Welcome to this throwback edition of the award-winning Best of Left podcast

where we remember the past and choose to repeat it. Today's episode was

originally published in June 2015 and I'm bringing it back today,

to look at the state of the war on drugs almost 10 years ago,

as the Biden administration now prepares to finally reclassify marijuana away from being a

Schedule 1 drug comparable to heroin and LSD where it has been listed ever since

Nixon went to war with the hippies.

Sources today include health care triage,

the David Pacman Show, the Young Turks,

Democracy Now, La Show, and the majority report. It's April 20th, 20th of April, 420, or as some like to call it, Weed Day. I guess we're

doing this. This is health care triage.

To be honest, this is an episode I thought about bailing on many times.

There's just no way to talk about marijuana without somebody completely

misinterpreting what I say.

Some of you are going to call me a fascist for saying anything bad about pot at all.

Others are going to attack me for not coming down

in it hard enough. So I'm going to cloak myself, as I always do, in the power of data.

Marijuana works by affecting the brain. It's a drug, like many others others with different effects on different people.

The active ingredient is called tetrahydro-canabinol or THC.

THC bonds to protein-specific receptors in the brain to produce a number of results.

It can have a mild sedative effect, and it can also lower your inhibitions.

Marijuana can increase your pulse, lower your blood pressure, and increase your appetite.

...