Roark Smith: (00:00)
Following program. Moral High Ground is sponsored by www.drugtruth.net publishers of to End the War on Drugs and Forever, Salem, the American Inquisition, written by Reverend FD Becker, 

Rev FD Becker: (00:16)
Exposing the sins and the sinners of this drug war. I am Reverend Becker, and this is Moral High Ground Trucks, 

Song: (00:27)
The First Eternal War. 

Rev FD Becker: (00:31)
Hello, my friends. Uh, welcome to this edition of Moral High Ground slash Cultural Baggage. I am the Reverend Dean Becker. Glad you could be with us. Our guest is already with us. He's based in Canada. He's a, an activist extraordinaire, I guess is the best way to put it. A man who has a conscience in who, who is trying to make a difference. Uh, as Mr. Dana Larson. He's been with us a couple of times before. And, uh, I, I first just want to say we had that, uh, you didn't hear it out there on the network, but we had A-A-A-A-P-S-A aired just before this program that talked about when you get high, you drive different. And that's probably true on many drugs, but I know it's on weed. I've been driving high for 55 years and it's never caught. I've never had an accident. And, um, it just depends on the person and what they're doing and what the situation is. But there is no universal truth about drugs. Uh, it affects all of us differently. Uh, and with that, I want to go ahead and welcome our guest, Mr. Diana Larson. Hello, sir. 

Dana Larsen: (01:37)
Hello. Thanks for having me. 

Rev FD Becker: (01:39)
Oh, thank you, sir. Yeah, I, uh, I, I want you to first give folks a little summary of what you have done over your, I don't know, your activist lifetime, because you've been very busy up there in Canada. Please, uh, tell the folks what you've been doing. 

Dana Larsen: (01:55)
Well, these days I run the only shop in the world where any adult can come in and buy a variety of psychedelic mushrooms or LSD or DMT or kra or COA Lee for other wonderful and forbidden products like that. I also run a program called Get Your Drugs Tested, which has become the busiest and best, uh, free street drug analysis service in the world. We're approaching 80,000 samples tested all for free. Um, and those are my main two projects. But in the past, I was integral in the cannabis dispensary movement in Canada and help get the cannabis laws changed. And I've done a lot of other things, but those are my main, my main projects these days. 

Rev FD Becker: (02:38)
Yes, sir. And, uh, along the way you've done some ancillary things like writing some books, uh, on drugs and on, I think one is, uh, potentially for, uh, instructing children, uh, if I'm not mistaken, haven't had a chance to read it, but, uh, is that true? Well, I 

Dana Larsen: (02:52)
Wrote, I wrote a book called Harry Pothead and the marijuana Stone, it's not really aimed at kids, it's aim for, I mean, we've all, it's aim for for kids of all ages, I guess, but it's a, it's a cannabis friendly Yeah. Retelling of the Harry Potter, uh, story. Uh, and I've written a few other things, the history of cannabis and Canada and that kind of stuff as well. 

Rev FD Becker: (03:11)
Yeah. And now let's, let's get back to your current, uh, endeavors. Um, that I, I think I saw a picture. Do you also provide peyote whenever it's available? 

Dana Larsen: (03:21)
We have peyote. Peyote is another thing we sell at our shop as well, live plants and dried peyote chips too. 

Rev FD Becker: (03:26)
Okay. Yeah, I, um, in my youth, you know, I, I did all of those except cone, I think, if that's how you pronounce it. I don't know that it was much in circulation or known, uh, back then, but, uh, like many folks, I've greatly curtailed my drug use as my, uh, years advanced. Uh, I think it's mostly a, a means, it's a means of exploring, uh, life, um, and, and maybe setting your mind, uh, right, if you will, uh, and salute. Sorry for that, uh, sneezing there. Uh, but, but the, the point I guess I wanted to get to is that to me, I found peyote to be the most instructive that, uh, it, it tended to take over, uh, your focus and, and, uh, give you a, a new perspective on life. Um, what, what has been the response of your patients, your, your, uh, customers? 

Dana Larsen: (04:18)
Well, so we, we sell, we sell dried peyote, and people do buy it and use it. It's not nearly as popular as mushrooms or LSD or DMT is. I mean, the challenge with peyote, it's quite expensive, uh, to have a peyote experience compared to other things. And also a peyote can cause nausea sometimes, which can be healing and part of the process when you throw up. And sometimes it feels like you're expelling negative emotions or fear and things like that outta your body. But also throwing up is not what everybody wants to do as part of their experience. So we saw a lot less peyote than other substances, but those that, uh, uh, use it, uh, generally fine, really powerful psychological benefits to it as well. It's, uh, you know, masculine is the active ingredient I'm looking at trying to bring in pure masculine as well. Um, but, you know, one, one step at a time, we're, we're pushing a lot of boundaries at our shop, and I'm never quite sure what the, what the limits are or what's gonna get us in trouble, but, uh, we're gonna be expanding our menu of psychedelics over the coming weeks and months. 

Rev FD Becker: (05:16)
Well, that's, that's great news. Um, and I, I, I just wanna underscore that, yeah, if you, if you do enough peyote, you are probably going to vomit like you've never vomited before. But, uh, that's, as you say, it's an instant relief. I I, one of my most, uh, extreme experiences was at a peyote party. Some friends had gone to South Texas and got a gunny sax full, and, uh, just made massive pots of it. And I drank a big glass. And, uh, it was, it was, uh, sun was setting. And I, after I vomited, it was like the world just, um, became a, a more magical place. The stars were brighter and, uh, life seemed more wonderful. I don't know how else to say it, that you just felt more alive. Um, 

Dana Larsen: (06:02)
Well, that's a very common, I'll say one thing. Peyote is completely legal in Canada. Uh, there's no laws against growing using selling peyote in Canada at all. Mescal, the active ingredient is forbidden. So you're not supposed to extract the mus out of the peyote. But unlike in the US where peyote is forbidden, except for members of the Native American church, uh, in Canada, peyote has always been legal for everybody. 

Rev FD Becker: (06:24)
Well, and uh, yeah, and the, the way I understand it, the, uh, uh, the peyote has been picked pretty clean in many places. And, uh, the only places where it's really in abundance these days is on those big ranches there in South Texas 

Dana Larsen: (06:39)
Where, well, and I'll, I'll point out, uh, the peyote we sell is not, while the harvested, it's all grown like under the farm or whatever. Like, I don't, I don't like the idea of people going out pulling peyote out of the ground and selling it. That is, that is not something we do. People have sometimes gotten upset with us or selling peyote 'cause they think that we're ripping out wild peyote and stuff. But that's not cool. We don't do that. Our peyote is all farmed peyote and, uh, and produced in an ethical kind of a way like that. Well, 

Rev FD Becker: (07:06)
Good on you. I'm glad to hear that. I really am. I've, I've talked to, um, a professor, I forget which college down there in, uh, south Texas who's, uh, kind of an expert on it. And yeah, he's informed me that, uh, the supplies are dwindling and, and we'd best be careful. Um, but again, I guess those, those big ranches are gonna have a, a supply that we could rebuild from if need be. But, uh, that's, that's a whole other subject. I guess. I, I wanted to talk about something. I, I guess it's been a couple of weeks now. There was a big bust, uh, well, I don't know, a subterfuge, whatever, that one of, uh, Chapo Guzman's children, uh, za Joaquin Guzman lga and El El Maor Zamata, who was, um, Chapo, Guzman's ally for the rise of the Sinaloa cartel. They were both caught on the US side of the border. 

Rev FD Becker: (08:02)
Uh, I think they, they fooled him into believing they were landing in Mexico. But I, I heard, I think it was the, uh, US Attorney General, uh, talking about we won't stop until we get all of these guys and control the supply of these drugs. And, uh, to me, that's just more blowing in the wind. It, it makes no sense. They've been saying this for decades on end, that they're going to stop the supply of drugs, they're going to get the big wigs, they're going to eliminate the, the black market, et cetera, et cetera. And I think you would agree with me. That's just baloney. They, somebody else stepped in, in place and wants to be the next billionaire. And that will continue for as long as these drugs are prohibited. Your response there, Dana Larson? 

Dana Larsen: (08:47)
Yeah, I wouldn't even say it's bologna. I would say that they are causing the problems they're claiming to try to solve. Right? And so, you know, the existence of fentanyl is entirely the result of prohibition in the same way that the, that the prevalence of methyl alcohol in the liquor supply during alcohol prohibition was caused by alcohol prohibition. And not only ended when alcohol prohibition ended. And there is an endless supply this of people, in fact, when they bust a big cartel leader or they get somebody in charge, and these aren't good guys, I'm trying to understand. I'm not defending El Chapo or these dudes. They often do a lot of bad things, but this is the ones who are the worst and the most violent and the most unethical are the ones who are pushed to the, the head of the drug, uh, selling system because of prohibition. 

Dana Larsen: (09:33)
And because you can't sue and go to court and deal with your financial challenges in a normal way like any other business. So that the result is these things are solved with violence and with aggression, and those who are the, the meanest and toughest and most violent end up running the drug trade. But that's entirely the cause of prohibition and pushing this out of the system and not intrinsic to these substances, right? If cheese was forbidden, then the meanest guys would be in charge of the cheese trade, and we'd be getting our cheese from the cheese cartels, right? Because I love cheese. I'd buy cheese, whether it was legal or not, most people would. And so it's the exact same thing. And the reality is that prohibition and drug war, it, it, it, it results in the safest version of these substances being harder to get than the most more dangerous versions. 

Dana Larsen: (10:16)
So, for instance, to buy a cup of OPMT or to get some coca leaf to chew is much, much harder in America and Canada than it would be to buy fentanyl or heroin, or to buy crack or pure cocaine. And it's, that pushes people towards those stronger forms. And, you know, if you look at something like coffee, for instance, it's, it's legal to buy pure caffeine and snort it and inject it if you want to. And there's the odd person that might do that. But the reality is, the vast, vast majority of caffeine users prefer to get it in the form of a drink, either coffee or a really strong, sometimes quite strong, uh, beverages. And, and if, if Coca Leaf was available and cocaine was totally legal, the reality would be that cocaine use would drop drastically in terms of snorting and smoking and that kind of thing. And drinks with cocaine in them, and coca alkaloids in them, like coca tea or maybe stronger versions, would replace the entire market, which are much, much safer to use, much healthier, more natural. And those are impossible to get under prohibition. And so if we want to see safer substances, we want to see less harm caused, and then prohibition is the policy we gonna change. Prohibition is causing all of the problems it claims to prevent. 

Rev FD Becker: (11:23)
Yeah. I, I'm trying to think back. It was about, uh, I'm gonna say 17, 18 years ago, I made a trip to Bolivia, uh, to meet the justice minister to, uh, have a discussion about drug policy. And it turns out that every person I met from that justice minister to the Christian minister at the church, we visited to, uh, um, I don't know, the prison warden where they're in, uh, coach Obama, uh, and all the prisoners, and every person I met was chewing Coca, had a little wad, coca and, and, um, alkaline or whatever it is, they mixed with it down there, uh, to, uh, enhance the, the, uh, the product. And I, I found that, uh, when I was in La Paz, uh, you're, they're at 14,000 feet, uh, elevation. And if you aren't chewing some coca, you can't walk on the sidewalk. You don't have enough oxygen to, to move around. 

Rev FD Becker: (12:15)
I'm a flatlander. I'm here in Houston. Uh, it's like 60 feet above sea level. And it really made a difference for me. And I learned while I was down there. There's very few people that do cocaine. It's more a rich man's drug that, uh, only rich people did, I suppose. But Coca was so cheap and available and everywhere I got to visit some markets where they were, you know, uh, batching it and selling a huge, uh, I don't know, big sacks of it. I don't know what you'd call 'em. Uh, and, and it was just not a problem. Is, is it legal? Uh, coco leaf legal in Canada, 

Dana Larsen: (12:54)
Coco Leaf is not legal in Canada. And, um, it's actually like they often do. It's in the same schedule, one as cocaine and heroin and everything else, right? So, and in fact, I got raided last year in November, and quite a, quite a dramatic raid with, with a lot of police. And I spent seven hours in jail, although I wasn't charged. And I believe, and they don't really tell you when they come in, they took all of our stuff, they took all of our mushrooms and LSC and DMT and Cocal leaf, but I believe that raid was actually about the Cocal leaf. And that was what really triggered them to finally come in and, and come after us. Um, you know, I've been on the news, uh, six months earlier talking about COA leaf and explaining that we import it. And I guess I was explaining how we import a Schedule one drug, even though, obviously COA leaf is very different. 

Dana Larsen: (13:36)
I don't think cocaine should be prohibited. But the reality is that COA leaf is very different, very, very different from cocaine. And, you know, you're right that in Bolivia and also Peru and other parts of South America, Cocal leaf is legal. It's not legal to make cocaine or to export it, but it's legal to grow and use in those countries. And, and Bolivia, especially, like you're saying, the altitude is so high and cocal leaf with its many medicinal values, it benefits one of those is it allows you to process oxygen in your system more efficiently and to oxygenate your blood. And that is why these high altitudes in Bolivia where people often have difficulty breathing, it's you wake up in the morning in, in LA pause and you've got a pounding headache. 'cause the oxygen level in the air is so low sometimes if you exercise, you feel like you're drowning, kind of. 

Dana Larsen: (14:18)
You're breathing deep and you're not getting any air, right? Yeah. And you chew a little cocoa leaf, perhaps some coca tea, and the change is, is very rapid, and you feel much, much better. And of course, that also helps you when you're in a regular oxygen and air environment in Canada, the us I mean, you're not in a system where you need more, but it still helps your body to process oxygen better. It still helps to, to infuse you. It's, it's a very beneficial plant. You know, the word coca, you know, within, in the cannabis community, we sometimes call cannabis the tree of life, you know, and we see the, the immense benefits of cannabis. Well, the word coca means tree. It means the tree, like the primordial tree. And their view of coca leaf is similar to some of us in our view of cannabis. 

Dana Larsen: (14:58)
Coca is a sacred medicinal plant to these people with millions of, not millions, but thousands of years of, of industrial and social and community and religious and spiritual use. And it is deeply, deeply intertwined into their cultures. And it is offensive to me that the UN and other organizations, their official policies, that cocal leaf should be eradicated from the face of the Earth. That this plant, which is one of the greatest and most useful and beneficial plants there is, along with opium, poppies, cannabis, flowers, psilocybe mushrooms, peyote cactus, and many others. Coca leaf and coca bushes are, are one of the mo world's most greatest plants. And the idea that the un and other authorities want to eliminate this plant, which has deep cultural value, should be very offensive to everybody. Uh, and, and really, you know, looking at what this means for our planet, we need to be embracing plant medicines and embracing the benefits of this indigenous wisdom and culture that have used these plants for so long and understood their benefits, and also how to use them safely, how to maximize the benefits and minimize the risks. 

Dana Larsen: (16:01)
And one of those, of course, is to use them in mainly in their natural form. And so I, I've come to love coa the cocoa plant. I've learned a lot about it. When I opened the Coco Leaf Cafe in 2019, which is part of our mushroom dispensary, and we're the only place in the northern hemisphere that sells cocoa leaf and cocoa tea in that form, it's been challenging for us. 'cause since that raid, the, the customs in the police have been more aggressive and coming after our shipments and, and, and, and blocking things and making it harder for me to get things into the country. But, uh, we are persisting because coca is, is such a beneficial plant. And of course, part of our work is to teach people about these things and what the benefits are and how to use them. And, um, and so we're gonna continue on that. But right now at the Coca Leaf Cafe, our coca supplies, unfortunately are, are pretty low. But I'm, but I'm working on that. 

Rev FD Becker: (16:49)
Well, yes, sir. And, uh, the, the word that I heard quite often down there, uh, uh, is mother Coca, because it's just art of life, uh, in Bolivia. Um, I, I wanted to kind of, uh, tag onto what you were saying there, or I, I don't know, maybe branch off a bit. The fact of it is, is that the, the plant products you just spoke of all much safer, much safer than any of these black market products, uh, of cocaine or crack or e even the, the black market heroin or whatever. It's all, uh, potentially deadly. And the, it, it, I wanna reach back a a hundred years, uh, 120 years ago, the these, hmm. These products were available cheap. Uh, they were, you know, some of them LSD didn't exist on the market yet. But the, the, the fact is, these, these products were available and there were, there were these, uh, snake oil salesmen selling concoctions that had some kind of, you know, product in there might be a bunch of cocaine or, or, uh, some kind of opium extract or whatever. 

Rev FD Becker: (17:59)
But nobody knew what they were buying, is what I'm getting to. And we have created the same thing now, where if you're going on the black market, you don't really know here in the United States what you're buying. Uh, the, uh, um, Xylazine is now trying to replace Fentanyl, uh, as a cheaper, uh, more readily available product. 'cause as the government cracks down on the fentanyl supply, well, they're gonna go to other drugs, other components, other molecules to, to sell here in this country, because it's a many hundred billion dollar a year, uh, endeavor. And you're just never gonna stop them from trying to supply the people's needs, so to speak. Let's talk about how it's just so wrongheaded everything about the drug war is pointing folks in the wrong direction. Your thoughts there, David? 

Dana Larsen: (18:52)
Well, definitely, I mean, we've seen, if you go back, people think of this as a new thing. But really, prohibition began about a hundred years ago, around the turn of the centuries when these laws really started coming in, in North America. And, um, and we've seen since then, you know, at the time there was no heroin or morphine or fentanyl. People were smoking opium and drinking Op PMT. And the anti opium laws were put in primarily a a against Asian people, against the Chinese people that used opium. And it was in Canada, especially a means of expelling the Chinese community. We had a lot of Chinese come to Canada to work on the railroad, to work in the gold mines. And white Canadians resented the presence of the Chinese men, especially. Um, and 'cause they were work for less. They didn't have their families there with them. 

Dana Larsen: (19:35)
There was a lot of anti-Chinese racism. And these anti opium laws were designed very successfully to, to kick Chinese out of Canada. And they resulted in the deportation of thousands and thousands of Chinese men, uh, which was primarily 'cause white men didn't want the labor competition. But since opium was banned, we've seen the, the, the movement of, of opioids away from opium, the morphine, and then to heroin. Now, not a fentanyl. And this is entirely the result of prohibition, because prohibition moves drugs to their most strongest form because that is the easiest to smuggle and the most profitable. And now we're seeing, we see this through, get your drug tested all the time, that even the fentanyl is not clean. So you might think you bought fentanyl and you bring it to us. And it turns out, like you said, there's xylazine, there are other benzodiazepines in it. 

Dana Larsen: (20:21)
And so it's a real problem that the drug market is not pure, not clean. And of course, because it's unregulated and uncontrolled, there's sometimes there's sloppy work in there and products that don't meet the right standards. And the reality is, a good drug policy should make it easier to buy a cup of OPMT than to buy fentanyl. A good drug policy should make it easier to buy a cup of coca tea than to buy crack. And we do that with caffeine, right? Our, our, our drug policy makes it much easier to buy coffee than to buy caffeine powder. We didn't prohibit caffeine powder, but the reality is 99.9% of caffeine users prefer it in the milder form. And the same thing would happen with these other, with these other substances. We wanna bring back the opium parlors, bring back coca tea, bring back these natural milder forms that really we never should have abandoned. 

Dana Larsen: (21:08)
And it was entirely due to racism and bigotry and ignorance that we began all this in the first place. And so, I'm a big proponent, and, and the way you do this is not, we don't ban eating. It's you, it's legal to inject rat poison into your body if you choose to, it's legal to, to drink the everclear or whatever. And all these things that are quite harmful are legal. We don't, we don't reduce and stop people doing those kind of things by punishing you do it through education and by having much safer alternatives available in the first place, right? And so it's not illegal to inject Everclear, and you'll get really drunk if you inject Everclear Everclear. I don't know if in the states and Canada, it's a really, really strong alcohol product, right? Maybe. I'm not sure if it's available in the us, but Oh, it is. 

Dana Larsen: (21:51)
But it's not against a lot to do these things. It is okay, but it, it's, it's, um, the reality is that people don't wanna do that. But if you banned all the other forms, people would gravitate towards these more dangerous options. But most people prefer a beer. Most people prefer a cup of coffee just to snorting caffeine. And you don't have to prohibit caffeine to pretty much entirely eliminate caffeine snorting. We don't need to ban cocaine to pretty much eliminate caffeine snorting, just offer safer, better ways of getting it into your body that are more natural and more, uh, uh, uh, healthy for you. And people will gravitate towards those options. And so people make smart choices. We don't need to ban things always to, to encourage public health. We need to give them the safer options, and I'll make sure they know what the safer option is. 

Dana Larsen: (22:33)
And so our, our drug policies, again, do the exact opposite. They eliminate all the safer options. They eliminate any knowledge of how to use these things safely. They demonize all use and all things has been exactly the same. Our laws put opium, poppies, and heroin, and fentanyl and coa, leaf and cocaine and crack all on the same schedule. It's all the same thing to our laws. But the reality is these are very, very different. And regulations should treat coa leaf or opium very differently than they treat heroin and crack. Not necessarily with prohibition, but with rules around access and taxes and age limits and those kind of things. That's how you create a sensible drug policy. That's what we're gonna see in our lifetimes if we keep this up. But we've still got a lot of work to do. 

Rev FD Becker: (23:12)
Yes, we do. And, um, one of the things that I, I know, I mean, you've encountered it with those, uh, raids on your, uh, facilities and me and my youth, I got busted 13 times, mostly for just tiny amounts, a couple of times for two seeds on a floorboard, you know, that kind of thing here in the US that it's just so, it's, it's, it's gotten better, but it still exists. And, and if they want to, they can still hem you up and, and, you know, throw you in a cage for any amount because, well, I don't know, there was a child in the car or, uh, some other, you know, other instance creates a, a what they consider a more dire situation. And therefore having drugs in that situation makes you an even more, uh, mu more of a criminal i, I guess is the way to put it. 

Rev FD Becker: (24:01)
But, um, the, the thing that I, I know you work on, and I I, in my own way, am trying to do, and that's to educate the politicians to what you were just talking about, that we are so off ba off base with this, that we're doing it the wrong way. We're never going to make the progress. We think we're going to by continuing down this same path. And, and I guess what I'm, I'm trying to say is that, uh, there was a situation happened here in Houston. I sent you some information in an email a couple of days back. I hope you got it. And it was from the Houston Chronicle. And, uh, the, the key takeaways that the Houston Police Department suspended case reports, it was a failure of leadership, a failure of our department, so said acting, uh, Houston Police Department Chief Larry Satterwhite. 

Rev FD Becker: (24:50)
And what it is, is that they had a, a code called suspended lack of personnel code that they would attach to a case coming into their, I don't know, into their files, and it would be put aside. And there was, I've, I've now learned it wasn't just 260,000, it was 264,000 cases that were just set aside, uh, reaching back to the year 2016, coming forward to today. Um, these cases were just set aside, back burner were not dealt with, uh, more than 4,000, uh, um, sexual assault cases were included in that number. And I wrote to the editor, I used to have good dealings with the editor of the Houston Chronicle. They used to print my, my, um, um, letters to the editor and, and one op-ed, they, they covered my work on the, the front page of the Houston Chronicle one time above the fold. 

Rev FD Becker: (25:50)
And now they won't take my letters. I wrote them saying, we are off track. These 260,000 cases should have been addressed that the, the 10,000 plus law enforcement officers in Houston were focused on busting people for minor amounts of drugs. They, they had their nose to the ground. They were not paying attention to these backlogged cases, and they didn't print it and, uh, didn't even respond. Uh, I felt it was very rude and, uh, just so off base. And I wrote them telling them why I'm canceling my subscription to that newspaper because they, they have their nose pointed in the wrong direction. They don't understand that these 264,000 cases should have been addressed, but were, uh, ignored because they had their nose to the ground trying to find little Janie and little Johnny with a bag of weed or some pills or, or whatever. And, uh, that they wasted all of that manpower. I I figured out, even if it's just one hour per day per cop chasing these, uh, drugs, but it's much more than that. They have drug squads of plenty and all of that. But if it was just one hour per day per cop, it was three and a half million man hours per year wasted chasing drugs that they could have been dealing with these 260,000 other cases. Um, that's long-winded, but your response there, Dana? 

Dana Larsen: (27:20)
Well, the reality is that that drug prohibition causes, uh, so many problems with the police. There's a lot of police corruption involved, which is understandable in a way because there's just such vast amounts of money in the illegal drug market. And, uh, and it's very tempting for police. And also often it's, it's, it's, uh, kind of their only choice. You know, sometimes there's the silver led option for these elected officials and that kind of thing where they, you know, you either take the bribe or you get a bullet, right? But, uh, but when it comes to enforcement, um, you know, the police, uh, could spend all of their resources only on drug issues and never solve the problem, never succeed in shutting down a cartel, never succeed in stopping anybody from using these things. It is so, so prevalent and so common because it's natural and normal, of course, to use these kind of substances, right? 

Dana Larsen: (28:10)
Drug use is incredibly normal and natural, but it's so prevalent that it's impossible. You know, here in BC alone, there's a quarter million people that are using illegal opioids, nevermind any other substance. The idea that you're gonna, they want forced treatment in jail. And like, we do not have the resources. It's impossible to put all these people in jail or, or in treatment, nor does that a good idea, either. It's a terrible idea in the first place. So you're putting every alcoholic, or not every alcoholic, but every single alcohol drinker, you know, when they had alcohol prohibition, it was the same thing. It's impossible to enforce. So it's an endless opportunity for the police to do whatever they want to arrest, almost whoever they want. If you wanna get a lot of charges as a cop, it's very easy to do by going after drug users. 

Dana Larsen: (28:48)
For the most part, drug users especially are easy to arrest. They don't resist, they're not violent. Cartels of dealers can be a little different sometimes, but the, the users, which is really the bulk of the enforcement Yeah. Is against users. You, most of the arrests are cannabis users, right? I mean, and aside from where it's been legalized in terms of numbers, the vast majority of, of police enforcement against drugs is on cannabis users. Those are the primary, uh, target when it comes to the numbers, right? But, um, yeah, if we want a safer, a cleaner, uh, a healthier society prohibition needs to be ended, right? Because it, it diverts police resources away, and it creates other crimes. When you go busted, like you said recently, they, they arrested or charged the, the head of the, the, the, the El Chapo sun, you were saying, right? 

Dana Larsen: (29:31)
Mm-Hmm. . It's not gonna, I mean, he may or may not be a good guy, but it's, it's gonna, he's gonna get replaced instantly, and it's only gonna create more chaos and violence in the system. And there's been many studies showing this police busts of drug of drugs increases violence, increases death, increases problems every time they arrest somebody. It only causes more death and destruction because now everybody's fighting over that spot in the drug market. So there's violence between cartels and dealers in terms of, of capturing that market that had already been controlled by somebody. And whenever they bust a regular person, if you're a regular drug user and the cops come and take your drugs away from you, well, now you've gotta go buy more. And sometimes if you're somebody who's, who's got an addiction issue or a withdrawal issue, well, you had your substance, you're gonna go use your opiates, now they're taking it away. 

Dana Larsen: (30:15)
Now, withdrawal is setting in, and you're in a desperate situation. You need something very quickly to help you deal with your situation. Well, maybe you're not, you know, you're not an imal person, but suddenly you see some change in a car window. You see an opportunity to make a few, a few bucks, maybe you're gonna prostitute yourself to get that money you need. You make choices you wouldn't otherwise make because of your desperation. And, and having them take that away from you only increases that. It doesn't make anything better. It makes everything absolutely worse. So, at every level, from busting the regular user to going after the heads of cartels or the big dealers, every time the police interfere, they only actually make things worse. They cause more misery, more death, more violence and destruction, which in a way is good for them. 'cause that creates an endless job program for the police where they can create more need for more cops anytime by doing these kind of busts. 

Dana Larsen: (31:01)
And whether the cops really realize it or not, that is the reality of what they're doing. And so, a totally unregulated system with no cops would actually be better when it comes to the drug trade. But the ideal is better regulations, good regulations that control what you get when you buy a substance. There should be a label on it that says exactly what it is. We run this drug testing program where you can bring things in to get them tested. It's very helpful as a service, but it's absolutely ludicrous that we have to do this. You should be able to buy a substance with a label that says what it is. It has warnings on how to use it properly, and how not to hurt yourself, and how to be careful. And the same kind of thing we do with, we do with most other products out there, right? 

Dana Larsen: (31:38)
That is a solution. Proper regulation, police enforcement like this, uh, and, and these raids, and then going after these, these leaders, it's an endless battle. And we know this because it's been going on for a hundred years, and everything's only gotten worse over the last century. We think of the drug war as some kinda recent thing, but it's been going on for a century now, and it's only gotten worse and worse every year. You know, and if you look at, at the, at the rates of, for instance, like overdose deaths or drug poisoning deaths, they've gone up every decade for the last century. And now we're at the pot of the, the frog in the pot of boiling water situation where the water's really bubbling and the deaths are extreme. And we're seeing how terrible it is. But, you know, when I first got started of this movement in the 1990s, here in British Columbia, there's about seven deaths a day now from, from opioid, uh, poisoning and, and overdoses. 

Dana Larsen: (32:25)
Well, in the nineties, it was about one death a day. And at that time, that was considered a public health emergency. It was a big deal in the nineties, this one death a day from opioids, there was a lot of concern. Politicians were talking about it. The chief coroner of British Columbia was out there doing research and trying to figure out what's going on. And of course, all the recommendations then were the same now of safe supply and decriminalization and this kind of thing. But now it's a seven deaths a day here in British Columbia. And then if you pick any other jurisdiction in North America, you'll see the same thing, right? It was a, it was a bad but smaller number in the nineties. Now it's bigger. But if, if they got it back down to that one death a day now politicians would say, Hey, we solved the problem. 

Dana Larsen: (33:00)
We did it, problem done. 'cause the window has moved so far that now it's seven times worse than it was in the nineties, that now it's considered like, that will be considered great. And if you go from the nineties, a few decades back, the overdose death was still happening, but they were lower then. And it was, you know, so we've gone through this, this frog in the, in the boiling water situation, where now it's unbearable. And if we don't change things in 10, 20 years, it's gonna be 20 deaths a day here in British Columbia and more than other jurisdictions. And they'll say, if they get back to seven deaths a day, that'll be a victory. And that'll be a problem solved. But, you know, it should be zero deaths a day. It should be one, a death a year, every two years. You know, that would be a, a proper policy, right? So we are in a really, uh, bad situation now, and the solution is not more prohibition. It is turning our backs on these failed policies and moving towards decriminalization, legalization regulation, and building a drug policy, not based on prohibition, punishments, ignorance, and bigotry, but a drug policy based on science, on human rights, on, on safety and health. Those are the, the, that should be the attributes of our drug policy. And you get to those things with regulation and, uh, and proper awareness, not with prohibition and punishment. 

Rev FD Becker: (34:08)
Thank you again, folks. We're speaking with Mr. Dana Larson, a Canadian activist extraordinaire, um, entrepreneur, uh, the man with, uh, a lot of experience and great knowledge in this regard. Um, Dana, I, I think about when, when I was, what, uh, the year was 1968, I was busted for the first time and dig this, it was for 0.023 grams. Now, try to picture that amount. It was an empty matchbox, as far as I'm concerned. That's what we were using back then, was matchboxes. And, uh, it was empty far as I knew. And they spent quite a lot of time scraping that matchbox. And I think most of the material they weighed was matchbox scrapings, to be honest with you. But 0.023 grams. If I had 40 times that amount, I could roll it joint, you know? And it, it was just, uh, it got me kicked outta the Air Force. I was a bad person because I, I had 0.023 grams. And it's, it's an example of how extreme this mindset is, is that, oh, we've gotta control it somehow. I was not a threat. I was the marksman for the squadron. I was the, you know, I was doing all right. I was not a criminal. I was not doing criminal things. I had a tiny amount of weed in a, in a matchbox, and yet somehow I was a horrible person. Got a bad conduct, discharge, uh, respond to that. Would you? 

Dana Larsen: (35:36)
Well, first of all, even if someone's got a hundred pounds of cannabis, that shouldn't make them a criminal, you know, or anything like that. But of course, the reality is, is that, that a lot of people are being charged or punished for nothing at all, basically have something in their bloodstream. You know, they get, they get drug tested at work, or they get drug tested by the police, and it's even having something in your bloodstream, which is even a tinier amount, really. But yeah, many of these charges, or most of them are for regular folks with a very small amount of a substance in their possession. And that's the easiest for the police. Those folks are the easiest to target. There's a lot of them out there. In fact, probably the majority of the population at one time, where another could fall under this. And that's why the police like it, because they can get almost anybody like that. 

Dana Larsen: (36:18)
Um, but, uh, you know, it shouldn't really matter how much you have of something on you, really. But th this is, this is very common. People being charged for seeds or for tiny little bits, or for that, uh, it, it is not unusual. And that, I think is part of the big problem here. That the, it's, it's, it's really, in many ways, it's a cultural attack. It's a pogrom against a certain range of people. We don't see it like that, because it's not always easy to identify it as a cultural group. It's more dispersed than that, right? But the reality is that cannabis users and, and coca users and opium users are targeted in a, in a, in a very strange and direct kind of way with drug testing, with, ultimately, you're sort of expelled from society. You know, you often have your children taken away. 

Dana Larsen: (37:00)
You're fired from your job. You, you, uh, you are punished in all these kind of extra ways other than simply being arrested and putting in jail, which is a big part of it. But there's so many other ways that we go after drug users to ostracize them from our society, to identify them, to isolate them, to control them. And if you look at the terms of genocide and what happens in a genocide, those are all the steps in a genocide. You identify, you isolate, you ostracize, and then ultimately you eliminate. And, you know, I think we're, we're, we're moving towards that in our society as well. In many ways, this war on drugs, I believe, and consider it to be a real genocide, a cultural genocide, and a real actual genocide. In some countries, you can see that more than others. You know, in the Philippines, for instance, where for the last 10 years or so, there's been a massive death campaign against drug users, specifically, uh, stimulant users, but many others as well. 

Dana Larsen: (37:50)
Mass, mass incarceration at a level far beyond even what you see in the us. But also there's people being gunned down on the streets, the past president of Philippines, encouraging citizens to murder other citizens because they suspect them of being drug users. And this is something that happens in many parts of the world that has happened in the US and maybe will happen again. This, this massive. So, I, I, I, I very clearly consider the, the global war on drugs to be a genocide, both a cultural genocide and an actual genocide. You know, when you look at, for instance, the Coca leaf being used by indigenous cultures across South America for thousands of years, and there's a policy by many world governments to eliminate the coca plant entirely from the earth. Well, that's a cultural genocide. This plant, it is not just a plant. It's, it's a deep, integral part of their culture. 

Dana Larsen: (38:34)
You know, it'd be like trying to ban wine to, to prohibit Catholics from practicing their faith or, or something like that, you know, or, or banning other sort of sacred foods or, or plants or substances that are used for religious and spiritual purposes. Uh, it is very clearly that, and all of these substances from, you know, opium poppies to cannabis flowers, to coca leaves to say celly mushrooms, the peyote cactus, they're all substances that have deep, deep, cultural, social, spiritual relevance, and which our, our western governments of the un want to eliminate from the earth. That is a genocide, that is a cultural genocide. And, uh, and we need to recognize it as that and call it out as that, and not be afraid of using that term. That is exactly what we're facing. And it's been going on for far too long. 

Rev FD Becker: (39:16)
Thank you, Dana. Um, I, I wanna, um, reach back to what you were talking about. The, uh, um, Duterte, he was in charge there in, in the Philippines. Uh, he's been replaced now, and, but the death toll is still, um, going on. It's, it's just a percentage, a fairly large percentage of what it was under Duterte. And they're saying, oh, it's getting better. You know, they're somehow putting a bandaid on it, saying it's getting better. And, uh, Trump has aligned himself. He did align himself with Duterte back when, and just last month, Trump was quoted as saying, uh, he's all for a more all out drug war. He's, he's for quick, um, uh, trials and for quick executions. Those are, those are words that came outta Donald Trump's mouth just last month. Uh, uh, and, and it, it, it just, uh, it is part of that global gen, uh, China ex, uh, executes, people chops off their heads in the city square. Uh, the same happens in Iran, or at least it used to. I understand Iran's getting a little better, but, but it's, it's part of this global inquisition that the United States started that a hundred years ago. We convinced the United Nations to follow in our path, or else we wouldn't give them money. And it, and we have led this, this effort, uh, for a hundred plus years. Your your response to that thought, Dan. 

Dana Larsen: (40:40)
Well, the thing is, the people, these guys know that, that that is not right. Trump, Donald Trump knows that prohibition is a failure, and the drug war is a failure. And you know how I know that? 'cause in 1990, Trump wasn't afraid to say that. And I, there's a great quote here from this, uh, uh, a luncheon in 1990 where Donald Trump said, US drug enforcement policy was a joke. He said that we should legalize and regulate drugs. We should create programs to educate Americans about the dangers of drugs and addiction. And he said, this is a quote, we're losing badly the war on drugs. You have to legalize drugs to win that war. You must take the profit away from these drugs czars. So Donald Trump knows that the war on drugs is a failure. He knows that legalization and regulation is the right policy. So what changed between 1990 and 2024 or, or when, you know, 2016, when Trump was, was first putting this rhetoric out there. 

Dana Larsen: (41:34)
He's playing to the base. He know that these are successful arguments for a lot of Americans, that the drug war is a successful tactic when it comes to creating fear and division and getting elected by scaring people. And so he changed his tune. And I wish, you know, nobody's asked this, asked Trump about this in the last 10 years as a modern, when he became a politician. No one's asked him about this contradiction. But they all know it. They all, they all know that the truth, Joe Biden knew it when he was out there campaigning for stronger drug laws. And for, you know, Joe Biden wrote and put in many of the harshest drug laws in the us. He also knew that these laws are bad, and it was a failure. Anybody who really thinks about it knows that these laws are counterproductive and doing the opposite of what they claim to do. 

Dana Larsen: (42:16)
But they can't say that. They don't feel like, they don't feel. They can say that. Trump could say in 1990, when he wasn't a politician, when he didn't give a what anybody else said, when he could say what he really thought sometimes. But, but when it comes to, to now, you know, people think trump's a different kind of politician or something. He says it how it is. No, he's buying into the same garbage as the rest of them, the same drug war nonsense. And he knows in his heart and his mind is inaccurate and is wrong. But how to get votes, how to create division, how to create fear. And those things are very positive for politicians. And so, I, I really think a lot of these guys, and they know that what they're saying is wrong. They know it's not true, but they say it anyways because that's what gets them votes. And that's what, that's how they can manipulate people into being afraid and how they can gain political power. 

Rev FD Becker: (43:02)
Thank you for that. Uh, let's be careful with our verbiage. Um, 

Dana Larsen: (43:06)
Sorry about that. I get a little passionate. 

Rev FD Becker: (43:08)
No, no, I, I understand. And I, it's all I can do some days to curtail myself. Uh, but the, the, the whole point being what you have put forward, what I've been putting forward for 25 years is that we own the moral high ground every square inch of it. They have nothing to say. They will never debate us. They will never be on a stage and allow us to present the actual truth of the matter. They want to keep their propaganda and their hysteria working. They want to continue to, uh, I don't know, just control the people. It's not about drug control, it's about people control. They will never stop the flow of drugs, but they can control the people through the use of these quote laws. And that's what it's really all about, isn't it? 

Dana Larsen: (43:58)
Yeah. It's about control. It's about power. It's about, it's about, uh, creating a police state. And, uh, it's about having an endless war. Uh, endless war is very helpful for politicians. It's very good. And, uh, and, you know, I want drug peace instead of drug war. That should be our goal. That's my slogan. And that's, uh, that's, that should be what we're aiming for. Endless drug war. We're never gonna win this. It's never gonna end. And who wants endless, endless war? You know, only those who benefit from death and misery and destruction and pain and chaos. Those are the ones who want support. Endless war. 

Rev FD Becker: (44:31)
Yeah. The DEA, they, they, I consider them to be the top drug cartel. They, here in the United States, they determine the price, the purity, and the availability of drugs being circulated in this country. And they are responsible for the hundred thousand deaths each year. They are responsible for all the gang shootouts. They're responsible for all the misery, uh, that, that flows from their decree that they are, um, masters of logic or some such. Uh, I consider them to be some of the most evil people on the planet. You're response, sir? 

Dana Larsen: (45:07)
Well, yeah. There's a lot of hypocrisy too. You know, you go to any of these anti-drug meetings and they're all chugging alcohol and drinking coffee and, and, uh, and engaging in these things. And, you know, I don't wanna prohibit alcohol. But the reality is that in, in a regulated and controlled system, alcohol's still gonna be more dangerous than many of the prohibited substances, right? And, uh, you know, we push people towards the, the one of the most dangerous drugs by legalizing and promoting and encouraging, not just legalizing, but encouraging and promoting alcohol use all around every politician. Who do you wanna drink a beer with? And, and this kind of thing. And even in Canada where cannabis has been legal now for six years, uh, uh, not one politician comes out and says, I, I use cannabis on a regular basis instead of alcohol. They're still afraid. 

Dana Larsen: (45:49)
There's still stigma around that. Every politician will, will appear with alcohol. Even ones who don't drink very much will appear with alcohol in their hand. 'cause they wanna appear normal and regular and feel like a regular guy. But you never see a politician anywhere at any level of government in Canada smoking a joint, especially on camera smoking a joint or taking a bong hit on camera, even though it's far safer than alcohol, even though it's far, uh, better for you health wise, even though it's totally legal now, and there's no, you know, reason to hide it in that way. There's still a lot of stigma and fear around that, which I think just shows how deeply ingrained this is in our society. And like, it's, it's a very deep kind of a thing. But yeah, we, the reality is that, that most of these, so-called drug warriors are actually quite heavy drug users themselves. Uh, and, and, and they're just different substances. Although often they're actually using the drugs that they prohibit as well. That's very common too, finding out that these cops or anti or prohibitionists are actually users themselves. And maybe they're, they're, they're engaging in this 'cause they have some kind of internal challenge or feel guilty about things, or they're mixed up in their own minds. But, but drug use is prevalent across all levels of society, including among the prohibitionists and the cops who wanna tell the rest of us what to do. 

Rev FD Becker: (46:59)
Well, and then, yeah, and then we have, again, reaching to the DEA or maybe the drug task forces that many of these cities have, they're kind of the upper echelon. They get to, you know, they're long haired, they're bearded. They, they, they wear, I don't know, hippie clothes, for lack of a better term. They pretend to be drug users and in fact, become drug users to ingrain themselves with the people they're trying to bust. This is, uh, just part of it for them. They, they get the freedom to be drug users while busting drug users. And it's just so well, well beyond hypocritical. I, I don't even know what to say. Um, I, I'm trying to think. It's been 12 years ago maybe I came to, uh, uh, uh, Vancouver. I, um, uh, got to, I was meeting there with Mark Emory and his wife Jody and, and et cetera. 

Rev FD Becker: (47:47)
And, um, I, I've got to visit the insight. Um, I, I don't know, it's not a dispensary, but the insight location, which is right next door or close to, uh, where Mark had his place back then. And I, I found it to be amazingly clean and open and, I don't know, just a, a, a positive thing to have in the community for those people who are doing these quote illegal drugs, uh, tainted and dangerous. And, uh, that, uh, as far as I know, no one has ever died in one of the, in, in the insight, but it's now expanded to many cities in Canada, I think. Uh, but no, no one has died within those facilities because the people there know how to treat overdose. Uh, y your response to that, please. 

Dana Larsen: (48:36)
Absolutely. I mean, I, I fully support supervised injection and supervised use sites, although, you know, to be, again, the people should be able to access these substances in such a manner that they know what they're getting and that they're safe and clean. And I really think these sites should be treated more like a bar than like a, or like a, you know, like a social environment really than how they are now. But, but the reality is, insight and other places like that save a lot of lives. It also reduce a lot of community chaos. You know, here in Vancouver, when they were first opening in site, uh, decades ago, uh, a lot of the Chinese community and other business communities were very against it and lobbied against it. But a few years after it opened, they all came out in support and said, you know, we thought this was gonna cause more problems and more chaos, but actually it reduced crime, it reduced problems, it reduced deaths, it made our communities safer. 

Dana Larsen: (49:20)
But we are in Canada right now, a backlash against these kind of sites. And we've got Trudeau's, our prime minister, we've got Pierre Pore the conservative who's currently leading in the polls in Canada. And he says he calls these place drug dens because he wants to shut them all down and close them. And, and that's gonna cause a lot more chaos and a lot more death and a lot more problems and pushing drug users back out onto the streets in a very real way. And, and I think that when there is problems with these kind of sites, it's because there's not enough of them. You know, imagine if you just had one bar in town, one location where you could buy alcohol. Well, of course there'd be some crazy stuff going on at that location because you're gonna concentrate all these people at one spot. 

Dana Larsen: (49:59)
But we don't do that, right? We have these things all over the place, and we really need to have more access to these kind of places where you can safely use these kind of substances and, and, and, and all over all different kinds of communities and all over the place. That's really what we need. And then you don't have, have a lot of people at one spot. And then the kind of issues that can arise around that. And of course, I believe we should be providing, and I don't think we should be giving away drugs, you know, they have these safe supply programs where they give people stuff for free, and sometimes you should, some people need to get free stuff because of whatever issues they're dealing with. But the reality is that we should be selling these things at reasonable prices the same as we do with alcohol and cannabis and tobacco, and many other substances. 

Dana Larsen: (50:39)
And we should be able to go in and buy some opium or buy some heroin, if that's what you want. And you a regulated and controlled fashion and with age limits and with, with, with warning labels and with proper understanding of how to use these things. And if you do that, you'll find that the vast majority of users gravitate towards the milder and safer and easier forms that are easier and healthier, not only for them and for their whole community and for their society to use as well, and, and to have these things there. So I'm a big supporter of insight and of supervised injection sites, but really they're not a solution. They're the first small step towards the solution, right? We need to go beyond this idea. We'll provide you a safer space to use your unclean, unknown substances you bought on the street. 

Dana Larsen: (51:21)
Well, that's better than nothing. But really, we need to be having a place where you can go in and buy, like having a pub where they don't sell you alcohol. You gotta buy your booze outside from a guy in the alley, and then you can take it to the pub, and then we'll make sure you don't die when you, if you, if you pass out while you drink it, we'll give you something else. Well, that, does that really make sense? I mean, that's better than drinking in the alley, but it's not really the solution. The solutions of a pub where the guy sells you alcohol, you know what you're getting. He can keep an eye on you. He can make sure you don't drink and drive. You've had too much. He knows how to deal with you and how to take care of you and make sure that you're, you know, trying to make sure people are using things as, as responsibly as possible. It's not gonna be a perfect situation, but it's the least harmful, the most beneficial, the one that, that is the safest for a community and everything else. And we need to adopt that policy to these other substances as well. And of course, prohibition is all the opposite. 

Rev FD Becker: (52:11)
Yeah. Um, but back in the day, the a hundred years ago, we're talking about the drugs were not controlled, but they were maybe most often were what they were purported to be. Uh, back around 1898, I think it was, Bayer invented heroin. They put it on the grocer's shelf right next to Bayer Aspirin at the very same price. And as you say, these drugs are not that expensive if they're made, uh, you know, commercially, so to speak, and that, that these prices, uh, are are just outrageous for, you know, polluted and maybe deadly, uh, concoctions that you buy on the street. Um, we're about to run out of time here in a, in a couple of minutes. I, I wanted to say this, that, you know, you talked about how, uh, drug use can complicate your life, can lead to more, uh, ramifications, more implications. 

Rev FD Becker: (53:03)
Uh, I'm reading here from, what is this? Stop the drug war. The US has deported half a million people, excuse me, for drug offenses in just the last 20 years. And that's, you know, getting caught with some small amount and maybe there's a, a politician that wants you out of the country or they have laws already in place, but it's just more punishment. Uh, drug punishment goes on for a lifetime in many cases. Just the, the, uh, stigma, uh, that's attached to it, that you can't get certain jobs and on down the line. It's, it's just a means to control the people. Uh, that that's just the heart of it, isn't it? 

Dana Larsen: (53:43)
Yeah, absolutely. It, it's a means of control. It's a means of exerting power. It's a means of making a lot of money because you take things that are very cheap to produce, that you grow out of the ground for pennies, and you can sell 'em at incredible markups, a hundred, a thousand times markup. And, and that's makes a lot of money. And it makes a lot of money not only for the, for the drug cartels and the dealers. It makes a lot of money for the cia. A it makes a lot of money for the government, it makes a lot of money for the police who, who challenge that. And, uh, and, you know, we need to change that. And, and I think that we are in a time and our society and our culture where we are moving away from this and we're starting to realize that these policies are wrong. 

Dana Larsen: (54:25)
And sometimes it reminds me of the AIDS crisis, and it takes a lot of death and a lot of destruction and misery to change people's minds and also to activate people, you know, and get them angry. I know so many people, so many mothers who have lost their children to this drug war. These are mothers who did not expect to become activists who didn't really think a lot about drug policy in their lives, but now their child has been lost. They become an activist. They want to change these laws. And many times they recognize that prohibition is the real problem. And so, you know, we are gonna change these laws and it takes everybody watching and everybody to make a little difference every day to get out there and do one thing at least every day to help end prohibition. It might just be a difficult conversation with somebody. 

Dana Larsen: (55:04)
It might be donating 10 bucks to a, a, a cause or a campaign. It might be, uh, uh, uh, uh, talking, or it might be lobbying or going to a rally or a protest, or just doing something to educate and change it. It's a mass movement and we all need to be involved. And if we work together, we can change these laws. We've got cannabis legalized in many jurisdictions. We can end this whole war on drugs if we work together, if we have faith, if we believe we work hard, we will end this terrible genocide in our lifetimes. 

Rev FD Becker: (55:32)
Thank you. Uh, yeah, I, uh, just this morning I heard that, um, um, VP Harris has now selected her v uh, her, her vice president candidate, uh, Tim Wal out of, uh, I think it's Michigan. And he is a legalize of cannabis. She is a legalize of cannabis. That gives me great hope that maybe if they, uh, I hope the hell they get elected, that they can begin to change the mindset, the, the, the, uh, the outlook towards drugs in general and begin moving in that direction. Uh, your thoughts there, sir? 

Dana Larsen: (56:06)
Well, I think cannabis is the first step, and I think peeling off cannabis from everything else is a good idea to get that legalized. And I think probably the next one will be psychedelics and, and mushrooms and things like that. I mean, I, I think we need to change all these policies, but at the same time, it's gonna be one step at a time. And cannabis is the first step. Psychedelics, I think will be the next step in some ways. And, uh, and I, I hope that, uh, you know, I, I, I mean, in some cases it's the same folks that, that put these laws in that are taking them out, right? But I, I would obviously be supporting, I'm not an American, but I'd be supporting Kamala Harris and Tim Walls, and I hope that when they're elected, that they will at least legalize cannabis, take it out of the prohibition federally, and open up that space for federal and for state legislators to start moving towards other harm reduction, other decriminalization and legalization and regulation policies. This change is coming, it's gonna seem like a long time and, and quite a long time to make it happen. But over the grand course of history, we're, we're seeing a rapid shift away from the failed genocidal war on drugs. 

Rev FD Becker: (57:07)
Well, thank you once again. Friends, we've been speaking with Mr. Uh, uh, I'm sorry, Dana. Dana Larson. I was looking for my notes. Couldn't find 'em. But anyway, Dana, thank you so much. Uh, very kind words, um, very intelligent words. I, I hope the audience, uh, embraces because that's the whole point, is that I think the majority of people in America and probably around the world know the drug war is a failure. They're just afraid to speak up. And it's with ammunition knowledge being brought forward by good folks like you that may be help fortify them to speak up as well and help bring that change. And, uh, I guess we're about out of time here. I'm not getting nothing from the engineer. I'm gonna go ahead and wrap it right now. Uh, once again, folks, I wanna remind you that because of prohibition, you do not know what's in that bag. And I urge you to please be careful and always remember that, uh, euphoria is a blessing, not a crime. Please help to expose the abomination of this drug war. Until next time, this is Dean Becker with Reverend Most High, claiming the moral high ground. 

Roark Smith: (58:11)
The proceeding program Moral High Ground is sponsored by www.drugtruth.net publishers of to end the War on Drugs and Forever, Salem, the American Inquisition, written by Reverend FD Becker.

CULTURAL BAGGAGE

AUGUST 2, 2018

TRANSCRIPT

DEAN BECKER: During this time of eternal war, I find it my somber duty to report the death toll from the drug formerly known as marijuana is zero.

Hello, folks. This is the High Reverend Dean Becker, and this is Cultural Baggage. We've got a great show, most of it coming to you from Canada. But first, I want to get something out of the way.

It's time to play Name That Drug By Its Side Effects! Difficulty breathing, swelling of your face, fever, sore throat, headache, vomiting, severe blistering, bruising, tingling, numbness, pain, weakness, bleeding, dark urine, clay colored stools, jaundice, and death. Time's up! The answer: Nuvigil, a medication that promotes wakefulness.

And let us begin.

You know, it's been a few years since I talked to our next guest, but he's been busy the whole time, I can guarantee you that. He works up in Canada, I think he's based in British Columbia, but he's been one of British Columbia's most outspoken advocates for marijuana reform, and I applaud him. I'm glad to hear that he's also been talking about decriminalizing the personal possession of hard drugs including cocaine and heroin. With that, I want to welcome Mister Dana Larsen. Hello, Dana.

DANA LARSEN: Hey, hello, thanks for having me.

DEAN BECKER: Dana, you know, you heard what I said, I'm a LEAP speaker. I think we have bigger fish to fry than just cannabis these days. Would you agree with that thought, sir?

DANA LARSEN: Well, the opioid overdose crisis is pretty extreme, especially here in Vancouver, BC, where we've had about four deaths a day now from opioid overdoses, and I'd call it -- I'd say it's not a drug crisis, it's a prohibition crisis, and these overdoses and deaths are caused almost entirely by the war on drugs.

DEAN BECKER: Exactly right. I don't know how often you might hear my show, but I close the Cultural Baggage show with the thought that because of prohibition you don't know what's in that bag and I urge folks to please be careful, and that is the point. Nobody knows what they're buying these days. Supposed heroin is being replaced by fentanyl and carfentanyl, in the main. Your thought, please.

DANA LARSEN: Well, you know, if you look back historically, the exact same thing was happening during alcohol prohibition, where, in Canada and the US, many thousands of people were blinded or killed by drinking alcohol that was poorly made or wood grain alcohol, and if alcohol prohibition had lasted until now, we would see the same thing, where the number of deaths goes up every decade.

Every decade since we banned opioids in Canada, we've seen more overdose deaths than the decade before, and actually back in the 1990s, when there was one overdose death a day in British Columbia, that was considered a crisis, and we had a big -- hearings, and discussions, and the government talked about changing things, and eventually they didn't do anything and they just decided one death a day was the new normal.

Now that it's up to four deaths a day, everyone's freaking out again. I really hope they don't decide in a year or two that, oh, four deaths a day isn't so bad actually, and just wait till it gets to ten deaths a day before they get concerned again.

We need to realize that the prohibition is the root cause here, and ending prohibition is the solution to the drug overdose crisis.

DEAN BECKER: You know, in recent weeks, here in my city, Houston, we had a couple of instances where cops thought they encountered fentanyl or carfentanyl, gave themselves naloxone treatment to prevent, I guess, ODing or dying, but the fact of the matter is that stuff is deadly, but it's not as deadly as is often indicated, that you can't absorb it through your skin and immediately, you know, fall over dead, it's another means to just frighten us into believing, I don't know, this drug war is worthwhile. Your thought there, Dana.

DANA LARSEN: Well, yeah, I mean, fentanyl and carfentanyl are certainly dangerous, but they don't absorb into your skin if you touch them like that, that's really a myth and I think that the police are spreading paranoia and misinformation about this, which doesn't really help the situation at all.

And, you know, people, they want clean, safe opiates, and we need to provide a clean, safe source of drugs. And people say to me, I don't want to pay for any addicts drugs, that's not fair. Well, then charge them, because it's very, very cheap, producing these drugs is incredibly cheap. You can get, you know, heroin tablets or other forms of opiates for like a dollar a dose.

The only reason it's so expensive for street drugs is because of prohibition, and, you know, in Switzerland they have programs where they allow opiate users to buy opiates, at cost, it doesn't cost taxpayers anything, but there's no profit being made either. And it works very, very well.

And in Portugal, where they've decriminalized possession of all drugs and are treating drug use like a health issue, they've also seen remarkable success, and many American states have also decriminalized possession as well. You know, Oregon, I believe, has a thing in place where there's a limited amount of any drug you can possess, and you won't be charged. And I think we have to stop looking at drug use as a crime, or as a moral failing, and just look on it as a health issue, and people need help, we should be helping them.

But, the main thing these people need is clean, safe drugs, in knowable doses, in safe amounts, and to not allow that to happen, really, it's tantamount to murder, in my opinion.

DEAN BECKER: I'm with you there, sir. I was privileged, earlier this spring, I went to Switzerland there, I got a chance to interview Doctor Christoph Buerki. He was the designer of the Swiss heroin injection program. I had a chance to tour their facility, learned how, you know, people come in twice a day, they do their heroin there, and that, in the approximate twenty years, I don't remember exactly, of this program, no one has died.

It's -- it's -- the fear of these drugs is more deadly than the drugs, am I right?

DANA LARSEN: Well, we've had a hundred years, or more than a hundred years, of demonization, of paranoia, of fear and attacks against primarily opiates, but also cannabis and cocaine and many other substances as well.

And, you know, these substances, in their original, natural forms, they're not deadly. People who smoke opium or drink opium tea, they don't overdose and die. And before we banned opiates, that was how opiate users used it, they primarily smoked opium. And I think we need to go beyond a supervised injection site, and offer opiate users a safer alternative. Sure, if you need to inject, okeh, there's a safe place you can do it, here's some safe drugs.

But, maybe you'd prefer a cup of opium tea? Maybe you'd prefer to smoke some opium, and I think a large number of current opiate injectors would switch to milder, safer forms if they had the alternative.

And we saw this again with alcohol prohibition, where during alcohol prohibition, smugglers don't want to smuggle beer and wine, they smuggled a hundred percent pure alcohol, the strongest stuff they can get, and then they dilute it down on the other end, after it's been smuggled. And that also caused countless health problems, deaths, overdoses from alcohol.

And when you ban a drug, you make it stronger. Not because users necessarily want stronger drugs, because that's what's easier to smuggle, and more profitable, and prohibition makes drugs stronger. And legalization makes drugs weaker, and safer, and people really want more moderate doses for their use.

And so, you know, people say we've got a drug problem or an overdose problem, and I always say, it's a prohibition problem. Prohibition is what is causing this to happen. And you know, in my opinion, the war on drugs is really a genocide against poor people, marginalized people, indigenous people, and we need to recognize that, and that politicians who support prohibition are ultimately supporting death, misery, and genocide, in North America and around the world.

DEAN BECKER: Wow. You nailed it, Dana, that's exactly my feelings. This is -- this is a deviation from reality, it's, I call it a quasi-religion, this belief in prohibition. Doesn't need any data, just the belief.

You know, you guys have, in British Columbia in particular, had safe injection sites, Insite there, where folks can come in and use their drugs under medical supervision, and I think in, I don't know, over a decade that it's been in play there hasn't been one death that has occurred there, though there have been those who overdosed, and were able to recover thanks to the medical personnel on staff.

And we have down here in the US now, San Francisco, Seattle, Ithaca, New York, New York City, a couple of other cities I'm leaving out, are considering making use of safe injection facilities for their cities. What would you say to those politicians considering making that move?

DANA LARSEN: Well, I support supervised injection sites very, very much. They reduce disease, they reduce overdose, they also can act as a facility for people who do want help or to want to stop using opiates, that they can get information and contacts and work to end their opiate use there. So I think they're a good start.

But, also, in the long run, I feel that it -- supervised injection sites aren't really the final solution to anything, you know? They definitely save lives and prevent people from overdosing, but in my opinion it's a little bit odd to say well, we're going to give you a clean needle and -- to put your dirty street drugs in, and then if you overdose we're going to be here to stop your overdose and to give you some Narcan to -- or naloxone to reverse your overdose.

But, really we should be giving them some clean drugs to put in their needle as well. So, I think that, and we should also offer them alternatives that are non-injectable and perhaps safer. So I definitely think that supervised injection sites are a good first step, and that they save lives, and that people who oppose them ultimately believe that drug users should die as punishment for being a drug user.

But I think we've got to go beyond supervised injection sites, ultimately. They're a first step of many steps towards really ending prohibition altogether.

DEAN BECKER: Well -- well said. Dana, I think about, you know, you guys have had a medical marijuana law in place for many years now, and it has worked out pretty good, as best I understand it, but you're legalizing October Twelfth or something, I believe, there's a new set of laws going to be in play. But from my perspective down here in Texas, it really seems kind of creepy, the way it's all set up. Your response to that thought, please.

DANA LARSEN: Yeah, the legalization is going to come into play in Canada on October Seventeenth, although it's going to be ultimately a multi-year, maybe a multi-decade process of really sort of ending the stigma and attacks on cannabis users.

The laws they've put in place, I mean, I support what we're doing in Canada because I think it is a step forward, but the way they're treating cannabis, the -- we want to see an end to prohibition that includes an apology from the government, a recognition that prohibition was wrong, and based in racism and bigotry and ignorance and was never well-intentioned and never accomplished anything good.

But the route they're going is to say, well, we're going to punish cannabis, if you violate any of these rules we're going to punish you far out of proportion to what it would be with alcohol. And they've put in rules that are far more restrictive than alcohol, in every way, and far more punitive, even though cannabis is the much safer choice than alcohol.

So there's all kinds of things in this legislation that really need to be looked at in Canada, and ultimately will need to be changed over the next ten or twenty years, as we continue moving forward on this.

There's lots of examples, you know, for instance in Canada, an adult parent can share alcohol with their minor child if they choose to do so at home. So you want to give your kid a half glass of wine with dinner or something, that's not a crime. But an adult parent who shares cannabis with their teenage child can face very severe penalties and jail time.

And, it's like that all the way down the line, where every aspect of these cannabis laws are still maintaining the idea that cannabis is incredibly dangerous, and that cannabis users can't be trusted, and that it's better if we all just drink alcohol instead of using cannabis, and so it's created a system I think that is still unduly restricted, unduly controlled, and there's still going to be even arrests for cannabis possession in Canada after it's legalized.

If you possess cannabis, which they call illicit cannabis, so you didn't buy it at the right place or grow it yourself, that's a crime, and you can go to jail for that, with quite severe penalties. And we just don't treat alcohol or tobacco or anything else that's legal like that, so, there's still a lot of work to do, but, you know, in a planet where prohibition is the dominant policy in pretty much every country on earth, I think Canada is still making some significant steps forward, even though it's not really giving us everything that we want when it comes to ending cannabis prohibition.

DEAN BECKER: Look, I have to agree with you, Dana, but -- progress is progress, and embrace it and move forward, but, it just seems that there was a reach back to reefer madness, to just hang onto it, to carry it forward into this new era, and that's what's kind of creepy to me, is that it's obvious. Cannabis is not the threat it was once purported to be, and why the heck are we so afraid.

DANA LARSEN: Yeah, I feel that the decisions being made by Canada's liberal government about -- and the rhetoric around legalization is really designed not to do the right thing, but to thwart attacks from the right. So they're framing legalization as a way of fighting, you know, the bad guys who are the organized crime and the gangsters who are selling cannabis now.

They're framing legalization as a way of protecting young people from the harms of cannabis, rather than framing it as cannabis is pretty good, actually, and prohibition is wrong, and we never should have banned it in the first place. And so because they're taking that angle and that approach, it really kinks the way that legalization is going to look in Canada.

And, we have a very strange situation in Canada, much like the situation in Amsterdam right now, where cannabis is illegal federally, but many cities have got cannabis shops in them operating quite openly, in Vancouver, in Victoria, and other cities that these dispensaries have been granted business licenses and mainstream acceptance, even though they're still against federal law.

And the legalization we're getting is actually being accompanied by threats to crack down on the dispensaries, and to shut down and punish even more severely the current industry.

I was in Amsterdam a few months ago, and the Dutch coffee shop owners were like, hey, congratulations, they're going to legalize in Canada, and I told them, well, yeah, thanks for the good sentiment, but it's like if the Dutch government said we're going to open three government run cannabis shops in Amsterdam and then we're going to raid and shut down every single coffee shop that's here and throw all you guys in jail. And they were like, oh, that's not a good idea. And I'm like yeah, it's not.

It's not really like a system that's open for those who are already in the industry, and who have been the pioneers moving things forward, and challenging the law. They're still seeing those people, like myself, as criminals who deserve to be punished and flushed out of the way so that we can be replaced by a limited selection of corporatized government cannabis, and I think that's just not the way to go.

There needs to be a liberation of the industry, and not trying to replace and demonize the current cannabis industry, and replace it with this government monopoly, that's not really going to work in Canada. I think it's going to lead to many more years of conflict, arrests, confusion, and stigmatization of cannabis users.

DEAN BECKER: Well, you know, earlier you spoke of the fact that these harder drugs really cost just pennies to make, that the -- it is the prohibition that inflates that price to where it is today on the street. And the same can pretty much be true for cannabis. I realize there's rent for the warehouses where this stuff is grown, but, you know, you can grow some pretty good stuff outdoors that basically costs nothing but time and a little sunshine.

And I guess what I'm leading to here, Dana, is, we have a situation where cannabis has been way over priced for decades, and the price is not going down that much through your new government policy. The black market's still going to be out there, it's still going to be kind of thwarting the efforts of the government. Am I right?

DANA LARSEN: Oh, absolutely, and you know, I always say, if they want to shut down every dispensary in Canada and get rid of the black market, it's easy to do. Just have legal cannabis be higher quality, better selection, and lower prices than what's out there now.

And if they do that, well then my dispensary can't compete, and we would have to shut down, which I would consider kind of a victory. But they want to tax it a dollar a gram, regardless of how much that gram costs, it's going to be a dollar tax on it, plus seven percent GST federally, plus provincial taxes, plus probably a provincial fee as well. So we're looking at, you know, around a two dollar a gram tax on this plant.

They're not going to be able to compete with the current industry if they don't lower those taxes and produce more quality. And another thing maybe people don't realize is that the legalization we're getting in Canada only is for dried buds. No extracts, no edibles, no hash, no concentrates, no cookies, no brownies, no suppositories, no capsules, none of those things are going to be legal in Canada.

Only raw, dried buds for smoking will be available in these government run shops when we legalize. And they say they're going to bring in the extracts and the edibles in a year or so, I expect that will be more like two or three years before they really get that figured out and in place.

But -- but ultimately, I mean, I'm all for smoking dried buds, but especially for medical users, the real value medicinally comes from the extracts and the edibles and things like that, that have a higher concentration and more ability to help with medical issues.

And so, you know, as a Canadian citizen, I say, well, get on this right away and legalize it all, and as someone who runs a dispensary I say, hey, take your time. We've got this covered, and the longer they take to get their stuff in place, the longer we can continue serving our members and providing those products to those who need them.

DEAN BECKER: Right.

DANA LARSEN: So, it's going to be a long, slow process in Canada until we get to where we need to be.

DEAN BECKER: Maybe I had heard those details, that they weren't allowing for extracts and edibles, but that just -- that just seems ridiculous. Some folks can't smoke anything, their lungs will not handle it. It's -- it just seems outrageous to me.

Again, folks, we're speaking with Mister Dana Larsen, he's a drug policy activist up there in Canada, based in British Columbia. Dana, as we're wrapping it up here, I want to come back to, you mentioned they're trying to deny you and good folks like Jody and Marc Emery the right to open a dispensary, to be providers, that many of those that are taking over the distribution of these drugs are former cops and district attorneys, and others who used to prosecute folks who sold cannabis.

And that to me is part of what, you know, was creepy to me about what's going on up there. Would you address that for us, please?

DANA LARSEN: Oh, absolutely. That's an issue, and you know what? It's one thing if a police officer, you know, I'm glad to see cops, you know, growing cannabis or moving into the cannabis industry in some ways, but not when they're going to continue to demonize cannabis users.

You know, now they're saying, well, don't buy it from those gangsters who've been selling it all along, buy it from me, I'm a cop, you can trust me, or I'm a big former politician, you can trust me, buy it from me, and these people often were angry and pushy opponents against legalization. They demonized cannabis, they attacked Trudeau for wanting to legalize, and then now as soon as it's legal and they see the money, they suddenly see dollar signs in their eyes and they decide they want to be the ones to sell it to everybody.

And, I just think that that's wrong, you know, it -- people in the cannabis industry should not be the same people that have been fighting to destroy the cannabis industry, who continue to demonize cannabis users and cannabis growers and the cannabis culture.

I don't want to buy my cannabis from those people. And I think that most cannabis users don't want to buy it from them either. And so, we've really got a system in Canada that is difficult for the average person to get involved in, and participate in.

And I will say it's sort of heading in the right direction in some ways, but that they're opening that up a little bit, they're creating what they're calling microgrow licenses and things like that, for smaller growers, but, it's such a slow, slow process, and so restricted, and ultimately you really need millions of dollars to sort of get involved in the legal industry. And I think that kind of restriction is going the wrong way.

I like what I'm seeing in some cities like Oakland and a few American states where they're actually making an effort to set aside licenses or include people that have personally been affected by cannabis prohibition, or from communities that have been marginalized and hurt by cannabis prohibition, and trying to prioritize them to get the licenses and to be part of the legal industry.

And I think we need to have that kind of approach in Canada, but that's not what we're getting. We're getting the opposite, where it's the elite, the people who are already millionaires, who want to become billionaires on the cannabis industry, and I think that's just the wrong way.

And ultimately, legalization should mean that cannabis is a lot cheaper, and more available, and higher quality than it is now. And if that's not happening, then it's not really legalization, it's more just kind of a sideways move on prohibition in some ways.

So, yeah, we have a lot of problems with our legalization, but, at the same time, I'm glad that we're moving in this direction and we're having these discussions, and you know, hopefully it's not another ten or twenty years before we create a system that's really dot the end of cannabis prohibition as we want to see it happening in Canada.

DEAN BECKER: Well, I thank you for that, Dana. I have one more question here. I came to Canada, I don't know, I'm guessing ten years ago, I was up there to visit Marc and Jody and to tour the Insite facility. And as I came across the border, they found where I had been busted thirty five years ago, now it's probably 45 years ago, I was just a kid.

And they almost didn't let me in the country. It was for robbing a drug store. I didn't rob it, but I pled guilty and I took the five years probation rather than twenty behind bars. We're going to have a situation at the border where folks in Canada will not be able to come to America because they're pot smokers, much the same as pot smokers can now, are being denied coming into Canada for the same reason. Your thought in that regard.

DANA LARSEN: Well, I -- we do restrict people coming into Canada, but I think America's more strict in how they deal with people coming across the border the other direction.

And we're actually starting to see this happen in Canada now. It used to be just sort of regular people or poor people with criminal records that were getting stopped, and wealthier people could find a way around it, but we've recently seen a few prominent Canadians who are big money investors in the cannabis industry getting turned back at the border.

And in a way, I think that's kind of good, because it needs to affect the rich and powerful people before they'll do anything about it. And I'm seeing these folks saying, I can't believe it, I'm shocked that I was turned back at the border because I happen to own a cannabis company.

And of course, that's not just, but I hope that these people in these positions of power will then try to pressure the US government to change those laws, because we're going to have thousands and thousands of Canadians who, whether or not they use cannabis, they're going to be working in a legal government regulated cannabis shop, and if they get -- if the US customs, you know, finds out where they work, they're going to get banned from entering into the US, and this is going to affect a lot of Canadians.

And so I hope that we could put pressure on the American government. I don't know how responsive Trump is going to be to wanting to make those changes, but hopefully, if you guys still have a democracy and a president in a few years, that your next president might actually work to change some of these things, because it's going to cause a lot of problems for a lot of people, and it's going to impact trade across the border quite severely as well.

And in British Columbia especially, we look to the north, and there's legal cannabis in Alaska, and we look to the south, and there's legal cannabis in Washington and Oregon, and yet if you -- and there's going to be legal cannabis in British Columbia, but if you're a legal cannabis user crossing from British Columbia into Washington or Alaska, you're going to get turned back because the federal government still hates cannabis as official policy.

So, it's going to be a strange situation, and it's certainly the punishment, the stigmatization, and the harassment and the arrests of cannabis users and cannabis growers, and those in the cannabis industry. It's going to continue for a long time to come.

And what's happening here in Canada's really is just the first small step in a long journey towards really ending cannabis prohibition and recognizing that cannabis was never the problem, that cannabis is the solution, and prohibition is the problem.

DEAN BECKER: Right on the money, sir. Thank you for that. Friends, we've been speaking with Mister Dana Larsen, he's an activist extraordinaire up there in British Columbia. And, a closing thought to share with you, Dana. The lady at the border, I said, do you see any problems other than that 35 years ago charge, and she said no, I don't. And then she said, I tell you what, Mister Becker, we'll let you in this time. And she let me in the country, in a very, in my opinion, very Canadian perspective. Closing thoughts from you, Dana.

DANA LARSEN: Ah, well, just that I think we have to keep up this effort and we have to keep pushing to really end the stigma around cannabis, and for me, like we've been saying, it's much more than just cannabis, it's the whole war on drugs, and you know I've been thinking maybe it's time to open a medicinal mushroom dispensary in Vancouver, and start providing psilocybin mushrooms and other beneficial entheogens and psychedelics in a medical fashion to those who need it.

There's a lot of research and experience showing that these kind of entheogenic substances can really help people deal with addictive behaviors, and help them sometimes stop using opiates. And that's one of the many hypocrisies of the war on drugs, that some of the drugs that can help you get off opiates are also banned under prohibition, even though these things are incredibly useful, psychologically beneficial.

So, for me, I want to continue pushing to end the whole war on drugs, the war really on many of the world's most beneficial and useful and culturally relevant plants. And so, in many ways, this journey towards ending prohibition is really just beginning, and we still have a very long, long way to go.

DEAN BECKER: We close this out with a quick injection of thought in support of Mister Dana Larsen. Maria McFarland Sanchez-Moreno.

MARIA MCFARLAND SANCHEZ-MORENO: The US has used the war on drugs and criminalization as its main approach to problematic drug use, or all drug use, for decades, and it got us here, where, at this time when tens of thousands of people are dying of overdose every year. It's time for the US to look, take a hard look, at these failed policies, and explore new alternatives that have been proven to work elsewhere.

DEAN BECKER: Maria is the executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, drugpolicy.org.

This is Dean Becker, urging you to visit our website and check out our seven thousand radio segments, that's all available at drugtruth.net.

And again, I remind you, because of prohibition you don't know what's in that bag. Please, be careful.