TRANSCRIPT

CENTURY OF LIES

APRIL 3, 2019

DEAN BECKER: The failure of drug war is glaringly obvious to judges, cops, wardens, prosecutors, and millions more now calling for decriminalization, legalization, the end of prohibition. Let us investigate the Century Of Lies.

DOUG MCVAY: Hello, and welcome to Century of Lies. I'm your host Doug McVay, editor of DrugWarFacts.org.

Well, the executive producer of the Drug Truth Network, my good friend Dean Becker, was at a Drug Policy Alliance event and he brought back some great audio, so much great audio that he's kind enough to share some of it with us, so we're going to be hearing some interviews in the later part of the hour [sic: half hour] with Shiloh Jama of the People's Harm Reduction Alliance, with Gretchen Burns Bergman from A New PATH, and with Art Way from the Drug Policy Alliance.

But first, the Food and Drug Administration is announcing that it will be holding a public hearing at the end of May to gather scientific data and information about products containing cannabis or cannabis derived compounds. It's a public hearing and a request for comments.

At the time of this recording, their announcement is not technically official. The draft which is right here on my computer screen in front of me tells me that the public hearing will be held on May 31, 2019, that requests to make oral presentations and comments at the public hearing have to be received by May 10, electronic or written comments will be accepted until July 2 of 2019.

You will be able to find all of this at the Federal Register, which is FederalRegister.gov, and on GovInfo.gov. Probably there will be something at the FDA's website about it. It's, as I say, at the time of this recording, still in draft, so, there's always a chance that by tomorrow, when the publication is made final, they may make some changes, they may adjust the dates, who can say.

But at the moment, according to this in front of, the FDA will be holding a public hearing to gather scientific data and public information about the safety, manufacturing, product quality, marketing, labeling, and sale of products [containing cannabis and/or cannabis derivatives].

On March 28, Scott Gottlieb, who is leaving the office of Commissioner of the FDA, testified before an appropriations subcommittee, talking about the 2020 budget request for the FDA. He was asked about CBD and CBD products and regulation by Democratic Senator from Vermont Patrick Leahy. Here's that audio.

SENATOR PATRICK LEAHY (D-VT): Doctor Gottlieb, I'm going to miss having you here. I do appreciate your availability when I've called, and when we've had questions.

I suspect there are four people in Westport who will be glad to have you back, your wife and your three children, and you probably won't mind that, either. That's safe to say.

SCOTT GOTTLIEB, MD: I'm going to miss this position, this has been a wonderful, wonderful journey.

SENATOR PATRICK LEAHY (D-VT): Well, let's go to a couple of things, and I realize everybody's got different questions, but, we did a bipartisan 2018 Farm Bill. I was pretty proud of it, Republicans and Democrats did things the way they should do. The Chairman was a member of that Committee, and we passed the Farm Bill, overwhelming margins, both the House and the Senate.

We had some significant wins for Vermont families and dairy farmers, organic producers, but also, what I was mostly concerned about, rural communities across the country, and also we classified hemp as an agricultural product, rather than a controlled substance.

I've had farmers, processors, retailers in my state, most states, want to enter this market, they want to leverage the potential. They have significant regulatory and enforcement uncertainty, including the FDA. You recently stated the FDA, if I've got this correct, could take years to create a formal pathway for hemp derived CBD products to be sold, despite the fact they're widely available in the market.

How do you think the FDA should use its enforcement discretion on the use of CBD as an ingredient?

SCOTT GOTTLIEB, MD: Well, we're using enforcement discretion right now. I will take enforcement action against CBD products that are on the market if manufacturers are making what I consider over the line claims.

So if you're marketing CBD and you're claiming it can cure cancer or prevent Alzheimer's disease, we're going to take action against that, because that could mislead a patient into foregoing otherwise effective therapy.

But there are products on the market right now that, you know, given our enforcement priorities and our limited resources, we haven't taken action against. That's not an invitation for people to continue marketing these products. We're concerned about it, but we heard Congress loud and clear here.

We know you want a pathway under our regulatory scheme. It's a challenging route, because this not exists as a drug in the marketplace, but it also is under substantial clinical investigation. So even if there was an improved drug, because it was never previously in the food supply, we don't have a clear route to allow this to be lawfully marketed short of promulgating new regulations.

That's why in closing one of the things that the working group that's headed up by Amy Abernathy, who's here with me today, our Principal Deputy Commissioner, is going to be looking at, is what options we could propose to Congress to potentially legislate on this issue in a specific manner.

SENATOR PATRICK LEAHY (D-VT): Well, that's going to take a legislative fix. I don't envy you trying to figure out a regulatory one, because you have other agencies with regulatory. Would you please, as you continue on this, make sure my staff and I are kept apprised of what type of legislative fix there might be.

I think between the various committees members of this serve on will probably be where the legislative fix will go, and I would just like to get some certainty here. I'm not diminishing the complexities, but I'd like to get some certainty.

DOUG MCVAY: That was US Senator Pat Leahy asking some questions of FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb at a hearing of the Appropriations subcommittee covering the Food and Drug Administration's budget. They were discussing the fiscal year 2020 budget request for the FDA.

Again, FDA will be holding a hearing on cannabis and cannabis derived products. Details will be at the FDA website, and will be published in the Federal Register on April Third.

You're listening to Century of Lies. I'm your host Doug McVay, editor of DrugWarFacts.org.

Now, as I said at the top of the show, the executive producer of the Drug Truth Network, Dean Becker, who's also the host and producer of Cultural Baggage, was fortunate enough to attend a Drug Policy Alliance event recently. Got some terrific audio, and he's kind enough to share that with us.

So today's show, we're going to be hearing from some folks. Let's start off with someone from the Drug Policy Alliance, here's Art Way, Colorado State Director for the Drug Policy Alliance.

ART WAY: I'm Art Way, State Director in Colorado for Drug Policy Alliance, also a part of our criminal justice reform strategy team. So essentially the work that I do falls along, you know, the traditional ways in which DPA kind of breaks up its work.

You know, we promote harm reduction, we promote broader sentencing reform, when it comes to drug policies and in criminal justice, and, you know, we're looking to establish, you know, marijuana laws that take that substance out of the criminal justice toolkit for law enforcement, so that's legalization as well as medical marijuana.

DEAN BECKER: Art, let me ask you this. You are one of the main cogs in an effort called LEAD, Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion. It's working in Colorado, but still being refined, as I understand it.

It's beginning to wind around the country a bit. There's some dabbling of it in Houston, as I'm aware, but, tell us about LEAD. How does it work?

ART WAY: Yeah, LEAD ideally is a public health approach to deal with drug use and possession, addiction, that is essentially a pre-booking diversion program that uses law enforcement to be the first responders and the first people to provide for services as opposed to simply arresting people.

So, it's, ideally it's a way to create harm reduction wrap around services drug treatment infrastructure that is independent of the criminal justice system but still utilizes police to be that bridge to get people into those services.

DEAN BECKER: What type of tactics, or perspective, understanding do you have to develop within those police officers?

ART WAY: Well, they need to understand harm reduction. They need to understand that relapse is a part of recovery. They need to understand that you can increase somebody's life whether or not they become abstinent. You can increase somebody's quality of life, whether or not they become abstinent.

So, you know, they need to understand that it's not simply about, oh, I put you into this program, now you should get your life together overnight. You know, it takes time for people to become drug dependent. It takes time for people to find themselves, experiencing homelessness. It takes time for people to realize that they may have some mental health issues, and anything that we do needs to recognize that it may take time.

And I think police are the slowest to realize that this is a marathon and it's not a sprint. You know, they don't want to see the same people twice. Somebody that they put in LEAD in February --

DEAN BECKER: They find it insulting.

ART WAY: Yeah. They find it insulting to see that person back on the street doing the same thing in March. But the reality is, you're looking to figure out ways to increase people's quality of life through the harm reduction lens, and LEAD, if done properly, can be done -- can be used that way.

It takes a lot of faith, when it comes to law enforcement and district attorneys, to properly do LEAD in a harm reduction way.

DEAN BECKER: And, I was going to just throw this bit, the fact of the matter is, the difficulty involved can easily be discerned by just observing people trying to quit tobacco. It's, sometimes it takes a hell of a lot.

ART WAY: It's a journey. It's a journey, you know, it's rare that this stuff happens overnight. You know, most people quit three or four or five times before they finally are able to put that whole thing behind them.

And of course, it's the same thing with a lot of our illicit drugs. But you know, the great thing about LEAD, if done properly, it's not just about drug treatment. It's not just about diverting people away from the criminal justice to put them into drug treatment. It's about individualized case management.

So, ideally, you ask what does this person need to improve their quality of life? Drug treatment might be a part of that, but they also may need assistance with housing. They may need assistance with employment. So LEAD is ideally about wrap-around services with drug treatment just being one part of that.

DEAN BECKER: There are communities, I don't know if it's directly involved with LEAD or not, but there are communities around the country where in order to lead people towards that, finally recognizing or ending their addiction, that they've -- they're given housing at times, given a stipend in some locations, able to start to rebuild the life, start to have a little respect for their own dignity, and move it forward. Your thought there, Art.

ART WAY: Yeah, I mean, ideally LEAD deals with what many people call the 'frequent flyer' community, so any local jail, you'll have the same people going in and out of that local jail, every week, whether it's on drug charges, transient charges, loitering, trespass.

So these are the people in our community that could benefit the most from, you know, for the lack of a better term, safety net type policies and procedures and practices that we really don't have.

So, you know, LEAD looks to build this type of policy infrastructure, find this type of wrap around services, and limit our over-reliance on the criminal justice system to provide such things.

You know, we depend on the criminal justice system to provide mental health, and we need to figure out a way to at least have the same amount of services outside of the criminal justice system, and I think LEAD can slowly start to not only make that paradigm shift, but make that resource allocation shift that's needed to deal with public health issues that the criminal justice system is not ideally situated to deal with.

DEAN BECKER: And I would think given time, given the ability to prove the validity of this transition, from criminalization to, you know, support, it would prove itself.

ART WAY: Yeah, yeah, you know, it's -- it's a definite mind shift for many actors involved. I mean, not only police, but even, you know, most of our people within the treatment community aren't really fans of harm reduction like we think they should be.

So, it not only shifts the paradigm for police, but it shifts the paradigm for those in the treatment community.

But yeah, it's going to take some time to work out because we've been doing it one way for fifty years, and we've been putting a lot of money into jails and prisons, and we've been trying to create services within jails and prisons, but for whatever reason, we haven't done the same thing outside of the criminal justice apparatus, and I think LEAD is one way to slowly start to begin to walk down that path of establishing community based supports that do not require a conviction in order to take part.

DEAN BECKER: Okeh. Now, once again, folks, we've been speaking with Mister Art Way, he's with the Drug Policy Alliance, they're out there on the web at DrugPolicy.org. Art, is there a subsection where folks can learn more about LEAD there on the DPA website?

ART WAY: Yeah, you could just search for LEAD, and some resources will come up. There's a national LEAD bureau that I think has the most detailed information on the LEAD policy. I'm not quite sure of that website, but google National LEAD Bureau, and you'll get a lot of information on the LEAD program specifically. [sic: https://www.leadbureau.org/ ]

DOUG MCVAY: That was Dean Becker's interview with Art Way, Colorado state director for the Drug Policy Alliance. They were at a Drug Policy Alliance event recently, and as I say, Dean was kind enough to bring back a lot of really great audio.

So now, let's hear another interview from that event. This is Gretchen Burns Bergman, she's director and co-founder of A New PATH, Parents for Addiction Treatment and Healing.

GRETCHEN BURNS BERGMAN: So I'm Gretchen Burns Bergman, and I'm co-founder and executive director of A New PATH. That stands for Parents for Addiction Treatment and Healing, and we advocate for therapeutic rather than punitive drug policies, and we -- I'm also the lead organizer of Moms United To End The War On Drugs, which is now in 35 states, and we work to -- also partners with six countries, and we work to end the stigmatization and criminalization of people who use drugs or people who struggle with substance use disorders.

DEAN BECKER: You know, the idea is being respected more, more than ever before, I think. The implementation of change, hopefully we'll soon follow more rapidly than it has been, but, the truth of it is, is that more and more people are realizing that these newspaper headlines about the opioid deaths are friends and sometimes family, and worthy of more respect, and reinterpretation. Right?

GRETCHEN BURNS BERGMAN: They're not just statistics. They're not just numbers. They're people, and they leave in the wake of their oftentimes accidental opioid overdose grieving families, parents, communities, whole communities are devastated by this.

You know, it's interesting, because I talk about the opioid crisis, well, it's not the opioid crisis, it's the opioid overdose crisis. It's the number of people who are accidentally losing their lives.

DEAN BECKER: Well, you know, Gretchen, I close my half hour show the phrase because of prohibition you don't know what's in that bag, to please be careful. And it is the policy of prohibition that creates this situation where gangsters make it and gangsters cut it with all kinds of c***, for lack of a better term, and sell it, many times to our children. Right?

GRETCHEN BURNS BERGMAN: And it's that black market that's created by prohibition that is really at the base of this. It's the war on drugs, you've, we've all said it many times, but it's not a war on drugs, it's a war on people, and people, precious human beings, are getting caught up in the crossfire of this.

So, you know, our kids are at the forefront of this war on drugs, and are losing their lives, and oftentimes if not losing their lives, losing their liberties, being caught up in mass arrest, mass incarceration.

And this is why we're working to try to enlighten the general public about this, and that we are losing our human rights and dignities. It's been eroded at such a pace that people are not necessarily aware of the need to stand up for their rights.

Parents, mothers, like me, need to speak out about what our basic human rights to nurture and protect our kids are. Right? For the sake of, not just our own children, but future generations.

DEAN BECKER: Well, it has a, I use the term, it's a quasi-religion. It's a belief system that allows one group of people to go to war against another group of people because they don't like their habits, their morals, their use of certain products. And, I try to be careful. It's not -- it's charlatans, ah, hell ....

GRETCHEN BURNS BERGMAN: It's about judgment. I mean, how dare we judge what people, what other people put in their bodies, you know. How dare we judge them. And yet we've built a whole system of control over people, like a moral authority over people, that is ridiculous.

DEAN BECKER: I see great similarities to that of the tactics of the Taliban, if you will, that you go with the, our dictates, or we will punish you.

GRETCHEN BURNS BERGMAN: Yeah. And there's a, very much of an us and them separating of people, which is so dangerous. I'm very worried about mankind. Right? When this happens, and it's happening all over the world, this othering of people. You know?

DEAN BECKER: Yeah. And I think it's, you know, it's a means whereby, you touched on it, our rights are slowly being eroded, and handed over to no-knock warrants and SWAT teams and other new tactics to modern policing that never existed before but they're justified through this fear of drug users and their quote "tactics."

GRETCHEN BURNS BERGMAN: And it's very interesting that we allowed the criminal justice system to take over what is really a healthcare concern, and it's a parental concern. You know? And perhaps teachers' and instructors' concern.

But it's not a criminal justice concern. Why did we do that to our own people, to our own family members, you know?

DEAN BECKER: Well, we're here at the Drug Policy conference in St. Louis, and yesterday I tried to bring up what I thought is the answer to what you just posed, and it is that it was charlatans pretending to be moralists who put forward the idea that blacks shouldn't be allowed to use marijuana, they'll rape white women and so on and so on.

And it was embraced within, well, the Jim Crow era, it was put in place, and it has been, this war has been waged for over a hundred years, depending on which initial law you speak of, but it's, it has no, no real defenders in public. They'll do it to TV camera, or from a pulpit or whatever you call it in DC, but they will not submit to an open public debate about the validity of usefulness of this policy.

GRETCHEN BURNS BERGMAN: Well, at the core of it is racism, and it's also not just a war on race, it's a war on poverty, so it's the haves and the have nots, and the greater divide between the two. It's power and money. That's why it's hard to get an honest debate going.

DEAN BECKER: They can't do it. Well, Gretchen, it was wonderful to see you here in St. Louis. I'm sure we'll be seeing each other this November, back here in St. Louis, where the major Drug Policy Alliance conference will be held, and, some closing thoughts? Your website, share that with the audience, please.

GRETCHEN BURNS BERGMAN: It's easiest to go to the Moms United website, which is MomsUnited.net, and the two sites are interconnected so that you can check around our different campaigns.

We're coming up to our Mother's Day campaign, a time where we can really speak out about our mom's rights to nurture, protect, and defend the rights of our families and our children.

So, I hope that we get a big crowd here when we come back in November. The Drug Policy Reform Conferences are really, really thought provoking, inspirational, and reinvigorating, you know.

DOUG MCVAY: That was an interview with Gretchen Burns Bergman, director and co-founder of A New PATH, Parents for Addiction Treatment and Healing. Drug Truth Network's executive producer Dean Becker was at a Drug Policy Alliance event recently, ran into Gretchen, and was kind enough to share that audio with us for today's show.

Now, let's hear from Shiloh Jama, a longtime harm reduction advocate and director of the People’s Harm Reduction Alliance in Seattle, Washington.

SHILOH JAMA: I mean, I think, you know, some of the trends that are going forward now is, you know, we've been talking around things like syringe exchange programs for a long time, you know, and since our last kind of conversation, when we were in Portugal, we've been doing a lot more work towards getting smoking services.

And something that I was really impressed, when we went there, is a lot of young people don't inject, that they do, they're a lot more smokers, and you know, I think that's where a lot of people, people can talk about, that's how people start or whether or not, but, you know, if, it's one of those things about drugs, is if you don't do enough, they're not very fun, but if you do too much, they're really scary.

And so your just right place? That actually might be smoking compared to injecting, and I think a lot of places we've kind of forgotten that, and we've forgotten that, you know, people do inhalant systems, and, you know, talking to a lot of our people we've been serving is they're becoming a lot more responsible because they've been able to use a lot less and it's been a means for them to recover.

You know, one of the other things I think that people aren't talking a lot around is, you know, some of your listeners might know what dabs are. You know, it's a concentrate of THC, and there's a lot of opiate users in Seattle, because of the legal market of marijuana, who've been using, who've been turning to smoking heroin and they've been now using, mixing it in with dabs to slowly do a detox formula, to stop using opiates and start using marijuana.

There's also, you know, and there's been some advocacy work around getting low income folks some free marijuana in order to facilitate that.

I think, you know, it's, like anything, you know, the system hasn't really caught up yet to those recovery systems through marijuana. And I think, you know, but again, it's like that smoking system, when you give people the opportunity and you give people the means, they, you know, some people want to use drugs the rest of their lives, and that's great. We just don't want them to be in chaotic use.

DEAN BECKER: Sure.

SHILOH JAMA: Right? People who are in stable use, you know, some stable use can look like a lot of different ways. Right? It can be that you've decided to use marijuana over opiates. It also can mean that you decided to use opiates on the weekends.

And it's around creating those opportunities for folks to do that. You know, and when we're dealing with a larger concentration of heroin, that's fentanyl laced, so quality, or I should say, you know, the potency, is not an issue as it used to be. So there used to be a lot of weaker opiates, so you didn't want to smoke, but now that it's a lot stronger because it's laced, smoking becomes a safer means of ingesting your drug.

DEAN BECKER: Well, and even like with marijuana, they talk about you can titrate, you can determine how much you want to intake, and how much of an effect you want to create for yourself, and I'm sure that's true with smoking the opiates, I don't know, is it pills, is it the powders, what the heck are they smoking? The opium's certainly not around, is it?

SHILOH JAMA: Well, it's the tar heroin that people are smoking, and you know, I think one of the things for a long time there wasn't really many ways to smoke.

People, you know, the old opium pipes aren't readily available, let's just say, and so we've been having to develop more and more different systems and like creating these dab rigs, and a lot of people, if you know what a dab rig is, that can be, you can use tar or powder, you can smoke out of those same systems. They're well designed for that. You know, not everyone can afford, you know, the hundred dollar version of that.

DEAN BECKER: Little, yeah, rig.

SHILOH JAMA: Yeah, rig, where, you know, a lot of this, essentially, I mean, it's basically a bong with a little more high tech top, and it's, and the reason they call it a dab rig is because it has this little nail that you put down on it.

DEAN BECKER: To provide the heat, provide it first from the blow torch, mostly.

SHILOH JAMA: Yeah, yeah, it's a high heat, you dab, you put it in, the concentration turns to smoke really quickly, you inhale it really quickly, and it works really well with using with heroin, and so a lot of opiate users are reducing their use through adding marijuana to it.

DOUG MCVAY: That was Shiloh Jama from Seattle, Washington, where he directs the People's Harm Reduction Alliance, in an interview with Dean Becker, host of Cultural Baggage and of course my good friend and colleague, the executive producer of the Drug Truth Network. They met up with each other at an event that was sponsored by the Drug Policy Alliance recently.

And well that's it for this week. I want to thank you for joining us. You have been listening to Century of Lies. We're a production of the Drug Truth Network for the Pacifica Foundation Radio Network, on the web at DrugTruth.net. I’m your host Doug McVay, editor of DrugWarFacts.org.

The executive producer of the Drug Truth Network is Dean Becker. Drug Truth Network programs, including this show, Century of Lies, as well as the flagship show of the Drug Truth Network, Cultural Baggage, and of course our daily 420 Drug War News segments, are all available by podcast. The URLs to subscribe are on the network home page at DrugTruth.net.

The Drug Truth Network has a Facebook page, please give it a like. Drug War Facts is on Facebook too, give its page a like and share it with friends. Remember: Knowledge is power.

You can follow me on Twitter, I'm @DougMcVay and of course also @DrugPolicyFacts.

We'll be back in a week with thirty more minutes of news and information about drug policy reform and the failed war on drugs. For now, for the Drug Truth Network, this is Doug McVay saying so long. So long!

For the Drug Truth Network, this is Doug McVay asking you to examine our policy of drug prohibition: the century of lies. Drug Truth Network programs archived at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy.

TRANSCRIPT

CENTURY OF LIES

OCTOBER 28, 2018

DEAN BECKER: The failure of drug war is glaringly obvious to judges, cops, wardens, prosecutors, and millions more now calling for decriminalization, legalization, the end of prohibition. Let us investigate the Century Of Lies.

DOUG MCVAY: Hello, and welcome to Century of Lies. I'm your host Doug McVay, editor of DrugWarFacts.org.

This week, we’re going to look at drug policy in the United Kingdom, and efforts within Parliament to make reforms, including decriminalization and expansion of harm reduction. But first:

The Commission on Narcotic Drugs held another set of intersessional meetings from October 22 through 25 in Vienna, Austria. In essence, these meetings are in preparation for the Sixty-Second Session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, which will be held in March 2019.

The October intersessional meetings covered law enforcement and supply reduction related measures, alternative development and crop control strategies, and cross-cutting issues including new psychoactive substances.

A lot of the discussion was around law enforcement though it was disappointingly limited. There were plenty of statistics on seizures, arrests, production, et cetera. There was much handwringing about how law enforcement efforts are at best shoveling against the tide, with production on the increase, new psychoactive drugs on the increase, drug purity increasing, drug prices dropping – basically a laundry list of the failures of law enforcement strategies.

Those lists of failures are then followed by assurances from several nations, such as Russia, China, and unfortunately these days the United States, that if we just keep doing the same things that have consistently failed for the past several decades then magically things will come out differently. But I digress.

For the past decade now, nongovernmental organizations have been making inroads at the United Nations. We're inside the meetings of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, and NGO representatives even get invited to officially address the Commission.

On the afternoon of October 24, the Commission heard from Gretchen Burns Bergman, director and co-founder of an organization called A New PATH. A New PATH is a US-based nonprofit organization working to reduce the stigma associated with addiction through education and compassionate support. PATH by the way stands for Parents for Addiction Treatment and Healing. Here's Gretchen Burns Bergman.

GRETCHEN BURNS BERGMAN: The opioid overdose crisis is a global epidemic. In the United States today, one person dies every ten minutes from an overdose. Seventy-two thousand people lost their lives to accidental overdose in the US in 2017, which was up from 64,000 in 2016.

The number of first-time heroin users has increased dramatically, many switching from prescription pain medications, and the sharpest increase of death is from fentanyl.

There's nothing more tragic than young lives being lost unnecessarily, before they've had the chance to reach their full potential. The grief experienced by parents and family members is heightened by a sense of frustration and rage, that this loss could have been prevented.

Unfortunately, many still don't talk about overdose because of shame and stigma. I'm Gretchen Burns Bergman, executive director and co-founder of A New PATH, Parents for Addiction Treatment and Healing, and lead organizer for our international Moms Unite to End the War on Drugs campaign, now in 33 states and six countries.

We work to end the stigmatization and criminalization of people who use drugs and people who struggle with substance use disorders.

I'm also the mother of two sons who have struggled for decades with heroin addiction. They are survivors or a punitive criminal justice system. My older son is a survivor of accidental overdose. I'm lucky that both of my sons found their way to long term recovery, but they've lost far too many friends to overdose, and I know far too many mothers who've lost a beloved child.

We must stop wasting resources by employing failed drug war tactics to address what is essentially a public health epidemic. PATH promotes therapeutic rather than punitive drug policies. Moms are suggesting a better way to save lives, and we propose five policies to potentially solve the opioid overdose crisis.

First, the government must provide adequate funding to address the epidemic. To this day, despite numerous commissions to discuss the crisis, needed funds haven't been allocated.

Second, we need to have a healthcare system of treatment on demand. The US is behind other countries like Portugal in achieving this despite the obvious need.

Third, we promote and advise therapeutic services, not criminalization and mass incarceration.

Fourth, medication assisted treatment has been proven to be effective in treating addictive illness, so these services should be provided in the community as well as behind bars.

And fifth, community based harm reduction services must be made widely available. These include syringe exchanges, safe consumption spaces, and most importantly naloxone distribution.

Since 2014, PATH has been conducting community based parent to parent and peer to peer overdose prevention training and naloxone distribution in San Diego County, under a standing order with a local physician. Three hundred and seventy-one overdoses have been reversed, and we've trained over two thousand people through our program.

Naloxone is a safe and effective medicine that quickly reverses an opioid overdose. It's the right and responsibility of everyone who takes opioids, and their family members and friends, to have naloxone readily available.

Parents are often the first first responder, and every moment counts in saving a precious life. With our Ask Mom How to Save a Life campaign, mothers across the nation are promoting greater awareness about our power to prevent overdose deaths with naloxone.

They're training parents to administer it, encouraging physicians to prescribe it, and pharmacies to carry it.

Many of the moms leading this campaign have children who struggle with substance use disorders, and who were repeatedly incarcerated, or who have died from preventable drug overdoses.

Anyone who has a loved one who struggles with addictive illness, or who is prescribed narcotic pain medicine, should have naloxone easily accessible.

The most dangerous time for an accidental overdose is when a person is on a waiting list for treatment, or when they are released from jail, prison, or rehab, because of lower tolerance.

Too many people have had their lives cut short unnecessarily and families have had to deal with unbearable pain. Having greater access to naloxone is a positive, proactive step towards ending the opioid overdose epidemic.

Adopting strategies that help to reduce the harms associated with drug use and substance use disorders will save lives and heal families.

DOUG MCVAY: That was Gretchen Burns Bergman, director and co-founder of A New PATH, Parents for Addiction Treatment and Healing. She was addressing the Commission on Narcotic Drugs intersessional meeting on October 24.

Once again, those CND meetings are only webcast live. They do not keep any video or audio archive -- UNODC.org, follow the links to the Commission on Narcotic Drugs. You'll see what I mean. It's frustrating. This is the twenty-first century.

Now, I don’t have the travel budget to get to Vienna to be there in person so instead, with the help of very strong coffee and a stable wifi connection, I stay up and record as much as I can, and I bring you the good bits on my show. We'll have more from the Commission on Narcotic Drugs intersessional meetings next week.

You’re listening to Century of Lies. I’m your host Doug McVay, editor of DrugWarFacts.org.

Now to the UK. There was a debate on drug policy in the House of Commons on October 23. That debate was arranged by Ronnie Cowan, a Member of Parliament from the Scottish National Party representing the constituency of Inverclyde.

It was a non-legislative policy debate, that is, it was a debate on the underlying policies with a view toward crafting legislation. It was not a debate on a particular piece of legislation. We’re going to listen now to a portion of that debate. Here’s the opening statement from Ronnie Cowan, MP.

RONNIE COWAN, MP: The UK drugs policy is not just a combination of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016, and a host of schedules and classifications.

There's a range of laws which we've developed over years and have been put in place or guided by our perceived knowledge and our current attitude. We put them in place because we thought it was the right thing to do, and it is my belief that we got it wrong.

Outwith the drugs law, we have laws that regulate the production, distribution, marketing and consumption of alcohol. And alcohol is the interesting case because it is not included in the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act. Alcohol remains socially acceptable.

It is consumed openly at christenings, naming ceremonies, weddings, civil partnerships and even funerals, at hatches, matches and dispatches, society finds a place for alcohol. But it wasn't always this way.

Prohibition and abstinence were once very strong movements. In the 1920s, some states in the USA made alcohol illegal, and something strange happened. It didn't stop people drinking alcohol. What it did was it delivered the production, distribution, and consumers into the hands of criminals who recognized a money-spinning venture when they saw one.

The production became more potent -- the product became more potent, because that meant distributing smaller quantities while maintaining profit margins, and criminal gangs used extreme violence to protect their territory from rival gangs or gangsters.

The levels of violence spiraled, and more and more people were criminalized by using alcohol. According to the academic and historian Michael Lerner: As the trade in the illegal alcohol became more lucrative, the quality of alcohol on the black market declined. On average, 1,000 Americans died every year during Prohibition because of the effects of drinking tainted liquor.

When prohibition ended, levels of crime dropped dramatically and people’s health improved. They continued to drink alcohol, but the product was quality controlled and monitored, and nobody had to use violence to protect their market.

Alcohol continues to this day to damage people’s lives and ruins people's health, but it is legalized, regulated, and increasingly people can find educational support, because they have no fear of being criminalized.

Maybe in an ideal world, everybody would be so happy and content, so free of stress and anxiety, so confident and self-assured, there would be no requirement for alcohol, or indeed any recreational drugs. But we are not there, and we never have been.

Throughout history, for a variety of reasons, people have taken drugs. A hundred years ago, you could buy cocaine, heroin or morphine at pharmacies and department stores. During the first world war, Harrods sold kits with syringes and tubes of cocaine and heroin for the boys on the frontline.

Queen Victoria recommended wine laced with cocaine, Vin Mariani. Anthony Eden was prescribed purple hearts throughout the Suez crisis. They lived under what was termed the British system, which was a light-touch approach to drug consumption, one of tolerance and treatment.?

Things were changing during the 1960s. In 1961 the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs was passed. It was not popular in the UK, because we could see here that the British system was working.

In 1961, that convention, driven by prejudice, became the only UN convention ever to use the word “evil”. Torture, apartheid and nuclear war do not warrant the term “evil”, according to the UN. Genocide is referred to as “an odious scourge” or “barbarous acts”.

The term “evil” is reserved for drugs, drugs that had previously been available in many different guises in high street pharmacies. The stigmatizing of users went up a gear. And in 1971, through the Misuse of Drugs Act, criminalization became the name of the game. The results have been years of violence, tensions, organised crime, and a monumental increase in addiction.

KELVIN HOPKINS, MP: Would the Member yield?

RONNIE COWAN, MP: Certainly.

KELVIN HOPKINS, MP: I congratulate the Honorable Member on this absolutely first-class speech he's making at the moment. Could he say, you know, roughly, what proportion of the prison population are now -- people in prison are there because of the drugs trade? What are the costs to the criminal justice system, and what is the total social cost of drugs? I hope he will cover these things in his speech.

MADELEINE MOON, MP: Ronnie Cowan.

RONNIE COWAN, MP: I didn't know there was a quiz. We all know, everyone -- I have a prison in my constituency, I was talking to its governor two or three weeks ago, that the majority of the people in that prison are there in some way, shape or form related to the consumption of drugs, or the selling of drugs, or the drugs market and the violence around it.

We also know that there number of drugs within our prisons are more available, particularly synthetic drugs, available in our prisons than are available out on the streets.

So at ONS, they began collating consistent data on drug deaths in England and Wales from 1993, and figures showed an increase in drug misuse mortality rates among both men and women since 1996.

UK opioid-related deaths rose between 2012 and 2015, increasing by 58 percent in England, 23 percent in Wales, 21 percent in Scotland, and 47 percent in Northern Ireland. UK Focal Point on Drugs estimates that the number of problem drug users is 300,000 in England, 60,000 in Scotland and 30,000 in Wales. Those statistics are the result of the current drugs policy, and behind those statistics are lives in ruins.

I can fully understand why people exposed to the cruelty inflicted on their loved ones by the current drugs policy would want to lash out for retribution. If somebody provided one of my loved ones with a pill at a music festival, and that pill killed them, my initial reaction would be to hunt them down like a dog and have them strung up. I would be wrong.

At the next festival, another person would be selling the same drugs to more people, and another tragedy would unfold. The understanding of this is exemplified by the members of Anyone’s Child. These are people who have been directly affected by the loss of, or damage caused to, a close friend or family member.

And they understand that vengeance wouldn't bring back their loved one or undo the damage done. They understand that unless we change our current drug policy and how we enforce it, more innocent people will die.

It is their desire that their experience of loss does not fall on anyone else’s family member or friend. And I would ask the Minister if she's prepared to sit down to meet and talk to members of Anyone’s Child? Nothing.

GRAHAME MORRIS, MP: Will the Honorable Member give way?

RONNIE COWAN, MP: Certainly.

MADELEINE MOON, MP: Grahame Morris.

GRAHAME MORRIS, MP: I'm grateful, and I would like to congratulate the Honorable Member for Inverclyde on initiating the debate, on making some really powerful points in his speech.

He and I both attended a recent ?meeting of the drugs, alcohol and justice all-party parliamentary group, on drug-related deaths, where we heard Rudi Fortson, QC, explain how policies could be readily implemented to reduce drug related deaths, drug and alcohol-related deaths.

And would he agree with me at this point that it would be a good thing for Ministers to meet with Rudi Fortson, QC, and hear what policies could be applied instantly that would make a big difference?

MADELEINE MOON, MP: Ronnie Cowan.

RONNIE COWAN, MP: Thank you very much. It's always really good for me when I hear that people like Rudi Fortson, a QC, a person who has lived his life through the law, is ,looking at the current situation and thinking, “We have to change this.”

This backs up everything I believe, but he comes from a much more qualified in that term than I do. I wonder if the Government are actually engaging with people of his caliber.

Last week, Canada joined nine states in the USA and Washington DC, to legalize recreational cannabis. They've taken a different approach in various states regarding the age limits. Some Canadian provinces will allow people to grow their own, limiting them to four plants. Other provinces do not allow home growing.

We should be looking to those parts of the world to gather evidence and decide if their approach is beneficial, and if we should follow suit. Canada has the same problems we have, but like Portugal and Uruguay and others, they have taken a different approach to providing a solution. And it's not “drugs for everybody”; it's “regulate the marketplace, take away controls from the criminals”.

In the UK, parents of children that fear their children might be dabbling in drugs, or even developing a habit, are extremely reluctant to engage with support groups that could divert their child from the path they are on.

The parents are reluctant because they do not want to place their child on the police radar. They fear they could be arrested, get a criminal record or even be sent to prison. Early intervention can be the key to avoiding drug-related harm, and we should not be putting obstacles in the way of those that could be affected.

We must encourage users to engage without fear of prosecution and free up valuable police time and resources to fight crime. Can the Minister tell me if the UK Government is engaged with other countries to access their research, which could assist us in becoming better informed and help us to take an evidence-based approach to legislation?

And we need to listen to those affected, that can see a need for change but are not in a position to effect it.

Prior to this debate, the Westminster digital engagement team put out an appeal on social media, advertising this debate and asking the people of this country, “What do you think?”

Their response with they've furnished me with are, they're engaged with 20,000 people, and the majority of people came back saying, “Legalize cannabis.” Some called for drugs to be regulated and taxed. A few commented and said they had lost loved ones as a result of the current policy. Some commenters called for drug addiction to be seen as a health issue, rather than a criminal one.

Lots of commentators called for the UK to take the same approach as Portugal. That is the people of this country talking.

The problematic users, the kids on estates recruited to county lines, the medical professionals, the support workers, and the law enforcers should be listened to.

Peter Bleksley was a young cop during the Brixton riots. ?He went on to become one of the Met’s most celebrated undercover agents. He was a founding member of SO10, Scotland Yard’s dedicated covert policing unit. He said:

“I look back now and think, well, are there less drugs and guns on the streets because of what my colleagues and I did? And of course the answer is an emphatic, NO. We could wallpaper my bedroom with commendation certificates—they sit in the loft gathering dust. What a waste of time.”

MARY GLINDON, MP: Will the Honorable Gentleman give way?

RONNIE COWAN, MP: Certainly.

MADELEINE MOON, MP: Mary Glindon.

MARY GLINDON, MP: I congratulate him on this debate, and does he agree that the fact that the UK Government spent an estimated 1.6 billion on drug law enforcement in 2014-15, and drug treatment's been cut by 14 percent in the past couple of years, and does he agree that that's a false economy, especially as Public Health England estimates that for every pound spent on drug treatment, there's a four pound social return?

MADELEINE MOON, MP: Ronnie Cowan.

RONNIE COWAN, MP: Absolutely. I absolutely agree. If we could see the results from the money being spent on the criminal justice system, I would back off and say, “Well, it is working”, but it clearly isn't. And take that figure further down, every one pound spent on early intervention saves seven pounds in the criminal justice system further down the line. So even, as I've said, if you don't give a damn about these people, it makes good financial sense to step in anyway and get early intervention.

Peter's not alone. A host of personal testimony has been gathered by UK LEAP, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. I will offer four more examples from these experts.

“In Afghanistan I fought on one ‘front-line’ of the so-called ‘war on drugs’ and in Hackney I live side-by-side with the other and it’s obviously failing at either end. If real generals pursued an active war like generations of politicians have pursued this farce they’d be court-martialed and sent to prison.” That's from Patrick Hennessey, a British Army officer in the Grenadier Guards serving in Afghanistan

“Far from making communities safer, current drug laws have the unintended consequence of placing barriers between the police and often vulnerable individuals.” Paul Whitehouse, chief constable.

“The drug problem will continue and escalate if governments fail to recognise that the only way forward is to move towards nuanced regulatory models, thus removing the profit from criminals, and the motivation for their involvement.” Graham Seaby, former detective superintendent, international and organised crime branch, New Scotland Yard.

“The single greatest crime reduction measure the world could take would be to regulate the supply of cannabis, cocaine and heroin.” Francis Wilkinson, chief constable.

Neil Woods, 14 years an undercover drugs cop, would say exactly the same things. Ron Hogg and Arfon Jones, both police and crime commissioners, say that drugs must be a health issue, not a criminal justice one.

Every time we lock up a criminal gang or announce to the media that we have seized a large quantity of drugs with a street value of so many millions, what they don't say is that that supply has been disrupted for an hour or so, before another gang will step into their shoes and maintain the distribution.

Often those takeovers involve a spate of violence, and they are always maintained by violence and the threat of violence. The fact is that after 30 years of locking people up, a bag of cocaine that cost ten pounds in 1980 will cost you ten pounds today for the same weight. But because cocaine is so plentiful, it is purer in the UK today than it has ever been.

The damage being inflicted on people and communities will ?continue to increase if all we do is crack down on the criminal fraternity and those ensnared in problematic drug use. We can lock people up for longer, it does not improve their situation one iota. In fact, it makes it worse.

Will the Minister meet and listen to members of the Law Enforcement Against Prohibition?

In July of 2017, the UK Government published its drug strategy and announced that they would appoint a recovery champion, a recovery champion whose role was defined as someone who would “be responsible for driving and supporting collaboration between local authorities, public employment services, housing providers and criminal justice partners, ensuring that these critical public services are able to contribute fully towards securing effective outcomes for individuals suffering drug dependence.”

Fifteen months later, there is still nobody in the role, so nobody is coordinating those aspects of the support and recovery program. I find myself wondering if there is a UK Government harm reduction recovery program. Minister, when will you appoint a recovery champion?

As legislators, we do have a choice. We can change the law. In doing so, we can address the harm that drugs do. Before that, we have to take a constructive approach to our drugs policy.

We need to accept the fact that 90 percent of people who use recreational drugs do not live chaotic lives. We must acknowledge that of the 10 percent of users who become problematic users, the majority have suffered physical, psychological or sexual abuse. We must acknowledge that problematic use is higher in areas of social deprivation. We must accept responsibility for trying to find solutions and acknowledge our failures.

We need to help people with problematic drug use through harm reduction, treatment and wraparound support. Criminalizing users doesn't deal with the underlying issues that lead to drug use; it only makes things worse.

We should have a network of safe drug consumption rooms throughout the UK. They have proved to be a success in Switzerland, Canada, Spain and a growing number of other countries. We must be prepared to learn from other countries’ experiences. The emergency services should carry naloxone and be trained in its use.

Will the Minister reconsider the legalization of safe drug consumption rooms and ensure that naloxone is provided for members of the emergency services?

Most importantly, UK drugs policy should be a health issue, not a criminal justice one. Or, we can continue to criminalize users, drive them into the hands of unscrupulous dealers, while ignoring the atmosphere of fear that they live in. All we do is marginalize them, stigmatize them, and ostracize them.

CRISPIN BLUNT, MP: I beg pardon.

MADELEINE MOON, MP: Crispin Blunt.

CRISPIN BLUNT, MP: Since he's just moved on from the subject of drug consumption rooms, but did he note that after his last debate on drug consumption rooms, that the International Narcotics Control Board then produced a report on this, effectively endorsing drug consumption rooms. And that coming from the body that is responsible for the international enforcement of the relevant drugs conventions, which I know he and I both think are outdated and frankly dangerous in what they delivery in terms of global consequences around drugs policy. And if even they are in that place, hopefully our Government will be able to take some notice.

MADELEINE MOON, MP: Ronnie Cowan.

RONNIE COWAN, MP: I did, indeed, I noticed a couple of things after that debate. We had that debate in this House, and the Minister at that debate denied the fact that Canada had kept its drug consumption rooms open because they are effective. She made a statement that the Supreme ?Court had ordered them to stay open.

On the back of that, the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition, the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy, wrote to myself and the Minister a five-page letter detailing how the DCRs are working effectively in Canada and why they have been kept open. They described her statement as factually and legally incorrect.

In closing, we have lost the war on drugs. Our own drugs policy saw to that. We need to change our mindset and we need to ensure that we are in a position to win the peace. And finally, Mrs. Moon, when I say that everybody -- when we see a problematic drug user, we are watching a person drowning. Please, throw them a lifebelt, do not push their heads further under the water.

DOUG MCVAY: That was Ronnie Cowan, Member of Parliament from the Scottish National Party representing the constituency of Inverclyde, opening a House of Commons debate on drug policy on October 23.

For now, that's it. I want to thank you for joining us. You have been listening to Century of Lies. We're a production of the Drug Truth Network for the Pacifica Foundation Radio Network, on the web at DrugTruth.net. I’m your host Doug McVay, editor of DrugWarFacts.org.

The executive producer of the Drug Truth Network is Dean Becker. Drug Truth Network programs are available by podcast, the URLs to subscribe are on the network home page at DrugTruth.net.

The Drug Truth Network has a Facebook page, please give it a like. Drug War Facts is on Facebook too, give its page a like and share it with friends. Remember: Knowledge is power.

You can follow me on Twitter, I'm @DougMcVay and of course also @DrugPolicyFacts.

We'll be back in a week with thirty more minutes of news and information about drug policy reform and the failed war on drugs. For now, for the Drug Truth Network, this is Doug McVay saying so long. So long!

For the Drug Truth Network, this is Doug McVay asking you to examine our policy of drug prohibition: the century of lies. Drug Truth Network programs archived at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy.