Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Ethan Nadelman, and this is Psychoactive, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. Psychoactive is the
Speaker 1: show where we talk about all things drugs. But any
Speaker 1: views expressed here do not represent those of my Heart Media,
Speaker 1: Protozoa Pictures, or their executives and employees. Indeed, heed as
Speaker 1: an inveterate contrarian, I can tell you they may not
Speaker 1: even represent my own and nothing contained in this show
Speaker 1: should be used as medical advice or encouragement to use
Speaker 1: any type of drugs. Hello, Psychoactive listeners. So today's a
Speaker 1: big day for me because this will be the concluding
Speaker 1: episode of season two of Psychoactive, which means we've put
Speaker 1: out eighty episodes since the summer of plus a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of bonus episodes, And so I thought this would
Speaker 1: be a good time to really take the opportunity because
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if and when Psychoactive will be returning
Speaker 1: and in what form to thank a number of people.
Speaker 1: Let me start with Darren Aronovski and maybe of you
Speaker 1: know him as the famous movie director. Um. He and
Speaker 1: I met about twenty years ago. We were introduced by
Speaker 1: phone named Gonga White who took each of us not
Speaker 1: together separately on our first Ayahuaski experience. But Darren emailed
Speaker 1: me back in June and suggested the idea of my
Speaker 1: hosting of podcast on psychedelics, actually he thought, and my
Speaker 1: response to him was, I'd actually rather do one on
Speaker 1: all drugs, and he said, let's do it. So first, Darren,
Speaker 1: thank you ever so much for initiating this project and
Speaker 1: for having the confidence in the faith in need to
Speaker 1: make this happen. And then next let me thank the
Speaker 1: producers who have put in the most time and effort recently.
Speaker 1: That has been no him Osband at Protozoa and Josh
Speaker 1: Stain at My Heart, and then their predecessors who got
Speaker 1: this going Catcha kum Coova at Protozoa and Benjamin kubrick
Speaker 1: Um also at Protozoa. I mean, at the top of
Speaker 1: the list, Dylan Golden, my key collaborator over there, but
Speaker 1: also Ari Handel and Elizabeth Geeseus and a Vivit Barrio
Speaker 1: sph and Eric Watson, and over at my Heart there's
Speaker 1: Alex Williams and Matthew Frederick and of course the head
Speaker 1: of the whole enterprise, the Bob Pittman, and of course
Speaker 1: Robert Beatty, who came up with a wonderful logo for Psychoactive.
Speaker 1: So thanks to all of you. It's been wonderful working
Speaker 1: with this team. And I apologize to those whose names
Speaker 1: I've forgotten who are working more behind the scenes on
Speaker 1: all of this. But what I can tell you is
Speaker 1: the levels of professionalism and time and commitment and good
Speaker 1: times with the folks at Protozoa and I heart the
Speaker 1: co producers of Psychoactive has just made this whole experience
Speaker 1: a real pleasure. Next, I want to thank you the listeners.
Speaker 1: Of course I don't know exactly who all of you are.
Speaker 1: Some of you do tell me, but I can tell
Speaker 1: you this about the data that we collect. Most of
Speaker 1: the listeners maybe have been in the United States, but
Speaker 1: there have been listeners in over a hundred seventy countries
Speaker 1: and territories around the world, so the audience truly is global,
Speaker 1: and I want to thank especially those of you who
Speaker 1: are listening in countries with fairly oppressive governments, where these
Speaker 1: sorts of conversations that we have on Psychoactive would not
Speaker 1: be so well tolerated in your own countries. I hope
Speaker 1: these conversations have been a source of inspiration and enlightenment
Speaker 1: for all of you. Now, as I said, I'm not
Speaker 1: sure what the next incarnation of Psychoactive will be or
Speaker 1: when I am going to take a break for a
Speaker 1: while at least, but I would welcome your feedback. So
Speaker 1: contact me through Instagram or other social media, or email
Speaker 1: me directly at Ethan at Napleman dot net. That's Ethan
Speaker 1: at Napleman dot net. I can't promise to get back
Speaker 1: to you, but I always enjoy getting the feedback, not
Speaker 1: just the positive, you know, but also the negative and
Speaker 1: critical ideas for the future. Please keep posting your comments,
Speaker 1: whether it's on iHeart or Google or Apple or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to podcasts. The episodes will remain up for
Speaker 1: the foreseeable future on all of the platforms, so please
Speaker 1: keep listening. And so with this let me launch into
Speaker 1: episode number eighty. And for number this one, I decided
Speaker 1: to ask somebody who has been a long time ally
Speaker 1: and friend of mine. His name is Steve Roles. He's
Speaker 1: based in the u K's British. He has been the
Speaker 1: senior policy analyst at the British Drug post Reform Organization
Speaker 1: TRANSFORM almost since its inception, since that organization was founded
Speaker 1: by Danny Kushlick in the mid nine so he's been
Speaker 1: there for twenty five years. He's widely regarded, but not
Speaker 1: US as an expert in the UK, but perhaps as
Speaker 1: the single most knowledgeable person when it comes to thinking
Speaker 1: about the legal regulation of drugs. I mean that means
Speaker 1: that he's been a consultant to governments from Canada, Germany, Luxembourg, Jamaica, Malta, Mexico,
Speaker 1: uh Uruguay, really almost every place except the US when
Speaker 1: it comes to legalizing cannabis. It means he's been a
Speaker 1: recent advisor to the Petro government in Colombia on their
Speaker 1: proposals for legalizing coca cocaine. He's been dealing with the
Speaker 1: Dutch on the issues of legally regulating M d M A.
Speaker 1: Uh So, Steve, thank you ever so much for joining
Speaker 1: me on the last episode of season two of Psychoactives.
Speaker 1: That's my pleasure, Ethan, It's great to be him. Well. So,
Speaker 1: we have so much to talk about, from models of
Speaker 1: legalization to the actual realities of legalization. But let me
Speaker 1: just begin um by by asking you. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I think some of our listeners will know. I've been
Speaker 1: involved in this issue since the late nineteen eighties. Now, Steve,
Speaker 1: you've jumped into this about a decade later, in the
Speaker 1: mid to late nineteen nineties. But when you look at
Speaker 1: this evolution in the twenty years you've been involved in this,
Speaker 1: what most jumps out at you, Well, I mean, I guess,
Speaker 1: like like you, Ethan, it's been a remarkable, fascinating journey
Speaker 1: because what what started, as you know, discussions amongst reform
Speaker 1: advocates like us, has moved from the sort of theoretical
Speaker 1: space into the real world, and things which were seen
Speaker 1: as outrageous, sort of extreme heretical views, um when when
Speaker 1: we started are now very much mainstream political views and
Speaker 1: supported by a majority of the public um. And you know,
Speaker 1: they are happening on the ground on every continent on Earth.
Speaker 1: So things which were impossible, not not even twenty five
Speaker 1: years ago, even ten years ago. You know, if you
Speaker 1: think about it, Colorado and Washington and Uruguay, that that
Speaker 1: all happened in two thousand and twelve, So that was
Speaker 1: only just really ten years ago. Um. And before that
Speaker 1: it was just still all theoretical. It was things that
Speaker 1: we were hoping for, I mean, there were some things
Speaker 1: happening with medical cannabis and so on, but when you
Speaker 1: get into the non medical recreational drug legalization regulation, it's
Speaker 1: really very much you know, modern history. UM. And So
Speaker 1: for a long time, we were you know, making the case,
Speaker 1: we were writing our reports, we were developing proposals, UM,
Speaker 1: we were advocating, we were trying to change the framing
Speaker 1: of the debate and try and influence key political discourses
Speaker 1: in the media and in in in in professional forums
Speaker 1: and in political forums. And sometimes it didn't feel like
Speaker 1: we were getting anywhere, um, But clearly we were, because
Speaker 1: at some point a threshold was passed and reform became
Speaker 1: not just a possibility but a reality. And since those
Speaker 1: since two thousand and twelve, there's been a kind of um,
Speaker 1: cascading domino effect. Uh. And and you know, from from
Speaker 1: two states in the US to now twenty one from
Speaker 1: from just Uruguay, we're seeing cannabis reforms for nomenical cannabis
Speaker 1: on on every continent now except maybe the Arctic. And
Speaker 1: and and we're seeing, as you've already said, we've seen
Speaker 1: the debate move beyond cannabis into psychedelics and and cocaine
Speaker 1: and coca and m D m A and other stimulates
Speaker 1: and other drugs, and so the things that we you know,
Speaker 1: the things that we have been advocating all of this time,
Speaker 1: are becoming a reality. And that is both interesting and
Speaker 1: fascinating and historical view, but also you know, satisfying from
Speaker 1: professional view to sort of things that we were convinced
Speaker 1: that we were right, but everyone was telling us we
Speaker 1: were mad. It turns out that actually we were right
Speaker 1: because we've been vindicated by history, and you know, the
Speaker 1: evidence is coming in and showing showing that we were
Speaker 1: what we were saying was essentially right, and you know,
Speaker 1: here we are. We're still a long way to go,
Speaker 1: but I feel, yeah, satisfied that that we have you know,
Speaker 1: we haven't. We weren't just some cranky kind of tinfoil
Speaker 1: hat nutters and heretics and that you know, history, we
Speaker 1: are on the right side of history. M hm no,
Speaker 1: I mean, Steve, I'll tell you. Part of what kept
Speaker 1: me going all those decades of being involved in the advocacy,
Speaker 1: and you know, when people would think this was just
Speaker 1: a quixonic enterprise, was the sense that we were right
Speaker 1: in policy terms, We were right from a justice perspective,
Speaker 1: we were right from a perspectives of individual and broader morality,
Speaker 1: and that it just seemed inevitable that somehow this but
Speaker 1: that on some level, this bubble of a kind of
Speaker 1: um prohibition, this policy, the notion that you could somehow
Speaker 1: control global illicit commodities markets through policies of repression repression
Speaker 1: was somehow gonna work. But I want to ask you this.
Speaker 1: You know, I've oftentimes made the point that if you
Speaker 1: ask the question, how and why was it that the
Speaker 1: United States, which for almost a century, really from the
Speaker 1: early twentieth century until basically the second term of the
Speaker 1: Obama administration, really was the global champion of the war
Speaker 1: on drugs, right exporting and modeling and coercing other governments
Speaker 1: to adopt, you know, fairly punitive prohibitionist policies. How was
Speaker 1: it that we nonetheless became the leader when it came
Speaker 1: to the legal regulation of cannabis. And I've answered that
Speaker 1: question the US context by saying it really goes back
Speaker 1: to medical marijuana, goes back to that first medical marijuana
Speaker 1: ballot initiative victory in California six It was the one
Speaker 1: that afforded the first opportunity to bring marijuana markets above
Speaker 1: ground with the medical marijuana dispensaries. It was the one
Speaker 1: that gave people an opportunity to feel like what regulating
Speaker 1: marijuana would be like? Right, and it helped, you know,
Speaker 1: in every set, transformed that dialogue in a way that
Speaker 1: opened up the door, shifted public opinion, shifted government thinking
Speaker 1: to imagining a world in which the legalization of marijuana
Speaker 1: not just for medicinal purposes, but more broadly for all
Speaker 1: at us was possible. But the question is for you
Speaker 1: in the UK, and looking at this globally, to what
Speaker 1: extent was that the model elsewhere? First? Secondly, to what
Speaker 1: extent was what happened in the US kind of the
Speaker 1: inspiration or the instigation without which reform would not have
Speaker 1: happened elsewhere, Because we always look at the Dutch coffee
Speaker 1: shop system is being you know, one of the actually
Speaker 1: pre models to the US medical marijuana model. And to
Speaker 1: what extent has this happened in some countries actually totally
Speaker 1: independently of medical marijuana being the stepping still, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's a great question. Um Uh, there's certainly. Um I
Speaker 1: think the fact that the US, for the reasons you've
Speaker 1: you've you've you've touched on the fact that the US
Speaker 1: did go first, snificantly went first. I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: want to you know, erased Uruguay from history here, because
Speaker 1: Uruguay was the first member state and kind of happened
Speaker 1: around the same time as Colorado and Washington. But well
Speaker 1: sort of right because in a way, Uruguay legalizes as
Speaker 1: the end of twenty thirteen, so a year after all
Speaker 1: after Colorado Washington. In fact, I've sometimes wondered whether or
Speaker 1: not Uruguay would have happened in Colorado and Washington, and
Speaker 1: that kind of for sure. But the process was unfolding
Speaker 1: from about two thousand and eleven, and there were bills
Speaker 1: being tabled, and it was a very active public debate.
Speaker 1: There were expert consultations going on in two thousand, two
Speaker 1: thousand and twelve that TRANSFORM and myself and others UM
Speaker 1: were involved in. But I think the thing that was
Speaker 1: very significant in terms of the US for the global
Speaker 1: debate was really what you say, I mean, the fact
Speaker 1: that the US had been the kind of drug war
Speaker 1: sort of bully of the world for for all these decades,
Speaker 1: going all the way back to you know, um the
Speaker 1: drafting of the the you know U Single Convention in
Speaker 1: the forties and fifties and Harry Ainsling and all that,
Speaker 1: all that ghastly history. Um. The fact that they then
Speaker 1: did become these world leaders in the cannabis legalization regulation,
Speaker 1: it did create space for the debate to blossom elsewhere
Speaker 1: in the world. Just because of the US is hackmonic
Speaker 1: role in geopolitics generally and in drug policy specifically. Um,
Speaker 1: they kind of lost their authority to bully other countries
Speaker 1: on cannabis regulation when US states started legalizing. And you know,
Speaker 1: when when the US does stuff, it becomes okay to
Speaker 1: talk about it in other places in the world. And
Speaker 1: you can look at other things like equal marriage. For example,
Speaker 1: when the equal marriage stuff happened under Obama in the US,
Speaker 1: suddenly that debate, which had been completely off the table
Speaker 1: really in the UK, suddenly that debate opened up and
Speaker 1: within a year or two we'd we'd we'd legalized equal
Speaker 1: marriage as well. Um, just because it's sort of somehow
Speaker 1: made it okay, uh to talk about it, kind of
Speaker 1: normalized the debate. So what happened in the US has
Speaker 1: been immensely important, and they've you know that the models
Speaker 1: that have been adopted have been quite different in many
Speaker 1: of the states, so that there is also this interesting
Speaker 1: laboratory of change in the US that you have all
Speaker 1: these different models and we can look at what's working
Speaker 1: and what's not working. And other countries have looked at that,
Speaker 1: and they've looked at the successes and failings of US
Speaker 1: legalization and learned from it and developed that move move forward.
Speaker 1: But I think the political power of the US doing something,
Speaker 1: even though it didn't happen at a federal level, it
Speaker 1: still created a political environment in which it became okay
Speaker 1: for other countries and other political forums to to start
Speaker 1: discussing this, and it became more difficult for the US
Speaker 1: to sort of try and stomp on other reformers because
Speaker 1: you go back a few years before Colorado and Washington
Speaker 1: and the US was, you know, giving uh, the Dutch
Speaker 1: a hard time about the coffee shops for decades, and
Speaker 1: then suddenly the US is doing it themselves, and it's
Speaker 1: kind of like, wow, that's that's a real change. And
Speaker 1: I suspect the things that are happening with psychedelics, with
Speaker 1: magic mushrooms and psychedelic plants in Oregon and Colorado and elsewhere,
Speaker 1: and things that are happening with krat Tom and so on.
Speaker 1: I think that will probably help open up the debate
Speaker 1: for psychedelic regulation around the world as well, because it's
Speaker 1: sort of just becomes okay to talk about it. The US,
Speaker 1: their historical historical position, their hegemonic position in geopolitics. It
Speaker 1: just creates a sort of safe space for other nation
Speaker 1: states to engage in those debates, which just simply wasn't
Speaker 1: there before. Yeah, No, I think I think that makes sense.
Speaker 1: But I'll tell you it's funny when you we talked
Speaker 1: about Uruguay, right, Um, you know, when when President Mohican
Speaker 1: Uruguay sort of proposes and as you said, there have
Speaker 1: been conversations going on, and folks in the US have
Speaker 1: been engaging, and then you have you know, not just
Speaker 1: transformed but also i DPC International Drug Policy Consortion. So
Speaker 1: there are conversations had um. But what I oftimes think
Speaker 1: about Uruguay is that it was a country where the
Speaker 1: medical marijuana thing had not really developed separately in the
Speaker 1: way ahead in the US. Right So the US opening
Speaker 1: on medical marijuana, you know, beginning in ninety six, and
Speaker 1: then Colorado, Washington obviously opened up space. But Uruguay was
Speaker 1: an example of a place which moved forward without having
Speaker 1: ever done that intermediate medical marijuana step. As far as
Speaker 1: I know, yeah, that's true. I think. I think that
Speaker 1: the one of the differences between reform in Latin America
Speaker 1: and in Europe and North America is the key driver
Speaker 1: UM of the reform narrative in Latin America has generally
Speaker 1: been security issues, so it's much been more been about
Speaker 1: the cartels and violence and insecurity. UM and President Mohica
Speaker 1: of Uruguay his his sort of discourse around the need
Speaker 1: for cannabis reform, but his discourse was very much around security.
Speaker 1: I mean, he didn't want to see what he called
Speaker 1: the columbian Ization of Uruguay. Didn't want to see Uruguay
Speaker 1: become a kind of you know, moved towards narco state
Speaker 1: type status. So he drove what I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: how much organized crime activity was involved in the domestic
Speaker 1: cannabis industry in Uruguay is moved, but that that was
Speaker 1: still his driving force rather than um, you know, economic
Speaker 1: opportunities or social justice or public health. I mean, those
Speaker 1: things all came into it, but the driver and the driver.
Speaker 1: I think similarly for the Coca cocaine regulation debate in
Speaker 1: Colombia now and the Petro is is very similar. It's
Speaker 1: it's driven not by you know, and the overdose crisis
Speaker 1: or by over and you know, mass incarceration and social
Speaker 1: justice stuff. It's driven more by issues around security and
Speaker 1: cartel activity and undermining institutions and you know violence. That
Speaker 1: dynamic is all now beginning to unravel, you know, as
Speaker 1: as the global South is becoming more potent politically, more
Speaker 1: confident on geopolitical stage, more willing to stand up to
Speaker 1: the US and some of the kind of hegemonic powers
Speaker 1: of the of the global North, we're seeing a great
Speaker 1: a lot more confidence um in those countries like Colombia,
Speaker 1: you know, and and and like Uruguay to say no,
Speaker 1: we're not We're not going to play this game anymore.
Speaker 1: We're gonna we're gonna plow our own foreign and do
Speaker 1: our own thing because the war on drugs just has
Speaker 1: not worked for us. We've been fighting your war on
Speaker 1: drugs for generations and all it's brought to us is
Speaker 1: misery and degradation and and and violence and death. And
Speaker 1: we're just not going to do it anymore. Let me
Speaker 1: stop you right there, because before I want to go
Speaker 1: back to the Uruguay thing and some of the Latin
Speaker 1: American context and I both want to Although I agree
Speaker 1: with most of what you said, I do want to
Speaker 1: challenge you in a few things and also provides some
Speaker 1: context for our audience. So when we're talking about the
Speaker 1: former president of Uruguay, President Mohica, you know he was
Speaker 1: at all leftist Gorilla Tomorrow guerrillas back in the seventies
Speaker 1: or whatever, who became this one term president. Part of
Speaker 1: what at him successful, of course, was that Uruguay they
Speaker 1: never had more than forty of the public supporting the
Speaker 1: legalization of cannabis, but they had a leadership, as you
Speaker 1: pointed out by President Mohika, and a very strong tradition
Speaker 1: of party discipline which enabled this to happen, for Uruguay
Speaker 1: to pass a law legalizing cannabis a year after Colorado
Speaker 1: and Washington had done it. Now you talk about securitization,
Speaker 1: I think they're The big issue was that Uruguay was
Speaker 1: importing most of its cannabis from I think Paraguay, which
Speaker 1: is the leading producer of cannabis um in the southern
Speaker 1: part of South America and where organized crime is inevitably involved.
Speaker 1: But just to complicate it a bit. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think if we look obviously talking about the bigger issues
Speaker 1: around coca cocaine or heroin, opium in other places, security
Speaker 1: is a big issue. But if you look elsewhere in
Speaker 1: Latin America, I remember, we were perpetually frustrated at you know,
Speaker 1: more and more people Latin American especially that American elites
Speaker 1: understood the extent to which US inspired you know, drug
Speaker 1: war policies, drug war pressures, prohibitionist frameworks were absolutely disaster
Speaker 1: for their country, sort of like you know America during
Speaker 1: alcohol prohibition times fifty or times a hundred in terms
Speaker 1: of creating you know, violence, crime, corruption, all that sort
Speaker 1: of stuff. But we also saw virtually nothing in the
Speaker 1: way of progress on that front in response to the
Speaker 1: security issue. And where the progress did happen in recent years,
Speaker 1: for example, in countries like Columbia or in Mexico or
Speaker 1: even elsewhere, it was typically medical marijuana sort of sticking
Speaker 1: its nose under the tent. Right in Mexico and Colombia,
Speaker 1: you have these mothers, these parents of you know, of
Speaker 1: infants and children, are that terrible Dravette syndrome, that epileptic syndrome,
Speaker 1: that you know, where cannabis is the only thing that
Speaker 1: really helps to reduce seizures, and they become this kind
Speaker 1: of inspirational force in a way. So much similar woul
Speaker 1: happened the United States. So it seems that even in
Speaker 1: that Latin American context, where security is such a major
Speaker 1: issue and organized crime and the violence and corruption of
Speaker 1: such a major issue, that nonetheless, apart from Uruguay, it
Speaker 1: did seem like medical marijuana was the key elements sort
Speaker 1: of opening things up. Yeah, I think I think I
Speaker 1: agree with you on that medical cannabis has you know it,
Speaker 1: as you say, it does help normalize, um, the concept
Speaker 1: of a regulated cannabis market, and it does kind of
Speaker 1: detoxify the idea of cannabis as this as this as deadly,
Speaker 1: this deadly drug in the in the public perception that
Speaker 1: certainly has played out um in most countries, and it's
Speaker 1: happening in Europe now. Um. I think the thing with Uruguay,
Speaker 1: I mean, one of the things is that cannabis was
Speaker 1: never really criminalized in Urugua any In fact, drugs possession
Speaker 1: generally was never criminalized in Uruguay. So right, and as
Speaker 1: we forget and we talk about Portugal, and you know
Speaker 1: with its decrem model that it brought in about twenty
Speaker 1: years ago, and we think of them as the pioneer,
Speaker 1: and in many of the sects they were. But from
Speaker 1: a legal perspective, Uruguay already had something of the Portugal
Speaker 1: model for decades. Yes, and they were they were clearly, um,
Speaker 1: quite pragmatic. I mean, I actually I met Mohika when
Speaker 1: we were working there. Because it's quite a small country,
Speaker 1: so your access to the politicians is a lot easier
Speaker 1: than if you're in a huge country like the US.
Speaker 1: You can just get to meet the president and so
Speaker 1: we we went and met him and it was quite
Speaker 1: an amusing meeting UM. But I sort of asked him,
Speaker 1: I said, are you worried about you know, America breathing
Speaker 1: Danian neck and giving you heat for legalizing cannabis? I mean,
Speaker 1: are they gonna are you wired? They're going to come
Speaker 1: down on your hard And he was like, he was like, look,
Speaker 1: I was imprisoned down a well for three years and
Speaker 1: the tortured. Um, I don't he basically that I don't
Speaker 1: give a shit about the US, and and it was
Speaker 1: it was just so refreshing to see just someone literally
Speaker 1: doing leads because it wasn't just cannabis. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is a guy who also legalized gay marriage and abortion, which,
Speaker 1: like cannabis, none of them had a popular mandate. He
Speaker 1: just thought they were the right thing to do. Um
Speaker 1: And you know, he got away with it because the
Speaker 1: public respected his leadership even though he didn't he didn't
Speaker 1: have a popular mandate for any of those issues. But
Speaker 1: you know that was just genuine leadership. I mean, that's trusty.
Speaker 1: But you know, I'll also say, you know they had
Speaker 1: and I remember, you know, he had a right hand guy,
Speaker 1: Diego can Yet. I think, who was, you know, one
Speaker 1: of our key liaisons. And I remember talking with him
Speaker 1: when he had come to the US, and I think
Speaker 1: some of the story can be told now, but they
Speaker 1: were to some extent concerned how the US respond because
Speaker 1: the US in the past had been so you know,
Speaker 1: beating up on Canada if they talked about doing harm reduction,
Speaker 1: or beating up in Australia, if they thought if they
Speaker 1: were going to you know, or you know, Netherlands or
Speaker 1: whatever country wanted to move forward. And what he told
Speaker 1: me it was that there had been a discussion with
Speaker 1: folks in the White House and he he wasn't precise
Speaker 1: who it was. I speculated that it might have been
Speaker 1: Vice President Biden, but who had essentially said at that
Speaker 1: point that listen, um, so long as this is entirely
Speaker 1: a domestic issue in Uruguay, so long as you're not
Speaker 1: exporting this stuff to the US, so long as you're
Speaker 1: not talking about legalizing drugs other than cannabis, then we
Speaker 1: don't have to see this as affecting American national security
Speaker 1: or other political interests whatsoever. In other words, it was
Speaker 1: a kind of tacit qualified green light to saying we're
Speaker 1: not going to respond to you the way we have
Speaker 1: in the past. And I think the U. S Ambassador,
Speaker 1: you know, follow that line. And then there was a
Speaker 1: very another pivotal moment. There was an Assistant Secretary of
Speaker 1: State for International Arcotics International i n L the State
Speaker 1: Department Arcotics and Law Enforcement Office, and he was a
Speaker 1: highly respected diplomat, William Brownfield, and he was something of
Speaker 1: an old drug warrior, but he had been a very
Speaker 1: respected former ambassador to Chile and Venezuela, Colombia. He'd become
Speaker 1: the head of the Narcotics and Law Enforcement Office in
Speaker 1: twenty eleven. Then Uruguay and Washington legalized in twelve, and
Speaker 1: the Obama administration is in a bind, like what do
Speaker 1: they do about Washington? And Colorado's is in clear violation
Speaker 1: of the federal law, and clear violation in seventy Control
Speaker 1: Substance Act, and clear violation of the U N Conventions,
Speaker 1: And they kind of toss and turn and finally, and
Speaker 1: I think the summer Fall often come out with what
Speaker 1: becomes known as the quote unquote brown Field doctrine. And
Speaker 1: that Brownfield doctrine essentially reverses um, you know, almost a
Speaker 1: century of US kind of mono prohibitionist policy. It basically says,
Speaker 1: we are no longer going to be intolerant of diversity.
Speaker 1: We are going to be open to other possibilities and
Speaker 1: debates so long as countries keep collaborating on the basic
Speaker 1: efforts to crack down around drug later organized crime and
Speaker 1: trafficking and all this sort of stuff. Right. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: as an American, I saw that, you know, Colorad Washington
Speaker 1: lead to the Obio administration have to rethink how they're
Speaker 1: gonna have to deal with this domestically, and that inevitably
Speaker 1: leads to some rethinking of how to deal with this
Speaker 1: stuff internationally. Now, how did all this look from where
Speaker 1: you're sitting, you know, advising government sitting in the UK
Speaker 1: looking at this from outside the US perspective? Well, I
Speaker 1: mean the Brownfield statement was was huge. I mean it
Speaker 1: was you know, it was huge within drug policy circles.
Speaker 1: It didn't I mean, it got some media coverage, It
Speaker 1: didn't particularly reverberate around the world outside of drug policy circles.
Speaker 1: But you know, it's you know, it's still being quoted today,
Speaker 1: and I think you're absolutely right it was. It was
Speaker 1: a pivotal moment because it was basically the US acknowledging
Speaker 1: that the global consensus on on prohibition of all drugs
Speaker 1: was you know, crumbling um and they needed to be
Speaker 1: tolerant of because the brown Field wasn't. He didn't just
Speaker 1: talk about cannabis as well. He talked about the legalization
Speaker 1: of of all drugs or or other drugs jet drugs only.
Speaker 1: I can't remember the exact wording that he used, but
Speaker 1: that was really really significant too, and it create did
Speaker 1: the context. I think the debate that has unfolded subsequently.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's going to be really interesting to see
Speaker 1: how the what's going on in Columbia, with the debate
Speaker 1: around coca leaf and cocaine regulation, is going to stress
Speaker 1: test that. You know, how how far can countries like
Speaker 1: Columbia push things before the US. That starts to get
Speaker 1: pretty jumpy. And I suspect um, since Petro's election, they
Speaker 1: have been going or hang on a sec this this
Speaker 1: this guy, this new president Columbia is actually talking about
Speaker 1: legalizing cocaine. And you know, I've been working on this
Speaker 1: bill that you mentioned in your introduction around the regulation
Speaker 1: of coca leaf that includes a pilot for a legally
Speaker 1: regulated cocaine market for for non medical youth, very strictly
Speaker 1: regulated and go to the details if you want, but
Speaker 1: it's in that bill. And one of the people who
Speaker 1: was on the committee that worked on that that that
Speaker 1: worked on that bill was Petro and he is now president.
Speaker 1: So he's spoken favorite, it's a favor of it's on
Speaker 1: the record, he's voted for it. Um, it's all on
Speaker 1: the record. And you know when The Economist did there
Speaker 1: a feature on cocaine regulation back in November, he then
Speaker 1: tweeted it. Um. You know the screen grab at the
Speaker 1: full the full editorial that was saying, you know, Biden
Speaker 1: should legalize cocaine. They need to go further than just
Speaker 1: partnering a few people for for cannabis. So it's going
Speaker 1: to be interesting to see how the US actually reacts
Speaker 1: to that. But um, you know, if there was, if
Speaker 1: there was a stress test of the Brownfield doctrine, I
Speaker 1: think what's happening in Colombia is going to be it.
Speaker 1: And it's gonna be really fascinating to see how that
Speaker 1: plays out. So, you know, I should tell our listeners
Speaker 1: that that Steve has been the lead author on a
Speaker 1: number of very important publications. The first one that they wrote,
Speaker 1: maybe almost fifteen years ago, was basically a blueprint for
Speaker 1: legal regulation of drugs called Blueprint for Regulation. But he's
Speaker 1: also been the lead author on a volume called How
Speaker 1: to Regulate Cannabis, which is now in its third edition.
Speaker 1: More recently, a couple of years ago, they published How
Speaker 1: to Regulate Stimulants, which included this issue that Steve's talking
Speaker 1: about now, around cocaine, cocaine and around emphetamine and I
Speaker 1: think as M D M A. And they're currently fundraising
Speaker 1: to produce a volume about how to regulate psychedelics. Now
Speaker 1: this Steve, what I want to go on this coca
Speaker 1: cocaine thing. I mean, obviously, coca has been legally produced
Speaker 1: in Bolivia and Peru for many decades, right, there was
Speaker 1: always an exception within the UN conventions on that allowing
Speaker 1: them to produce it for you know, local purposes, but
Speaker 1: never allowed to export any cocaine except for the kind
Speaker 1: of decocon allized coca leaf that's used as part of
Speaker 1: Coca Cola's flavoring and such and some and some tiny
Speaker 1: bit that's used for pharmaceutical purposes, because cocaine still does
Speaker 1: have limited medicinal pharmaceutical purposes. But when we look at
Speaker 1: what's going on now, right, I mean, there's obviously the
Speaker 1: issue domestically about how do you regulate this um. But
Speaker 1: before we get into that, one of the big elephants
Speaker 1: in the room always is the United Nations, right, the
Speaker 1: United Nations the anti Drug conventions going back, you know,
Speaker 1: not just to the Opium Conventions the early twentieth century,
Speaker 1: over a hundred years ago, but to the ninety six
Speaker 1: Control Convention, the sixty one Single Convention, the subsequent ones
Speaker 1: in sight eight um. That was always seen as a
Speaker 1: barrier to any form of states legalizing markets beyond the
Speaker 1: research are strictly medical. Now to go back to Uruguay,
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously, when Uruguay does this, the United Nations
Speaker 1: about un we should specify there's two major there's three
Speaker 1: major U n. Drug agencies. Right, There's the U n
Speaker 1: Office on Drugs and Crime un O d C, which
Speaker 1: kind of funds programs around the world and whose head
Speaker 1: is a semi public figure on drug control. There's the
Speaker 1: Commission on Narcotic Drugs, which is a grouping of all
Speaker 1: the various governments that meets, you know, periodically in every
Speaker 1: spring in Vienna. And then there's the i n c B,
Speaker 1: the International Our Cartage Control Board, which has sort of
Speaker 1: been a watchdog of the conventions. Now when Uruguay is
Speaker 1: moving forward and Mohicas saying we're going to do this
Speaker 1: and we don't give it damn and the i n
Speaker 1: c B reportedly sends a nasty letter to Mochica saying
Speaker 1: you can't do this. Well, what happened there? I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously they just did it. Anyway. The thing about the
Speaker 1: i n c B, which is, you know, like like
Speaker 1: you say, they're the kind of they're kind of watchdog
Speaker 1: of on compliance to these prohibitionist tenants within the within
Speaker 1: the treat with the within the three treaties that you mentioned,
Speaker 1: is that their their enforcement power is quite limited. I mean,
Speaker 1: they can in theory make recommendations two more senior bodies
Speaker 1: within the within the U N and that could ultimately
Speaker 1: result in sanctions or some some other kind of uh,
Speaker 1: punitive intervention. But that's never actually happened. I guess one
Speaker 1: of the reasons that never actually happened is because until
Speaker 1: you're agin country it ever, you know across that line
Speaker 1: in the sand. You know, Uruguay was the first country
Speaker 1: essentially to make a kind of hard defection from the treatise.
Speaker 1: You know that the consensus around global prohibition, including cannabis prohibition,
Speaker 1: had held for a long time, and the strength of
Speaker 1: the treatise is essentially based it's rooted in the fact
Speaker 1: that member states agree to to abide by them. You know,
Speaker 1: these that they're they're quite difficult to enforce against non
Speaker 1: compliance or breaches in in treaty commitments. And when Uruguay
Speaker 1: moved forward with this, it's true the the I n
Speaker 1: c B did did send them sort of snarky letters
Speaker 1: and that the head of the then I n t
Speaker 1: B actually referred to Uruguay as pirates, which was incredibly undiplomatic,
Speaker 1: an inappropriate language for a UN agency to be referring
Speaker 1: to to a member state ads UM. But they they
Speaker 1: made an argument that uh, they were make doing the
Speaker 1: reforms in pursuit of the human rights and public health
Speaker 1: of the citizens of Uruguay, and their commitments to those goals,
Speaker 1: the higher goals of the u N Charter Um superseded
Speaker 1: technical compliance to you know, one or two articles in
Speaker 1: these in these creaky old drug treaties. That's you know,
Speaker 1: it's worth reminding people the treaty which it's sixty one.
Speaker 1: You know, this is this is like more than sixty
Speaker 1: years old now and was being drafted in the nineteen
Speaker 1: forties and nineteen fifties, an era which is completely different political, economic,
Speaker 1: social and cultural landscape to the one we live in now,
Speaker 1: particularly around drug use. I mean, you know that the
Speaker 1: sixties hadn't happened, and you know in the al Capoma
Speaker 1: was still alive. This is when those the foundational bedrock
Speaker 1: of global prohibition was being drafted and the urguins based
Speaker 1: similk this creakial treaty. It's no longer relevant. We think
Speaker 1: that the our commitments to peace and security and health
Speaker 1: and well being a mankind that are enshrined in the
Speaker 1: the overarching U N Charter are more important than technical
Speaker 1: appliance to these creakial treaties, and we are going to essentially,
Speaker 1: they said, we're just going to ignore them, um and
Speaker 1: we we will engage in a constructive debate how to
Speaker 1: resolve these tensions. And that kind of created the blueprint
Speaker 1: which Canada followed. I think the difference between Canada and Uruguay,
Speaker 1: because Canada became the second country to formally the second
Speaker 1: member state to formally legalized cannabis and no medical uses,
Speaker 1: Canada was a bit more bold. They actually acknowledged that
Speaker 1: what they were doing was in non compliance, but and
Speaker 1: they essentially made the same argument. They said, look, this
Speaker 1: is in the interest of our citizens. You know, we
Speaker 1: are following the guidance of the UN Charter in terms
Speaker 1: of peace and security and health and well well being
Speaker 1: of our citizens, and we will engage in a constructive
Speaker 1: debate in the relevant forums to try and resolve these tensions.
Speaker 1: And they kind of left it there, and now NTB
Speaker 1: got a bit pissy and sent a few snarky letters.
Speaker 1: Both Uruguay and Canada and other countries now that are
Speaker 1: following their footsteps. But essentially there wasn't a great deal
Speaker 1: that the I n t B could do apart from
Speaker 1: kind of a bit of finger wagging and kind of
Speaker 1: you know, naughty noughty and and give them a bit
Speaker 1: of a telling off in their annual report. You know,
Speaker 1: in many ways that can that prohibitions. Consensus and the
Speaker 1: treaties have been remarkably effective at maintaining global prohibition. But
Speaker 1: now the cracks are there, the first cracks in the dam.
Speaker 1: It's starting to turn into a flood. And now we're
Speaker 1: having five or six countries in Europe with seeing Thailand,
Speaker 1: South Africa, Mexico and all these other countries. So once
Speaker 1: you have multiple countries defecting, then the whole system starts
Speaker 1: to to collapse in its own internal connections and something
Speaker 1: has to change, you know, either you get a new convention,
Speaker 1: or conventions are repealed or the cons amended. Something has
Speaker 1: to give, and I think that's the stage right now,
Speaker 1: particularly with kind of as issue. We'll be talking more
Speaker 1: after we hear this ad see. I mean, Steve, you're
Speaker 1: reminding me that you know, back in the old days
Speaker 1: when I was first speaking out in the late eighties,
Speaker 1: and one of our leading antagonists was the chairman of
Speaker 1: those US Congress Select Committee and Arcotics, Charlie Wrangel, very
Speaker 1: prominent black politician out of Harlem, and he was when
Speaker 1: I was debating on national television all this stuff, and
Speaker 1: he does, he does a hearing, and part of his
Speaker 1: rhetorical thing is, well, what's your plan? What are you
Speaker 1: gonna do? How are you gonna sell it? How are
Speaker 1: you gonna I'm kind of imitating his kind of voice
Speaker 1: that he had um back back then, right, And I
Speaker 1: remember thinking, you know, he is he actually really serious
Speaker 1: about wanting to hear proposals? And I don't think he was.
Speaker 1: I mean, I sort of took the opportunity, I think,
Speaker 1: as you know, you know, back when I was teaching
Speaker 1: at Princeton, I put together a Princeton Working Group on
Speaker 1: the Future of Drug Use and Alternatives to Drug Prohibition,
Speaker 1: had eighteen distinguished academics from about a dozen different disciplines
Speaker 1: to try to come up with a basic model of
Speaker 1: how do you think about legally regulating drugs? How do
Speaker 1: you find the right compromise between individual rights and community rights,
Speaker 1: the right compromise between putting a stake through the heart
Speaker 1: of the black market organized crime and at the same
Speaker 1: time having a non free market public health approach. How
Speaker 1: do you balance all of that? But we didn't have
Speaker 1: that many models to go on. I mean, we could
Speaker 1: look at alcohol in to bacco to some extent, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't all that developed. But what I found was
Speaker 1: that when we put out our recommendations from the Princeton
Speaker 1: Working Group in an article I published in Dentalists thirty
Speaker 1: years ago, there was really no market for that. And
Speaker 1: what you did with Transform beginning about fifteen years ago
Speaker 1: was really one was you put this out with a
Speaker 1: level of sophistication and a level of depth that really
Speaker 1: nobody had done before. And secondly, in terms of the timing,
Speaker 1: there was the beginnings of a market for this. I
Speaker 1: mean when you wrote the first blueprint for regulation that
Speaker 1: was almost before that time, but you laid the groundwork,
Speaker 1: and obviously your volumes on regulating cannabis and stimulants are
Speaker 1: are ever more timely in this front. Now, all of
Speaker 1: this goes to say that background issue of the United Nations.
Speaker 1: What I remember, that's all I want to ask you about,
Speaker 1: is five six, seven years ago there was this vigorous
Speaker 1: and sometimes almost personal debate happening within the international drug
Speaker 1: reform community about how we should think about the conventions.
Speaker 1: And I remember there are people saying we have to
Speaker 1: focus just on getting rid of the conventions entirely and
Speaker 1: replacing them with something like maybe the w h O
Speaker 1: Framework of tobacco control. And others would say that's a
Speaker 1: realistic let's focus on revising the conventions and removing cannabis
Speaker 1: and maybe coca from the conventions. And THEOS would say, no,
Speaker 1: just let's just do what the President of Olivia Able
Speaker 1: Morales did, were they withdrew from the conventions and then
Speaker 1: rejoined making an exception. And the others say, let's just
Speaker 1: do it. Mohican did, let's just let's just ignore the
Speaker 1: conventions essentially. But what's your take of years after the
Speaker 1: fact now and that whole debate among the reformers and
Speaker 1: whether it was a productive debate or whether it really
Speaker 1: actually resulted in something concrete. Well, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: the first thing to say is that it was really
Speaker 1: important to be having that debate, and it was to
Speaker 1: be to laying out these different potential pathways for reform
Speaker 1: of the u N system. Um, you know, nothing really
Speaker 1: has significantly changed at the u N. It's since Young
Speaker 1: Gas in terms of the actual you know, the legal foundations,
Speaker 1: I mean, the treaties are all still in place. There's
Speaker 1: been one minor tweak too, uh, scheduling of cannabis, which
Speaker 1: is now acknowledged to have some medical uses. But that's
Speaker 1: basically the only thing that's happened. But what has changed
Speaker 1: is that more and more states are saying publicly and
Speaker 1: if you publicly, in the u N forum. So these
Speaker 1: are things that would only have been said by Uruguay
Speaker 1: ten years ago, but now you're getting a ten fifteen
Speaker 1: countries standing up and saying these treaties are no longer
Speaker 1: fit for purpose, they are not meeting our needs and
Speaker 1: they need to be reformed. And more and more countries
Speaker 1: are not just saying there is a need for change
Speaker 1: at u N level, but they are actually just making reforms,
Speaker 1: you know, essentially in breach of their technical obligations under
Speaker 1: the treaties. So the water is building behind the dam
Speaker 1: and at some point something has to give. Now exactly
Speaker 1: what the mechanism of that reform will be is unclear,
Speaker 1: but a tipping point will be reached and I think
Speaker 1: we're approaching it fairly soon, particul lee with cannabis, but
Speaker 1: perhaps with the whole treaty framework more broadly, where there
Speaker 1: is just an acknowledgement that the system is no longer
Speaker 1: working and more and more and if it doesn't reform,
Speaker 1: it will simply collapse. And it's the treat system. It's
Speaker 1: important to remind people that it doesn't just you know,
Speaker 1: enforced prohibition. It also regulates controlled medicines globally, so you
Speaker 1: know that the use of opioids and the use of
Speaker 1: um various drugs which which can be misused non medically,
Speaker 1: are also regulated by the treatise and that it does
Speaker 1: so it does have an important function that we generally
Speaker 1: seek to maintain as well. Steve, there was one other
Speaker 1: historical thing where we're obviously talking and will go more
Speaker 1: into this around cannabis and also was happening now in
Speaker 1: Columbia around cooking cocaine. But there was also this little
Speaker 1: fascinating story that happened in New Zealand some years ago,
Speaker 1: right maybe seventy years ago, right where they were struggling
Speaker 1: with what to do about the almost synthetic cannabis, and
Speaker 1: where two of the biggest producers of synthetic cannabis essentially
Speaker 1: approached the government said, look, we have a mutual interest
Speaker 1: in your regulating synthetic cannabinoids. We know that our products
Speaker 1: are relatively safe. We don't like all these other you know,
Speaker 1: fly by night operations. Putting out these products can be
Speaker 1: quite dangerous. And the result was in New Zealand Parliament
Speaker 1: passing by like a hundred to one margin a law
Speaker 1: essentially creating a domestic kind of like FDA Food and
Speaker 1: Drug Administration to regulate drugs that could be sold not
Speaker 1: for medical purposes. And there is giving producers corporations the
Speaker 1: opportunity to say, we have a product, we want to
Speaker 1: put it on the market for recreational purposes, and if
Speaker 1: we can prove that it's basically got a high margin
Speaker 1: of safety, the government will allow us to do so.
Speaker 1: So New Zealand moves forward with this thing. They passed
Speaker 1: this law. Unfortunately it never gets implemented. But between the
Speaker 1: time it gets passed and and enacted and the time
Speaker 1: it never gets him plamented, there must have been some
Speaker 1: reaction in Vienna, in the headquarters of the United Nations.
Speaker 1: You know, narcotic system and you were going to these meetings.
Speaker 1: I mean every year, I think you and many others
Speaker 1: were going to the meetings in Vienna than the Commission
Speaker 1: Narcotic Drugs. What was the reaction I mean at that level,
Speaker 1: because that was potentially a model for broader and I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's interesting that the reaction was incredibly muted because
Speaker 1: those synthetic cannabis drugs at the time, we're not controlled
Speaker 1: under the UN conventions. I mean, we we have the
Speaker 1: same There was the same issue, um that countries have domestically,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, as as these novel psychots of
Speaker 1: substances are invented, they have to then get uh you know,
Speaker 1: essentially they have to get banned, they have to get
Speaker 1: scheduled or added added to your the prohibitionist list. And
Speaker 1: that that that does happen at the seat at the
Speaker 1: Commission Narcotic Drugs. Every year a whole bunch of drugs
Speaker 1: are kind of read out and there's votes and they
Speaker 1: all get banned. Um. But at the time they weren't illegal,
Speaker 1: those New Zealand synthetic caind of annoids, and so there
Speaker 1: wasn't really any engagement and and also the UN doesn't
Speaker 1: really didn't really have a mandate to to do anything
Speaker 1: about it until they were um scheduled, and to be scheduled,
Speaker 1: countries have to report them and they have to go
Speaker 1: through this process and the w h O has to
Speaker 1: produce a report and it all takes quite a long time.
Speaker 1: All of those drugs have subsequently been banned, I should
Speaker 1: add now, but by that time what was proposing New
Speaker 1: Zealand had already kind of fallen to be some I mean,
Speaker 1: it's interesting that law did pass in New Zealand and
Speaker 1: they do have this it's still there, it's still on
Speaker 1: the books. They do have this um really quite good
Speaker 1: sophisticated regulatory framework, and I did some work on it
Speaker 1: um which it was very welcome in many ways, but
Speaker 1: no drugs ever made it into it. So it's like
Speaker 1: it's like this empty shell of a legislation. And one
Speaker 1: of them it was kind of a daft reason in
Speaker 1: the end, because they there to get the toxicology to
Speaker 1: establish the safety limits, you had to do animal testing,
Speaker 1: and they also had another law that said you can't
Speaker 1: do animal testing on on these drugs, so they kind
Speaker 1: of that they just got caught in this sort of
Speaker 1: legislative catch catch twenty two. And you know, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: want to see animal testing done on novel psychoaches substances either,
Speaker 1: but it was a bit of a shame that there
Speaker 1: wasn't an alternative route. But interestingly, in New Zealand, even
Speaker 1: before the Psychoactive Substances Act in I think it was,
Speaker 1: they did actually have a system put in place a
Speaker 1: few years before that, back in the two thousands, I
Speaker 1: think around two thousand and eight, they actually developed a
Speaker 1: regulatory framework for a specific drug called b z p
Speaker 1: which was a kind of kind of crappy, low rent
Speaker 1: stimulant drug, you know, and it was being widely sold
Speaker 1: as one of these legal highs, you know, as one
Speaker 1: of these novel psychatist substances that wasn't covered by the law.
Speaker 1: It became really quite popular in New Zealand, and they
Speaker 1: did actually put a regulatory framework and in their legal
Speaker 1: system thought for the regulation of this one specific drug.
Speaker 1: So for a couple of years in New Zealand, and
Speaker 1: this was years before the Psychiatrist substant they did actually
Speaker 1: have a regular framework for the sale of this this
Speaker 1: crappy similant called called b z p um and you know,
Speaker 1: it was sold legally and there was, there was there
Speaker 1: was you know, quality control, and you had to have
Speaker 1: dosage put on the packaging and a lot of the
Speaker 1: things that we'd like to see. It wasn't brilliant, but
Speaker 1: it was all right, um. And it was actually the
Speaker 1: first that I'm aware of, the first legal regulatory framework
Speaker 1: anywhere in the world for a drug outside of the Conventions,
Speaker 1: there was a still a synthetic stimulant drug. So that
Speaker 1: that happened. It then fell foul of some sort of
Speaker 1: political shenanigans and was eventually repealed and and and banned
Speaker 1: along with everything else. But New Zealand does have this
Speaker 1: sort of interesting history. And they, of course it was
Speaker 1: only like two years ago they narrowly missed um legalizing
Speaker 1: cannabis by in a national referendum by about you know,
Speaker 1: hand a handful of so I think it was about
Speaker 1: half a percentage point that their natural referendum. Sadly they
Speaker 1: just failed on that. So we're obviously kindabis leg legalization
Speaker 1: New Zealand. Not for a few years anyway, but I'm
Speaker 1: sure it will happen some days some day. That was
Speaker 1: one with the Prime Minister once say which way she
Speaker 1: would We wouldn't say whether she was forward or against it,
Speaker 1: and then afterwards said, oh, I voted for it, but
Speaker 1: I don't want to buy it, and I wish I
Speaker 1: wish she'd just said. If she'd said that, probably would
Speaker 1: have swung it. But I think it was about sixty votes.
Speaker 1: In the end, they just narrowly lost. But you know,
Speaker 1: the fact that it even made it to a referendum,
Speaker 1: and the fact that it was that close, um, just
Speaker 1: just goes to show how, you know, how far we've
Speaker 1: come to Let me just let me just interject, Let
Speaker 1: me just interject to say that toughs. When people ask
Speaker 1: me about legal legalization, how do I define it? How
Speaker 1: do I distinguish from decriminalization? I say, you know, legalization
Speaker 1: essentially means the legal regulation of this market, like we
Speaker 1: have with alcohol and tobacco products, and so in a way,
Speaker 1: I look at Mexico and South Africans say, well, okay,
Speaker 1: the courts ruled that way. Um, but until you stually
Speaker 1: have the government legally regulating shops, or at least stores
Speaker 1: being up and selling without being even if they're not regulated,
Speaker 1: then being up and selling openly without the police having
Speaker 1: any basis to crack down on them. In Mexico and
Speaker 1: South Africa, you still don't have stores popping up openly
Speaker 1: selling cannabis products um without fear of any prosecution or arrest,
Speaker 1: legal transition state in those limbo but but basically Malta,
Speaker 1: in Malta legally regulated shops quite not quite so, So
Speaker 1: what they did in Malta is interesting in that they
Speaker 1: have they have legalized home growing within certain parameters a
Speaker 1: certain number of plants if you follow certain rules, UM,
Speaker 1: and they've legalized um what in Spain is kind of
Speaker 1: called cannabis social club, so not for profit cooperatives that
Speaker 1: are membership based, So you can join a membership based
Speaker 1: cooperative and then that that there will be UM specific
Speaker 1: cannabis grown for that cooperative to be supplied to the
Speaker 1: members of that cooperative on a not for profit basis.
Speaker 1: But they have not actually opened yet, so they're only
Speaker 1: opening for license applications for these nonprofit associations next month,
Speaker 1: so that that you can't yet actually go and buy
Speaker 1: cannabis anywhere, and even if you wanted to, you'd have
Speaker 1: to be a resident of Malta and you'd have to
Speaker 1: join one of these associations and then you would be
Speaker 1: able to have access to legal cannabis via that route
Speaker 1: unless you were growing your own at home. So they're
Speaker 1: not going to have any actual retail commercial market as
Speaker 1: such a tool and on only these non nonprofit cannabis associations.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of an interesting a model, you know.
Speaker 1: It's this is a fascinating time for for drug policy folks,
Speaker 1: because you're seeing these more commercial models in the US.
Speaker 1: You're seeing kind of these state models in state control
Speaker 1: models like in Uruguay and certain and state control retailing
Speaker 1: in places like Quebec in Canada. But now you're seeing
Speaker 1: these European models emerging and this interesting one in Malta
Speaker 1: whether it isn't going to be a commercial retail market
Speaker 1: at all, only homegrowing and not profit association. So we're
Speaker 1: gonna just give me really interesting to see see what
Speaker 1: works and what doesn't work with with these models. With
Speaker 1: you know, what can we learn from the countries that
Speaker 1: follow in their footsteps. Well, No, Uruguay was kind of interesting,
Speaker 1: right because they did is basically a tripartite model right
Speaker 1: where they said basically you can grow your own up
Speaker 1: to a certain point, which is a core element of
Speaker 1: what's going on in the US. Then they did some
Speaker 1: of the Spanish Canada's social club model, so people could
Speaker 1: have a kind of cooperative where people remember and somebody
Speaker 1: would grow for the group. And then they did a
Speaker 1: pharmacy sort of distribution model. And now that's been going
Speaker 1: on for about almost at seven eight years now, Um,
Speaker 1: I mean, how is it working out? And and are
Speaker 1: we seeing a lot of I mean, is the pharmacy
Speaker 1: the principal source? What's happened with the black market there?
Speaker 1: I mean the black market that the illegal market is
Speaker 1: certainly contracted, but interestingly the pharmacy sales, which were probably
Speaker 1: too restrictive, and they have not actually turned out to
Speaker 1: be the predominant supply model. So far more people obtain
Speaker 1: their cannabis through home growing or through the not for
Speaker 1: profit social clubs done via the pharmacies. And I think
Speaker 1: the problem really with the pharmacies was that they were
Speaker 1: just too restrictive. You have to register as a registered
Speaker 1: buyer to get a kind of like you know, digital
Speaker 1: pass code things so that you can act you can
Speaker 1: buy a certain amount each month, and the cannabis that
Speaker 1: they sell is quite low potency, certainly by American standards.
Speaker 1: I think you can get seven percent and nine th HC,
Speaker 1: which a lot of people would regard as too low
Speaker 1: or that if you're used to K plus t HC cannabis,
Speaker 1: you probably guard that is too weak. I think they're
Speaker 1: looking to now introduce a stronger strain of around fift um.
Speaker 1: But it was non branded. There was only these two
Speaker 1: varieties you could get to these two potencies, and you
Speaker 1: could only get it from a relatively small number of
Speaker 1: pharmacies um and you had to buy in person, so
Speaker 1: you couldn't do mail order delivery. So for people who
Speaker 1: weren't near one of these pharmacies, it was actually pretty inaccessible,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people were turned off from using this.
Speaker 1: You know, they didn't want to register with the government
Speaker 1: as someone who uses cannabis, but kind of unsurprising obvious
Speaker 1: reasons people don't want to be on a government database
Speaker 1: as people who use cannabis, given given you know, the
Speaker 1: history of the War on drugs and persecution of cannabis users.
Speaker 1: So actually about ten times more cannabis is consumed from
Speaker 1: homegrow and the social clubs than actually the pharmacy sales model,
Speaker 1: which suggests to me that the pharmacy sales model was
Speaker 1: too restrictive. I think you probably. You know, even for
Speaker 1: someone like me who I know Ethan, you're always teasing
Speaker 1: me about being a hyper regulator. Um, I think overcooked it.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was involved in making proposals and helping
Speaker 1: design some of this, but you know, we were arguing.
Speaker 1: I was down there with Lisa Sanchez, who's now the
Speaker 1: director of um muc D in Mexico, and we were saying, look,
Speaker 1: that's just too it's too restrictive. You know, if you're
Speaker 1: having a registry of buyers, people aren't just aren't going
Speaker 1: to be into it. And I think we were proved
Speaker 1: right because it just hasn't proved as popular, I think
Speaker 1: as they're expecting, and people were much more drawn to
Speaker 1: the idea of these um social clubs and homegrown models
Speaker 1: because they don't. They don't. They just didn't want to
Speaker 1: be in the system. They didn't want that. They were
Speaker 1: worried about surveillance and private But it does seem though
Speaker 1: there there, for example, the the import from Paraguay had
Speaker 1: dropped rammatically though that people are getting if they're getting
Speaker 1: it illusively, they're getting it diverted. They're getting it from
Speaker 1: home growths, from friends, or from social clubs or what
Speaker 1: have you understand that the stuff that was coming in
Speaker 1: from Paraguay was pretty terrible quality staff lots of sticks
Speaker 1: and seeds, and it was very low potency, and it
Speaker 1: often had pesticides on it. It It was it was pretty
Speaker 1: crappy weed, really, And so the stuff that was being produced,
Speaker 1: even the low poesy pharmacy stuff UM, and certainly the
Speaker 1: stuff from the social clubs was just far far better
Speaker 1: and it but it was coming in at kind of
Speaker 1: the same price. So the Paraguay imports um and that
Speaker 1: whole market yet collapse, and that that's an undoubted positive
Speaker 1: in terms of reducing the scale of that the illegal market. Said,
Speaker 1: to that extent, it's been a success. I think in
Speaker 1: public health terms, it's been regarded as success. Youth use,
Speaker 1: which is obviously always a focus of these debates, has
Speaker 1: has you know, either stayed level or in many cases
Speaker 1: gone down. There certainly hasn't been a jump in levels
Speaker 1: of use. Adult use has gone up a bit, a
Speaker 1: bit like it has in some other legalization places. But
Speaker 1: you know, the the the much dreaded explosion in cannabis use,
Speaker 1: and you know, armies of child cannabis zombies walking streets.
Speaker 1: None of that none of that stuff happened. Let's take
Speaker 1: a break here and go to an egg. So Steve,
Speaker 1: we've been friends for twenty years. When it comes to
Speaker 1: thinking about legal regulation, we're actually pretty on the big picture.
Speaker 1: We're pretty much on the same page that you have
Speaker 1: to find ways of balancing public health and public safety
Speaker 1: and maximizing tax revenue but protecting young people, and you know,
Speaker 1: respecting what communities want to do in terms of where
Speaker 1: things can be sold and limiting advertising and all this
Speaker 1: sort of stuff. But when it push comes to shove,
Speaker 1: we also get into it. And Steve likes to tease
Speaker 1: me calling me a libertarian, which of course I am not.
Speaker 1: I'm a civil libertarian, but I'm certainly my politics lean
Speaker 1: left of center. And I like to tease him about
Speaker 1: being a hyper regulating socialist, which of course is probably
Speaker 1: more true than anything accuses me of being. UM. But
Speaker 1: that's it. Steve and I were recently in late two
Speaker 1: at a gathering in the US UM that was very
Speaker 1: focused on issues of social equity and racial equity and
Speaker 1: how to prevent the growing concentration UM in the marijuana
Speaker 1: in the cannabis industry in the U s and elsewhere.
Speaker 1: But I mean, Steve, remember I remember teasing you at
Speaker 1: this thing, because a couple of interesting things were coming
Speaker 1: out of this. One is there were people not just
Speaker 1: from the U S there, but from about a dozen countries,
Speaker 1: and not just you know, Europe, but the Africa, the Caribbean,
Speaker 1: Latin America. And the first kind of you know, kind
Speaker 1: of realization that hit that the people coming from Caribbean, Africa,
Speaker 1: Latin America, it suddenly occurred to them that they were
Speaker 1: looking at the US as a potential market for them
Speaker 1: to be exploring their cannabis too, but that all the
Speaker 1: folks in the US were going, well, wait a second,
Speaker 1: we don't want any exports. We want this to be
Speaker 1: all domestic driven. We want to help our small growers.
Speaker 1: And the second thing that was interesting was that some
Speaker 1: of the activists and small cannabis business owners there, you know,
Speaker 1: people of color running small marijuana businesses. If you close
Speaker 1: with your eyes and listen to them talking about the
Speaker 1: challenges they confronted, what jumped out at me was that
Speaker 1: here were women of color running small businesses, caring about equity.
Speaker 1: But for the first six key percent of their comments,
Speaker 1: they could have been a Trump loving small businessman Republican
Speaker 1: right complaining about over taxation, over regulation and realizing that
Speaker 1: what was killing not you know, you can hear the
Speaker 1: big eyes, the multi state operators, what we call the
Speaker 1: bigger cannabis organizations that have operations and lots of states,
Speaker 1: complaining about over taxation, over regulation, but to hear the
Speaker 1: little guys saying it and sounding like even if our
Speaker 1: politics on the left and we care about equity, this
Speaker 1: is a major problem. And I wonder Steve in that meeting,
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, you know, you've been a big
Speaker 1: advocate for high levels of regulation, taxation and all this
Speaker 1: sort of stuff. I mean, was there an aha moment
Speaker 1: for you there or anything surprising that jumped out at
Speaker 1: you there? Yeah. I mean, well, one of the other
Speaker 1: things that came out was that there was a lot
Speaker 1: of fear of federal regulation, a federal legalization, which I
Speaker 1: was I was kind of surprised at, but I think
Speaker 1: there was a I mean, one of the interesting things
Speaker 1: I think about the US, the way it's unfolded in
Speaker 1: the US, is that because um regulation of cannabis is
Speaker 1: operated within states. I mean, you can't have trade between states,
Speaker 1: you can have multi state operators, but they have to operate,
Speaker 1: you know, within each state. So you've had these kind
Speaker 1: of now twenty one, I think it is small scale,
Speaker 1: not small scales. Some of them are quite big scale.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously California is huge, but you've had these
Speaker 1: kind of like islands of island industries that they can't
Speaker 1: trade with each other. But if if federal legalization opens
Speaker 1: that up, I think there was a lot of fear
Speaker 1: of kind of um corporate consolidation and you would get
Speaker 1: these big kind of corporate players and the and the
Speaker 1: the smaller medium sized market actors wouldn't be able to
Speaker 1: compete with them um on in a national or in
Speaker 1: the future international market and they would just get gobbled
Speaker 1: up or kind of brushed aside. And I think there
Speaker 1: is there was a very legitimate concern about that UM
Speaker 1: and didn't really come up with that many answers at
Speaker 1: anythink because it's quite difficult. I mean, I think that
Speaker 1: there there are potential answers, but it would be it's
Speaker 1: important to try and protect the interests of the smaller
Speaker 1: and smaller medium sized businesses to prevent the emergence of
Speaker 1: oligopolies and monopolies who could sort of distort the market
Speaker 1: and consolidate the market in ways that I think would
Speaker 1: reduce diversity and reduce social social equity. But there was
Speaker 1: also concerns that there was about legal legal federal legalization
Speaker 1: having an impact on some of the really cool social
Speaker 1: equity programs that have been set up at state level
Speaker 1: and that that you know, we are seeing these things
Speaker 1: in Massachusetts and now New York and New Jersey and
Speaker 1: Illinois and a number of other states, really incredible social
Speaker 1: lexuity programs that would you know, give licensing reference to
Speaker 1: social equity candidates from impact to communities, that would provide
Speaker 1: grants and support um that would you know, could could
Speaker 1: really help h build and and support people who from
Speaker 1: impact to communities to participate in these markets in a meaningful,
Speaker 1: kind of equal way. That the federal legalization could kind
Speaker 1: of undermine a lot of those efforts if it's not
Speaker 1: done in a in a thoughtful way that respects the
Speaker 1: interests of some these states state social equity programs. So
Speaker 1: I was very struck by that. But I think the
Speaker 1: point you made Ethan about the international markets, I think
Speaker 1: that's that was really important because even the people who
Speaker 1: well actually steve before we get into the international market thing.
Speaker 1: I just want to say, you know, since I and
Speaker 1: my callings were deeply involved in the drafting of many
Speaker 1: of the medical merial one in the mirror Metroan legalization,
Speaker 1: you know statutes, we look at what you know, what
Speaker 1: we were involved in California are again I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: we're learning a lot from that. You see in California
Speaker 1: vast or illicit market. They continues, you know, because of
Speaker 1: over taxation, over regulation, and a host of other variables.
Speaker 1: So the question about when I look at some of
Speaker 1: your writing and your blueprints, right, they still have a
Speaker 1: strong regulatory on you know, a strong relatory thing and
Speaker 1: tax and all this. Do you think that when you
Speaker 1: come out with your you know, fourth edition of regulating cannabis,
Speaker 1: how do you think it will be different in terms
Speaker 1: of what you see happening on the ground in many
Speaker 1: of these estates and countries. You know, if you if you,
Speaker 1: if you if you read what we've we we've we've
Speaker 1: said ethan and I know you have done it. It's
Speaker 1: it's I hope it's a bit more nuance. I mean,
Speaker 1: I would prefer to have um, you know, localized or
Speaker 1: and social controls and social norms dictating a lot of
Speaker 1: the things that we that we we talk about, But
Speaker 1: what we've said is we think that as a starting point,
Speaker 1: you should err on the side of a more restrictive,
Speaker 1: more heavily regulated model, and then over time, as things
Speaker 1: are shown to be working okay, which bits are working,
Speaker 1: which bits aren't, you can then relax things. What I
Speaker 1: think is problematic is if you start with a very
Speaker 1: open market, a very maybe unregulated or underregulated market, it
Speaker 1: becomes it's much harder than to impose restrictions or regulations
Speaker 1: if things aren't if things aren't working, And we've seen
Speaker 1: that without con tobacco. I mean, you know, you look
Speaker 1: at tobacco now, particularly in Europe, but also in the US.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's been a decades long battle to
Speaker 1: try and impose better regulation on tobacco in terms of
Speaker 1: marketing controls and in terms of information on packaging, and
Speaker 1: in terms of you know, smoking in public spaces and
Speaker 1: so on. When you've got when you've got a multibillion
Speaker 1: dollar entrenched industry lobbying against regulation, it's much harder to
Speaker 1: pursue public health goals in that context. So our view
Speaker 1: is that you you you start with a sort of
Speaker 1: public health regulation model, um and and and try and
Speaker 1: learn lessons from some of the failings about con tobacco,
Speaker 1: and if things are shown to be working, then you
Speaker 1: relax it afterwards rather than trying to do it the
Speaker 1: other way around. So I'm not I'm not think of it.
Speaker 1: I'm not a hyper regulator just because I just love
Speaker 1: regulating stuff. I get it. But and I basically agree
Speaker 1: and and the issue about corporate capture when big alpha
Speaker 1: big tobacco, can you know, keep the taxes low and
Speaker 1: the regulations low for a long period of time. But
Speaker 1: to play devil's advocate on this stuff, right, It's also
Speaker 1: the case that if what you're trying to do to
Speaker 1: some extent is transition quickly from the illicit market, from
Speaker 1: the majority of the industry being illicit to being legally regulated,
Speaker 1: you want to have a low taxation policy, right. You
Speaker 1: want to find ways to induce people, you know, to
Speaker 1: shift from both consumers and producers to shift into different
Speaker 1: It comes back to what you were this idea of balance.
Speaker 1: And one of the issue one of the challenges we
Speaker 1: have when we have these policy debates, when we're designing
Speaker 1: regulatory frameworks is that you have a range of different
Speaker 1: stakeholders who have different priorities ease, and sometimes those priorities
Speaker 1: are in confit of each other. And public health people generally,
Speaker 1: and tobacco tax is a good example of this. Public
Speaker 1: health people generally want to have lots of tax keep
Speaker 1: the prices of these things high, because most economic analysis
Speaker 1: shows if you put the price up, people will consume less.
Speaker 1: And we've certainly seen that with tobacco. As you as
Speaker 1: you ramp up the tobacco taxes, use generally goes down.
Speaker 1: But what it also does is it incentivizes illegal market activity.
Speaker 1: Now with tobacco, that's generally smuggling from lower tax regimes
Speaker 1: and selling it in high tax regimes, but some counterfeiting.
Speaker 1: But with cannabis, it means that you have a parallel
Speaker 1: legal market that will seek to undercut the higher price,
Speaker 1: higher taxed um cannabis products. And you know there's a
Speaker 1: tension there. You have a tension between the need to
Speaker 1: a desire or a priority to dissuade use or certainly
Speaker 1: not encourage used by having low prices and dissuade us
Speaker 1: by having high prices, versus a desire from people who
Speaker 1: prioritize criminal justice outcome to minimize the illegal market. And
Speaker 1: there's no perfect answer to that. We just have to
Speaker 1: decide what our priorities are and try and strike the
Speaker 1: right balance, acknowledging that you know, you can't you can't
Speaker 1: have it all. Different stakeholders have different priorities, and that
Speaker 1: the problem, I think is, and you've touched on this
Speaker 1: with the corporate captive thing, is that you know, corporate
Speaker 1: actors and commercial actors whose primary goal is essentially profit generation,
Speaker 1: they all have a series of um, you know, regulatory
Speaker 1: goals that may be out odds with the public health goals.
Speaker 1: You know that they are seeking to make money and
Speaker 1: not to protect public health. I'm not saying all corporate
Speaker 1: actors are totally uninterested in public health and and other
Speaker 1: things like sustainability and social justice, but generally speaking, they
Speaker 1: will prioritize, you know, corporate profits over those other social
Speaker 1: health and you know, sustainability goals, and there you have attention.
Speaker 1: And if they become very powerful, and if you do
Speaker 1: get consolidation, and if you do have these billion dollar
Speaker 1: corporations you know, flooding the hill with their lobbyists and
Speaker 1: all the rest of it, it becomes very difficult for
Speaker 1: social justice advocates who don't have the same access to
Speaker 1: that kind of political and media and sort of publicity
Speaker 1: capital and lobby and capital, and you know, pr budgets
Speaker 1: to compete with them and it becomes very difficult. And
Speaker 1: I actually think it's huge credit to the non government
Speaker 1: organizations that they have been able to you know, hold
Speaker 1: their own against some of these corporate voices on the market.
Speaker 1: You know that whether it's a Drug Policy Alliance or
Speaker 1: Transform or people like Sharlie Title at the Parabolus Center, UM,
Speaker 1: you know, who are making the argument, you know, critical
Speaker 1: of of of corporate capture and critical of some of
Speaker 1: the kind of over commercialization UM, that they are able
Speaker 1: to hold their own against these corporations that have these
Speaker 1: gigantic budgets, and you know they are actually funding front
Speaker 1: organizations like cep here. I can't even want cep here
Speaker 1: as an anagram for cannabis. It's got you know, basic,
Speaker 1: it's it's funded by the alcohol and tobacco industry as
Speaker 1: to promote cannabis legalization that is shaped in in the
Speaker 1: interests of the ALCN tobacco industry who want to you know,
Speaker 1: move in and profit on on that new industry, and
Speaker 1: it's really important that we pushed back against that because
Speaker 1: if you have Alcohn tobacco industry money and big corporate
Speaker 1: money guiding the legislation at this early stage, at federal
Speaker 1: legislation and state legislation, it will be made in their interests,
Speaker 1: in the interests of corporate profits, and not in the interests,
Speaker 1: to quote the U entreaties of the health and well
Speaker 1: being of of you know, humankind. And that's a big concern,
Speaker 1: and that's something I have to say. It is complicated,
Speaker 1: remember as this meaning that you're ira both there and
Speaker 1: I'm asking, so what are the models? Has More and
Speaker 1: more states are embracing more of a you know, trying
Speaker 1: to give a headstart and a leg up and assistance
Speaker 1: to the nine big players, you know, especially to people
Speaker 1: of color, to veterans, to women, two people who have
Speaker 1: uh you know, remarkably people who have had a marijuana
Speaker 1: conviction getting getting a head start on getting an opportunity
Speaker 1: to get a license. And if you ask, well, so
Speaker 1: what are the best models out there right now? And
Speaker 1: the sense I god for some of the conversations was
Speaker 1: that there were two models out there. One was a
Speaker 1: limited one in Oakland, California with a fairly progressive government
Speaker 1: that seems to have found some way to provide you know,
Speaker 1: kind of equity preferences. But the other one, fascinatingly was Oklahoma, right,
Speaker 1: one of the reddest states in America, which is legalized
Speaker 1: medical marijuana, and it's now a wild West out there
Speaker 1: with almost no regulation. People growers from California moving to Oklahoma,
Speaker 1: Oklahoma illegally supplying you know, beginning to supply the rest
Speaker 1: of the country. But what's the case there is it's
Speaker 1: probably one of the least regulated states in the country.
Speaker 1: One result of which is that anybody can spend like
Speaker 1: two grand or something to get a license, can open
Speaker 1: up a medical cannabis shop, and it's very easy to
Speaker 1: get a medical cannabis I date. But the result is
Speaker 1: is if if you go I'm told, if you go
Speaker 1: into a black neighborhood, IDEs are pretty good there's gonna
Speaker 1: be some black guy from the community who's got the
Speaker 1: local dispensary. Right, So there are ways in which the
Speaker 1: kind of very low regulation sometimes can advantage to small
Speaker 1: guys as well, at least so long as we don't
Speaker 1: have federal legalization. I mean, you know, I'm not looking
Speaker 1: at that generally. I I frown on that levels of
Speaker 1: regulation like that, But that's not that I don't want, um,
Speaker 1: you know, people who don't have access to significant amounts
Speaker 1: of capital to be able to participate in the market,
Speaker 1: I really do. I just think you have to use
Speaker 1: your equity models to support them. So you have other
Speaker 1: other states have grant programs and you know, interest free
Speaker 1: loan programs and training programs to help people, you know,
Speaker 1: enable them to compete on a more even playing field
Speaker 1: with some of the more established actors. And you know
Speaker 1: the New York. New York just issued its first thirty
Speaker 1: eight or thirty six, thirty eight licenses I think last months,
Speaker 1: and they all to social equity candidates. Eight of them
Speaker 1: were to nonprofit actors, which I just think is absolutely amazing.
Speaker 1: And of the tax revenue from the new legal cannabis
Speaker 1: market in New York is going to go back into
Speaker 1: impacted communities in terms of social programs, which I also
Speaker 1: think is amazing. In in New Jersey, it's see, the
Speaker 1: tax revenue is going to be reinvested in impacted communities. Now,
Speaker 1: if you think about it, that is really amazing. That's
Speaker 1: really amazing. In the US to have seventy of the
Speaker 1: tax revenue in in an emerging market be reinvested in
Speaker 1: UH communities that have been disproportionately impacted by the War
Speaker 1: on drugs. I think that's absolutely remarkable. It it it does
Speaker 1: bring up some real challenges of capitalism and how how
Speaker 1: how states will I mean look, and I also have
Speaker 1: a kind of a whole panoply of views on this
Speaker 1: under went and very proud. I mean, California, which we
Speaker 1: played a major role into acting in twenties sixteen, has
Speaker 1: not really pioneered some of these provisions about directing tax
Speaker 1: revenue to the communities that have been most harmed, about
Speaker 1: giving certain assistance to you know, basically equity actors to
Speaker 1: get involved in this industry. And you know, obviously it
Speaker 1: was my success as a drug policy Alliance who drove
Speaker 1: the New York legalization model. So in that sense, it's
Speaker 1: very you know, I feel quite proud of what's happened.
Speaker 1: But then I asked myself, m if your number one
Speaker 1: objective is increasing the amount of tax revenue that's going
Speaker 1: to go to communities that were harmed, you want this
Speaker 1: industry to grow quickly, right, But the slower you roll
Speaker 1: it out, the less tax revenue that there's going to
Speaker 1: be that. Secondly, the more regulation you have, the harder
Speaker 1: it's going to be. I mean, one thing that advantages
Speaker 1: the big players and all of this is that they
Speaker 1: have expertise in dealing with government regular relation, They have lawyers,
Speaker 1: they've often come from other industries where they've been involved
Speaker 1: in this, whereas if you're starting up or you've previously
Speaker 1: been involved in the illegal side of the industry and
Speaker 1: not had you know, any any interaction with government regulators,
Speaker 1: right then basically these are all barriers to the small
Speaker 1: guys getting better, and it depends on the regulation model.
Speaker 1: So you know, you that this is one of the
Speaker 1: really beautiful and exciting things about cannabis legalization. Regulation is that,
Speaker 1: you know, we get to design the market structure from scratch,
Speaker 1: and we can make decisions around who participates, how and when,
Speaker 1: and you can preference smaller actors. You can restrict participation
Speaker 1: of bigger actors. You can prevent you know, um emergence.
Speaker 1: You can limit the number of licenses that anyone actor
Speaker 1: can have. You can support and do preferential licensing for
Speaker 1: particular communities or participants. You can make these decisions, and
Speaker 1: you can reshape the markets in all kinds of interesting ways.
Speaker 1: And you know, I genuinely think that it may have
Speaker 1: impact on other markets and nothing to do with cannabis,
Speaker 1: because you know, imagine if you had sev the tax
Speaker 1: revenue from I don't know oil being directed into environmental
Speaker 1: you know, cause, environmental sustainability. This is you know, I
Speaker 1: don't want to I don't want to be sort of
Speaker 1: ridiculously evangelic and idealistic about this, but these things do
Speaker 1: have the potential to help reshape how we think about markets,
Speaker 1: um and commerce and entrepreneurship and you know, community participation
Speaker 1: in a in a much broader way. I'd love to
Speaker 1: see some of these really innovative, amazing cannabis reforms having
Speaker 1: a kind of ripple knock on effect far beyond drug markets.
Speaker 1: Well we'll see. I mean, I would like to see
Speaker 1: that happened too. There's also a major difference though, between
Speaker 1: talking about where the tax revenue is directed to on
Speaker 1: the one hand, and how one is going to regulate
Speaker 1: or create opportunities and the interest on the other, And
Speaker 1: to some extents there can even be a conflict between
Speaker 1: those two things. It's nice to think that this could
Speaker 1: become a model for the future, and that it could
Speaker 1: even survive federal legalization. On the other hand, we do
Speaker 1: know that there is an overall whelming force behind basically
Speaker 1: the basic nature of capitalism, right capitalism, you know especially,
Speaker 1: I mean, look, even we look about, you know, the
Speaker 1: illegal markets, those are kind of capitalism and its rowst form.
Speaker 1: But when we look at legal capitalism and the different
Speaker 1: varieties of capitalism, some social welfare capitalism to chrony capitalism,
Speaker 1: to free market capitalism to kleptocratic capitalism, I mean, most
Speaker 1: of the world is essentially capitalists. And we also tend
Speaker 1: to see that some movement towards concentration inevitably happens in
Speaker 1: most industries. So let me bring this down to a
Speaker 1: very concrete example. You are an advisor and you've played
Speaker 1: a role in Canada. Now, Canada doesn't have the types
Speaker 1: of state controls I mean in the same way of
Speaker 1: limitations that we have in the US. You do have
Speaker 1: more of a national model in Canada. And what's your
Speaker 1: take about how Canada is evolving and what lessons can
Speaker 1: be learned for better or words from what's happened in Canada. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean that that the state controls are over supply
Speaker 1: and trade. The individual provinces the princial controls. I should
Speaker 1: say that the individual provinces, um, they they regulate retail.
Speaker 1: And you do have this quite interesting variation between the
Speaker 1: provinces in terms of several of the provinces have government
Speaker 1: monopolies on the retail. So Quebec perhaps most high profile,
Speaker 1: I think, I can't remember the other one in New Brunswick,
Speaker 1: I think, and a couple of them have a mix
Speaker 1: of government stores and you know, conventional commercial stores, and
Speaker 1: so there is actually quite an interesting amount of variations.
Speaker 1: Some of them have different age access um, and some
Speaker 1: of them, like in Quebec, also they don't allow certain edibles.
Speaker 1: They don't allow the gummies and candy based edibles. So
Speaker 1: again we have this quite fascinating sort of laboratory of
Speaker 1: change where you can look at you, okay, what's working
Speaker 1: in in each one. I mean, I think if you
Speaker 1: look at the Canada, generally, I would say generally it's
Speaker 1: been a reasonable success if you look at the public
Speaker 1: health outcomes, if you look at the tax revenue. UM,
Speaker 1: I think there was certainly a problem with the big
Speaker 1: corporate corporate corporates have kind of collapsed in value. There
Speaker 1: was probably a bit of a bubble into an investor bubble,
Speaker 1: which then collapsed um and the corporatization. I was very
Speaker 1: worried that we were moving towards a sort of oligopoly situation.
Speaker 1: And then there was a point early on where I
Speaker 1: think the big five companies they were all measured in
Speaker 1: the billions, valid in the billions, and they were more
Speaker 1: than half of the total market. But interestingly that is
Speaker 1: actually shrunk. A lot of them have kind of collapsed
Speaker 1: to a certain extent. You're till raise and yeah, I
Speaker 1: can't remember what they're all called, but they're they're now
Speaker 1: they're like most Let me interupt you on two issues. Then.
Speaker 1: One is when it comes to cultivation, can you have
Speaker 1: mega cultivation facilities in one province exploring to the rest
Speaker 1: of the country. And secondly, and so that seems to
Speaker 1: me very different what's going on the US right now,
Speaker 1: and that means that you would potentially have major concentration
Speaker 1: were something like we've had, you know, we're people envision
Speaker 1: if you're under federal legalization, that the Central Valley in
Speaker 1: California could be exporting too much of them, but we
Speaker 1: could we could make the rules. If you're writing the legislation,
Speaker 1: you get to make the rules. And if you say
Speaker 1: no one company can cultivate more than ex hectares of cannabis,
Speaker 1: then that is then the law and so it. But
Speaker 1: has Canada done that? They haven't. I mean I actually
Speaker 1: wish that they did. I recommended that they did, and
Speaker 1: they didn't. You know, I work with the Federal Task Force.
Speaker 1: I didn't actually draft the law. I understand and what
Speaker 1: and what about in terms of corporate you know, corporate
Speaker 1: concentration And obviously a lot of these companies grew too fast,
Speaker 1: they were too full of themselves. They collapsed. But what
Speaker 1: prevents corporate concentration. It's another thing that I think that
Speaker 1: they didn't do enough. On UM. There has been a
Speaker 1: consolidation and corporate corporate capture up to a point. But
Speaker 1: as the point I was just making was actually UM
Speaker 1: that system, it seems that the market seems to have
Speaker 1: actually in the last couple of years become more diverse
Speaker 1: and not less, which kind of has surprised me. But
Speaker 1: that's what the data suggests. UM. I think I think
Speaker 1: some of the points you were making earlier, that you know,
Speaker 1: one of the things that Canada didn't do well. Was
Speaker 1: the was the social equity piece? They really didn't. They've
Speaker 1: they've had to kind of retrospectively try and introduce some
Speaker 1: social equity stuff, particularly related to participation in indigenous groups.
Speaker 1: And you know, the regulatory bars to entry to the
Speaker 1: market were way too high even for their kind of
Speaker 1: micro cultivation. Um you you needed to have literally hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands of dollars um you had to build your
Speaker 1: facility before you could even apply for a license, which
Speaker 1: was crazy. So I think they didn't do some of
Speaker 1: the stuff around social equity at all well. But I
Speaker 1: get the sense that they've they acknowledged some of those
Speaker 1: shortcomings and are trying to kind of retrospectively kind of
Speaker 1: engineering some more social justice staff and more social equity programs,
Speaker 1: particularly around indigenous participation and micro cultivation. But you know,
Speaker 1: other countries can see it, can look at what's happened
Speaker 1: in the US States, they can look at what's happened
Speaker 1: in Canada nationally and at the provincial level, and learned
Speaker 1: from that and goal, look, they did this really well.
Speaker 1: I mean things like you know, quality control inspections, packaging
Speaker 1: REGs and so on. Generally, I think all of that stuff,
Speaker 1: health warnings and UM tax tax controls. I think generally
Speaker 1: was pretty good. And you're seeing about sixty of the
Speaker 1: market is now tax and regulated in Canada after four
Speaker 1: years five years, sorry um, And you know it's been
Speaker 1: it's been creeping up. It was thirty years, or it
Speaker 1: was after one year, and then after like two or
Speaker 1: three years, and now it's about six and it's still
Speaker 1: going up now sixty. You know, it would be a
Speaker 1: lot better if that was eight, but that's six still
Speaker 1: sixty pc tax and regulated as opposed to illegal, untaxed
Speaker 1: and unregulated, which is what it was before. So it's
Speaker 1: still those age programs. I think generally they've done a
Speaker 1: good job, but there were shortcomings. The question you and
Speaker 1: I are both mutually interested in, is there any way
Speaker 1: to kind of get to the point of diversity and
Speaker 1: diversification and avoiding the conglomeration of wealth and the album
Speaker 1: oligopoli phenomenon, you know, you know, without having the big
Speaker 1: guys take over in the first place. And the question
Speaker 1: is can that realistically happen? Can it? Can it? Can
Speaker 1: it really happen? Given the power of economics in all
Speaker 1: of this, and given the realities of politics and all
Speaker 1: of this, and given the fact that you know, a
Speaker 1: big part of the U. S. Government is controlled by
Speaker 1: Republicans who don't care about a lot of this type
Speaker 1: of thing that you and I are talking about, right
Speaker 1: And as you say when you talk about NAPTON, w
Speaker 1: t O and all these other sorts of variables. So
Speaker 1: the question is, is is can in fact that happen? And
Speaker 1: one of the things I find myself saying people who
Speaker 1: are pursuing equity objectives, especially at the governmental level, is
Speaker 1: try to think forward five or ten years. Take everything
Speaker 1: we know about the forces that lead to concentration and
Speaker 1: to oligopoli takeover, and try to figure out what are
Speaker 1: the things that can effectively be blocked. How do you
Speaker 1: take a stand in certain areas where you can preserve
Speaker 1: things that are meaningful? And I think we need to
Speaker 1: look at the lessons um from other industries. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, if you look at alcohol. I was just
Speaker 1: looking the other day, Steve at which states allow liquor
Speaker 1: to be sold in supermarkets, and I think like a
Speaker 1: third third to a half of all U S states
Speaker 1: now allow liquor to be sold in supermarkets, and they
Speaker 1: vary from you know, conservative states to moderate states to
Speaker 1: liberal states all around the country. There's no kind of
Speaker 1: rhyme or reason to that. And I think that in
Speaker 1: those states where liquor can be sold in supermarkets, you're
Speaker 1: less likely to have small liquor stores, right, small wine
Speaker 1: stores and things like that. So I'm curious how much
Speaker 1: of you and others are they looking at the viable
Speaker 1: models from alcohol control um that makes sense, or if
Speaker 1: we're looking in the global context looking at the models first,
Speaker 1: say coffee production or cocao production, the ones that have
Speaker 1: been successful in retaining you know, a real diversity of
Speaker 1: participation on the cultivation and the distribution side as opposed
Speaker 1: to having oligopoly takeover. Which elements of industry are the
Speaker 1: ones where you can best resist oligopoly, whereas which elements
Speaker 1: of industry are the ones where it's inevitable, and therefore
Speaker 1: you figure out how to kind of catalyze, how to
Speaker 1: direct that stuff so you can protect the small guys
Speaker 1: without ever thinking you can ultimately block it. But in
Speaker 1: terms of going forward, and as we think not just
Speaker 1: about cannabis, as we think about the legal regulation of cocaine,
Speaker 1: hopefully cocaine, as we think about m d m A.
Speaker 1: Things like how much do you know about people looking
Speaker 1: at these other models, whether the alcohol field or the
Speaker 1: cacao and coffee field on the production side, is that
Speaker 1: thinking happening or not? And if not, one I think
Speaker 1: it is. I mean we we've been trying to get
Speaker 1: people in the sustainable to element and social and sustainable
Speaker 1: of element goals, people in the development field UM engaged
Speaker 1: in the drug quality debate specifically around you know, alternative
Speaker 1: to prohibition and what legal markets are some of these
Speaker 1: drug drug drug plant crops would look like, and how
Speaker 1: we can build in things like sustainable development and fair
Speaker 1: trade principles and you know, protecting traditional growers. A lot
Speaker 1: of these concepts UM have been thought about. You know,
Speaker 1: organizations like the Transational Institute the Netherlands has done a
Speaker 1: lot of work, Health Poverty Action in the UK have
Speaker 1: done a lot of work. Transform We've been pushing it
Speaker 1: UM and a lot of the things that you've already
Speaker 1: you've already touched upon, you know, learning lessons from successful
Speaker 1: fair trade approaches to other agricultural products. But you know,
Speaker 1: at a domestic level, I think you can do anti
Speaker 1: monopoly legislation, you can do an awful lot with licensing controls.
Speaker 1: You know, you can say no individual economic actor can
Speaker 1: can take more than X number of licenses, and you
Speaker 1: you know, you aren't allowed to have vertical integration, you
Speaker 1: can't own production and retail facilities. You can actually do
Speaker 1: a lot to prevent those things at the initial legislative
Speaker 1: slate stage. And if it's if it's if it's hardwired
Speaker 1: into the legislation at the outset, it's not something that
Speaker 1: will necessarily just get eroded um in time. And of
Speaker 1: course legislation can be amended or superseded um. But if
Speaker 1: you don't allow the emergence of these you know, ultra powerful,
Speaker 1: multi billion pound corporations in the first instance, um, then
Speaker 1: you know those those power blocks of of of lobbying
Speaker 1: and political influence don't emerge either. So you don't have
Speaker 1: to then try and retroactively impose responsible regulation and control
Speaker 1: like we've had to do with our Cohn tobacco. We've
Speaker 1: done successfully to back up to some degree, but we
Speaker 1: haven't really done with alcohol yet, which is why I
Speaker 1: would argue that alcohol is critically underregulated in many ways,
Speaker 1: particularly around retail and marketing and corporate sponsorship and so on.
Speaker 1: But I just think there's there's a lot we can do.
Speaker 1: And if you are actually in the position of making
Speaker 1: the reforms and drafting the legislations which shape the nature
Speaker 1: of the market from the outset, you have the power
Speaker 1: to do things very differently. And that's why you do
Speaker 1: have the possibility of social ecuty programs that restrict licensing
Speaker 1: or preference licensing for for impact to communities, and you
Speaker 1: are able to legislate that tax revenue is redirected into
Speaker 1: impact to communities, and you can put in place controls
Speaker 1: that prevent certain actors from participating. You can actually do it.
Speaker 1: You can design and and and have markets operate in
Speaker 1: a different way at a legislative level from the outset.
Speaker 1: And of course then there are also options like state monopolies.
Speaker 1: So in a number of as I've already said, in
Speaker 1: a number of Canadian provinces, you do have state monopolies
Speaker 1: on retail. In Quebec, all of the cannabis shops are
Speaker 1: run by the provincial government of Quebec um and and
Speaker 1: this it's a bit like the alcohol model in some
Speaker 1: Nordic countries, which in Sweden, for example, all alcohol retailing
Speaker 1: is run but as a state monopoly of the Swedish
Speaker 1: government um. Or you can have a very strictly regulated,
Speaker 1: effectively a state monopoly model on production as well um
Speaker 1: as they've done in Uruguay. Or you can have nonprofit
Speaker 1: and homegrowing only, as they've done in Malta. So there
Speaker 1: are alternatives, there are different ways of doing this. We
Speaker 1: don't have to go down um an alcohol tobacco model.
Speaker 1: And it used to Ethan. He used to annoy me
Speaker 1: when you would. You would talk about, you know, let's
Speaker 1: let's legalize and regulate cannabis like we do alcohol, and
Speaker 1: let's tax and regulate cannabis like alcohol. And I go, no, no,
Speaker 1: let's do it. Let's do it better than that. Don't
Speaker 1: keep saying that either let's do it, let's do it
Speaker 1: better than that. Let's let's learn from all the crappy
Speaker 1: stuff we've done with alcohol regulation and not do that
Speaker 1: and do it better. And let's let's use cannabis regulations
Speaker 1: an opportunity to show how drugs can be regulated and
Speaker 1: how markets can be regulated in the interests of the
Speaker 1: communities in which those markets exist, because rather than in
Speaker 1: the in the narrow interests of governments or in the
Speaker 1: narrow interests of corporate profits, which is the way that
Speaker 1: a lot of markets have gone um up to now,
Speaker 1: and that operates at a local level, that operates at
Speaker 1: a state level, at a national level, at a regional level,
Speaker 1: and at an international level. So we have to be
Speaker 1: thinking about these intersecting issues that operate at different scales
Speaker 1: as well as the issues themselves as social justice and
Speaker 1: social equity, is and fair trade or important principles, but
Speaker 1: they operate at all different scales, and some of them
Speaker 1: maybe tensions between you know, local level initiatives, national evaluatives,
Speaker 1: and an international initiatives. This stuff is complicated. You know
Speaker 1: that there's a lot of work to be done, even
Speaker 1: if we get the principles in place, and even if
Speaker 1: the political will and intent is there actually delivering these
Speaker 1: things effectively UM in ways that can last. You know,
Speaker 1: as you say, a lot of these things may be vulnerable.
Speaker 1: We can have all these good intentions and then a
Speaker 1: few years down the road, you know, corporate capture and
Speaker 1: corporate consolidation has eroded a lot of this stuff. We
Speaker 1: have to put in place solid legislation that can stand
Speaker 1: the test of time, deliver stuff that deliver outcomes that
Speaker 1: communities want to see and therefore communities and the politicians
Speaker 1: that serve that will be supportive of these these initiatives
Speaker 1: in the longer term. I mean, I genuinely believe it's doable,
Speaker 1: and I think a lot of the examples that are
Speaker 1: emerging already, whether it's in Uruguay, whether it's in Malta,
Speaker 1: whether it's in some of the better models that have
Speaker 1: emerged in US states and Canadian provinces, we're doing that already.
Speaker 1: We're showing how things can be done better. Because legalization
Speaker 1: is a process. Regulation is the end point, but there
Speaker 1: is more than one way to do it. You can
Speaker 1: do it well or you can do it badly. And
Speaker 1: I think advocates such as US you've been pushed in
Speaker 1: for a form all these years, we need to be
Speaker 1: advocating for for legalization regulation to be done right. And
Speaker 1: when it's not done right, I think we have to
Speaker 1: speak up against it. And it pains me sometimes to
Speaker 1: be critical of some of the legalization models that are emerging,
Speaker 1: but I think it was it was it in Ohio
Speaker 1: where they had this awful model with um well, basically
Speaker 1: they were having a constitutional monopoly for the people who
Speaker 1: funded the ballot initiative where these ten named people would
Speaker 1: then get basically a monopoly on the on the legal
Speaker 1: cannabis market. And you know, I had to come out
Speaker 1: against it, but Stevens said, I did. I did want
Speaker 1: to give you the last word on this. But quite funny,
Speaker 1: that was a wonderful sonation that you just presented, and
Speaker 1: I overwhelmingly of course in the end. You know, I've
Speaker 1: I've been on record for a long time as saying
Speaker 1: I'm not in this for the bud wise irization or
Speaker 1: marlboritization of marijuana. I really believe in the smallest beautiful
Speaker 1: model and I'd like to see that work, and I
Speaker 1: hope that we can actually make that. You know, that's
Speaker 1: the next five know we've we've won the first, we've
Speaker 1: won the argument against prohibition. That the next battle is
Speaker 1: to make sure that the regulation and the legalization regulation
Speaker 1: is done in the right way that you know, it's
Speaker 1: a supports the principles that on that very optimistic and
Speaker 1: promising note, I want to bring our extended conversation to
Speaker 1: a halt. I want to thank you, Steve for being
Speaker 1: such a wonderful ally throughout many decades and continuing into
Speaker 1: the future, and a good friend, and for being a
Speaker 1: real thought leader, and not just a thought leader, but
Speaker 1: somebody who has had an impact on the way government
Speaker 1: shapes these policies and bringing the right set of values
Speaker 1: to thinking about all of this. And also thank you
Speaker 1: for being you know, episode number eighties to conclude season
Speaker 1: two of Psychoactive, and hopefully it will not be the
Speaker 1: last episode of Psychoactive ever. Um, but I'm very glad
Speaker 1: that you've got to be the final guest that we've
Speaker 1: had in this current incarnation of psychoactis. Thank you then,
Speaker 1: it's been it's been a privilege to work with you
Speaker 1: over all these years, and it's been a it's been
Speaker 1: fun coming on the show. And I hope it isn't
Speaker 1: the last one. I hope so too. Okay, Steve, thanks
Speaker 1: so much pleasure. If you're enjoying Psychoactive, please tell your
Speaker 1: friends about it, or you can write us a review
Speaker 1: at Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. We
Speaker 1: love to hear from our listeners. If you'd like to
Speaker 1: share your own stories, comments, and ideas, then leave us
Speaker 1: a message at one eight three three seven seven nine
Speaker 1: sixty that's eight three three Psycho zero, or you can
Speaker 1: email us at Psychoactive at protozoa dot com or find
Speaker 1: me on Twitter at Ethan Natalman. You can also find
Speaker 1: contact information in our show notes. Psychoactive is a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. It's hosted by
Speaker 1: me Ethan Naedelman. It's produced by noa'm osband and Josh Stain.
Speaker 1: The executive producers are Dylan Golden, Ari Handel, Elizabeth Geesus
Speaker 1: and Darren Aronotsky from proto Zilla Pictures, Alex Williams and
Speaker 1: Matt Frederick from my Heart Radio, and me Ethan Edelman.
Speaker 1: Our music is by Ari Blucien and a special thanks
Speaker 1: to Avi Vi Brioseph Bianca Grimshaw and Robert deep H