Denise Morris hosts this episode of the Old Mole which is a re-broadcast from the archives of Against the Grain: America’s Drug Binge.
Americans as a population have an unusually large appetite for psychoactive drugs, whether legal or illegal. And American history has been marked by periodic moral panics over drug use and normalization or legalization, as we’re experiencing right now. Why is that? What is it about US society that makes drug use simultaneously so appealing and reviled? In this interview with Sasha Lilly, writer and scholar Benjamin Fong weighs in.
Benjamin Yen-Yi Fong is author of: Quick Fixes: Drugs in America from Prohibition to the 21st Century Binge Verso, 2023
Against the Grain is a weekly radio show hosted by Sasha Lilly and C.S. Soong on KPFA Pacifica Radio in Berkley, California. It’s a program of ideas, in-depth analysis, and commentary on political, economic, social, and cultural issues important to radical thinking and activism.
Shows can be downloaded from the KPFA Archives: https://kpfa.org/program/against-the-grain/
- KBOO