Drugs and Stuff: A Podcast from the Drug Policy Alliance

In this episode we take you behind the curtain to meet the producer of Drugs and Stuff, the incomparable Katharine Heller.

Katharine is a woman of many talents. Actor, voiceover artist, producer, and bartender. She hosts a great monthly podcast called Tell the Bartender, which features tales from everyday people with unique stories to share. We were lucky enough to be guests in an episode you can find here.

We caught up with Rep. Ro Khanna during a recent visit to his home district in the Silicon Valley. Rep. Khanna talks about his support for the Marijuana Justice Act, the Justice Department under Jeff Sessions and his favorite place to grab a cup of chai.

This week we sat down with Maria McFarland Sánchez-Moreno, DPA's executive director. We had a lot to catch up about since the last time she was on the show back in October 2017. Her new book, There Are No Dead Here: A Story of Murder and Denial in Colombia, was released in February and Maria explains how it created a little bit of controversy with a former Colombian president. We also talked about how DPA has been responding to Trump's calls to ramp up the drug war, what's needed to address the overdose crisis, and the future of marijuana legalization.

The time has come for people who care about psychedelics to step out of the shadows and bring our voices to the table. In this episode, we're joined by a couple of DPA's in-house psychedelics experts: Jag Davies, DPA's director of communications strategy, and Ifetayo Harvey, DPA's communications associate. Both Jag and Ife previously worked at one of our closest allied organizations, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). They share some great wisdom and experience about psychedelic research, changing the conversation about how psychedelics are perceived, and weaving in psychedelics advocacy with the broader mission to decriminalize all drugs.

Remember last year when we sat down with DPA's Marsha Rosenbaum to talk about what drug education should look like for young people? If you missed it, check out that great conversation from Episode 05 when Marsha explained the history of "Safety First," a DPA project that was dedicated to providing honest, reality-based information to parents for when they talk to their teens about using drugs. That project has now grown and evolved into a high school curriculum for 9th and 10th grade health classes, and it's being piloted right now at Bard High School Early College Manhattan. For the first time ever in a U.S. public school, students are receiving a science and harm reduction-based education about drugs.

In this episode we get an inside look and talk about the rollout of DPA's historic and revolutionary drug education curriculum with Sasha Simon, DPA's Safety First Program Manager, and Drew Miller, the health teacher from Bard High School Early College Manhattan who is teaching the "Safety First" curriculum.

Long-time Drug Policy Alliance media relations director, Tony Newman, joined the latest episode of Drugs & Stuff to chat with us about the current state of drug policy reform, and his latest think piece, which you can read here.

Newman has witnessed a dramatic change in the drug policy reform landscape since coming to DPA 18 years ago. As director of media relations, he has been at the forefront of most of DPA's greatest victories and he was – and continues to be - instrumental in the dramatic shift in the public perception of drugs and drug policy.

We dove into what brought him into the drug policy sphere and we get to hear the wily veteran share stories about what keeps him energized about this work for so long.

In early January, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions (Mr. "good people don't smoke marijuana") began the year by firing a shot across the bow to states that have legalized marijuana. Will it have a chilling effect? Is it even warranted? In this episode, we sat down with our in-house marijuana law reform experts, Tamar Todd and Jolene Forman, to talk about Sessions' threats and we dig into a report that examines the progress of reform in states that have legalized marijuana. Spoiler alert: the sky hasn't fallen - it's actually going very well.

It's the end of the year, people are getting excited about the holidays, and millions of people are making plans for partying on New Year's Eve. And for lots of people, their version of partying includes using drugs. So who better to talk to about harm reduction and partying than DPA's Stefanie Jones? Stefanie Jones is the director of audience development at the Drug Policy Alliance. She oversees communication and outreach to specific communities on drug use and drug policy topics, including on novel psychoactive substances (NPS) and DPA's youth drug education work. She personally runs the Music Fan program, which introduces harm reduction principles and drug policy alternatives to partygoers, public health officials and city nightlife regulators across the U.S.

AlterNet editor-at-large and associate publisher Jan Frel sits down with us to expound on non-problematic drug use and how drugs are interwoven into modern society. Jan explains how the war on drugs is essentially a war on fun that demonizes and destroys lives. Jan is the author of Neighbors from Hell: An American Bedtime Story (Feral House, 2015). AlterNet is a progressive news magazine that publishes original content as well as journalism from a variety of sources.