Hamilton Morris Is Changing the Way We Talk About Drugs
The host of Hamilton's Pharmacopeia is exploring what a post-prohibition world will look like.
HD DownloadWhat will American drug culture look like once prohibition is finally over and we can start to use more drugs in more settings?
No one is better situated to start that conversation than Hamilton Morris, the 32-year-old host of Hamilton's Pharmacopeia, a show that explores what sorts of drugs are available, how they work, and how we might best use them to fulfill our hopes and dreams.
In one early episode, Morris confounds the conventional wisdom by telling "a positive story about PCP," a drug that even legalizers typically have nothing good to say about. He visits with Timothy Wyllie, an artist and visionary who uses the drug as part of his creative process. In another, he travels to the Brazilian Amazon, where locals get high on a drug taken from frogs. In a third, he gains access to an abandoned laboratory in a volcano that was once central to the production of MDMA.
Morris also does laboratory work at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, where he and his collaborators create new drugs for testing and research trials. He sat down with Reason to talk how the drug war has warped the discussion about legal and illegal drugs and what the post-prohibition landscape will look like.
To listen to an audio podcast version of this interview, go here.
Edited by Mark McDaniel and Alexis Garcia. Cameras by Jim Epstein.
Photo credit: Everett Collection/Newscom
