Tulsi Gabbard on the Joe Rogan Experience #1170, fact-checked

What the evidence shows: Rogan cited roughly 1-in-100 (1%) as the commonly quoted rate for sociopathy/psychopathy and suggested the true prevalence is much higher, later floating a figure around 10%. Peer-reviewed prevalence research broadly supports the 1% figure he cites as the baseline: a 2021 systematic review and meta-analysis of 15 studies (11,497 adults) found psychopathy prevalence in the general adult population averaged 4.5% across various measurement tools, but only 1.2% when using the PCL-R, the field's gold-standard clinical instrument. Separately, the related but broader diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) was found in 4.3% of U.S. adults in the NESARC-III survey of over 36,000 respondents (2012-2013), using DSM-5 criteria; a related, non-diagnostic pattern of antisocial behavior without childhood onset was found in 20.3% of adults, though clinicians distinguish this from psychopathy/sociopathy proper. No peer-reviewed general-population study supports a flat 10% psychopathy rate. The claim that the commonly cited 1% figure understates true prevalence has some support depending on the diagnostic instrument used, but the specific 10% figure exceeds what published prevalence studies, including the gold-standard PCL-R estimate, actually show.

What the evidence shows: Gabbard stated that Democratic superdelegates numbered "over 700" and included Democratic members of Congress, Senate Democrats, and party-appointed officials. Contemporaneous PolitiFact reporting on the 2016 Democratic primary confirms there were 712 superdelegates, about 15 percent of the roughly 4,763 total convention delegates, matching her "over 700" figure. Documented examples from that cycle show the category did include sitting Democratic senators and representatives (e.g., New Hampshire's Sen. Jeanne Shaheen and Rep. Annie Kuster) alongside state party chairs and other party officials, consistent with her description of Congress members plus "people appointed by the party leadership." Her opening phrase "all 435 members" (the full size of the U.S. House, including Republicans) was self-corrected in the same breath to "Democratic members of Congress" specifically, which is the accurate framing. The cited sources describe superdelegates broadly as "party officials and bigwigs" without breaking down the category by role, so the overall total and general composition are supported, though the precise share of superdelegates who were sitting members of Congress versus other party posts is not detailed in this evidence.

What the evidence shows: The claim asserts a 39% tax rate on recreational marijuana in Colorado. Colorado's Department of Revenue documents a 15% state retail marijuana sales tax charged to consumers at the point of sale, plus a separate 15% state excise tax levied earlier in the supply chain on the wholesale transfer from cultivator to retailer or manufacturer; retail marijuana is exempt from the standard 2.9% state sales tax. Local jurisdictions may additionally impose their own marijuana sales and/or excise taxes on top of the state rates. No official Colorado tax schedule sets a 39% rate on recreational marijuana sales, and the documented state-level rates (15% consumer sales tax plus 15% wholesale excise tax at an earlier supply-chain stage) do not sum to or otherwise support the 39% figure cited.

What the evidence shows: An early ecological study (Bachhuber et al., JAMA Internal Medicine, 2014) found that U.S. states with medical cannabis laws had a 24.8% lower mean annual opioid analgesic overdose mortality rate than states without such laws over 1999-2010; the authors themselves cautioned that a direct causal link could not be established from this aggregate, ecological data. A 2019 replication (Shover et al., PNAS) extended the same methodology through 2017 and found the association had reversed: medical cannabis states showed a 22.7% higher opioid overdose mortality rate, a complete flip from the original -21% estimate. The Shover authors concluded the original correlation was likely spurious, noted medical cannabis users are too small a share of the population to plausibly drive population-level mortality effects, and warned that claims that legalizing medical cannabis reduces opioid deaths "should be met with skepticism." No causal relationship between marijuana access and reduced opioid deaths has been established, and the best current longitudinal evidence contradicts the "drastic reduction" framing.

What the evidence shows: Johns Hopkins has run psilocybin trials for addiction, and a randomized pilot (82 smokers) found that 40.5% of those given a single high dose of psilocybin plus cognitive behavioral therapy achieved biochemically verified abstinence at six months, versus 10% given a nicotine patch plus the same therapy; the trial was unblinded and the authors describe psilocybin as a 'promising candidate' moving toward the FDA approval process, not a cure. For heroin and other opioids, human clinical evidence is far earlier-stage: supporting data is still limited largely to animal studies, and trials testing psilocybin for opioid relapse prevention were only beginning as of the mid-2020s. NIDA characterizes psilocybin research across substance use disorders as preliminary, noting it 'may be helpful' but requires further large-scale trials, not an established or approved 'cure.' Overall, the claim overstates both the strength and the certainty of the evidence, particularly for heroin, and 'curing' misrepresents research still in pilot and early trial phases.