The War on Drugs

Grammy-winning musician John Osborne never imagined he’d turn to psychedelics. But when he went through a mental health breakdown, they saved his life. A skeptic turned advocate, John shares how psilocybin therapy helped him recover from deep depression, persistent anxiety, and more. With research continuing to demonstrate that psychedelics may offer a powerful treatment option for many, why are they still illegal? And how ma...

Lead MC of the legendary Cypress Hill, B-Real grew up in LA at the height of the drug war, initially on the street hustling side of things. Music took him out of that life, but when California began to legalize in 2016 B-Real got back into the game on the legitimate side.  He found however what many early-adopting entrepreneurs are finding - the Federal ban means you can’t use the banking system, and when you try and exp...

Marcus King grew up in Greenville, SC, watching people around him get written off—criminalized instead of helped, cast aside instead of supported. His own story could have gone the same way. Instead, music, finding sobriety, and building supportive community saved him. In this episode, Marcus talks about his journey to sobriety, the shifting cultural conversation around addiction, and why meeting people where they are—w...

The champion MMA fighter and Marine Corps veteran is no stranger to pain - both dishing it out and taking it.  Hear her take on the ongoing War on Drugs, and what the lack of coherent federal policy means for our community of Veterans, athletes and others dealing with high-level pain management - how she has found positive results managing her own pain with CBD, to the point where her brain scans show a marked drop-off in infl...

For years, the headline was: “Heisman Trophy winner and NFL All-Pro running back Ricky Williams quit the NFL to smoke weed.” The real story? Much deeper. Cannabis helped Ricky manage pain, both physical and mental, in ways the media and the sports world didn't understand in 2004. Now that the NFL has progressed significantly on cannabis policy, Ricky reflects on the cost of systems that punish people for making their ow...

Greg and Clayton welcome you back to The War on Drugs Podcast with “Stories Matter.”  This Season, you will hear notable voices from across the cultural spectrum on their personal, lived experience, and how the failures of the War on Drugs policy continue to affect people’s lives, even as progress is made at the local level.  

A new episode of The War on Drugs will be available every Tuesday whereve...

Welcome to season two of The War on Drugs podcast, co-hosted by comedian Clayton English and Greg Glod, advisor to Stand Together on Criminal Justice and Drug Reform. This season, we’re bringing you real stories from real people—artists, athletes, and influencers like B-Real, Marcus King, Ricky Williams, John Osborne, and many others who lived the impacts of the War on Drugs firsthand. We’ll explore how drug polic...

On August 10, 2017, police executed a search warrant at a home in San Antonio, TX and found nearly three pounds of methamphetamine hidden in a bathroom. Upon this discovery, police arrested 45-year-old Louie Garcia and two other individuals. It turns out that the search warrant stemmed from the word of a confidential informant, and nothing else. Further, upon their arrest, Louie and his co-defendants urged that they had been framed...

In this special episode, Grammy and Oscar award winning singer-songwriter Melissa Etheridge joins our hosts Clayton English and Greg Glod for a personal and thought-provoking conversation about advances in plant-based medicine in treating conditions such as depression, PTSD, opioid withdrawal, and addiction. 

To learn more, visit:

https://www.etheridgefoundation.org/

The War on Drugs is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in as...

In this special episode of the War on Drugs, Clayton English and Greg Glod are live on stage with some of the top names in podcasting, including Ben Bowlin and Noel Brown from Stuff They Don’t Want You to Know, Gilbert King from Bone Valley, and Jason Flom from Wrongful Conviction to discuss the intersection of the War on Drugs and wrongful convictions.

Recorded Live at iHeart Media in Atlanta, GA, on April 26th, 2023

Featuring hos...

Season One of The War on Drugs concludes with the story of a single addict’s journey, Morgan Godvin. Her story illustrates the disastrous consequences of America’s decision to treat addiction as a crime. Morgan spent five years addicted to heroin and four years incarcerated as a direct result of her addiction. She lost her mom and four close friends to overdose. And yet, Morgan’s story is ultimately one of hope—one that takes her f...

Johann Hari tells Clayton and Greg how Portugal kicked its heroin habit.

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MDMA therapy gained a following among psychiatrists in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Some psychiatrists believed that it allowed their patients to achieve unique insights into their mental health problems. It was also during this time that MDMA started becoming more widely available on the street. It gained a foothold as a ‘party drug' under the names Ecstasy and Molly. Then, in 1985, the DEA declared an emergency ban on MDMA, pl...

Clayton and Greg explain how the War on Drugs allows law enforcement to examine your medical records without a warrant.

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AN...

Jesse Gould graduated from Cornell University in 2009 and shortly thereafter, driven by a sense of duty and patriotism, enlisted in the Airborne Rangers. He returned home in 2014 from three tours in Afghanistan only to find himself with debilitating PTSD. After finding that none of the traditional treatments offered by the VA helped his PTSD, Jesse quit his job in finance, sold all his belongings, and took off for Peru where he und...

Greg tells Clayton about the time the police in Henry Country, GA served a No Knock Warrant to the wrong house and violated the civil liberties of a 79 year old innocent man.

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Clayton and Greg are joined by New York Times columnist Maia Szalavitz to discuss one of the least talked about consequences of the War on Drugs: the criminalization of pain. Millions of Americans have been cut off from the pain medications they need to survive (including terminal cancer patients) as the United States tries to stem the tide of the opioid epidemic. Doctors who treat patients with chronic pain are finding themselves ...

Clayton and Greg dispel the myth that if fentanyl touches your skin, you die. 

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AND PARTICIPATE TODAY. THANK YOU FOR YOUR S...

The War on Drugs killed Breonna Taylor. Clayton and Greg sit down with journalist Radley Balko to talk about how the War on Drugs has steadily eroded our Constitutional rights and led to the militarization of the police. They zero in on the practice of no-knock warrants and discuss how deadly and unnecessary they are. Special attention is paid to the case of Breonna Taylor and how she was a tragic and innocent victim of America’s d...