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Taboo: Drugs

NGC explores drug cultures around the world where people use drugs to enter an “altered state” — sometimes with dangerous consequences. We visit a village in Venezuela where shamans use drugs to contact the spirit world, a festival in Nepal where hashish is temporarily legalized and a club scene in Amsterdam where drugs have become a focus of both recreational indulgence and scientific inquiry. 

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  1. Lemppu i couldnt agree more, inaccurate facts about long term affects..

  2. @9:15 high as balls

  3. @9:15 high as balls

  4. @9:15 high as balls

  5. over the top, drugs is dangerous, no science behind it.
    BBC owns this

  6. over the top, drugs is dangerous, no science behind it.
    BBC owns this

  7. I liked the video, National Geographic is awesome.

  8. I liked the video, National Geographic is awesome.

  9. I liked the video, National Geographic is awesome.

  10. Well, this is, in my opinion a very low quality, outdated documentary about drugs. Based on questionable old facts, a typical anti-drug documentary, with no interesting/new information whatsoever. Please, do not waste your time watching this.

  11. No fact checks were done on what that Hindu man was saying. marijuana was given a bad rap while DMT wasn’t given the proper caution it deserves. I typically enjoy NatGEo documentaries but this one missed the mark.

  12. I agree with zacateca, this is really biased. I almost laughed out loud when I heard the “marijuana stays in your body for 5 years” bit. And the “mdma causes brain damage” got a little more ridiculous everytime they repeated it. It’s really sad that apparently the people who make these documentaries don’t check their information. I think this one is worth it for the yopo part, I haven’t found much information on yopo prior to watching this, and I rather liked watching the shamanic initiation ritual

    • pedna you should’nt laugh about the 5years marijuana’s thing it is true! there are some case of 7years found in hair’s root.

      • yes, hair testing is more accurate than urine testing, and can go back further in time, but I’ve never read anything about 5 years, or even 7 years. do you have a source for that? The thing that made me laugh was the dramatic way they mentioned the 5 years and the “horrible addiction”. From what I understand, if it does stay in your body for that long there are no implications other than appearing in drug tests, because the drug is no longer being metabolized. The way they say it is like “if you smoke marijuana your life is forever ruined”. when I watched this documentary I was expecting a straightforward approach to the “taboo”, shedding some light on the subject, instead it just seems to try to make people more afraid of drugs, rather than helping people understand them

  13. This is the most biased drug documentary i´ve watched. There´s clearly no medical science behind the risks they claim the drugs portrayed here have. I reccomend the BBC documentaries about drugs, especially Horizon´s “is alcohol worse than ecstasy?”

  14. Great documentary. Informative and fun to watch. National Geographic does documentaries better than anyone. It’s not fair how good it is.