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