unido Contra la Delincuencia, and Ray Lakeman, a campaigner for the UK nonprofit Anyone’s Child, about the need to regulate the stimulant market.
On this edition of Century of Lies: Dr. Emily Wang, Associate Professor of Medicine at Yale School of Medicine, on the new report by NASEM entitled Decarcerating Correctional Facilities During COVID-19: Advancing Health, Equity, and Safety. Plus, Lorenzo Uribe, a graduate student at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago and lead drafter of the cocaine regulation bill that’s currently before the Colombian Senate, on regulating stimulants.
Transform Drug Policy Foundation’s new publication, How To Regulate Stimulants: A Practical Guide, can be found at the TDPF website, TransformDrugs.org.
Live from this year’s virtual Seattle Hempfest, a discussion of activist journalism featuring Kymone Freeman, a writer and organizer whoco-founded and operates a radio station in DC called WeAct Radio;Vanessa Maria Graber, a journalist and radio producer from Philadelphia;Angela Bacca, a freelance writer from California; Tauhid Chappell, a journalist in Philadelphia and a board member of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists; and Steve Bloom, a journalist based in Brooklyn, New York who is publisher of CelebStoner.com and a former editor at High Times Magazine.
This week on Century: European Drug Report 2020. Plus, a presentation on supervised consumption facilities featuring: Brad Finegood, Strategic Advisor at Public Health – Seattle & King County; Jesse Rawlins, Public Policy Manager, Public Defenders Association; Mark Cooke, ACLU-WA Policy Director Washington Campaign for Smart Justice; Richard Waters, MD Physician, Site Medical Director at NeighborCare Health - Housing & Street Outreach; Michael Ninburg, Executive Director, Hepatitis Education Project; Lisa Etter Carlson, Co-Founder and Director of Programs at Aurora Commons in Seattle; and Lisa Herbold, Member of Seattle City Council.
This week: a conversation with the author, activist, radio host, and distinguished long-time drug policy reformer Kevin Zeese; plus, White House Communications Director Sean Spicer on likely new directions for this administration's marijuana policies.
This week on Century: Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt and Oregon Justice Resource Center Executive Director Bobbin Singh on recent events in the city of Portland, Oregon. Plus, Virtual Hempfest will be October 10 and 11! To whet everyone's appetite we look back at some previously unaired footage from the Ric Smith Hemposium featuring Ed "New Jersey Weedman" Forchion, Keith Stroup, Vivian McPeak, Kari Boiter, Gloria Kalteich, and your COL host/producer Doug McVay.
This week on Century: Canada’s chief public health officer, Doctor Theresa Tam, on decriminalization of drugs; University of Washington Professor Edwin Lindo, JD, on police brutality; and Yale University Professor Lisa Puglisi, MD, on prisons and Covid.
What Does An Effective Drug Policy Look Like?
This week on Century we speak with Dr. Zian Tseng, professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco Medical School, about his new article, entitled “Occult Overdose Masquerading as Sudden Cardiac Death: From the Postmortem Systematic InvesTigation of Sudden Cardiac Death Study.” Plus Niamh Eastwood, executive director of the UK drug policy reform nonprofit Release, speaking on What Does An Effective Drug Policy Look Like?
This week on Century, Dr. Thomas Pietschmann with the UN Office on Drugs and Crime tells us about the UN’s 2020 World Drug Report. He was part of a webinar hosted recently by the Vienna Nongovernmental Organizing Committee.
This week on Century: Sanho Tree, director of the Drug Policy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, talks about “COVID, Modernity, Lifeways & Drug Use.” His talk was part of an IPS webinar series entitled “Progressive Politics and the Time of Pandemic" and comes to us courtesy of the Institute for Policy Studies.
Taking Drugs Seriously: Transform Drug Policy Foundation and Anyone’s Child recently held a webinar entitled “Take Drugs Seriously.” We hear from two of the panelists: Anne-Marie Cockburn, one of the founders of Anyone’s Child; and Johann Hari, author of the bestseller Chasing the Scream: The Search for the Truth About Addiction. Plus, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors adopts an ordinance to allow the establishment and operation a supervised consumption facility.
"Stimulants and Harm Reduction webinar. This week we hear portions of “Tweaking our Harm Reduction: A stimulants Webinar.” Participants included:
Dr. Sheila P Vakharia, Deputy Director of the Department of Research and Academic Engagement for the Drug Policy Alliance; Christine Rodriguez, a consultant in drug user health and harm reduction who recently founded Higher Ground Harm Reduction, which is focused at the intersection of harm reduction and climate change/systems disruption; Mindy Vincent, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker specializing in mental health and addiction treatment and the founder and Executive Director of the Utah Harm Reduction Coalition; and Brandie Wilson, the moderator, who is the Executive Director of the Chicago Recovery Alliance."
Doug McVay who produces Century of Lies, talk about racism and the drug war. PLUS: the thoughts of Michelle Alexander, author of the New Jim Crow.
Police Brutality and Community Relations. The Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony recently on “Police Use of Force and Community Relations.” On this edition of Century of Lies we hear from some of the witnesses including S. Lee Merritt, a civil rights activist and attorney with Merritt Law Firm of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; the Rev. Dr. Doug Logan, Jr., President of Grimke Seminary, Co-Director of Church in Hard Places Acts29, and Pastor for Church Planting at Remnant Church in Richmond, Virginia; and Vanita Gupta, President and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. Plus we hear from US Senator Cory Booker, Democrat from New Jersey.
Outreach work and COVID-19. Correlation – European Harm Reduction Network recently brought together a panel of experts to share insights on recent developments in their harm reduction practices, the challenges experienced by their communities, and the impact of COVID19 on operations. We’ll hear from Jane Mounteney, Head of the Public Health Unit at the European Union’s drugs agency, the European Monitoring Center on Drugs and Drug Addiction; Sara Woods, Policy Officer at the Mainline Foundation; and Tony Duffin, CEO of the Ana Liffey Drug Project in Dublin.
This week on Century of Lies: the impact of COVID-19 on the provision of services to people who use drugs. This week on Century: How COVID-19 is shaping the future of drug services in Europe, featuring: Tony Duffin, CEO of the Ana Liffey Drug Project in Dublin, Ireland; Mat Southwell, a Partner at CoAct Expertise in Drug Use and HIV, located in Bath, England, and a Project Manager with the European Network of People Who Use Drugs; and Phaedon Kaloterakis, President of the European Federation of Therapeutic Communities.
The COVID crisis is having a particularly deadly impact within the criminal justice system. Unfortunately systems are slow to change, institutional inertia and the unwillingness of policymakers to do the right thing - quite literally a deadly combination. On this week's Century we hear from a panel of experts including Dr. Rashawn Ray from the University of Maryland and the Brookings Institution; Dr. Annelies Goger, also with the Brookings Institution; Marcus Bullock, founder and CEO of Flikshop; and Marc Schindler, executive director of the Justice Policy Institute.
This week on Century of Lies, part one of our conversation with the journalist, hemp activist and farmer Doug Fine. We talk about hemp, renewable agriculture, farming, CBD, and Doug's new book American Hemp Farmer. Plus we hear from Louis L. Reed, national organizer for #Cut50, on COVID in prisons.
This week on Century: Doctor Mitch Earleywine on alcohol addiction, treatment, and recovery, plus a conversation with the comedian, journalist, and activist Ngaio Bealum.
This week on Century of Lies: Prisons, jails, and pandemic. In this time of pandemic, correctional institutions are like Petri dishes in which the novel coronavirus COVID-19 grows and spreads. Public health experts and criminal justice advocates around the nation are demanding that jails and prisons release some of the people being held behind bars in order to stop or at least slow the spread of this deadly disease. The organization Just Leadership USA recently held a web seminar on COVID-19 and the New York City jail on Riker’s Island. We hear portions of that seminar on today’s show, including: Jumaane Williams, Public Advocate for the City of New York; Doctor Bobby Cohen, member of the New York City Board of Correction; Marlene Aloe, whose son is being held on Rikers Island awaiting a retrial; Janet, whose son is being held on Rikers awaiting sentencing; and Tahanee Dunn from Bronx Public Defenders. We also hear from Nick Turner, president and director of the Vera Institute of Justice.
This week, we bring you an archive edition from August 30, 2015. It’s one our of Hempfest specials. Seattle Hempfest is a brilliant event, bringing together a couple hundred thousand beautiful freedom loving marijuana legalizing drug policy reforming people to a few mile stretch of park land along Puget Sound in Seattle, Washington. Speakers include CA attorney Bill Panzer, Montana medical marijuana activist Kari Boiter, and Canadian attorney John Conroy. Hempfest is still scheduled for August this year and the good lord willin’ we’ll actually have that event once again, but for now, while we’re sheltered in place in self-quarantine trying to survive this novel coronavirus, COVID-19, let’s go back to August of 2015 and Seattle Hempfest.
This week on Century of Lies: The city of Baltimore considers supervised consumption facilities; the state of Indiana takes a step backward in public health; and we hear from the US Dept. of Health and Human Services about the benefits of syringe service programs.
The Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce held a hearing January 14 entitled “A Public Health Emergency: State Efforts to Curb the Opioid Crisis.” On this edition of Century of Lies we hear from: Jennifer Smith, Secretary of Pennsylvania’s Dept. of Drug and Alcohol Programs; Monica Bharel, MD, MPH, Commissioner of Public Health at the Mass. Dept. of Public Health; Christina Mullins, Commissioner of the Bureau for Behavioral Health at West Virginia’s Department of Health and Human Resources; Kody Kinsley, Deputy Secretary for Behavioral Health and Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities at North Carolina’s Department of Health and Human Services; and Nicole Alexander-Scott, MD, MPH, Director of the Rhode Island Department of Health.
On this installment of Century of Lies, we hear from Kees De Joncheere, President of the International Narcotics Control Board, plus Just Say Know parts one through four by DrugReporter and the Rights Reporter Foundation.
This week on Century of Lies, UNODC's Justice Tettey, PhD, talks about new psychoactive substances, plus we bid farewell to UNODC's outgoing executive director Yuri Fedotov.
On this installment of Century we hear from Pedro Arenas Garcia with the Colombian NGO Corporación Viso Mutop-Observatorio de cultivos y cultivadores; plus an interview from 2012 with activist and journalist Kevin Zeese and the late activist, documentary filmmaker, and writer Mike Gray.
By the end of 2018, the European Center on Drugs and Drug Addiction was monitoring 731 new psychoactive substances. This week on Century, UNODC's Gilberto Gerra, MD, discusses new psychoactive substances, plus we hear from EMCDDA Director Alexis Goosdeel about the release of the new 2019 EU Drug Markets Report.
This week on Century of Lies, a conversation with comedian, activist, and journalist Ngaio Bealum.
November 20 2019 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the UN's Convention on the Rights of the Child, a human rights instrument ratified by every other nation on earth but not by the United States. This week on Century we have a portion of my interview with human rights and drug policy expert Damon Barrett, plus we hear part of a news conference from UN Headquarters in Geneva on the report Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty.
The Massachusetts Legislature's Joint Committee on Mental Health, Substance Use and Recovery held a hearing recently on harm reduction sites and supervised consumption facilities, so on this edition of Century of Lies we hear from MA State Sen. Cindy Friedman, Fenway Health's Carl Sciortino, and former US "Drug Czar" Michael Botticelli.
This week on Century of Lies, part two of our conversation with John Pfaff, JD, PhD. Dr. Pfaff is a professor of law at Fordham Law School and the author of Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform.
A federal judge has rejected the Justice Department's attempt to stop Philadelphia nonprofit Safehouse from setting up a supervised consumption facility. On this week's Century we hear from Liz Evans, one of the founders of North America's first supervised consumption site, Insite, in Vancouver, BC. Plus, an update on the vaping crisis.
This week on Century we look at reforming police practices and efforts to get a handle on police brutality. The US House Judiciary Committee recently held an oversight hearing on police practices. We'll hear audio from Committee Chair Rep. Jerrold Naddler, Gwen Carr, Ron Davis, and Dr. Phillip Atiba Goff.
This week on Century, a conversation with journalist and cannabis connoisseur Jimi Devine, senior staff writer for Cannabis Now and a contributing writer for the LA Weekly.
The Commission on Narcotic Drugs met in Vienna on Monday June 24 to
hear a report by the World Health Organization's Expert Committee on
Drug Dependence recommending that cannabis be rescheduled and removed
from the list of banned substances. We hear from the WHO, from
national delegates, and from Vienna NonGovernmental Organizing
Committee Chair Jamie Bridge.
This week on Century of Lies, international drug policy reform. We hear portions of the 62nd Annual Session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, live from Vienna, including interventions by the delegation from Switzerland, the World Health Organization, the Canadian HIV Legal Network, and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
This week: US Senators look at pain management, opioid policies, and the search for alternatives like cannabis.
This week on Century, we hear portions of a debate in the Denver City Council on a measure to establish a safe consumption space in the city of Denver. Hosted by Doug McVay.
Fri - UK Parliament re drug laws
Tue - UK Parliament discussion of drugs
This week on Century, we talk with William Dolphin and Michelle Newhart about marijuana and their new book, The Medicalization of Marijuana: Legitimacy, Stigma, and the Patient Experience.
This week on Century of Lies, live at the International Cannabis Business Conference 2018 in Portland, Oregon, we talk with Washington state cannabis cultivator Farmer Tom Lauerman; plus, Orsolya Feher from Students for Sensible Drug Policy addresses the recent Commission on Narcotic Drugs Intersessional Meeting in Vienna, Austria.
This week on Century of Lies, live from the International Cannabis Business Conference in Portland, Oregon, we talk about the cannabis industry and social justice with Joseph Stovall II, an attorney and cannabis consultant from Maryland. Plus, we hear a presentation from Vinay Saldanha of UNAIDS at the a Commission on Narcotic Drugs intersessional meeting that was held in Vienna on September 25.
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