Scurvy’s Selection: Crackdown Podcast
Editor’s Note: Scurvy’s Selection brings you the best of left wing vlogs and podcasts from around the web each week; curated by our long suffering NIDC site administrator, Scurvy.
The drug war, covered by drug users.
Good day, podcast fans! I struggled to find just the right thing to share with you all this time; because I wanted to ring in the new year with only the crème de la crème of multi-media content experiences here in my Selections. Then my brain reminded me that I knew of just exactly that thing. One of the best podcasts ever in my opinion. It’s timely, it’s well produced, and it doesn’t pull punches; in fact it throws them when such a thing is the proper thing to do! Finally, it’s also covering an issue that has been near and dear to my heart for decades: the so-called drug war.
Crackdown Podcast, hosted and executive produced by Garth Mullins, is a literal street level eye on the war on some people, that has been for a century pretending to be a war on drugs. It is literally impossible to get closer to “the story”, aka: the lives of drug users, than this. I don’t think I can explain who they are better than they can, so I won’t even try:
“Crackdown’s Editorial Board consists of some of Vancouver’s most tenacious drug user activists, including members of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, the BC Association of People on Opioid Maintenance, and the Western Aboriginal Harm Reduction Society.”
I always recommend starting from episode 1, but for this one going back to the beginning is important. You literally witness in real time the impact of the “war on drugs” on the people it targets. Their most recent episode, number 35, is about the intersection of drug use and sex work and if any of the recent baby-step reforms matter when so much else is still criminalized. In previous episodes they have spoken to the people in charge of “British Columbia”‘s interpretation of “Canada”‘s drug laws, flown to Portugal to experience their world-leading decriminalization efforts, and obviously much more.
Check it out on the Crackdown website, or listen to the embedded episode below:
Scurvy’s selection is my weekly pick and as always, the content shared here is the product and property of the listed creator, or creators.
And with that, I’m out!
- Scurvy
Anarcho-humanist; DIY Cyborg
System-Administrator at NIDC;
“Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike” – Oscar Wilde
