PODCAST · society
Narcotica Podcast
by Christopher Moraff, Troy Farah, Zachary Seigel
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.
Episodes
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Episode 96: The Schism of Addiction and Vice with Elizabeth Roberts
Not everyone views addiction in chiefly negative terms, which isn’t all too surprising to anyone with a little world experience, but it sometimes still feels shocking because of how dominant the mainstream narrative that dependency (on certain drugs) is automatically a moral failing or represents…
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Episode 95: Behind the Speedboat Dope Bombings with Ioan Grillo
As we’ve said hundreds of times on Narcotica, the drug war is a war on people used to advance some of the worst atrocities in history. Drugs are the perfectly legible boogeyman to the public, used as a justification used to advance racist, draconian policy. From CIA planes that deliver ecocide to...
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Episode 94: The AI Dystopia Acid Test with Douglas Rushkoff
The internet and drugs are deeply intertwined in a way that isn’t glib or always obvious. Being online is a deeply conscious experience that can change your perception and yeah, be pretty habit-forming. The slow dopamine drip of doom scrolling isn’t a 1-to-1 analog to doing a line of meth, of...
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Episode 93: Veterans’ Harm Reduction Battle with Beth Dinges
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…
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Episode 92: The Drug War’s Invisible Casualties with Sheila Vakharia
Overdose 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...
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Episode 91: Drug Surveillance Won’t Stop at Opioids with Liz Chiarello
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...
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Episode 90: Navigating Shifting Chemical Landscapes with Claire Zagorski
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…
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Episode 89: Can Good Drug Policy Survive 2025?
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 counts in...
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Episode 88: Helping Harm Reduction Flourish with Joy Rucker
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...
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Episode 87: Drug Testing Equals Empowerment with Dr. Nabarun Dasgupta and Charlton Roverson
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…
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Bonus Episode: When Nothing Changes Nothing Changes from Naturally Noncompliant
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…
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Episode 86: Why Naloxone Still Matters with Nancy D. Campbell
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...
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Episode 85: “Narcoterrorism” is just another forever war lie with Oswaldo Zavala
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…
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Episode 84: How Drug Seizures Damage Public Health with Drs. Bradley Ray, Jennifer J. Carroll and Brandon del Pozo
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...
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Episode 83: The Parents Who Oppose The War on Drugs with Tamara Olt and Gretchen Bergman
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...
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Episode 82: Drug War Activism and the Future of Harm Reduction with Louise Vincent
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,...
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Episode 81: Harm Reduction Against the Prison-Industrial Complex
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...
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Episode 80: A Messy History of Methadone with Dr. Zoe Adams
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 with...
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Episode 79: Is California Really Progressive on Drugs? with Dr. Isaac Jackson
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...
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Episode 78: Drug Use in a Post-Roe World with Dinah Ortiz
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…
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Episode 77: Harm Production — The Hazards of Drug Courts with Dave Lucas
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...
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Episode 76: How To Change Your Mind About ALL Drugs with Veronica Wright
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...
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Episode 75: Copaganda — The Favorite Tool of Drug Warriors with Alec Karakatsanis
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...
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Episode 74: Cannabis And Capitalism — Preventing Another Big Tobacco with Shaleen Title
For good reason, about 150 million people use cannabis, according to the World Health Organization. That’s around 3 percent of the global population or the entire population of Russia. In most places, smoking the flowers or extracts of this plant can come with some steep legal consequences: long...
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Episode 73: Oh No! Not Naltrexone! with Nancy Curran
Naltrexone, also known by its brand name, Vivitrol, is an opioid antagonist that kicks opioids off of opioid receptor in the brain, not unlike naloxone. But thanks to a combination of overprescription, unscrupulous marketing practices and ubiquitous use over more effective alternatives…
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Episode 72: When The Trip Doesn’t End with Ed Prideaux
Psychedelics and other drugs can trigger a condition called Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder, a terrible name for a real condition that we don’t have much data on and is poorly understood. But while it’s clear that psychedelics shouldn’t be illegal, it’s also clear we’re still learning...
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Episode 71: Aduhelm, Obscene Drug Prices and Big Pharma Tactics with Dr. John Abramson
It’s easy to hate the massive pharmaceutical corporations that extract obscene profit from the healthcare system—and there are many, many reasons why you should distrust these companies, although the situation is far more complex than “Big Pharma = bad.” But how did we get here? How did medical...
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Episode 70: How Testosterone Bans Criminalize the Body with Adryan Corcione
Imagine banning a chemical that we all make in our bodies. But that’s exactly where drug war logic takes us and why testosterone is Schedule III on the Controlled Substances Act, alongside ketamine and buprenorphine. Testosterone is painted as some dangerous substance that must be locked up.…
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Episode 69: The Promise and Peril of the Psychedelic Mainstream with Shelby Hartman and Madison Margolin
Psychedelics are not exactly taking the same path that cannabis has taken to the mainstream, but there are some similarities. In the late ‘90s and early aughts, when medical cannabis was first starting to take hold in California, quasi-legal businesses popped up overnight, with a lot of...
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Episode 68: Is The Drug War Getting Better… Or Worse? with Zach Siegel, Chris Moraff and Troy Farah
On this episode, Narcotica co-hosts Zachary Siegel, Chris Moraff and Troy Farah interview each other, riffing on one question: Is the drug war getting better… Or worse? They cover everything from nitazenes, Dopesick, the Drug User’s Liberation Front, banning psychedelics like DiPT, benzo dope…
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Episode 67: Methadone in the Time of Covid with Danielle Russell
Harm reduction programs like syringe access, supervised consumption or even just handing out condoms on the street, can be some of the only access to healthcare some people encounter. Definitely not all, but some people who use drugs routinely shun going to the doctor—not because they don’t care...
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Episode 66: Overlooking Alcohol and The Nature of Addiction with Dr. Stanton Peele
Booze is one of the most ancient and most prolific drugs in society, yet for some reason, it’s always placed in some separate category. Drugs and alcohol. Even at Narcotica, we’ve done over 65 episodes about drugs and not one of them has focused solely on ethanol. We just haven’t gotten to it…
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Episode 65: Restoring Trust in Doctors Amidst The Overdose Crisis with Dr. Ben Cocchiaro and Dr. Ashish Thakrar
Over the past two decades, as fatal drug overdoses have risen precipitously, few professions have been hit harder by the crisis than the medical community. Physicians in particular have found themselves in the no-win position of being both blamed for the overdose crisis, which claimed more than...
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Episode 64: LSD And Psilocybin For Physical Pain? with Greg McKee and Dr. Johannes Ramaekers
These days, there isn’t an ailment some Silicon Valley-esque startup is trying to treat with psychedelics. Of course you have depression, anxiety, addiction, PTSD and fear of death for the terminally ill—there’s some good data for treating all of that—but some of the more obscure treatments…
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Episode 63: Delta-8-THC And Other Obscure Cannabinoids with Jason Wilson
Nearly half the U.S. population now have access to adult-use cannabis. Marijuana is a medicine, if it’s cultivated or extracted right, and millions of people find relief or pleasure from this fantastic plant. But as legalization accelerates, regulations have struggled to keep up. Most experts and...
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Episode 62: Policing Pleasure — The Intersection of Sex Work and Drug Use with Tamika Spellman and Caty Simon
Sex work is work, just like coal mining, professional sports and literally any job that involves physical labor. So why is a show about drugs interested in sex work? For starters, there’s a lot of overlap in terms of harm reduction services that help people who use drugs and sex workers....
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Episode 61: Undoing Drugs—Harm Reduction’s Early History with Maia Szalavitz
We’re truly living through a disaster. Drug overdose deaths rose nearly 30 percent in 2020 to a record high 93,000. This is no longer an “opioid” crisis. What I mean is, 2020 overdose deaths linked to stimulants, especially methamphetamine, also broke records. The other key development here is…
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Episode 60: Perinatal Panic—Drugs, Pregnancy and Stigma with Ria Tsinas, Joelle Puccio and Erika Goyer
One area where drug stigma especially persists, even among harm reduction advocates, is the prejudice against mothers and pregnant people who use drugs. Even some people in syringe exchange or who work in drug policy are against the idea of people with the capacity for pregnancy, (i.e. anyone…
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Episode 59: Psychedelic Extinction—How Poaching Endangers Some Psychoactive Plants with Dr. Anya Ermakova
Psychedelic drugs are well beyond the quote ‘renaissance’ stage and relatively recently entered a ‘gold rush’ as dozens of companies maneuver themselves to make this nascent industry as profitable as possible for themselves. At least that’s part of their motivation. It’s a bit of a double-edged...
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Episode 58: How Racism Fuels The Drug War with Kassandra Frederique
Few social justice groups have put in as much work to end the war on (people who use) drugs like the Drug Policy Alliance. Since 2000, DPA has been behind some landmark drug reforms, such as leading a campaign to enact major reforms of New York’s notorious Rockefeller drug laws, assisting in a...
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Episode 57: Autism, Acid and the Altered Brain with Aaron Orsini and Justine Lee
For many people, psychedelic drugs like LSD or psilocybin are their first major introduction to a profoundly altered state of consciousness. Mental conditions like autism or ADHD are other forms of consciousness, although they don’t wear off after 12 hours and so-called ‘neurotypical’ people…
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Episode 56: Drug Use During Disaster with Aaron Ferguson
Our planet is in crisis, plagued by an increase in wildfires, floods, hurricanes, freak storms and outbreaks of disease. As a result, we’re seeing more and more people isolated, left to fend for themselves, as the cracks in public infrastructure only seem to widen. To use one prominent example…
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Episode 55: Street Sampling Synthetics, from Carfentanil to Xylazine with Alex Krotulski
Amid a wave of synthetic drugs in recent years, Kensington, Pennsylvania has emerged as the locus for a different kind of experimentation, through a new generation of freelance entrepreneurs. Their bathtub chemistry is often guided by trial and error—leaving doctors, public health officials and...
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Episode 54: West Virginia, America’s Worst Overdose and HIV Hotspot with Lauren Peace
There’s a “twindemic” raging across the state of West Virginia: Covid-19 has collided with an outbreak of HIV and hepatitis C. If that’s not bad enough, West Virginia has the highest overdose death rate in the nation. The CDC recently called the HIV outbreak in Kanawha County, West Virginia the...
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Episode 53: A Life of Getting Lit with Tommy Chong
It’s kinda weird hearing people say “weed is mainstream” now, when merely possessing the plant stuff can still earn you serious consequences in many parts of the world. But the growing popularity of cannabis is unmistakable. Marijuana is now a global, multi-billion dollar industry—well, to be…
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Episode 52: The Fundamental Human Right to Get High with Casey William Hardison
Maybe it seems like an obvious question, but why is certain drug use illegal in the first place? Don’t you, as a human being, have some bodily autonomy and doesn’t that extend to alterations in the mind as well? What about the fundamental right to change your mind? On this episode of Narcotica,...
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Episode 51: The Joy of Drug Use with Dr. Carl Hart
Dr. Carl Hart has long been known as America’s preeminent drug scientist. If you listen to our show regularly, you’ve probably heard of him. He appeared briefly way back on Episode 6, talking about crack-cocaine. For the uninitiated, Dr. Hart is a neuroscientist at Columbia University, and he’s...
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Episode 50: Sicarios and Supply Side Economics with Scott Stewart
On this episode, we discuss how Mexico became a flashpoint of the war on drugs, broader trends in American foreign policy and drug policy, as well as the evolution of synthetic drugs as the main category of illicit narcotics. Our guest is Scott Stewart, a security analyst who for years penned one...
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Episode 49: Salvia: Psychedelic Oddity with Ivan Casselman (Plus, Canada’s Emerging Psilocybin Scene)
Most people know salvia as the weird psychedelic drug at head shops that you try once, have a bizarre, uncomfortable experience and never touch it again. But there’s so much more to salvia divinorum, psychedelics and plant medicine in general. Narcotica co-host Troy Farah speaks with Dr. Ivan...
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Episode 48: Moms And Methadone with Elizabeth Brico
Is there any class of people who receive more stigma, who get more shit and abuse for using drugs, than mothers? Probably not! For whatever reason, society really looks down upon mothers who use drugs. And too often, Child Protective Services use evidence of drug use, even prescribed drugs like...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
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.
HOSTED BY
Christopher Moraff, Troy Farah, Zachary Seigel
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Narcotica Podcast have?
Narcotica Podcast currently has 97 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Narcotica Podcast about?
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.
How often does Narcotica Podcast release new episodes?
Narcotica Podcast has 97 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
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You can listen to Narcotica Podcast on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Narcotica Podcast?
Narcotica Podcast is created and hosted by Christopher Moraff, Troy Farah, Zachary Seigel.
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