Free Culture Radio

On this edition of Free Culture Radio: Violence Against Women Who Inject Drugs. Host Doug McVay is joined in conversation by Samantha Colledge-Frisby, PhD, a Research Fellow at the National Drug Research Institute at Curtin University in Melbourne, Australia, and Ashlei...

On this edition of Free Culture Radio: An Ounce of Prevention. Host Doug McVay is joined in conversation by Barry Davis MD, PhD, a physician, biostatistician, and public health doctor. They discuss tobacco companies, social media, and Dr. Davis's new book Preventioneers: ...

On this edition of Free Culture Radio: Decriminalization in the Context of HIV. UNAIDS, the United Nations Development Programme, and the International Network of People who Use Drugs, together with several other partners, launched a new joint guidance note entitled Dec...

On this edition of Free Culture Radio: Venezuela and the Rule of Law. In a blatant violation of international law, on January 3 the United States kidnapped Venezuelan head of state Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores and took them to New York, where they’re standing ...

On this edition of Free Culture Radio: Compassion in Washington State. In the state of Washington, legislators are considering House Bill 2152, entitled Permitting the medical use of cannabis by qualifying patients in specified health care facilities. This bill is based o...

On this edition of Free Culture Radio: Human Rights Day. Ever since it was first observed in 1950, December 10 is Human Rights Day. It commemorates the anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, which set out, for the first time, fund...

On this edition of Free Culture Radio: Evidence Still Matters #AMERSA2025 The Association for Multidisciplinary Education and Research on Substance use and Addiction, AMERSA, held its 49th annual national conference November 13-15 right here in my home town of Portland, O...

On this edition of Free Culture Radio: Keeping the Faith. Host Doug McVay is joined in conversation by Hill Brown, Southern Director of Faith In Harm Reduction. The Principles of Harm Reduction to which Hill refers in our interview can be found at the National Harm Reduc...

On this edition of Free Culture Radio: Barriers to Treatment. Host Doug McVay is joined in conversation with Marlene Lira, MPH, Senior Director of Research at WorkIt Health, and one of the co-authors of Pharmacy Barriers to Receiving Buprenorphine Among Patients Undergoin...

On this edition of Free Culture Radio: Addiction Consult Services. Hospital-based addiction consult services have been described as an emerging model of care for hospitalized patients who may have a substance use disorder. To learn more about ACS I spoke recently with Doc...

On this edition of Free Culture Radio: World Drug Report 2025. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime released the 2025 edition of its annual World Drug Report on June 26. Whether or not one regards the World Drug Report as a compendium of selected statistics and ...

On this edition of Free Culture Radio: Beyond Punishment. The Global Commission on Drug Policy released a report recently entitled Beyond Punishment: From Criminal Justice Responses to Drug Policy Reform, which exposes how punitive drug policies have driven mass incarcera...

On this edition of Free Culture Radio: Scotland the Brave. On Wednesday May 7 2025, the UK Parliament’s Scottish Affairs Committee held a hearing entitled: Problem drug use in Scotland follow-up: Glasgow’s Safer Drug Consumption Facility. The Committee was looking at the ...

On this edition of Free Culture Radio: Tokin’ Female. Host Doug McVay is joined in conversation with Sabrina Fendrick, drug policy activist and author of Tokin’ Female: Women, Weed, and the War on Prohibition.

On this edition of Free Culture Radio: It Takes a Village. Host Doug McVay is joined in conversation with Andrew Grover and Ethan Bulisco of Youth Villages Oregon.

On this edition of Free Culture Radio: Trying to Make Sense of It All. It’s 2025. Public health and healthcare systems under threat, scientific and medical research brought to a standstill, agencies advancing US interests around the world being dismantled, border hysteria...

On this edition of Free Culture Radio: Human Rights and Drug Policies in an Evolving Global Paradigm. The Sixth European Harm Reduction Conference was held recently in Warsaw, Poland. In one of the sessions, entitled “navigating human rights in drug policy reform,” pane...

On this edition of Free Culture Radio: Harm Reduction and the Regulation of Drugs. The Sixth European Harm Reduction Conference was held recently in Warsaw, Poland, bringing together people who use drugs, practitioners, advocates, policy experts, and public officials fr...

On this edition of Free Culture Radio: Decolonizing Coca. The nations of Colombia and Bolivia held an event at the United Nations in New York on November 7th to challenge the negative connotation attributed to the coca plant. The event was entitled "Beyond Declassificatio...

On this edition of Free Culture Radio: Recovery and Community. According to its website, the Recovery Cafe Network, established in 2016, is “comprised of Recovery Cafés committed to serving people who have experienced trauma and the results of trauma like homelessness, su...

On this edition of Free Culture Radio: A conversation with drug policy activist and researcher Kurtis Hanna. In 2002, to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the Shafer Commission, I did some research on the report and Nixon. Back then, to listen to any of the Nixon t...

On this edition of Free Culture Radio: A Conversation with NORML Board Chair Dan Viets. This month on Free Culture host Doug McVay is joined in conversation with attorney and civil rights advocate Dan Viets, Chair of the Board of Directors of the National Organization f...