This Is a Very Weird Moment in the History of Drug Laws
About this episode
The episode asks what's next for drug policy now that the war on drugs has failed but decriminalization faces backlash. Guest Keith Humphreys, a Stanford psychiatry professor specializing in addiction, argues "drug" is a misleadingly vague term and the debate is wrongly framed as a binary between prohibition and libertarian legalization — in reality, "you get to pick the set of problems you have." On Oregon's Measure 110, he says arrests fell but the promised treatment system never materialized, and the idea that removing pressure would spur spontaneous recovery misunderstands addiction. Portugal pairs decriminalization with universal healthcare and a family-oriented culture, he notes. Fentanyl has changed the game by making street use dangerously unpredictable. Cannabis legalization was botched: the industry depends on about 40 percent daily users, mirroring tobacco. What works: predictable, swift enforcement like Hawaii's HOPE program and medication-first opioid treatment — though stimulants still have no pharmacological fix.