Mike Jay on Mescaline

Kurt Schmoke’s life and mine intersected at a pivotal moment in the spring of 1988, as the war on drugs was approaching its most feverish pitch. I was a 31 year old assistant professor at Princeton Un...

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Boris Jordan is a fascinating figure. An American of White Russian ancestry, he played a pivotal role in Russia’s roller coaster economic transformation during the 1990s. Today he is best known as the...

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“We could not have civilization without intoxication,” says Professor Edward Slingerland in his important new book: Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization. Indeed, “the use...

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Jockeying over patents is driving investment and competition among the growing number of people and companies trying to profit from the psychedelics renaissance. Graham Pechenik is one of the smartest...

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Here's a bonus episode of Psychoactive. I was was recently a guest on the Dear Chelsea podcast, a weekly advice show hosted by comedian Chelsea Handler. I thought our listeners might enjoy hearing thi...

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There is probably no other country in the world with such a fluid and counterintuitive history of drugs as Iran,” says Maziyar Ghiabi, professor at the University of Exeter, in his book, Drugs Politic...

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The Narcotic Farm was a remarkable institution. Opened in Lexington, Kentucky in 1935 and closed in the 1970s, the massive hybrid prison/treatment facility was for many decades one of the only publicl...

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Chesa Boudin, a public defender and child of “radical royalty,” was elected as district attorney of San Francisco in late 2019 and recalled by voters in mid-2022. Derided by critics as soft on crime a...

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