Welcome to Current Affairs. My name is Nathan Robinson. I am the editor-in-chief of Current Affairs

Magazine, and I am joined today by Benjamin Y. Fong. He is Honors Faculty Fellow and Associate,

director of the Center for Work and Democracy at Arizona State University.

He's also the author of the new book Quick Fixes, Drugs in America, from Prohibition to the 21st Century Binge,

available from Verso, Benjamin Fong.

Thank you for joining us on current affairs today.

Thanks so much for having me.

So let's start with perhaps the lay of the land of drugs in America today.

We use an awful lot of them of an awful lot of different kinds.

So perhaps you could, and you know, you open with a shocking statistic about, you know,

the percentage of the world opioids that are consumed in this country.

So in this country specifically, what are we hooked on and how much?

Yeah, we're in the midst of a world historic drug binge.

Americans comprise 4% of the world's population.

We consume about 80% of its opioids, including 99% of its hydrocodone, a bit more than 83%

of its ADHD medications or its amphetamines and amphetamine-like drugs.

We are a uniquely drugged populace, I think, is from personal experience.

I feel like more people are using psychoactive drugs than ever any other time that I've

been alive.

And that is confirmed by the evidence.

You look at the trends of drug consumption over time.

In the 21st century, they're all going up. So I think the most familiar

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