CONTENT WARNING - This episode includes discussion of mature themes, including illicit drug use, prescription drug abuse, and both legal and illicit drug addiction. Listener discretion is advised.

In the final installment of America's Drug War, Jaye discusses recent trends in the American drug landscape, including cannabis decriminalization and legalization in several US states, and the opioid epidemic sweeping suburbs and rural areas. How did the War on Drugs, particularly its focus on the "usual suspects," lead to the opioid crisis? Will cannabis be legalized on a federal level, and should harder drugs also be legalized?

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Source Texts and Links:

Hari, Johann. 2016. Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs. New York: Bloomsbury. Temple, John. 2015. American Pain: How a Young Felon and His Ring of Doctors Unleashed America’s Deadliest Drug Epidemic. Guilford, CT: Rowman & Littlefield. https://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/four-decades-counting-continued-failure-war-drugs https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/08/29/this-is-unprecedented-174-heroin-overdoses-in-6-days-in-cincinnati/ https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2019/07/27/cincinnati-area-had-24-overdoses-24-hours/1846992001/ https://medicalmarijuana.procon.org/historical-timeline/#2016-present https://www.newsweek.com/state-local-governments-trying-make-cannabis-industry-less-racist-1466077 https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2014/03/conflicting_statean/ https://www.dualdiagnosis.org/infographics/history-of-the-opioid-epidemic/ https://avalere.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Avalere-20181030-Opioid-Trends-Brief-FINAL.pdf https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5993682/ https://www.medpagetoday.com/painmanagement/painmanagement/80054 https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6025116-Opioidsuit.html#document/p2/a502790 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02686-2 https://www.poison.org/articles/opioid-epidemic-history-and-prescribing-patterns-182 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/27/nyregion/brooklyn-opioid-investigation.html https://www.nprillinois.org/post/why-opioid-epidemic-hitting-rural-america-especially-hard#stream/0 https://www.cnbc.com/id/18591525 https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/ending-addiction-good/201408/marijuana-the-gateway-drug-myth https://today.law.harvard.edu/feature/war-drugs-succeeding/ https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/brochures-and-fact-sheets/alcohol-facts-and-statistics

Music:

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Spark composed by ALBIS

Destination Unknown composed by Ugonna Onyekwe

Sunny Over the Horizon composed by RAGE