Speaker 1Hello and welcome back to the James Kennedy podcast. I hope you've all had a great week and enjoyed this glorious sunshine, also known as the Advancing Climate Catastrophe. And hope you've all been able by now to check out last week's episode with Zahra Hassan. It was one of my favourite episodes, man. She was absolutely amazing. There was nothing she doesn't know on that issue. We were talking about refugees, immigration and asylum law in the UK and why we've still got such a long way to go. The Nationality and Borders Bill, we covered the whole lot, man. Well, she did. I just stood there and listened. But it was one of my favourite episodes so far and she was absolutely brilliant. She just covered that whole issue from every angle inside and out. She left no stone unturned. So please go back and listen to that episode if you haven't yet. It's really, really important. Massive shout out to everybody for supporting the podcast so far, subscribing, liking, sharing, leaving ratings and reviews and all that jazz. And massive, massive thanks to everybody for throwing some change into the PayPal link as well. It really, really does mean a lot and helps me keep this podcast advert free because, you know, neither you nor I want to have to stop proceedings halfway through and have some cheesy advert kicking in. You know what I mean? So thanks to everybody for enabling me to keep this independent and keeping it free of adverts. The link for that again is paypal.com slash paypal.me slash jameskennedyuk. Right. That's all the formalities out of the way. Let's get down to the fun stuff. Today, man, I have got a beast on the show. This guy, is kick ass. And the issue of the day to day is drugs. We're going to be talking about the war on drugs, addiction, the penal system, and why our guest today believes that all drugs should be legalized. Now, before you throw your hands up in shock horror and think, okay, this episode isn't for me. This one really is for you. This is such an important issue that affects all of our lives in so many ways that we might not even realize. The issue of drugs connects to the issues of crime and public health. What kind of society is this? What kind of society we'd like to have, how we take care of our sick and our suffering. And I think we're long overdue a collective catch up on whether our current approach to drug enforcement has actually been working. So this is a broad subject, which is fascinating and interested in so many different ways. And we have got an absolute Spartan to come on the show and speak with us about it today. Trust me, you're going to enjoy this one. So strap in, sit back and enjoy the ride, man. Steve Rolls is a senior policy analyst at Transform, a charity that campaigns for a change to our country's drug policy. And it's a place where Steve has been working on this issue since 1998. Steve regularly appears on the mainstream TV and print news outlets. So we are privileged to have him on our humble show today. And I cannot wait to jump feet first into this issue with him. So Steve, thanks so much for being with us. How are you, man?
Speaker 2Pretty good. Kind of hot. But other than that, I'm very well.
Speaker 1Yeah, we are recording this, we should say on the Tuesday. So it's the second day of what is supposed to be the hottest day in the history of the world ever. Is that right?
Speaker 2Yes, something like that. It certainly feels like it.
Speaker 1It was red alert yesterday. And I went out to Cardiff yesterday and the clubs were packed. You know, they told everybody, don't go to work, don't go on the trains, don't go anywhere. And it occurred to me that literally nothing will keep the British public out of the pubs second to like, you know, nuclear holocaust or something.
Speaker 2Well, I mean, we're a nation of drugophiles, whether they're legal or not.
Speaker 1So. And I love that segue. That was pretty slick. That was. So. You've cleverly steered us right into the issue of the chat today, which is, as I mentioned, the issue of drug regulation, drugs, addiction, the penal system, all that stuff. And you are the man to speak to on this issue. So I am going to step aside, give you the microphone and let you do your thing. So before we get started, could you give the listeners just a very brief overview of who you are and what it is that you do over at Transform?
Speaker 2Right. So Transform is a. I mean, we're a charity. We are based in the UK, but we work in the UK and internationally. We have been around for about nearly 25 years. And we do policy analysis around the efficacy of our drug laws and our drug policies. And we advocate for reform to those drug laws and policies to try and get better outcomes. And our analysis is very much the kind of war on drugs approach, the prohibitionist approach, whatever you want to call it. The sort of punitive paradigm where it's essentially punitive enforcement-led approach to drugs has not worked. The idea of that whole approach was to use drug law enforcement to deter people from using drugs. So you have criminal penalties for drug possession and use. And the idea being that that would stop people using drugs. And you use enforcement directly against drug markets. So you would use enforcement directly against drug markets. So you would use enforcement to attack supply and production, both within this country and in places like Colombia and Afghanistan, where cocaine and opiates like heroin come from. And looked at historically, we've had that policy for more than 50 years now. The Misuse of Drugs Act, which is a central piece of drug legislation in the UK, has been around for, it was 50th anniversary last year, actually. And prohibition can actually be traced back further than that. But even if you look at it as a 50-year, project, for a policy that was designed to deter use and to restrict availability on drugs, it's clearly been a staggering failure. For every one of those 50 years, drug use globally has been rising. Drug use in the UK is far higher than it was in 1971. I don't think that would surprise anyone. There's 25 times more people using heroin. There's 10 times more people using cannabis. We now have a whole world of drug use. There's a whole world of drug use. There's a whole raft of drugs that didn't even exist in 1971. MDMA use, ecstasy use, went from zero, effectively, in about 1985, to several million people using it every weekend by the end of the 80s. So as an approach to deter use or to prevent drug supply, it clearly doesn't work. Drugs are cheaper, purer, stronger, more available than ever before in the UK. So on its own terms, drugs are cheaper, purer, stronger, more available than ever before in the UK. So on its own terms, and it doesn't work on its own terms, and it's fabulously expensive. So we're hosing billions of pounds into this policy response to get absolutely disastrous outcomes on pretty much any metric you could choose. So part of our work is making that critique, just saying, look, the war on drugs doesn't work, and it hasn't worked for generations. So we need to have a rethink. So that's part of the work is the critique. The flip side of that is the vision. So what would we do to replace drugs? What would we do to replace drugs? What would we do to replace if prohibition doesn't work? What do we do instead? And the kind of logical corollary is that we need to have some kind of legally regulated market, because the option is essentially, you either leave the market with organized crime groups and unregulated street dealers, or you bring it within the ambit of government and state and you let responsible public health agencies regulate the community. And the thinking there is not like drugs are great, let's legalize them. It's not a sort of pro-drugs position. Drugs are obviously risky, but it's a pragmatic position that deals with reality. And the reality is that millions of people in the UK and hundreds of millions of people around the world do choose to use drugs, regardless of all the messages from government, regardless of the law, regardless of the risks they face, they're using them anyway. As policy makers, we've got to deal with that reality. So it's a reality-based policy, which is loads of people, there is a huge demand for drugs, and it will be met one way or another. So we then have a choice. Do we leave it in the hands of organized crime groups? Or do we responsibly regulate it? Because there's no third option in which that market disappears or the demand for drugs somehow magically evaporates one morning. Demand for drugs exists for better or worse, whether we like it or not. And we have a choice about how that demand is going to be met, whether it's responsible regulation from governments or whether it's organized crime groups and all the carnage and chaos we've seen over the last 50 years. So that's the essence of our position. Obviously, there's then a lot of detail we've done, a lot of detail work we've done in terms of developing what those models like. When we talk about legalized drugs, what do we mean? Is it different for different drugs? How do you regulate access? What products are we talking about? Where would the shops be? How do you license them? And all of that kind of detail we've done for different drugs in different environments where we've used a range of books and leaflets and so on that are all freely available on our website. And we use those as the basis for our advocacy work, which, you know, initially, it was just working with, you know, the public and through the media. But as the debate has progressed over the last 20 years, and, you know, the idea of legally regulating drug markets has moved from the kind of fringes into the mainstream, it's now a thing that is actually happening around the world. So we're now working with governments in a kind of mainstream way. kind of consultancy, uh, role so we're not no we're not no longer just activists or advocates we're actually consultants sitting down with governments and policymakers actually designing uh designing legislation um so things have moved on um clearly there's a long way to go most of the activity's been around cannabis stuff but it is going beyond that now as well i'm sure we can talk about that
Speaker 1that was amazing yeah you've already given us so much there already as to where you're clearly the current system doesn't work and you've you've you've hinted at some of the solutions there as well which we want to get into all of that and i'm glad that you said that you were able to um discuss with us some of the practicalities as to how a new model could actually look in reality and i want to i want to cover all this stuff man i want to really lay out the case here as to why this is just the model that you're going to be proposing is one that just makes much more sense because this is a difficult issue man because as soon as you like if you were to soundbite it as they often do and you know in the newspapers and things if you said hey i want to legalize all drugs immediately most people and probably rightly so we're going to we're going to pull back and say well hang on a second drugs cause so much destruction and harm in people's lives and in society why would you recklessly just make these things legal you know there should be boundaries and resistances in place to to minimize that damage and the exposure to these things but that is not it's not as simple as that as you've clearly laid out and that is not the solution that you're proposing in such a simplistic form either is it you know what you're proposing i think will take the power out of the hands of these organized criminal cartels which will obviously make a difference to the the types of crimes that we see on on our streets and it will bring the victims of addiction and substance abuse closer to the the public health sure aspect of you know treatment and rehabilitation and recovery rather than just simple punishment and then the cycle goes round and
Speaker 2round yeah i mean i i think james i think a good a good um just to help people think about it because i i think you're absolutely right instinctively if you say something like we want to legalize drugs um and people in their minds they associate drugs with all the chaos and harm and addiction and squalor and death and you know people have been watching breaking bad and narcos and um they've seen all those awful tabloid stories about sort of you know addiction and death and young people dying at festivals and all these horrible horrible things associated with drugs they're like why would you want to legalize that and it's kind of actually it's because of all that right that we need to have a different approach it all of those bad things are happening under the current policy um and the current policy is that we need policy is not only not stopping those things happening it's making them worse and it's making them more likely so it is harder to deal with what is essentially a public health and social policy issue it's much harder to deal with it um and and get the help to the people who need it and address the issues of crime and criminality when we are you know criminalizing the people we're trying to help and handing control of this multi-billion pound global market to the worst possible people i.e yeah i mean you know we're trying to help the people who are trying to help you know you're pablo escobars and yeah you're kind of your cartel gangsters we we are what prohibition does what the war on drugs does it doesn't get rid of the drugs it hands control to the worst possible people yeah um and like i say we're not we're not it's not a pro-drug position drugs obviously are risky and are associated with a whole range of different health risks and health harms but the our point of view is if you if you have a public health approach um it enables you to address those harms and it's not just a public health approach it's a public health approach and it's not just a public health approach it's a public health approach it's a public health approach in a more constructive positive way than criminalizing all the people who are who are we're putting at risk most most of whom i should say are tend to be vulnerable people i mean people who tend to get become dependent or addicted on drugs are usually people who have other issues going on in their lives whether it's mental health problems or or poverty or histories of abuse and other things um these are vulnerable people you know the idea that we criminalize and stick them in jail um is completely wrong-headed and you know but it's always also very expensive you know treatment and public health approaches are cheaper so you know even from a completely you know cold uh economic pragmatic point of view um prohibition of war on drugs is very expensive and it doesn't work and imposes costs on everybody um a public health approach is actually aside from anything else more sort of compassionate or social justice arguments it's good value for money you know it delivers better outcomes for less cash
Speaker 1well people always like to hear that one um so that's good and also there are you know there are the social benefits as well i mean you don't need to necessarily know someone or be around someone that has a direct um substance abuse issue or addiction but the effects of the current system are felt by all of us through society and it's very much a kind of um it can be a hidden hand you know so i'm interested to know is there anywhere around the world that we can look to as an example where this new model of complete legalization of drugs across the board has actually been trialed and if so does that give us any data as yet as to whether it's successful what worked what didn't work or anything that we can
Speaker 2learn from okay so the simple answer that is no um no no country or jurisdiction has legalized all drugs but what we are seeing is um a wave of uh cannabis legalization so i guess unsurprisingly cannabis has been the first kind of crack in the sort of prohibitionist damn if you like um i guess it's not surprising cannabis is the most widely used drug in the world the illegal drugs um it's associated with certain risks particularly for for younger people using regularly using the the stronger types of cannabis particularly some mental health risks but but compared to most other drugs it's actually relatively relatively lower risk and i don't want to be accused of sort of defending cannabis but in relative terms you know it's probably less risky than than tobacco and alcohol for example which we're very familiar with in the legal sphere um and it's less risky than cocaine and heroin and most of those sorts of drugs um so and it has it so it has a different sort of cultural uh operate it occupies a slightly different cultural space in that it's not as threatening to the kind of um uh if people don't find it as as as threatening as some of those other drugs because it's less risky and because it's more kind of culturally familiar and it's more widely used so unsurprisingly cannabis has led the charge in terms of legalizing and we're seeing that happening all over the world now so uh uruguay was the first country to legalize um cannabis back in 2012 13 at the same time colorado and washington states in the u.s did it um and they've been followed by 18 there's 18 states in the u.s now so over a third of the entire u.s population is living in legal cannabis jurisdiction including california which is the same size same size economy and population as the uk um canada has legalized and regulated um a number of caribbean countries including jamaica um legalizations moving forward quite fast for cannabis in colombia um and then we've recently we've seen some quite Mexico um a supreme court case cannabis is legalized in mexico and they're still trying to thrash out exactly how it's going to work but that has happened south africa similarly thailand recently legalized cannabis and now we've actually got this wave of cannabis legalization happening uh in europe so we've got a lot of cannabis legalization happening in europe so we've got germany malta luxembourg um the netherlands switzerland um are all in the process uh either have or in the process of establishing legal markets for adult use for not for non-medical use of cannabis so there's a it's a there is an accelerating trend of cannabis regulation and i think uh that's a good thing in itself uh there are lessons from that about how to do it well or how to do it less well uh when the uk gets there or when other countries start to follow follow that trend um but it's also opening up space for the wider debate people are kind of saying well if we if we're going to legalize cannabis why don't we legalize magic mushrooms or why don't we legalize mdma or why don't we legalize something else so it's creating a bit of space uh for the wider debate because people are seeing that you know in these countries that have legalized cannabis things have you know there hasn't been the sort of cannabis apocalypse that some people some of the kind of doom mongers were predicting and in most places it's actually been fairly successful in terms of health and criminal justice outcomes instead of in terms of you know spending resources for police they've got more time to go and do other things um less people are being criminalized uh you know the illegal market and the related problems are shrinking and generally speaking it's been a success now it's easy if you want to go and find some some damning statistics to kind of trawl through and cherry pick some bad stuff to say oh but what some things are always going to go wrong but you know we move on and we learn and we evolve but generally speaking the outcomes have been good and i think that fact has now created an environment where not only is cannabis regulation a much easier thing to discuss in the uk because you can go well look they've done it in california they've done it in canada they've done it in that blah blah blah um it's also creating space to say well yeah what about these other drugs because the same arguments apply i mean yes those other drugs are generally more risky but the same arguments apply people are using them whether we like it or not people are using them anyway you know big tough punitive enforcement isn't deterring use it's just making things worse um maybe a regulated market and a public health focus would um reduce the harms both the users and the wider community so that that that debate is now moving and expanding both geographically and within the issue to other drugs so we're in a kind of sort of golden age i think of the drug policy reform debate where everything is kind of of accelerating and ramping up.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, for sure. Sure. And has there been enough time yet to look at these places which have recently changed their drug policy regarding cannabis? Has there been enough time to actually glean any information or data from those places with regards to, you know, has there been an increase in usage or has there been a drop in associated crimes or anything like that? Is there anything we can learn from it at this point?
Speaker 2Well, it is, like you say, it's fairly early doors. I mean, the first jurisdictions were legalizing cannabis sort of about 10 years ago. And often they would change the law and then they would take a couple of years to actually sort of open the first shops because you have to build your regulatory infrastructure. You have to establish a kind of regulatory body. You have to sort of set up the licensing. It's actually quite a complicated technocratic sort of project. The first shops opened in Colorado in 2014. The first shops opened didn't open in Uruguay until 2017. Canada took about two years, opened about three, three or four years ago. So, yes, we have some data, but and most of it looks looks pretty good. And I can talk about that. But we have to also acknowledge that we are still very much in the rollout phase. Yeah. In most jurisdictions, we're still kind of rolling out this regulatory legal market. And there is there is inevitably a period of transition where people transition from the illegal market into the new licensed legal market because they may already have established dealers or contacts. And those markets, those sort of legacy markets don't necessarily just disappear overnight. Right. So there is a transition period. So, for example, in the in Canada, after one year, about a third of the market had moved to legal supply. And now after three years or over three years. Yeah. Now about three and a half years, we're about fifty five, fifty six, fifty seven percent of the market is now legally regulated. And that does leave over 40 percent is still illegal or unregulated. But, you know, my argument would be, look, there's a clear trajectory there. We're moving towards, you know, it's moving in a positive direction. Right. And 60, 60 percent legally regulated and taxed is better than 100 percent kind of gangster, as it were. Damn right. So there's progress. There's progress. In terms of levels of use, it's a good question. It's a it's a question that always comes up. Surely, if you legalize drugs, more people will use them. Yeah. It's totally understandable risk. But if you actually look at what happens, I mean, because drugs are fairly easily available anyway. I mean, anyone who wants to get cannabis in the UK, it's just not that difficult. In fact, any drugs. I mean, you can get like, you know, WhatsApp menus of drugs and you just tap in your request and it'll be delivered on a moped. Yeah. Within within half an hour, you know, quicker than a pizza arriving. So it's not difficult to get drugs. The idea that drugs would suddenly become available if they were legal. Yeah. And they're not available now. It's just it's just a misconception. Drugs are freely available now, basically to anybody who wants them. Yes, there may be some minor inconveniences. But once you've you know, if you get an established dealer, which is not very difficult thing to do, drugs become very, very easily available. And the illegal market, if nothing else, has shown it. It's incredibly good at getting drugs to people who want them because they're so profitable. You know, there's money to be made there. And organized crime groups are nothing if not entrepreneurial and they're very flexible and they're very they're very good business people. So, you know, I think that's that's the important first thing to challenge is it's not so much that if you legalize drugs, they would be more available. The question the difference would be we would we. As in we, the regulators, the policymakers, we would be in charge of that availability. So we would start to be able to do things like things that we do with alcohol and tobacco and pharmaceutical drugs, for example. So you could have age access controls. You could say, OK, you can only buy cannabis if you're over 18 or over 20 or over 21 or whatever it is we decided. You can say that the cannabis shops can only be open here, here and here and they can't be near schools or they can't. They can't be near playgrounds or maybe they can't. They can be online retail only, for example, you know, we would get to make these decisions. Yeah, you could determine opening hours. You could determine things like are they allowed to market and advertise? And our answer to that would be no, they're not. Just like we banned alcohol, we banned tobacco advertising and branding on packaging. We think that something like legal cannabis shouldn't be able to advertise and market as a sort of lifestyle that, you know, commodity. Yeah. And we don't want cannabis brands sponsoring football teams like we have with alcohol and like we had with amazingly like we have with tobacco in the past. Yeah. We don't want cocaine brands sponsoring club nights and things or festivals or ecstasy brands. So you can just ban all those things. You just don't allow it. We've done that very successfully with tobacco. You don't see tobacco marketing or advertising anywhere. We don't allow pharmaceutical medicines to advertise to consumers. You know, we can do these things and we have done them. And you can learn from how we regulate lots of other things, lots of other risky products and activities. We actually regulate them pretty well, not necessarily as well as we might for certain things. I don't think, for example, we regulate alcohol particularly well. No, I wouldn't. I wouldn't. Were I in charge, if you made me king of the world, I wouldn't be allowing the level of advertising sponsorship for alcohol that we see like for like sponsoring sports events. And things, you know, like the Euros are sponsored by Heineken, I think, which is ridiculous. You're associating a dangerous, highly addictive drug that kills thousands of people and feels all kinds of violence and social problems. You allowing them to sponsor a major sports event that is watched by tens of millions of children. And I think that's absolutely ridiculous. Like Strongbow Cider sponsored the British Olympic team in Rio. You know, Strongbow Cider. It's not even nice cider. Not even nice. If it had been nice cider, it might have been more accommodating. But seriously, you know, you don't want that kind of thing to happen. So you put controls on advertising and marketing. You put controls on who has access to the market. You could control the price and the packaging. You can you can insist that you could you can mandate that you would have health warnings and dosage information and harm reduction information would be on the packaging, like when you buy when you get over the counter drugs in a pharmacist. And in fact, you could have the sales model would be a bit more like a pharmacist, but the vendor who you buy it off would be a trained individual who could give you advice about dosage and safety and drug services and, you know, how to harm reduction. They would say, make sure you stay hydrated if you have this ecstasy pill or, you know, don't mix this cocaine with, you know, alcohol. And other stimulants and or, you know, don't exercise the kind of targeted health information that can genuinely reduce harm and reduce drug related deaths could be mandated on the packaging of the of the drugs themselves. And it would be related to the dosage of the drugs, which you would know because it was a legal product, unlike a random pill or powder you buy in a nightclub or something. And the vendor would be like a pharmacist trained to give you advice and guidance. And in that way, you don't eliminate the risks of drugs because you never can. I mean, you know, everything involves a certain degree of risk, but you can manage and reduce it. So we would get less drug related deaths. We would have less dependency. And when people did would get into problems with with their drug use and that, you know, inevitably, that is still going to happen to some degree. They wouldn't be scared of seeking asking for help or going to drug services because they were afraid of, you know, legal consequences because these things wouldn't be crimes anymore. And they should never. They're not. You can argue that drug use is reckless or stupid or foolhardy or immoral even. But it's not a crime in the classic sense. You know, you know, you can do risky things as an individual and as an adult. You can make consenting choices to participate in risky, risky activities. And it's not a crime. You know, you can have unsafe sex. You can eat unhealthy food. You can do dangerous sports. We don't criminalize those things. And sex is actually a good analogy. So, you know, we don't we don't criminalize having sex without condoms. We encourage people to use condoms to avoid sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies. But it's like looking at young people and sex. You know, we don't say to young people, well, some people do say you shouldn't be having sex. We've got to deal with reality. The young people are going to have sex anyway. And we encourage them to practice safe sex. And so they don't get pregnant and STDs and all the rest of it. Yeah. So it's a pragmatism. It's a pragmatic point of view. It's a again, I come back to it. It's a it's a we're trying to deal with reality and be pragmatic. Yeah. You can't get rid of drugs. Let's regulate them to try and make them safer for everybody.
Speaker 1It makes so much sense, man. Honestly, I mean, anybody listening to this now, even even if they're of a completely opposing view, I'm sure they can see the sense and the logic of this. It just makes sense. I mean, you don't have to be a drug user yourself or, you know, you don't you don't have to be, you know, a liberal progressive or something like that. But this is just based on, you know. Hard facts and practicality and a knowledge of what doesn't work for the intended aims and what clear. really does you know and it's just a much more mature compassionate practical you know realistic and and affordable approach to to drug reform and drug regulation than the one that we've been currently dragging around for god knows how
Speaker 2long yeah and i didn't i something i always say to people people go oh no i don't do that i'm anti-drug i'm like well you can you can be completely anti-drug and still be in favor of uh drug law reform it's the two things aren't incompatible you can think drug use is stupid you can think drug you know people shouldn't use drugs particularly young people yeah um but but still but still acknowledge that what we're doing at the moment doesn't work and a more pragmatic uh approach including ending criminalization of users and regulated markets would would be better you know you see one of the things that one of the things i think people don't realize and i mentioned the money thing earlier but we spend a lot of money fighting the war on drugs uh and you know you talk about billions here and there for um you know different things there's a lot of debate given the economic situation we're in at the moment about you know where are we going to find the money for to pay for you know the nhs or social care or education or all these things but we're spending about seven billion a year in this country a year fighting the war on drugs wow and that is money that uh you know is delivering dismal outcomes so we spend about seven million pounds a year uh fighting the war on drugs but that is creating billions more in costs in other in other areas so drug related health problems drug related addiction drug related death drug related crime it places an enormous burden on all of society um and and so we're spending money to create new costs and harm society it makes no sense and just a fraction of that seven billion if we if we put it into uh you know seven billion we're spending on stuff that we know doesn't work why don't we spend a small amount of that on stuff that we know does work so things like effective treatment for people who have drug problems yeah effective drug education for to so people understand the risk to make more sensible choices you know giving investing in young people so that they have cool stuff to do um and they're less likely to get involved in problematic drug use in the first place these aren't there's no mystery here this is all you know in the same way that the war on drugs is deeply unscientific and deeply you know un-evidence based all the kind of public health interventions treatment harm reduction prevention education those things we know that they work we know that they work and there's good evidence so let's spend our money on doing that instead of fighting this endless futile war on drugs that just simply doesn't work and it's not just it hasn't doesn't work here it's never worked anywhere right even in countries where there's a lot of people who are working on drugs and they're working on drugs and they're working on drugs and they're working on drugs where they execute people and you get like ridiculous life sentences or public flogging like in in uh you know saudi arabia or you get executed and or whipped in singapore and death penalty in china and you know brutal enforcement regimes you know tens of thousands of people killed in the drug war in philippines just in the last few years alone um extrajudicial murders you know just grim horrible horrible uh full-on you know not non-metaphorical war on drugs policies um they still have terrible drug problems so you know this whole idea that somehow if only we fought the drug war a bit harder if we ramped up our punishment all disappeared yeah blogged a few more cannabis uses it would somehow all suddenly start where it wouldn't we there's countries they've gone super hardcore um and it they still have massive just as bad drug problem arguably worse because of all the other things are saying tends it tends to make it worse and of course the people who end up being victims of drugs are the people who end up being victims of drugs and this is another really important point um it tends to be the more vulnerable or or sort of socially and economically marginalized members of society right so it it tends to be people from socially deprived uh communities it tends to be young people uh women lgbt people uh you know black youth in particular famously black black youth in the uk are grotesquely overrepresented in the criminal justice system in terms of drug enforcement yeah and they're not going to be you're 10 times more likely to be stopped and searched if you're black in the uk yeah um and once you're if you're arrested once you're arrested you're 10 times more likely to get um uh more punitive sanctions so you know it's not you know on top of all of those other harms and costs um it it's fueling you know it's it's a it's a path it's a it's a particularly acute conduit for institutional racism right and disproportionate policing so you know i could problems and harms forever but that is a particularly acute one in the uk particularly you know in in the cities dude
Speaker 1you are on fire today man yeah
Speaker 2sorry sorry i'm ranting you're
Speaker 1riffing dude it's what you're doing you're preaching man jesus christ i'm and i'm loving it i'm looking at my questions and you were just smashing through them okay
Speaker 2no but i mean pick me up on it if you if i'm not if i'm not being clear on anything hey not at all man not at all you know i do understand that particularly for people who haven't you know come to this issue and any detail it is quite counterintuitive i do get that and i do have these conversations a lot and you know to say to say to people who are you know who may have had like family members have problems with drugs or they may have lost people to drugs or they may have had drug problems themselves to then say i want to legalize that particular drug that caused that harm to you yeah it can really you know it can be it's not surprising people push back against it but when you try works and stopping doing what we know makes everything worse people do generally kind of come around to it even even for the more difficult challenging ideas like like regulating some of the more dangerous drugs and i'm up for talking about that as well what that means in practice because i think that is to people kind of go yeah cannabis i kind of get that but you mad cocaine heroin you mad yeah um so i think it's probably might be worth having a little think about the talk about what that would mean in practice as well
Speaker 1definitely i'm glad that you mentioned that because i did want to raise that with you at some point because we've spoken about you know recreational drug use but you know i don't really think that is the problem is it i mean people going out on the weekend and you know dropping some ecstasy tablets or you know people you know smoking a few joints in the night or whatever or even people going out on the weekend and doing a few lines of cocaine or whatever these are not the problems are they when it becomes a problem is when addiction and substance abuse starts wrecking people's lives and the lives of their families and society around them yeah so how do the harder substances such as you know heroin and cocaine and the much more addictive and destructive substances like that factor into the new model that you're proposing right so i
Speaker 2think that's a really good question which i kind of queued you up for um that what we're talking about when we talk about regulating drugs we're not talking about all drugs being available in corner shops or all drugs being available in in the same form of uh regulated availability so for lower for for the lower risk drugs like cannabis it might be a bit more like alcohol tobacco where you'd have licensed vendors uh like what you see like what we see now in in places like canada yeah i don't like some of the more commercialized type cannabis uh retail models that you see in some some u.s states but um essentially it would be a form of licensed retailing a bit more like alcohol and tobacco um we've proposed for sort of what you might call medium risk drugs so drugs that can get are more likely to get people into problems but don't necessarily uh if they're used in more sort of more moderate uh ways things like ecstasy cocaine amphetamines kind of the lsd the kind of party drugs or festival drugs that we you were talking about some people using problematically that more commonly they're used fairly infrequently and moderately um we've we've proposed a kind of pharmacy model there so it's kind of what i was talking about earlier where you you would have a uh something a bit more like a pharmacy where you would go in you it would be an over-the-counter retailing and the person who is selling it to you would be a trained individual like a pharmacist who would be trained to give you advice on health and dosage and harm reduction and safety and so on um and you would get a a a rationed amount for personal use of a drug in pharmaceutical packaging there wouldn't be any marketing or uh promotions or sponsorship or anything like that so it would be it would be a fairly functional uh retail experience a bit like buying you know painkillers in a in a pharmacist right in a pharmacy now for the most dangerous drugs things like um injectable heroin for example um i think it's actually useful to point to the fact that people in the uk can already be prescribed so people who are dependent on heroin or have had long long histories of heroin use and have failed on substitute drugs like methadone they can actually already be prescribed injectable heroin yeah so that already happens in the uk and it happens within a medical model so it doesn't need legalization as such because it's it's comes under medicine so these drugs aren't illegal cocaine heroin ketamine amphetamines they're all legal medical drugs already so there is already legal legal production of all of those drugs um so you would get pharmaceutical heroin is prescribed to people who are dependent on it and they're not going to be prescribed to people who are who have been long-term heroin users and have failed another the treatment models and that is effectively your legal heroin model and it already exists we don't actually need to legalize her and it's already legal and it's already given to certain dependent users now there are different models some people um historically would just get it as a takeaway drug and they could use it at home uh there's what's known kind of as the swiss model where you would go to a kind of clinic you drop into a clinic twice a day and you use the you use the heroin on site under medical supervision so if you do have a problem if you did have an overdose or you have a sort of some kind of adverse event there'll be someone there to look after you now that that that is actually a a model it's funnily enough it's called the british system and it's been present in the uk since back in the since the 1920s in the wollaston community and we've been prescribing heroin for almost 100 years in this country so that is not a new idea at all and it has a very good evidence base for it because if you're prescribed heroin you're not using dirty heroin you're using heroin of unknown of known strength and purity with clean needles so immediately you're not getting overdoses you're not getting infections you're not injecting weird drugs that you don't know what they are and you're not you're not getting hiv and hepatitis from sharing needles so a lot of the health problems that are you know in people's minds associated with heroin aren't actually anything to do with heroin they're to do with using illegal heroin in illegal environments got you so shooting up in a dirty back street with a dirty needle using dirty drugs you know it's inevitably going to be very very risky whereas using a pharmaceutical heroin and a medical supervision is actually very very safe right so again it's not the drug in this case i'm not saying heroin is is is isn't dangerous it clearly isn't it's very addictive but a lot of the harms uh associated with it are because it's you it's illegal and used in these kind of illegal environments so if you want as soon as you prescribe it people stop dying uh people stop getting transmitting hiv and hepatitis um people aren't using in the streets anymore they're not leaving uh needles in playgrounds and pavements and so on which i know fully understandably upsets a lot of people um and crucially because they're not having to raise loads of money to pay the overinflated price of illegal street heroin they stop or they dramatically reduce their offending so we know for example that people who use uh heroin and crack um are responsible for a disproportionate amount of um acquisitive property crime so street robberies burglary shoplifting and so on basically to raise money to pay for their to fuel their habit yeah if you if they get there if they get their heroin on prescription it's not actually a particularly expensive drug to manufacture it's only only becomes really expensive through the profiteering of the illegal trade if you give people those on prescriptions they stop stealing stuff or they stop committing crime or fraud or whatever it is to raise money to buy the heroin now it's not not every heroin user is committing offenses but they're disproportionate they are responsible for disproportionate as much as half of all kind of acquisitive property crime according to some estimates so but when you prescribe them they stop stealing stuff so everybody everybody benefits the community benefits we get we we we reduce street injecting and drug litter we reduce acquisitive property crime we reduce the health costs of dealing with hiv and hepatitis and overdoses and so on um and that model exists now so we don't even need to regulate we don't even need to legalize heroin it's already legal and that is already happening now in the uk i think it's it and it's very successful it's multiple countries around the world do it and it's been around for decades and decades so there's a very strong evidence base for giving giving legal heroin free to people who are addicted to heroin so there's a very strong evidence base for giving giving legal heroin free to people who are addicted to heroin so there's a very strong evidence base for giving giving legal heroin free to people who are addicted to heroin so there's a very strong evidence base for giving giving legal heroin free to people who are addicted to heroin even again it's you can understand when you say something like that it's incredibly counterintuitive what are you talking why would you give people heroin are you mad but then you look at the outcomes in terms of reduced death improved health reduced crime reduced drug litter reduced street injecting improved community safety you know reduced profits to organized crime groups and it's all good and also you know reduced profits to organized crime groups and it's all good and also crucially once you've got those people through the door and you're in contact with them regularly in many cases every day they're then in contact with health professionals who can give them access to other services right but they can help them with their housing they can help them with their employment they can get them counseling for their mental health problems and they've actually statistically it's shown they're much more likely to then get into uh long-term recovery and rehabilitation so ironically giving people free heroin is actually a very good way of getting them off heroin in the longer term because you get them into contact with services and when they're ready because they've dealt with some of their other issues um they will then use those rehabilitation services so you know it's one of those again counterintuitive things give out free heroin um you actually have less people using heroin and it's what they found in switzerland one of the things was that a lot of people who use heroin were user dealers so they would sell heroin right to fund their use yeah and part of that part of that was about recruiting new people now once you take those people out of the loop they're no longer you don't no longer have these user dealers recruiting new users and so you have a kind of aging population of heroin users and you don't get this kind of inflow of of uh younger users so you know since they start prescribing heroin in switzerland the number of people using injecting heroin has gone right down it's dropped by almost half you know and so this is what i mean about it being counterintuitive you start prescribing heroin less people use heroin like what what that doesn't make sense but it's it is true and the data's all there and and and just on that particular one we don't even need to have a debate around legalizing it because it's already legal and already happening
Speaker 1in the uk that's amazing man i did not know that uh much of my shame i should have but things get lost you know in amongst the noise of the spin and the misinformation and the arguing and the you know the right-wing headlines but that's actually a very enlightened and forward-thinking approach and to think that we've been doing that for 100 years is pretty awesome i think
Speaker 2yeah well and and actually that that that same thinking is increasingly spreading to other drugs so in the uk as well we do also prescribe amphetamines to people who are dependent on amphetamines um and one of the things that people do is they will try and prescribe uh safer preparation so if someone's uh you know injecting amphetamines you would give them uh oral amphetamine pills instead so you say look you you can have the drug but maybe have it in the safer preparation because injecting is intrinsically more more risky yeah um and you know there's their efforts and sometimes you would give people substitute drugs so if someone's um uh you know using methamphetamine you might say well try these amphetamine sulfate tablets because they're a bit less potent and they're longer acting and you'll be using it less frequently you won't have that kind of rollercoaster and they'll crash and then another rush and they crash and um we do that with heroin as well so a lot of people who are depending on heroin get prescribed methadone which is a sort of safer oral preparation so you so you stop them injecting but some people it doesn't work for those are the people who who tend to get prescribed um injectable heroin but the the the thinking is kind of spreading to other drugs so people most including stimulant drugs and also things like benzodiazepines right the people are dependent on things like the benzodiazepines like valium kind of downers like um you prescribe them a certain amount controlled dose um and then you can you know hopefully slowly wean them off it but it stops them using uh street benzodiazepines which are things like itazolam these ones that aren't aren't prescribed drugs um but are very potent and very dangerous and you know unknown potency but very very cheap and you can get a great handful of these things for a fiver you get like 20 of these pills for a fiver and each one of them will you know knock you out for 14 um you know the people who are getting really badly into benzodiazepines can be prescribed them and people who are you know misusing uh crack the smoking crack for example you know is there some way that they could be prescribed um a substitute stimulant so there's lots of different uh threads to the kind of harm reduction safe supply prescribing route but generally that's what we're talking about for the most risky drugs and drug preparation you basically move it into more of a kind of supervised medical sphere rather than a more kind of conventional recreational retail model yeah that makes a lot
Speaker 1of sense and exactly like you said i mean at that point it becomes much more a conversation about how we treat people in our society who are substance addicted um rather than punishing them yeah it becomes a conversation about recovery help support rehabilitation and if they're getting their substances from a regulated certified professional you know health practitioner as such then they're already one step closer to the service that can actually give them the treatment and the help that they need to help them recover and rebuild their lives rather than being forced out of society and into the into the wilderness to kind of you know fend for themselves and we all know how
Speaker 2that ends yeah i mean one of the one of the sort of um catchphrases of the reform movement is support don't punish right um that you you you know you offer support and you you stop punishing people because it's it's a carrot and stick argument and unfortunately they're doing it wrong the stick just doesn't work you know the stick tends to end up being used to beat people who are already damaged you know people you're just hurting them more these are often vulnerable people with multiple other health and mental health history issues histories of abuse and so on these are people who need support and the idea that you would then punish them or further marginalize them or even worse imprison them right you know put put damaged people with mental health problems in in a cage for 23 hours a day um you know in a traumatic environment at prison people talk about prison being a great great place to get off drugs i mean that's just absolute rubbish absolute rubbish it's a terrible place to get off drugs because not only is it incredibly boring and traumatic and drugs is probably the thing you would want in that kind of environment um if you fill up a prison with you know people who are dependent on drugs and people who have a history of selling drugs and then you the the prison is staffed by poorly paid poorly motivated prison staff don't be surprised that prisons are absolutely swimming with drugs right and they are i mean everybody knows that and the data bears that out um drugs are absolutely full of prisons partly because we fill them up with with drug users and drug dealers it's not surprising there's drugs in there
Speaker 1well even if you were like a small time user that just got caught up in a situation and ended up in prison you suddenly then you're connected to a much broader base of you know peers and suppliers and whatever you know you can come back even worse i mean 40
Speaker 2there was a shocking statistic is that 14 of people who go into prison who don't have a drug dependency or drug addiction they leave prison with one wow so we're not not not only are we not curing or not curing and you're not addressing people's problems but we're not curing people's problems and we're not curing people's problems and we're not curing people's problems and we're not curing people's problems and we're not curing people's problems and we're not curing people's problems and we're not curing people's problems and we're fueling it we're creating new populations of problematic drug users because you know if you you're stuck in a tiny six by ten cell for 23 hours a day and someone says here do you want some drugs it's like you you would probably oh yeah think about it because you'd be so bored out of your mind you know and unstimulated and and you know what what yeah so it prison's just an app is it and it's shockingly expensive you know it costs like 45 000 pounds a year to put someone in prison you could put you could put someone up in the ritz hotel for less than that jesus think how much think how much drug treatment and drug education and drug harm reduction you could fund with that 45 grand and that person will come out of prison and be more likely to use drugs and more likely to re-offend because they've got a criminal record and they carry around the stigma of a prison sentence with them yeah it's really hard to get a job it's really hard to get housing if you've got a criminal record right so by criminalizing people in britain in prison we make problematic drug use and addiction and dependence on drugs and we're not curing people's problems and we're not curing people's problems and we're not curing people's problems um and re-offending more likely not less it's just it's it's staggeringly stupid it's just bewildering to me after all this time to see that we still carry on doing it and i it's just that drugs seems to have got sucked into this populist law and order tough on crime yeah narrative and there's a bit seems like there's a bit of a bidding war between the tories and the labour party member who can be toughest on drugs we're the party of law and order yeah um and and drugs just get sucked into that in a way it should not be it just shouldn't be there it's a health issue i mean there's a bigger issue about sentencing in prisons more broadly but really we should not be putting vulnerable people with drug dependencies in prison at all ever i mean it's just the wrong place for that makes so much sense doesn't work it's it's expensive and completely counterproductive so yeah all of these things i think there's a growing awareness of all this by the way i think if you look at the the polling and the opinion surveys you can see a clear trend that you know acknowledgement that the war on drugs doesn't work and it's counterproductive is growing that's that's sort of a majority almost a consensus view now um where there isn't a consensus is about what to do about that so there is still this small pocket of kind of reactionary commentators who say what we need to do is fight the drug war harder you know put longer sentences and more police and more busts and um get really tough and you know there is there is still that uh viewpoint and there is still that uh viewpoint and there is still that viewpoint out there but i think it's kind of shriveling away because i think people see that that is part of the problem it's not it's not part of the solution
Speaker 1yeah so is there a feel for has there been any research done into the public mood on this issue yeah
Speaker 2there has actually i mean you get you there's periodic opinion polls it's quite difficult to compare them because often the wording is slightly different right you can see um support for uh decriminalization when i say decriminalization i mean ending criminal sanctions for personal possession of drugs and use so not this is different from legalization and regulation markets just so this is just ending criminal sanctions for users um that enjoys majority support now it kind of depends how you ask the question how you frame it and what terminology is because if you just say decriminalized drugs people often think you're talking about legalizing and regulating drug markets we're not decriminalizing drugs it means ending criminal sanctions for people who use drugs so if you're caught in possession you could get a fine or a treatment assessment or something but you won't get a criminal record so it'd be dealt with more like a speeding offense or something right um and support for that if you frame it in those terms is actually a majority so people get that criminalizing users is kind of stupid and counterproductive um support for legalizing cannabis is routinely um at or near 50 percent now so we're approaching majority or have achieved majority support for legalizing cannabis and i think that's largely to do with and canada and all these other countries are doing it in germany and everywhere people see that it's it's kind of normalized that debate and given it some kind of credibility and um authority so support that's continued to grow and in london it's 63 so in in sort of the in your more kind of metropolitan areas i guess where levels of cannabis use are higher or where people are maybe a bit more liberal yeah um you you see high even higher levels of support so we're we're we've got majority support for legalizing cannabis and i think that's largely to do with legalizing cannabis decriminalization of users we've got at or approaching or or in in some cases comfortably into majority support for legalizing cannabis um and there's also a broad consensus the war on drugs doesn't work so we are definitely getting there but if you then say should we legalize cocaine yes no you'll get about 15 yes right but if you said you know if you if or if you say should we legalize heroin you'd get like five percent you know hardly anyone thinks it but that's because people think about having it available in sainsbury's whereas if you say should people who have failed in other forms of treatment uh be available able to access a pharmacy to grade heroin for use uh in a clinical setting on a medical supervision uh and if you you know if you frame it in those slightly more nuanced terms and talk about heroin prescribing you do get support right you do get majority support for it um and so a lot of it is about how the questions are framed and how how we how we talk about these things if you just say legalized drugs and people don't really know what you're talking about their their their misunderstandings and misconceptions will fill that void got you and if people think you're talking about you know crack vending machines in primary schools yeah obviously they're going to push back on it but if you talk about you know a tiered system of responsible regulation controlled by appropriate public health authorities giving rationed amounts in unbranded packaging to uh responsible adults people start to get it and people start to what you know okay i see that that that is preferable to you know um pablo escobar and yes breaking bad and all the rest of it yeah so we're definitely making progress um and you can see that is reflected in things like sadiq khan the mayor of london had had kind of a cannabis reform as part of his election platform and he won you know and he was up against comment what the guy's name the tory guy he was very much against that and you know sadiq khan won it and it for me it was a sign of the changing times that for him uh taking a cannabis reform position had become a political asset rather than a political liability yeah um so that to me that shows how the times are changing and i think you know it would be great if some if some politicians just showed leadership you know if they they actually made the case made the argument and some do you know fair play to the green party and the lib dems and some of the other smaller parties who've had pretty sensible positions on on some of these issues for a long time yeah um you know and they they are showing that leadership but um we're not seeing it from labor or the conservative party even though there are you know out of you know public support amongst mps for legalization regulation of drugs in both parties um it's interesting actually that it's not it's not drug law reform isn't the preserve of left or right in any way there are supporters and opponents within labor and within the tories and there are drug law reform all party sorry party you know conservative party drug law reform group as a labor party drug law from group a lib dem party drug law reform group right it hasn't seemed to have got sucked into that partisan politics or the kind of ugly culture wars crap that we we tend to dominate so much political debate and i'm very glad about that i i like the fact that it's cross-party even though some you know there's there are some dreadful reactionary right-wing types who support legalizing drugs you know people like guido forks and nigel farage and fabricant and you know tom harwood and you know delling polls some of these some of these people who on almost every other issue i violently disagree and i think in many cases completely awful people but they support legalizing drugs just in just the same way as you know people on the left and people in the center and everywhere else so it's a good thing about it that um people can understand the arguments across the political
Speaker 1spectrum damn right well i'm a member of the green party so big up to the greens but um i mean it sounds like you know socially and in terms of the collective consciousness on this we are moving in a much more progressive direction but as always you know the machinery of government is kind of like 100 years behind the rest of us so are you um confident and hopeful for the future or are we still stuck in a political gridlock that isn't likely to move anytime soon well it's tricky one
Speaker 2i mean this government i think i think many people in government and certainly within the civil service and the home office and so on and i deal with a lot of these people they do understand the arguments they understand the failings of the status quo they've seen the evidence from other places around the world that some of these different types of reform and pragmatic public health based responses deliver better outcomes and they do get it um but i think many of them particularly in the current government uh and unfortunately the labour opposition um who are sort of obviously in a kind of i don't know kind of bit of a bit of a law and order arms race with the tories at the moment yeah yeah um they're terrified of the political conflict and they're terrified of the political conflict and they're terrified of the political consequences they're terrified that you know in the consequence in in the context of you know if you've been investing in these drug war narratives you know about about um uh you know a war on drugs and drugs are bad and we must fight them and um and they're terrified that in that context um that many of them have been investing in those narratives for decades if you if you start to move away from them and start to about reform you'll somehow be portrayed as weak or surrendering waving the white flag in the war on drugs and all the kind of narratives that politicians are very very afraid of that no no politician wants to be portrayed as weak yeah even i mean i don't think a reform position is weak at all i think it's a sign of strength and confidence to do do the right thing because you think it will work for your constituents and the people you represent but um they're afraid of the political consequences even when they understand the arguments intellectually right but i think if you look you know the fact that the polling is moving towards majority support and the majority support and the majority support and the majority support and the support for decriminalization cannabis at least um i started to change it change that equation um and and sadiq khan as i said it's quite a good example that you know he took a reform platform because the polling showed that it was popular in london um it would be great to have some leadership but i think what we have to do really in the absence of that leadership we have to show we have to make the keep making the arguments until public opinion and media opinion and you know the media opinion and media opinion and you know the media opinion and media opinion and you know the media opinion and media opinion and media opinion and media opinion and media opinion and you know the leading podcasts um start to make that argument for us and change public opinion so that it becomes you know reform a pragmatic reform platform becomes a political asset rather than a political liability and i think we are approaching that kind of tipping point now i think you know i don't think in this government i mean this obviously this is a very chaotic government and there's been covid and brexit and yeah this government sort of collapsing around us but you know i think the the next government hopefully will be more stable whether it's a labor tory or coalition or something else um and hopefully there will be more space once the kind of multiple crises of of brexit and covid and cost of living hopefully have receded a bit i mean you're almost any other subject any other policy area has struggled to get yeah right struggle for oxygen in the last couple of years just because of all these crazy things that have been going on um but hopefully uh when things settle down um and people can look at where where this public debate is up to and where the evidence base is pointing um i i think we are i think we're at a sort of fork in the road and and we're about to make a turn for the better and so what
Speaker 1can anybody listening to this now then that's been inspired by what you've said today what can they do to get involved in help i mean is is it simply a matter of lobbying your mp or is that really not enough yeah
Speaker 2i mean i think the thing to do is to talk about it with your friends with your families with your with your with your professional networks um just just just talk about it educate yourself do some reading there's loads of great material on the transform website there's loads of other ngos who do and civil society groups who do really good stuff on this and produce a range of um of literature and discussion documents and essays and blogs for you know and it's pitched all different levels there is all the very technical academic stuff but there's a lot of stuff that's been done and there's a lot there's also just a more discursive uh chatty material just educate yourself about about the issue and about the options and yes absolutely go and talk to your mps or your local councillors or any of your local policy makers they are we pay their wages they are there to serve us they work for us we should never forget it with your mp you pay their wages and their job is to represent you in parliament and you have an absolute right to go and talk to them about whatever the hell you like i would encourage you to talk to them about this issue explain what it means to you what you would like to see um explain the problems you see with the status quo um and uh you know explain some of the things that you'd like to see them looking at and you don't have to be like a massive world expert on this by all means point them to um some of the transform resources if you want to you can ring up transform and we can talk you talk you through it we can send you some literature um we can even potentially join you and we can send you some literature and we can send you some literature and come with you to visit your mp so wow you know supporting getting engaging your policy makers is really really important i mean there's lots of other things you can do we have a range of different campaigning activities and advocacy activities um we're also a charity so you know financial support donations large or small are obviously also welcome um and yeah there's a bunch of projects campaigning advocacy stuff and you can go and read about it on our website and there are we're not the only uh organization working in the space also but there are brilliant organizations like volt fast and release and drug science and beckley foundation and international drug policy consortium and that's just in the uk harm reduction international international network of people who use drugs um that they all have they all occupy slightly different spaces within the debate but they're all all very good very active um yeah so just just get involved read more learn more speak to your local policy makers support the uh ngos that are doing work that you think is cool um and and use us as a resource to transform website transformdrugs.org it's there as a resource for you um to support you uh you know building up your knowledge and expertise in these issues and and supporting you in advocacy work with your with policy makers or your professional arena or anything else so do use us as a resource
Speaker 1that's absolutely amazing and for anybody listening to that um who does want to get involved i'll be putting all of the links that um steve just mentioned into the podcast description text so whether you get the podcast on youtube or spotify or apple look through the episode notes and you'll get the links there i'll also give you guys a little reminder at the end as well once we've let steve go as to where you can find out more about steve and transform and their amazing cause but steve speaking of letting you go before i do that there was one thing i wanted to mention at some point which is the global impact of this because there's a victim in this that we haven't talked about for a long time and i think it's a very important point and i think it's a very important point and i think it's a very important point and i think it's a very important point and i think countries you know the countries where these drugs are manufactured places such as columbia and afghanistan where where these drugs such as cocaine and heroin are produced under such horrific and barbaric slave conditions i mean if you want to talk about a sweatshop product then it doesn't get worse than that you know and not only are very very poor people at the mercy of these disgraceful crimes cartels but they're also the victim of our war on drugs you know they're the ones that are getting sprayed from it and they're the ones that are getting sprayed from it and they're the ones airplanes with you know crop killing chemicals you know by the american government etc whilst they're out there just trying to you know earn their daily keep for fear of getting their hand cut off if they don't or something you know it's pretty brutal out there um so how would that factor into the model that you've been talking about today where if we had a fully legalized system in the west where consumption mostly takes place what would the knock-on effect be then for the producer countries in the third world where these products actually come from
Speaker 2well it's i'm really glad you asked that james it's a really good question it's an incredibly important uh area of drug policy i think it's very easy to have a very parochial view that you know our that we need to sort our drug policy to deal with crime and addiction and whatnot in in the uk and forget that a large amount of the drugs that are consumed they do come from elsewhere around the world um and those areas are in many ways the problems that those areas face eclipse the eclipse the problems that we face by a huge margin so in in mexico for example drug war related violence um is causing is leading to more than 10 000 uh murders violent deaths a month what a month not a year a month right um and that's just one country you know okay a particularly bad one on the front line of the war on drugs um and it's not that's not just the uk obviously most of the America or being produced in Mexico, going to North America. But you know, the, the, The war on drugs is very much a non-metaphorical war in those countries. Places like Colombia, you have millions of people displaced. You have cartels dominating entire regions and undermining good governance and security and fueling violence and conflict and civil wars and just total chaos. Places like Afghanistan, as you say, the opium economy is funded, all kinds of militias and terrorist groups and violence and instability and insecurity. And it's not just in the producer countries, it's in the transit countries as well. So the drugs coming from Latin America to Europe, a lot of them transit through West Africa. Places like Guinea-Bissau, these are very weak state infrastructure, very vulnerable countries. Economically vulnerable anyway, and they've been absolutely devastated by the illegal drug economy. So, yes, absolutely. When we think about the harms of our drug policies, we have to think about the wider international impacts and how awful they are. We also need to think about those places when we come to the reform agenda, because what we don't want to do, because one of the things that I think is important to point out is that those drug economies, it's not all Pablo Escobar people. Most of the people working in those in drug production transit. Are poor people who have got very few economic options. So they're often displaced people, they're migrants, they're socially and economically marginalized people. And when we reform our drugs, we can't just ignore them and hang them out to dry. We have to find ways to build a kind of. Peace process, if you like, to kind of where that has some kind of economic reconstruction in it, and we look we need to look at sustainable development for those communities and help those people who. Have used illegal drug markets as a sort of survival economy, a form of economic survival. We need to we need to look after those people as well. So we have to have a kind of development dimension built into our drug law reform program so that the millions of people who are involved in illegal drug production are not just abandoned because they're not all Pablo Escobar's. Many of them are poor, displaced migrants, marginalized communities. Who who who deserve our attention as well. But I think you're absolutely right that the harms of the war on drugs impact on those places even even more negatively than they do for us in the UK. And it's absolutely right that we think about them in terms of the harms of our current policy, but also in terms of we think about them when we get to the reform process as well.
Speaker 1Well, I think if the product that they're producing was it was a legal product and didn't have to come through these criminal networks. I think that would have a knock on effect. That down to the whole chain, wouldn't it? Because it's only the same as what we do with chocolate or coffee or anything like that.
Speaker 2You know, I mean, I mean, occasionally I have that when I've been talking about the idea of illegal cocaine market, people say, ha, ha, ha, you want organic fair trade trade. And I'm like, yes, I do. Yeah. What what kind do you want? Yeah. So I'm like, yeah, if that's if it's if it's organic fair trade cocaine or chemically polluted, you know, unfairly traded gangster cocaine, I think I'll take the first first one. Thanks. And it's the debate is happening. This debate is happening around the world that there is a bill in the Colombian Senate now and something that we've been working on being debated in the Colombian Senate to have a legal coca leaf market. But coca leaf is the leaf that cocaine is extracted from, but also to have a legal a pilot legal cocaine market in Colombia. They are debating it. So it's not just a sort of fantasy anymore. It's it's these are ideas that are being debated. They are being debated in national legislations that cocaine legalization is being proposed and debated in the Colombian Senate right now. That's amazing. And it may not it may not pass in its current form, but it shows how far the debates come that it's, you know, and how bad things are that they are. They've got to point where that is actually seriously being debated in national governments around the world. So I think there's room for optimism. You know, the debate is progressing. It feels like it's accelerating. I think people's. Understanding of the options and the cost of the status quo are increasing. I think civil society and organizations like Transform around the world have had a big role in that, but it's now moving from these kind of civil society advocacy. It's moving into mainstream politics now, you know, and we are seeing it. And I think we will see those changes sooner than people think in the UK. And if you want to see them happening around the world, just take a look. You know, we've got five or six EU countries are legalizing cannabis. They're debating MDMA legalization. In the Netherlands, they're debating regulated cocaine markets. In Colombia, they're debating what they've implemented legal psychedelic plant access in a number of US states. So it's not just happening with cannabis, it's going beyond that. And generally, all the outcomes are pretty good. You know, you can scrape around and find some cherry picks and bad outcomes if you like. But on the whole, things are getting better where they're adopting these policies and that that can only bode well for the future as well.
Speaker 1Amen. And Steve, on that note, I promise I will let you go now. Mate, thank you so much. That was a brilliant chat. You answered everything that I was hoping to talk about and more. So thank you so, so much for giving us your time. Thanks for everything you've been doing. I can't believe you've been doing this since 1998 and you still got as much energy and fight in you as I'm guessing you did when you started. So that's amazing. And I'm sure that one day this is going to happen. So I'm sure that everybody listening to this is going to be fired up and want to get involved now. So thanks for rallying even more troops. And thanks for giving us all this info. Today, which we can go and check out and get involved with. So on that note, I promise I am now going to let you get out of the sweat box because, man, I'm melting as well.
Speaker 2Thanks a lot, James. It's been a real pleasure. And yeah, if anyone wants to follow up, just check out the Transform website and feel free to contact me or the organization. We can help you get stuck in.
Speaker 1You heard the man. Get on it. Get over there. Get stuck in and let's make this happen. OK, Steve. Thanks again, brother. It's great to see you and best wishes with everything. And we'll catch you again. We'll catch you again really soon. Thank you, man. Great. Cheers. Jesus Christ. I was not expecting that. That dude literally knows everything on this issue, man. If you are still unconvinced after listening to that, then I don't know what's going to help you. Legalizing drugs, man. It seems to make sense whichever way you look at it. You know, this is just a mature and practical fact based solution that benefits everybody. It will make society better for all of us. And anything that takes power out of the hands of violent, macho criminal gays. Gangs on our streets and the fields of Columbia. I'm all for that. Now, you can hear that the whizzing in the background. That is my computer having a literal meltdown because I am stuck indoors. I got the windows closed because of the noise. You know, I want to keep the noise down for the recording and everything. I've been in here now for about two hours chatting to Steve and I am absolutely ringing of sweat. We're having the middle of a heat wave right now. They had a red warning yesterday. It's the highest temperature we've ever had on record in the history of the earth or something today. And here I am. Both me and my computer are dying a smelly, sweaty, whizzing, loud, whirring death right now. So I'm going to get out of here. You don't need me to riff and ramble now about what Steve's just said. The man just made the case clear. Get on it. Get involved. Get yourself over to transformdrugs.org, which is their website. And check out all of the amazing info and links they've got there. There's also a donate link because, as Steve said, you know, they are a charity. So, you know, they rely on donations from kind folks such as yourself. So get involved in that. And they are on. They are on Twitter at Transform Drugs. So you can follow them there for updates as well. I hope you've all been enjoying the beginnings of our forthcoming climate extinction, otherwise known as summertime. And I will see you guys next week for another episode. Make sure to subscribe. Leave a rating. Leave a review. Leave your thoughts. Leave your comments. Call me some names. Do whatever you've got to do. And I will see you next week. Take care of yourselves. Love you loads. See you guys.
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