Ryan, Welcome to the Lake.

Will, Thank you for Hosting today’s Book Salon.

Welcome to Firedoglake – glad you could join us today!

Thanks for having me, Bev. And thanks to Ryan Grim for coming to talk about his new book.

I don’t think I introduced Ryan properly in my intro comments, so let do that. Ryan is the senior congressional correspondent for the Huffington Post and has written for many notable publications including Slate, Rolling Stone, Harpers, and the Washington Post. Welcome, Ryan.

Thanks, Will, for the very kind words about the book. And thanks to egregious and to everyone for stopping by on this lovely Saturday. (It’s lovely in DC, anyway.) I’m very glad to be here and a big fan of FDL.

Your last question: Where can we find some LSD? Spoiler alert: it is, once again, available. It’s hard to find and in low supply, but at spots like Burning Man or at jam-band fests it does finally exist again. We can talk later about why it took so long to come back and why it’s in short supply if folks have questions on that.

Let’s start with a few general questions that will help explain what This Is Your Country on Drugs: The Secret History of Getting High in America is all about.

I don’t think I really made it clear that your book isn’t at all polemical. It’s a very detailed (but fun to read!) attempt to explain how we got where we are today — to make public the “secret history of getting high in America.” Why do you think it’s so important that this history isn’t secret?

Good afternoon Ryan and Will and welcome to FDL.

Ryan I have not had an opportunity to read your book (unfortunately) but I’[m one of those who, let us say, has some level of experience with various psychoactive substances over the years. I know may of us in the ’60s and ’70s thought for sure that at least marijuana would be legal by now.

Are the illegal drugs that way (my belief) because the Big Pharma and such can’t find an easy way to profit from grass, acid, whatever?

(I was the guy in college at the party that someone would hand pills/whatever to, take them then ask “What did I just take?”)

Did magic ‘Shrooms offer some of the replacement of acid or are they too much work for folks to go and gather?

I think you’re right that we can, in fact, draw lessons from our failed attempts to regulate drugs and apply them to regulation itself. I have to admit that’s something I hadn’t thought of till you mentioned it, but it does show that prohibiting something that can’t be banished merely winds pushing that thing elsewhere. Let’s think of it in terms of financial regulation. Banning or tightly regulating the sale of certain financial instruments led the financial industry not to stop trafficking in such things, but led to them being renamed as something else. They’re not “insurance,” they’re “swaps,” and that sort of thing. So if the drug analogy holds, a better way to regulate them might be to acknowledge that these things do exist and will exist and make sure that consumers have accurate information and understand the risks. It’s an interesting thought you raise, and one worth thinking about in terms of progressive legislation in general.

Which brings me to your other question: Is the school-marm strain of progressivism still alive and still influencing the debate? I think undoubtedly it is. It’s latest manifestation is the ban-smoking-indoors movement, which has remarkably succeeded in banning smoking even in bars in many places – a policy goal that would have seemed laughably impossible just a few years ago. So, too, with the movement against trans fats. One reason these movements have succeded is that the argument behind them is entirely reasonable. Trans fats are bad and so is, for the most part, smoking. So, too, is drug abuse. It’s very easy to go from there to a place where prohibition seems the best policy. And maybe with trans fats it is. But what’s unique about drug use is that the desire to get high or get wasted is a part of human nature. And any attempt to prohibit something so fundamentally a part of us will have all sorts of unexpected consequences and simply won’t work. Of course, other parts of human nature — say, the desire for violent revenge — should be held in check with prohibition. No killing. But when someone’s naturally driven behavior doesn’t harm someone else, prohibiting it is useless and counter productive.

I do think, however, that liberalism today has a much stronger libertarian streak than it did in, say, the ’80s and even ’90s, when people like Joe Biden were leading the drug war charge and pushing for ever-increasing mandatory minimum sentences. That’s shifting.

Looks like a great read. Thank you.

Just listening to Ring of Fire and they were talking about the additional addiction to the “taboo” (addiction to excitement?) re addictions like drugs but can be applied to anything forbidden, re Sanford’s sexual straying, etc. Do you also see that as a significant factor?

Citizenry seems to be obtuse to overviews of statistical evidence of legalization of drugs and its impact on a society. Moral belief bottlenecks rational exploration. Also, in terms of exploring dimensions of the personal, too, in terms of rehabilitation, etc.

Love the graphic on the book cover.

Ryan,

What’s your take on the drug war in Mexico?

That’s a play on the old anti-drug PSAs from the ’70s.

But of course, you know that. :})

It’s hard to say. shroom use actually didn’t increase after LSD nearly dried up, somewhat suprisingly, in the survey data. However, the surveys redid their methodology around shrooms right around 2002 (included the phrase shrooms instead of just psilocybin, which naturally increased the number of people saying they used it) and tried to balance it with the old numbers, saying there hadn’t been an actual increase. But there might have been. Use of other psychedelics, however, did increase. “Research chemicals” — http://www.erowid.org/psychoac…..rch_chems/ — became more popular, as did salvia and to a lesser extent ayahuasca

It’s latest manifestation is the ban-smoking-indoors movement, which has remarkably succeeded in banning smoking even in bars in many places – a policy goal that would have seemed laughably impossible just a few years ago.

Was it CNN last night with a big story now on attempt to ban smoking in the military, re our soldiers in the MidEast? Maybe we should be focusing on less killing, rather than less smoking? I’m just saying ….

the desire to get high or get wasted is a part of human nature.

to my way of thinking, the jury’s really out on this one. for one thing, there are all the mystics who are getting high without drugs. and for another, i think much of the desire for drugs is a response to us living in a culture that is not really designed in a way that works for human beings.

i think your book will make a fascinating read, i’m just not so sure that wanting to get high or wasted is a part of human nature as opposed to a response to our culture.

The stories of these “substitution effects,” as economists call them, is one of my favorite things about your book. You show that targeting one drug really can reduce the availability and use of that drug, but the lump tends to just move to another part of the rug. Or another mole pops up elsewhere. This is a really important point.

Hi Ryan, I’m an avid reader of your work on HuffPost, thanks for chatting with us today! I’ve started to read your book and I really enjoy it. Do you talk about the intertwined nature of “enforcement” and its need to for something, anything — as well as anyone — to legislate, to regulate, to arrest, to incarcerate? There’s such a huge industry built up around the enforcement mechanisms around drugs that I can’t help wonder if we’ll hear a president say in the near future, just as our current leader says he’d build single payer health care if he was starting from scratch, that de-criminalization would be “too disruptive.”

The huge industry that exists based on America’s weird relationship with drugs would seem to militate against any rational solution.

The fact that we don’t know our own drug history, i think, leads directly to our inability to craft reasonable policy. Cocaine use was, for example, off the charts in the 1890s and the nation learned a lot about how to deal with it. But then we totally forgot about it and when it came roaring back in the late ’70s, we thought it was totally harmless. If we’re trying to reduce the harm associated with drug use, the first and most important thing to do is to understand what that harm is. And the way to do that is to study our history with drugs — something we simply don’t do in this country.

It’s also kind of you to note that it’s not polemical. I can have quite a tendency to go on a rant, but I thought it was important in this book to just lay out the facts, make the connections, and let people make their own decisions. My hope is that people who haven’t given the issue a whole lot of thought will find it accessible and it’ll help shape the way they think about drug policy. There seems to be quite an opportunity now to rethink things, what with the war in Mexico and the depression here at home.

Welcome, Ryan. I just purchased your book on Amazon and can’t wait to crack it open. As a painter and writer, I must confess to dabbling in many types of recreational drugs, including LSD and pot. It has always disturbed me that folks with no experience in “controlled” drug use can damn this experience so absolutely. After all, excess and abuse are the scourges of society in any number of other forms of consumption. I truly hope that your book reaches a wide audience, and that enlightenment is just over the horizon.

Do you think that the Healthcare legislation will in any way serve to crack the door for alternative medicines, including cannabis, or will a strong government presence in the healthcare business only strengthten the authoritarian hold on the entire drug catalog?

There’s a good deal on the table, but I’d like to flag ART45’s question about Mexico. Ryan’s Chapter 7, “Border Justice” deals with this in detail.

I think that’s definitely the case with LSD. You couldn’t invent a LESS profit-generating drug if you tried. It’s something people do just a few times a year or a few times in a lifetime. It’s certainly not something anyone would do every day, which is what Big Pharma hunts for.

W/R/T pot, you’re right, there’s very little incentive in it for Pharma. It’s cheap to grow, doesn’t need to be doctored or synthesized, and can be a substitute for some people for pharmaceutical drugs that are more expensive. Big Pharma, indeed, was a major funder of the Partnership for a Drug Free America. So they know where their interests lie.

(For the record, I am one who has used/”experimented” with most every psychoactive substance, legal or otherwise. My own personal experience is a that marijuana is far and away the most innocuous, least debilitating substance going. And that includes cigarettes, alcohol, and pills)

Yes. We do more drugs by far than any other nation and we are also one of, if not the most, moralistic about behavior. I don’t think those things are coincidences.

You mention cocaine use in the 1890s. In the book you make an excellent point about this era. People often ask what it would look like if cocaine, heroin, marijuana, opium, etc. were all legal. Well, all that WAS legal, heavily marketed, and heavily used. We can look to our own history to answer some of our questions about what an America with legal drugs would look like.

Big Pharma, indeed, was a major funder of the Partnership for a Drug Free America.

Truth in advertising should require them to say “Partnership for a Drug Free America when the drug is something we can’t control”

Hi Ryan, I collect books on drugs and drug is society and this is a welcome addition. I draw a correlation between design elements in furniture, fashion and art as relective of the drug usage at the time…

what is you r take on legalization of pot in CA? Pharmacies/dispensaries are doing boffo business…but at the same time unless pot is grown organically or hydroponically thre is a tremendous damage done to parkland from over use of fertilizers…

And the striping of the rainforests and other areas for cocaine is a rel problem in south and central america (where btw opium is now being grown)

It was our various policies that strengthened the Mexican cartels and its our appetite for drugs that funds them and its our companies that make more than 90% of the guns they use. Mexico is itself flirting with legalizing marijuana, which makes up a huge proportion of cartel profits. Take that away and they’ll shrink in size.

my understanding is that there’s only been one community in world history that didn’t get wasted sometimes on drugs or alcohol, and that was a small island community somewhere who had never figured it out.

We have a schizo society. Aggressive religiosity meanwhile sexualized advertising. Drug War with pharmaceutical companies pushing pill therapy, not talk therapy. Heavy punishment for illegal drug use, while legal drug use highly addictive and encouraged. Crazymaking opposite-directionalism. Like those drug commercials that show happy people in a meadow as narrator whispers about rectal bleeding and potential suicide.

Right, just look at the opponents of the 2008 california proposition calling for treatment instead of enforcement: the prison guards union, alcohol industry, sheriffs and prosecutors. On the other side were doctors, nurses, social workers and such. I’d rather be with the latter, but the proposition went down amid a torrent of spending from the very very powerful prison guards union. Their jobs depend on people being in prison and they’ve demonstrated they’ll fight to keep those jobs.

I love the graphic, too! They did an amazing job with the cover.

What are you hearing about salvia divinorum?

Ryan, Regulation pushed (or resisted) by pharmaceutical companies plays a pretty big role in your story. This is a nice example of how, in general, established corporate interests tend to team up with government to marginalize competitors and lock down advantages. Not a lot of people understand how the FDA acts as a kind of corporate welfare for big drug companies. Or, say, how the tobacco settlement and further tobacco legislation is a great thing for Phillip Morris. Check out the front page of their website!

I wonder if we can retrain the prison guards, maybe provide them with some sort of agricultural guard duties?

I asked a few people early in the healthcare debate if they thought drug policy reform could be part of it, but nobody thought the political will was there. But you make an interesting point. If the government has a larger role in healthcare and a nearly existential need to control costs, then it might, in fact, be more inclined to look to medical marijuana as a way to bring down those costs. But that’d be down the road a bit, but I see it as a real possibility.

Hi Mark, Are you asking about potential regulation/prohibition of salvia? Or just asking about it generally?

I do have questions about that–and also whether there’s a tie to Crystal Meth. I graduated from high school in SD CA, and I was shocked–having moved there from NY’s suburbs at 16–by the Crystal culture. When crystal became more prevalent nationally in the last decade, I was again shocked that it had taken so long.

What gives?

More of a comment than a question, I’m almost through the book, and what’s standing out to me is the cyclical nature of the history. Drugs are regulated or banned, then they are re-legalized through great effort, and the cycle starts again. It’s both hopeful and depressing to think current efforts to legalize pot may go the same way.

What’s truth in advertising? I’m unfamiliar with this concept ;)

Let me throw out another general question which Ryan can answer at his leisure. This is Your Country on Drugs is a treasure trove of fun facts about the history of drugs in America. I had a lot of “I did not not know that!” moments. I’d like to give you a chance to throw out some facts. So what discovery was most surprising to you? Most telling?

Will

I want to thank you for a tremendously well-written review. It’s sold me–I’m gonna buy the book.

And thanks to both you and Ryan for being here.

Lisa — you make a really good point. The environmental damage that drug production does is probably the least-talked-about aspect of drug policy. You’re right, coca trees are terrible ecologically compared to the jungle they displace and pot plants are ravaging national parks. But as long as the industry is itself illegal, we have very little leverage to regulate it. If we legalized, we could more effectively control the environmental damage drugs do.

The need to fund the healthcare behemoth (feed the beast) may indeed break the back of the prohibitionist stranglehold on government. Here’s hoping.

Tangential but what is the story with Afghanistan and opium trade? This rarely gets addressed. Opium is the most user friendly crop in war, for one thing, right? Are we hooked up with drug business over there, governmentally speaking? And Taliban was fighting druglords long ago. Has that changed?

The Taliban was fighting drug lords?

Jason — that’s very true. If we do legalize marijuana, history tells us that’s not necessarily a permanent situation. Knowing that fact is important and could help avoid a repeat of history.

But it’s not nearly as much fun to push plants around!
FunnyWheelieDiva

The LSD story you told made me think of Kid Charlemagne by Steely Dan. And a mysterious man (Frank the Man) I knew when I went to Berkeley in the late 1970s who is now doing 10-life in a fed pen for dealing acid. He was um, gnarly.

iirc….long ago.

About environmental damage from farming illegal drugs… Poverty + prohibition really drive this. It’s a great option for farmers is less-developed countries, since the returns are higher than legal commodity crops. Moreover, farmers in poorer countries tend to farm relatively inneficiently, getting a relatively low yield per acre. Bringing the plant out of the black market would be great for the environment. Using state-of-the-art agricultural techniques, it would require much less land to produce the same yield. But, sadly, it would also take this source of income away from poorer farmers by pricing them out of the market.

I’d say that it was our drug bonanza in the late 19th century that most surprised me, but also helped me understand our history with drugs so much better. For a bunch of other crazy facts, check out this quiz I wrote up for Mother Jones…if you get all ten, you get 37% off the cover price of the book

http://www.motherjones.com/pol…..t-say-know

Thanks! I think you’ll enjoy the book.

Why doesn’t the United States buy the Afghan poppy crop at market prices and turn it into palliative pain management, of which there is very little in the developing world? I don’t understand why we can spend so much money on warmaking and not simply outbid the current buyers, ending the heroin trade completely.

Usage. The efforts to ban it are unsurprising and more about politics than medicine, imho.

Well, that was fun, but I totally flunked!
FWDiva

Fun. One of your ideas that I found most stimulating was your explanation for the fact that teen drug use peaked in 1998 and has been in decline. It has something to do with what we’re doing right now. Maybe you can expand on that?

empywheel — I missed what this was in response to. Can you clarify? (And thanks so much for buying it, that’s awesome. You’re right, Will’s write-up was terrific. Couldn’t have asked for a better one.)

Teddy — The US doesn’t buy up the Afghan poppy crop because our ally, Turkey, is the top producer of medical grade poppy and they would freak out if they lost their place on the hierarchy. Others might know more about this, but it’s also my understanding that the Afghan poppies are not the kind that can be easily turned into medical grade morphine. But I’d assume if we allowed them to grow for medical use, they’d figure it out. Your questions a good one: Why are we going to war with impoverished farmers just trying to make a living?

Great writeup, Will — I gotta say, though, Metadate sounds like something entirely different.

They’ll just increase the size of the crop.
And it’s not the farmers that are our problem.

Thanks! What does Metadate sound like to you? An Internet hook-up site?

Welcome to FDL. My mom is in jail in Texas on drug charges and she needs drug treatment and psych services FAR more than she needs more years in jail. They need to unstigmatize psychological problems and help people get the help they need so they don’t turn to powerful drugs to begin with.

From everything I have heard, weed is a lot different from coke and heroin and meth and the justice system should treat them as different.

True, I wonder how that would work, though. Maybe the push towards full legalization causes a somewhat inevitable backlash, and we should just go for decriminalization?

No Teddy! Only people with a ton of really good health insurance can get medicine when they have really bad pain.

Poppy production has skyrocketed since the Afghan invasion. The Taliban had done an effective job uprooting poppies throughout afghanistan. (I spoke to the DoD’s top drug guy about this and he claimed the Taliban didn’t do much to reduce poppy growing or opium production, but merely stored the product and has been selling it since. I couldn’t find confirmation for that.) The UN’s drug czar told me in an interview recently that Afghanistan now produces TWICE as much poppy as is needed for all of the heroin/opium users in the world. that’s leading to a decline in price and some farmers are voluntarily shifting to other crops. At the same time, the US announced just a week or so ago it would stop going after farmers, a welcome shift in policy.

I see. Ryan’s clear that salvia usage surged when the LSD supply dried up. But it wasn’t clear to me what the trend has been in the last couple years. Ryan?

Welcome Ryan! Loving the book. Thanks for being here today, and thanks for Will for the intro.

One of my big concerns with health care reform is that when adequate medical treatment is available for people with substance abuse problems, prison populations decline. Recidivism drops precipitously. We’re paying more to lock people up than it would cost to treat them in the first place.

Great book, very important topic. And thanks for all the great work you do at HuffPo, your health care reporting has been invaluable.

Ryan-

What do you think about the chances of Jim Webb’s crime commission bill impacting the War on Drugs?

I agree that entrenched interests like corrections, enforcement, treatment, and tough on crime bluster continue to block progress. But they’re small fry compared to our puritanical streak. As a society we worry about the possibility that somewhere some unworthy person is not suffering their due.

yeah, teen pot use peaked in ‘98 and has been coming down ever since. At the same time, teen pill-popping (non-prescribed) has been going up. My theory is that it has something to do with teen patterns of social interaction. Kids sit at home in front of the computer now for fun, which means they’re not in the woods or running around town with their friends. It’s in those social gatherings that kids pass around a joint. The more time you spend inside the less time you have to toke up with friends. But if the kid still wants to get high, he can head for the medicine cabinet.

Nobody smokes joints anymore. It’s all about bongs.

on salvia — federal survey numbers still show it rising in use and there have been some more calls for it to be banned. At least one person in Nebraska is in jail for it but it’s still legal most places. It sends you to the moon or some other planet for about five minutes. Judging by youtube videos, folks are still doing it…

http://www.youtube.com/results…..&aq=f

hiya K

And the new ads, supposedly directed at parents to make them aware their kids are stealing from their medicine cabinet, show kids how, just in case they didn’t know. Just like the anti-pot ads boosted pot use among teens, these stupid “anti-pill” ads will boost pill use. Of course, if mom’s pill prescription runs out earlier than expected, that’s good for the pill manufacturer, right?

And Ritalin makes it easier chat online for hours and weed makes it harder. I’m intrigued by the idea that some drugs complement certain experiences better than others. You have a great quote in the book from Andy Warhol about the culture clash of his methed-up troupe of New York City performance artists with the trippy San Francisco hippy scene.

So sorry to hear about your mom. It’s such a tragedy what we do to people in this country who have a drug problem (and even to some who’s only drug problem is that they got caught with drugs). Here’s hoping we get to a more rational place and your mom makes it home safely and gets the help she needs.

Obama’s drug czar has jacked up funding for drug courts, which is a good step as it can divert people from prison and send them to treatment.

Shhh! You can’t say hello in a book salon thread.

Teddy’s point about the perverse how-to nature of some anti-drug reminds me of Ryan’s discussion of the failure of DARE. Why doesn’t it work to try to scare kids straight?

But will it help people who are already in prison? And does it matter that some states have very harsh drug laws?

Thanks, Jane, very kind of you. I agree with you on the costs. One way to think of the drug war is as a twisted luxury of good economic times. But with rising debt and falling standards of living, spending so much money in a counterproductive way isn’t as attractive, let’s hope.

I think I’ll pass on the salvia. I’m glad acid’s back. So how did that happen? Who picked up the slack?

I think the way to do it — to legalize and make it resistant to repeal — is to do it gradually and get the nation used to it. That’s how we’re going with medical marijuana and people out in california who’d been opposed are realizing the sky hasn’t fallen.

If we’re going to reform our drug laws, I think it’ll be done through Webb’s commission. If it is composed of experts genuinely interested in reducing crime and reforming the system, they’ll certainly conclude that locking up drug users isn’t the way to do it. Webb appears to be making this a huge priority of his, and that’s good. Webb’s a skilled senator capable of getting this done.

I have a violent hatred of cocaine and feel it alters personalities in a very destructive way. Strangely somehow I think it fuels greed. Thus the mess on Wall Street, where coke was rampant in the 80s when the culture there went viral is on some level attributable to coke in my admittedly crackpot opinion.

care to comment

Teddy — you’re right, the government spends millions on those ads and all they do is either increase use by enticing kids or have no impact whatsoever.

Gradual is definitely the way things are going, seeing as at the federal level so far, progress has been fairly nonexistant. I’m hopeful about Webb but honest, just as happy to fight the state battles. They’re real and they’re more winnable and they seem to be working.

To me, one of your most interesting chapters was the one on the media’s coverage of allegations that the CIA had been funding the Contras in Nicaraugua by getting into the U.S. (especially California) cocaine trade. You seemed to me to imply that dominant media outlets, like the New York Times and Wahington Post, were too beholden to the security and intelligence establishment in Washington, DC to cover the story objectively. That’s pretty troubling. And it made me wonder to what extent mass media collaboration with the government is responsible for the durability of drug prohibition.

what happens to the people already in prison is a key question. And you’re right, even if we legalized at the federal level, some states and counties wouldn’t go along, just as we still have dry counties even after prohibition was repealed.

Even if coke is destructive, they shouldn’t make crack so much more worse of a person uses crack instead if powdered cocaine.

The danger here, of course, is that Webb was elected by a very small margin in a purple state. If he’s even marginally successful in this reform, he’s likely to see a wide array of interests opposed to his re-election. Strange bedfellows.

Thanks, Ryan.

I appreciate that decriminalization is a significant step, especially with marijuana which is a big product from Mexico (half of the drugs are pot iirc), and there is a danger of it becoming a narco-state is there not, which is chilling. So much corruption, drug money bribing public officials or drug money paying for assassinations of law enforcers not on the take.

But supply does have impact on demand, too, does it not? And once addicted, without heavy duty rehab, self-destructive escalation of need. Tough to find answers.

As I am typing this, I realize our media rarely addresses the tragedy of drug abuse except re celebrities as titillating schadenfreude. And the violence in Mexico, how threatening is that? Am I too cynical or is the tourist business in US and Mexico keeping real truth of dangers out of the news? Along with collusion of corporate media.

rapier, It sort of makes you wonder how many Wall Street guys who helped get us into the latest mess have been diagnosed with adult ADHD.

The powder/rock penalty differential is entirely race-based, but I’m sure you knew that.

I’m told there are three, and perhaps a few more, chemists in the US who have stepped into the breach to fill the acid demand. Phish making a reunion tour, actually, will have an impact as people will know where to go to look for it.

I have to throw this thought in — what about the ecological damage done through eradication efforts?

Our government is spending ungodly amounts of money to halt the production of opium poppies and coca crops, etc etc. It is just insane to keep trying to control it!

Is what was called MDA in the early 70’s exactly the same thing as ecstasy. Is it distrubuted by highly organized criminals, in general.

yes, your point on cocaine and wall street dovetails with what Will was talking about. How our culture influences the drugs we choose to do, and that drug use then in turn influences the culture. Wall Street’s the perfect example. The place is amoral and driven by the profit motive. There’s a culture of narcissism, of putting your own self-interest above everything else, of power, of money. All of that fits perfectly with the cocaine high, which makes a user feel like he/she is the greatest thing ever, smart, sexy, powerful, etc. And it’s a status symbol. A cocaine habit is hugely expensive.

As a general thing hallucinogens are extremely antithetical to authority and they will never be legalized because of it. In many ways the entire cultural upheaval of the 60 was caused in a very direct way by a few people taking LSD

agree?

Ryan: “Phish making a reunion tour, actually, will have an impact as people will know where to go to look for it [LSD].” It was enlightening to me to consider just how much the market for a drug can depend on a small number of focal points, like touring jam bands, for distribution. This makes a lot of sense for something like acid which is very hard to produce and so by and large comes from just a few chemists. I’d never thought about that.

No, MDA is slight different from MDMA, which is ecstasy. Compared to LSD, it’s easy to make and so it’s in more ample supply. Chinese pharmaceutical companies have been making it for awhile (and making LSD and other psychedelics, I’m told). Because it’s a pill it’s easier to ship than, say, cocaine or marijuana. Because it’s easier to ship and fairly easy to make, it’s not centrally controlled by any single criminal enterprise.

The downside can be though that even with a small resurgence of acid through a Phish reunion, it is also a freebie for the cops.

A few years ago, one of my younger cousins was complaining about the cops pulling over someone with a Phish sticker. His father and I regretfully informed him that a Phish (or Deadhead) sticker was a flag for the lazy cop, making them a target.

It doesn’t work to scare kids straight, I think, because they stop believing what you’re saying if they realize some of it was a lie — as they quickly realize w/r/t pot. Waving a bag of pot in front of a bunch of kids and telling them its bad will certainly lead some to conclude they’ll never do it. Others, though, will think, hmmm, that look interesting…

rapier, I think that’s an interesting hypothesis. Your line of thinking seems to imply that things that are supposed to be radically mind-opening, like a good liberal arts education, really aren’t, because they’d be banned if they were.

My own hunch is that taking illegal drugs, by its illegal nature, is a challenge to authority. And to argue that they ought to be made legal is to say that the authorities have been wrong. And so, even if the authorities are wrong (or especially when they are), there is a strong incentive to double down on prohibition to reassert authority.

I’m glad you appreciate my crackpot coke/financial meltdown theory. I hope you or others will follow it. Bring shame to the Street on an individual and collective basis which still after all this has not taken hold.

I attended a military high school in the late sixties. One year, the admin brought in some addicts from the Federal Narco Hospital in Lexington to “counsel” us on the dangers of drugs.

It kinda backfired when a couple of the speakers were emphatic about the problems with heroin but were quite supportive of smoking grass and disputed that grass was the dreaded ‘gateway’ drug of legend.

No one is scared by what they teach in health class. It’s way too overblown and everyone knows that the state won’t let the teachers or the books teach us real facts about drugs or sex or birth control. So no one takes it seriously anymore. (I am starting my senior year in HS in Texas.)

Ryan, It looks like our time is about to come to a close. Is there anything you’d like to say about your book that you haven’t had a chance to say?

Also, if you’ve done so many drugs, how is it possible that you are a successful person who has written an excellent book?

Regarding the economics of drugs in Afghanistan – Production of raw opium in Afghanistan is very labour intensive – obtaining the resin from the poppies takes far more effort than other crops such as wheat, and farmers have to engage many workers that have to paid to produce the opium. From an economic standpoint, providing a better price for wheat or other food crop may be a viable way of reducing the opium production, increasing food production, and reducing the funds to the Taliban.

Excellent insight about drug and trade policy being linked. While I appreciate the focus of your book is the US, I was wondering about the Chinese and drugs. The Opium Wars were about Britain balancing its trade deficit with China in the 19th century by hooking the Chinese on Indian opium, in defiance of Chinese opium bans. The East India Company even had a government-sanctioned opium monopoly in India. Are you aware of concerns in China about drug use, comparable to the increase in cigarette usage?

As we come to the end of this lively and informative Book Salon,

Ryan, Thank you for stopping by the Lake and spending the afternoon with us discussing your new book and all your research into the American drug culture.

Will, Thank you very much for Hosting this great Book Salon.

Everyone, this is a great book, if you haven’t bought one yet, here is a link.

Thanks all.

Will — here’s an excerpt and shortened version of the chapter on the Contras and the media that you refer to:

http://www.theroot.com/views/b…..t?page=0,0

In an interview with me, Post reporter doug farah put it well: “If you’re talking about our intelligence community tolerating—if not promoting—drugs to pay for black ops, it’s rather an uncomfortable thing to do [report on] when you’re an establishment paper like the Post,” Farah says. “If you were going to be directly rubbing up against the government, they wanted it more solid than it could probably ever be done.”

There is a sense of comradery between the MSM and the government. Their elite status gives them a sense of being in something together and “directly rubbing up against the government” isn’t done very often. I felt more comfortable publishing that chapter, however, knowing that there’s now a blogosphere that can act to counter what narrative the MSM pushes. And that’s a valuable thing.

Thanks again for inviting me to host, and best of luck to Ryan. I hope many, many, many people buy and read your book.

Have you ever considered selling the books through Powell’s or one of the independent bookstores that allows unions?

Thank you for this great chat today, it’s so rare to have an actual rational conversation about American drug use nowadays.

Thanks, Will and Ryan and Bev! Great salon!

largely, yeah, I think that’s a fair analysis, but it might be able to be overcome. The first step is being carried out by MAPS.org, which funds research into the therapeutic and medicinal benefits of psychedelics.

And I think it’s also fair to say that LSD influenced the countercultural movement heavily.

Oh excuse me. I forgot to say Thank You first to Will and Ryan and Bev. Thank you!

I caught the zed upstairs but I can’t get the radio player to start.

Thank you Will and Bev and Jane and everyone here at FDL. And to answer your question: Yes! The book is available at Powell’s, which actually reviewed it, too…

http://www.powells.com/review/2009_06_20

For more info on the book or upcoming events, either check out the FB page:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/…..04?created

Or the site for the book:

http://yourcountryondrugs.com/

Thanks again for the conversation!

Thank you Ryan, Will and Bev ! What a great post. I just ordered 2 books. One for the old DFH’s in the family to share. One for the youngbloods.
What a great conversation. I was a happy lurker.

Hey! I aced it. Score one for the old dfh…