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From Wondry, I'm Lindsey Graham and this is American Scandal.

For years, any Ducan seemed to be a model employee.

Working at the Hinton State Lab in Boston, Ducan tested drugs that had been confiscated from alleged criminals and identified the substances using chemical tests.

With the lab drowning in a backlog of work, Ducan made a name for herself by running far more tests than any other chemist at the lab.

But behind her sky high production was a dark secret. Ducan wasn't running actual tests.

Instead, she was merely guessing the results and covering up her tracks, even as the state continued to rely on her work for criminal prosecutions.

But in 2013, it all caught up with her when Ducan pled guilty to 27 criminal counts and was sent to prison.

But because her fraud had tainted criminal prosecutions, Massachusetts had to throw out some 21,000 convictions, the largest activists kind in American history.

For many, any Ducan's fraud was a symptom of the deeper problems with America's war on drugs.

Critics charged that the drug war placed intense pressure on the criminal justice apparatus to convict drug offenders and created an incentive for people like any Ducan to lie.

But those incentives and America's drug war may be shifting.

My guest today is David Farber, a historian at the University of Kansas whose books include The War on Drugs, A History, published in late 2021 and a previous book, Crack, Rock cocaine, street capitalism and The Decade of Greed.

In our conversation, we'll look at the wide-reaching consequences of America's drug war, including spikes in the country's prison population.

We'll also discuss the history of this Decade's long campaign, as well as recent developments that may fundamentally change America's war on drugs.

Here's our conversation.

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David Farber, welcome to American's Channel.

Good to be with you.

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