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This is Narcotica, a podcast about the war on drugs and the people caught in the middle, brought to you by dedicated science and drug policy journalists Christopher Moraff, Zachary Siegel, and Troy Farah.
96 Episodes
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Despite all the nationalism in our country, veterans are too often seen as expendable. Drug use in the military is as common as any other aspect of society, obviously, but increased stigma and consequences pushes most to the shadows. Harm reduction for veterans is especially vital and luckily, the Department of Veterans Affairs is starting...
The post Episode 93: Veterans’ Harm Reduction Battle with Beth Dinges appeared first on Narcotica.
1Overdose deaths are the go-to metric for how well drug policy is performing, but those on the ground know that harms from the drug war can include much more than the worst outcomes. As harm reduction policies get swept up in escalating authoritarian attacks on democracy, it’s becoming even more vital for those who value...
The post Episode 92: The Drug War’s Invisible Casualties with Sheila Vakharia appeared first on Narcotica.
Opioids are some of the best drugs ever invented. News flash! But that’s not something you’ll hear from the mainstream media anymore. No, the official message is that opioids are only problematic and even in the instances where they are prescribed by doctors, there’s this baggage, this stigma and shame attached to it. And no,...
The post Episode 91: Drug Surveillance Won’t Stop at Opioids with Liz Chiarello appeared first on Narcotica.
The endless whac-a-mole of the drug war, banning one chemical as soon as three more become popular, can never be won. That just isn’t how chemistry or human nature works. But that hasn’t stopped profiteers and special interest groups from pushing the same old strategies, none of which has resulted in significantly lowering overdose deaths...
The post Episode 90: Navigating Shifting Chemical Landscapes with Claire Zagorski appeared first on Narcotica.
Last year was a crazy time for drug policy and 2025 is looking to up the ante on the chaos. Narcotica hosts Chris Moraff, Aaron Ferguson and Troy Farah reflect on what went wrong, what can be done and what to hope for, even in the midst of an escalating crisis. They discuss the recent...
The post Episode 89: Can Good Drug Policy Survive 2025? appeared first on Narcotica.
Harm reduction means so many different things to so many different people, and some have even grown weary of the way the term has now been weaponized. How do we get back to the true core of helping people? Maybe by returning to the roots of the harm reduction movement to understand why these practices...
The post Episode 88: Helping Harm Reduction Flourish with Joy Rucker appeared first on Narcotica.
On today’s episode, we’re going to talk about drug testing but not the tedious ways in which you should (probably) do it. There are plenty of great guides out there which we’ll link to one or two in the show notes. Instead, we’re going to discuss how drug testing equals empowerment. It’s more than just...
The post Episode 87: Drug Testing Equals Empowerment with Dr. Nabarun Dasgupta and Charlton Roverson appeared first on Narcotica.
Narcotica and Narcomedia are proud to share an exciting new sibling podcast, Naturally Noncompliant, which is about people who stand in line and fight for safe supply, especially methadone, the original safe supply. Methadone is the first frontier in this fight, and this show emphasizes the voices of patients and directly impacted people in that...
The post Bonus Episode: When Nothing Changes Nothing Changes from Naturally Noncompliant appeared first on Narcotica.
Naloxone is a miracle drug. Calling any drug a miracle can be problematic, but admittedly there are a few of them, in my opinion: penicillin, insulin, mifepristone and misoprostol, thorazine, viagra (cough, cough) and yes, naloxone. I think it qualifies as a miracle drug, something that works so well it is astonishing. So many people...
The post Episode 86: Why Naloxone Still Matters with Nancy D. Campbell appeared first on Narcotica.
If you only get your international drug policy history from Netflix, you might think that the drug traffickers in Mexico are a smart, coordinated system of violent sociopaths that control the government. They are cartels. Therefore they have leadership, and hierarchies and tangible targets that can be taken out just like in a Call of...
The post Episode 85: “Narcoterrorism” is just another forever war lie with Oswaldo Zavala appeared first on Narcotica.
Like some kind of perverse fishing expedition, we’re all familiar with the drug warriors’ favorite form of theater: the drug bust. Every police department seems to do this, posing their officers with huge (or even tiny, inconsequential) bags of drugs, stacks of cash and sometimes a cache of weapons, propping everything up as if it’s...
The post Episode 84: How Drug Seizures Damage Public Health with Drs. Bradley Ray, Jennifer J. Carroll and Brandon del Pozo appeared first on Narcotica.
The War on (People who Use) Drugs has claimed over a million victims in the last two decades, every fatal overdose representing deep policy failures that attempt in vain to control normal human behavior: self-medicating and inducing euphoria. None of this wonky policy bullshit matters much when you’re the parent of a child who dies...
The post Episode 83: The Parents Who Oppose The War on Drugs with Tamara Olt and Gretchen Bergman appeared first on Narcotica.
The Drug War is more brutal than ever. Overdose deaths are still shattering records, there’s talk of war with the cartels, increased penalties are just making things worse, there’s little money for harm reduction programs or addiction treatment, yet plenty of cash for prisons, cops and the DEA, weird new drugs are appearing that no...
The post Episode 82: Drug War Activism and the Future of Harm Reduction with Louise Vincent appeared first on Narcotica.
Harm reduction is an imperfect philosophy that serves as the only wedge between prohibition and what we all really want, which is a healthy, productive society. If more police and prisons could make drugs safer, we’d have a lot less overdose deaths and problematic addiction. But that’s not what’s happening. Drugs are more available than...
The post Episode 81: Harm Reduction Against the Prison-Industrial Complex appeared first on Narcotica.
At Narcotica, we’ve often talked about how methadone is one of the most over-regulated substances on the planet. It’s not a perfect drug — nothing is — but it helps a lot of people. So why is it so hard to access? On this episode, the crew (Zachary Siegel, Chris Moraff and Troy Farah) speak...
The post Episode 80: A Messy History of Methadone with Dr. Zoe Adams appeared first on Narcotica.
People have this conception that San Francisco’s streets are just overflowing with human shit and people injecting drugs in the open. Stereotypes about California being overrun with homeless encampments and open-air drug markets abound, as if these things don’t exist in other states, while politicians in Arkansas and Oklahoma, for example, warn against so-called progressive...
The post Episode 79: Is California Really Progressive on Drugs? with Dr. Isaac Jackson appeared first on Narcotica.
A future where abortion drugs like mifepristone and misoprostol are trafficked just like fentanyl or methamphetamine or where birth control is sold on the street corner like crack cocaine is really not that distant of a reality, if it’s not already happening. The drug war is deeply intertwined with reproductive rights. That’s not always obvious...
The post Episode 78: Drug Use in a Post-Roe World with Dinah Ortiz appeared first on Narcotica.
The United States sure loves to cage people. Incarceration statistics can be shocking, but they can be cited so often that they can lose their potency. It can seem abstract or just the way things are. But it is completely immoral that the U.S. throws more people into cages than any other country for which...
The post Episode 77: Harm Production — The Hazards of Drug Courts with Dave Lucas appeared first on Narcotica.
Certain celebrity authors want to help you accept that certain drug use is OK—and there’s nothing wrong with psychedelic exceptionalism, but it overlooks the biggest destructive forces of the drug war. Yet, legalizing drugs like meth, heroin and cocaine remains a hard sell for even the most progressive of drug policy reformers. So how do...
The post Episode 76: How To Change Your Mind About ALL Drugs with Veronica Wright appeared first on Narcotica.
No matter what the problem is, whether it’s fentanyl overdoses or mass shootings, the solution to all of our problems is always more money and bigger budgets for police, prosecutors and prisons. Funny how that works, right? If crime goes up we need police, if crime goes down it’s because of the police, so we...
The post Episode 75: Copaganda — The Favorite Tool of Drug Warriors with Alec Karakatsanis appeared first on Narcotica.
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such a great podcast with in depth, well researched information. illegal drugs have always been dangerous but with these new research chemicals being introduced into the supply lines it's becoming even more dangerous. These new drugs are cheap and easily produced in mass quantities in places like China and Mexico. Some users don't even know what the drugs they are using contain, they think they are taking Xanax, but it's really a counterfeit pill pressed with a research chemical of unknown strength.
I cannot wait to attend in the future, thank you for sharing (on behalf of college students).