Kenneth Tupper, PhD: Harm Reduction, Drug Education, Canadian Ayahuasca, and Psychedelic Public Health

Kenneth Tupper joins Joe Moore to connect decades of harm-reduction and public-health work with broader questions about psychedelic policy, education, and social wellbeing. They discuss early DanceSafe pill testing, drug checking, supervised consumption, fentanyl and British Columbia’s toxic drug crisis, overdose-related brain injury, and the limits of decriminalizing possession without housing, healthcare, treatment, and safer supply. Tupper argues that psychedelic public health should include preparation, screening, set, setting, community support, health promotion, and access beyond the treatment of diagnosed illness, while cautioning against over-medicalizing psychedelics. The conversation critiques abstinence-centered drug education and develops the idea of entheogenic education, drawing on Indigenous knowledge, experiential learning, Dewey, and Vygotsky. It also examines ayahuasca policy in Canada, Santo Daime exemptions, admixture transparency, consent, ceremonial safety, cultural autonomy, and competing biomedical, religious, Indigenous, and scientific ways of knowing. Synthetic promotional audio is used in the introduction, while the interview is unaltered.