The War on Drugs is a War on People: Conversations with Natalie Ginsberg

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Natalie Lyla Ginsberg is the Director of Policy and Advocacy at the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). Before joining MAPS in 2014, Natalie worked as a Policy Fellow at the Drug Policy Alliance, where she helped legalize medical cannabis in her home state of New York, and worked to end New York’s race-based marijuana arrests. Natalie received her B.A. in history from Yale, and her master’s of social work (M.S.W.) from Columbia. In this conversation, we dive into her personal journey. We also explore the many facets of the work she is doing to disentangle science from political partisanship and to create safe, equitable, regulated access to psychedelics - and all criminalized substances. Natalie is inspired by psychedelics’ potential to assist in healing intergenerational trauma, for building empathy and community, and for inspiring creative and innovative solutions.

What you will learn:

• How current drug laws in the United States support hierarchical systems, and why we need to use harsh, confrontative language in order to make much needed changes in the collective conditioning

• What other countries are doing with their drug policies that we might want to learn from; Thank you Portugal, Spain, Canada and the Czech Republic!

• How psychedelics might be supportive tools for conflict resolution and peace building

• Harm reduction and the beautiful work of the Zendo Project
   

Resources from this Episode: 

1. MAPS.org
2. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
3. On Instagram: @natalielyla