Josh and Joel talk about the effect Suboxone smuggling has on prison mail across the United States.

I felt the 14th episode, where I interview Michigan's gubernatorial candidate Bill Cobbs was symbolically important. I can't imagine that many Gubernatorial candidates have sat down for an hour-long podcast interview with a formerly incarcerated registered citizen. Thanks to Mr. Cobbs for a great discussion and for his political courage.

There are lots of conflicting stories about how the Suboxone strip came to be. From what I can discern, Invidior was trying to protect its patent by changing from pill to strip.

There is a difference between llow-level (Suboxone) opiates and low-level opiates (Heroin etc.).

The end result of Suboxone being released in strip form has been a mail crisis in America's prisons and jails.

There is persuasive evidence that America's War on Drugs has failed at its main goal (reducing the supply of drugs) since 1971 and that imprisonment is a poor indicator of drug war success.

The basic idea of Harm Reduction is that we should target our responses to drug and addiction problems to reducing negative outcomes.

are-tricky-but-science-is-clear-needle-exchanges-work.html">Needle exchanges work, they just do. Luckily, at least one jurisdiction is implementing them.

The MDOC mail policy is really complicated and hard to follow (trust me, I have tried to follow it many times).

Many of us believe that getting mail is a really important thing to the restoration of incarcerated folks, luckily for us, md.org/uploaded_files/0000/0856/dpscs_letter_071916.pdf">the Supreme Court of the United States agrees.

There are md.org/uploaded_files/0000/0856/dpscs_letter_071916.pdf">scanners available that can detect Suboxone. So far, the MDOC argues they can't afford the scanners at every location (which is why we argue for centralization of facilities) and also argues the scanners don't detect all drugs (but they do detect Suboxone which is what caused the change in mail policy).