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<v David Marr>Good afternoon.</v>

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We're going to talk about drugs and money and crime for a moment.

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Let me introduce the panelists who are here this afternoon.

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Sitting close to me closest to me is Sadie Plant.

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Sadie told me a moment ago that in this hole years ago,

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it was the first place she ever spoke in Australia. Sadie remains English.

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She was an academic teaching at Birmingham university.

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She is now thank Kevin's a full-time writer.

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And I suppose she's on this platform because of her book writings on drugs

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next to her is Alfred McCoy. Now this mysterious man is very important,

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man, in public debate in this country,

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because even though he lives and works in the United States,

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he has had an enormous influence on the way in which we understand and debate

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policy on drugs in Australia, because for 25 or so years,

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maybe even longer, he's been writing about the drugs trade in Southeast Asia,

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and he has always placed Australia in that trade.

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And whenever I hear the rhetoric of Australia's new engagement with Asia,

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I always think of Alfred McCoy telling us exactly what it's all about being a

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marketplace for Asian heroine.

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And the third member of the panel this afternoon is Nick Cowdery.

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Nick Cowdery began life as a criminal barrister,

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a knockabout kind of criminal barrister practicing in new Guinea.

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And then later in new south Wales with some distinction.

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And he is now the director of public prosecutions in new south Wales,

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a controversial figure there because of his continued insistence on speaking.

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Good sense about law and crime and punishment rather than aping

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the kind of stuff that we live with. And I think you live with here too,

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mainly from radio shock jocks and and crook

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newspapers. And Nick Cowdery is now,

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I like to think of him as the prince of punishment in new south Wales.

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So that's our panel this afternoon.

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Each of them each of them will speak for a bit some from the lectern and some

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not.

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And then we'll have lots of time for questions and general discussion

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about the topic this afternoon.

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And we're going to begin by hearing from Sadie Plant.

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<v Sadie Plant>Okay. Thank you very much. It's a real pleasure to be here after many years.</v>

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So I'm very grateful to all the people who've made it possible for me to come

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today. I just going to say a couple of things,

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just to throw a few ideas into,

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to begin what I hope will be a stimulating debates.

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And I want to just say a few things about the whole notion of black markets and

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especially the historical role that drugs have played in the formation of,

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of what we know considers to be black or underground or slightly gray

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economies in the world. Clearly I'm sure most people are aware.

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The trade in drugs is one of the biggest global industries of any kind

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black or white. They're just most all religious.

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And that second it is Thor's only two arms and oil.

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So really we're talking about an enormous trade this trade in illicit substances

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or other the illicit trade in certain substances.

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And obviously the whole problem of that black markets is that there are by

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definition, impossible to be precise about,

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and nobody can really be sure the extent of, of any black market,

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but it seems that Alfred will confirm or probably

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expand on this a great deal.

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That's some 10% of the global economy may be taken up by this

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trade in illicit substances,

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which as you can imagine is a huge proportion of international trade. Clearly,

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one of the implications of this is that we're there to be any changes on a

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global level to the legal situation in relation to these

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substances.

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Then it would have enormous implications for many aspects of global

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trade and geopolitics, which I'll come back to in the moment.

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But the main point that I'd like to make just to kick this off is that it's

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important to realize not only the magnitude of this trade,

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but also the fact that it's with drugs really,

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especially opium and to some extent Coker and its derivatives that

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the whole distinction between black and white markets first originated.

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This is largely because the trade in opium in particular was so

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crucial to the formation of modern capitalism.

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I'm thinking especially of the role of Britain in Asia,

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especially in China. Now, going back to the 19th century,

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the trade in opium between India and China,

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which was obviously crucial to Britain's economic wealth and therefore to the

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industrial revolution,

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it really financed much of the industrial revolution of the period.

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And of course,

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in many ways it's then enabled us to say that the formation of modern

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capitalism, these substances really, we could now say looking back,

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I think the first commodities of modern capitalism

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and in many senses,

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obviously they were a completely unregulated trade at that time

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because there was no national or international legal system that

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was in a position to legislate them.

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And in effect,

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we can look back now and see the formation of the first laws to

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deal with this international trade as really being the very beginnings,

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not only in many cases of a notion of the nation state and therefore state

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regulation of any kind of commodity,

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because these were really the first commodities to ever be subjected to any kind

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of international or national legislation of any kind,

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but also on an international level,

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we really see the beginnings of international law of any kind coming with the

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first attempts to regulate the international drugs trade. So on the one hand,

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we've got a history where these substances lie at the heart of a kind of free

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market capitalism. And on the other hand,

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we've got situation where their attempts to regulate them really lie at the very

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basis of international law. I'm thinking in particular,

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when the league of nations first came together,

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the trading opium and cocaine were really some of the first issues that were on

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the agenda for the very first meetings of the league of nations.

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That obviously was the body,

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which then became the United nations later in the 20th century.

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So as I say,

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we can see drugs really at the heart of not only our current

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questions about black markets and white markets and legitimate and illegitimate

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trade,

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but also we can see them playing this crucial role in the very formation of

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the whole idea of what it was to have this distinction between

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legitimate state regulated state sanctioned trade.

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And on the other hand, illegitimate at black markets.

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One consequence of that for the current situation is obviously become

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now the fact that really looking back much of the Western world, as I say,

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Britain in particular,

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but by no means only Britain grew rich really on the trade

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in opium and many other psychoactive substances that are now controlled

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by these international laws.

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And one of the consequences of the current situation is that of course,

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many nations who in theory would be now in a position to really do the

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same thing and use the same markets in these substances to,

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to their own benefit are of course prohibited from doing so.

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So it seems to me that our current situation has a great deal to do with the

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ways in which the west maintains its political and economic power and the ways

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in which many other countries in particular,

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the most extreme cases being Afghanistan, Burma, Colombia,

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some of the most impoverished countries in the world are obviously prohibited

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from really engaging in that same extremely profitable trade.

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And the final point that I'd just like to make, to begin with.

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Cause I'd like to make sure that we have plenty of time to discuss the many

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issues that will come off. All of this is that at the moment,

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I think we see another sort of sinister development coming out of this history.

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And that is that in many cases,

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the routes and the systems that are now in place that have

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really grown up over the last hundred years of prohibitionist policy,

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which would enable these substances to traffic around the world are increasingly

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being used now to traffic people.

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And it's a situation which I'm sure we'll again, come back to, in relation to,

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for example, prostitution,

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we've got sex on the agenda as well as drugs here today.

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But also the more general trade in moving people around the world.

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I've had recent experiences,

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especially with the loss of Afghan friends who have found themselves in a

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position really in the hands of people,

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smugglers who until very recently were drug smugglers and have now just kind of

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shifted into the people smuggling trade. And of course,

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when they were smuggling drugs and they were about to be caught, for example,

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in a boat on the high seas somewhere,

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it was easy to just throw the heroin over the side.

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Now it's the people that get thrown over the side.

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They really are treated with the same callousness as the substances are treated

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before. So it's a, the, the,

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the legacy that we live with of this history of establishing this distinction

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between you just missed an illegitimate trade,

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has many spin-offs of which that's just the most recent and one of the worst.

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So I'll leave it at that and for the moment. Yeah. Thank you.

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<v Nicholas Cowdery>Thank you, David. After a lifetime of standing to address courts,</v>

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I find that the more natural position to adopt

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they topic is sex, drugs, and money.

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I'm not going to say a great deal about sex,

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not because of the subject about which I don't know a great deal,

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and I'm not answering any further questions about that.

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But because obviously the focus has been and will be

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on drugs and money,

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but I would like to make an aside on the subject of sex

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while I have the opportunity and it's to inform you of the very

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grave problem that our society has Sofar as the criminal law is concerned

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in relation to child sexual abuse.

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This is not something that affects only our society in Australia.

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This is an international phenomenon and something which has

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grown exponentially in recent years.

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Not I believe because there has been any more of it happening,

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but because a great deal, more of it is being reported.

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And you will see reports from all countries,

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all societies on earth on the extent to which

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this appalling crime against children is being committed.

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So I simply flag that as an issue that we

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should be concerned with, that we,

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as a society should be concerned with because children are our future.

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And if we stop the cycle of abuse,

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we will have to learn to live with it forever.

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To give you an example in new south Wales, my state,

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there are more than eight substantiated cases of

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child sexual abuse per day

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around the year. And I think that is a polling,

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well, no more sex, drugs and money,

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which are sexy enough topics in themselves.

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And I'm going to make some comments from the point of view of a domestic

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lawyer,

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a lawyer practicing within the Australian domestic jurisdiction.

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Being a lawyer is bad enough.

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I know being a criminal lawyer is even worse

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and worse, still is being a prosecutor,

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but that is what I am.

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What I have now been exclusively for the last nearly seven years

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and what it looks as though I will continue to be for some time to come

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crime is what governments make it.

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Parliament tells us what is criminal.

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And we have a mechanism of government set up to deal with

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crime.

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It is defined differently from time to time,

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things that were once crimes are no longer and things that were not

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crimes are declared crimes.

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As technology develops as community attitudes, change

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crime, yeah. Is usually the result of passion,

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greed or need.

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And as such, it's a very human phenomenon.

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We've always had crime.

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We have it now and I believe we will always have it.

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So my job security is looking pretty good.

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Aye. Once they deal with crimes of passion,

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sometimes money comes into those,

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but it's usually incidental crime occurs when people

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lose their self-control and commit offenses in

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heightened emotional circumstances. But crime, as I said,

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also arises from greed,

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which is directly connected with money and from need,

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which may also be a need for money for material

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goods, to convert into money,

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to fuel some other need that a person has.

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The most typical example is a heroin addict who needs

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money to buy black market drugs,

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to satisfy the addiction that that person has.

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Right. I've heard quite a bit about addiction already at this festival,

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and we will hear more about it.

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And I don't want to spend time talking about where that addiction comes

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from or how we end up with drug addicts.

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We have always had drug users.

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We've had drugs ever since somebody pull the plant out of the ground and chewed

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it and discovered that it produced a pleasant sensation.

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We've had other sorts of drugs ever since people mixed chemicals together to

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produce something which when ingested also produced a pleasant

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sensation, I believe we will always have drugs with us.

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They'll become more and more inventive as time goes by.

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They will produce different effects as people that chemists develop

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drugs that react on human bodies in different ways.

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Our big problem is how to deal with it.

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And what we've done so far is a pretty crude form

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of control called prohibition.

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It's using a hammer to crack a nut in my view.

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And instead of looking for other tools, other ways of dealing with the problem,

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all we've done is to make the hammer bigger and bigger and heavier

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and heavier prohibition has not worked.

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Prohibition will not work.

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Prohibition cannot work because the ingenuity of humans will

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00:16:16.510 --> 00:16:17.890
outsmart it all the time.

246
00:16:19.330 --> 00:16:24.070
It is costly in terms of money in terms of

247
00:16:24.790 --> 00:16:27.340
personal toil.

248
00:16:28.360 --> 00:16:31.870
And it's time that we put aside

249
00:16:33.040 --> 00:16:36.310
our faith in hope over experience.

250
00:16:37.990 --> 00:16:40.990
What prohibition does is to create a black market.

251
00:16:42.100 --> 00:16:45.820
And Sadie has already said something about black markets generally.

252
00:16:46.990 --> 00:16:50.560
And when you have a black market, you have inflated prices.

253
00:16:51.580 --> 00:16:56.290
The markups are huge at each stage of the operation from

254
00:16:56.740 --> 00:17:00.280
either harvest or manufacturer through two years.

255
00:17:01.630 --> 00:17:05.950
And with those markups, there are profits,

256
00:17:06.730 --> 00:17:11.230
enormous profits going to people at the various stages,

257
00:17:11.260 --> 00:17:12.220
along the chain,

258
00:17:13.960 --> 00:17:18.340
the Australian bureau of criminal intelligence estimates that in

259
00:17:18.341 --> 00:17:22.660
Australia about 18 billion that's with a

260
00:17:22.661 --> 00:17:27.430
B dollars per year spent

261
00:17:27.490 --> 00:17:31.660
on illicit drugs. That's a huge figure

262
00:17:33.430 --> 00:17:34.810
by way of comparison.

263
00:17:35.500 --> 00:17:40.210
Australia earns $15 billion, $3 billion,

264
00:17:40.211 --> 00:17:43.570
less per annum from international tourism.

265
00:17:45.130 --> 00:17:48.940
And we know what that brings into the country in terms of people and,

266
00:17:50.250 --> 00:17:51.083
and spending

267
00:17:54.470 --> 00:17:55.520
it's a business.

268
00:17:56.840 --> 00:18:01.670
And Sadie has already put it up there with oil, with arms.

269
00:18:02.690 --> 00:18:07.100
And she mentioned human trafficking and the

270
00:18:07.130 --> 00:18:07.850
profits,

271
00:18:07.850 --> 00:18:12.620
the sums of money involved in human trafficking and now on a

272
00:18:12.621 --> 00:18:13.454
par.

273
00:18:14.480 --> 00:18:19.370
So we have four global industries, the oil trade,

274
00:18:19.371 --> 00:18:23.420
the arms trade trafficking and drugs and trafficking in humans

275
00:18:23.960 --> 00:18:28.370
absorbing huge percentages of the international

276
00:18:28.520 --> 00:18:30.890
wealth. Isn't it?

277
00:18:30.891 --> 00:18:35.810
Time that we learnt from experience? It's not as if we haven't given it a fair,

278
00:18:35.840 --> 00:18:40.220
fair go. We have the research, we have the experience.

279
00:18:40.221 --> 00:18:41.420
We have the knowledge,

280
00:18:41.930 --> 00:18:46.790
but we don't have the political or social will to direct

281
00:18:46.791 --> 00:18:48.320
our attention elsewhere.

282
00:18:51.380 --> 00:18:56.210
There's not much point attacking it at street level, the drug traffic,

283
00:18:57.470 --> 00:19:01.340
it's a largely useless exercise.

284
00:19:01.341 --> 00:19:04.520
It takes a few people out of circulation for a while, perhaps,

285
00:19:05.660 --> 00:19:08.600
but it will have a best,

286
00:19:08.690 --> 00:19:12.680
only a marginal effect in a local area.

287
00:19:13.820 --> 00:19:17.060
The problem will continue. It will come back to that local area.

288
00:19:17.061 --> 00:19:19.970
In the meantime, it will be displaced somewhere else.

289
00:19:21.080 --> 00:19:24.320
And so far as the distributors further up the line are concerned.

290
00:19:24.321 --> 00:19:28.040
They don't care if their straight runners are taken out,

291
00:19:28.100 --> 00:19:32.450
they'll find more because the money is there to be

292
00:19:32.451 --> 00:19:33.284
made.

293
00:19:33.710 --> 00:19:38.120
The share is there to be had in the product by the users

294
00:19:38.121 --> 00:19:38.954
themselves.

295
00:19:40.850 --> 00:19:43.520
We can target people a little bit further up the chain.

296
00:19:45.110 --> 00:19:48.260
And sometimes we do have some success at that level,

297
00:19:49.250 --> 00:19:54.020
but it depends usually on obtaining intelligence information

298
00:19:54.860 --> 00:19:58.940
about these people, about where they are, who they are,

299
00:19:58.970 --> 00:20:01.730
how they're operating and what they're going to be doing.

300
00:20:02.810 --> 00:20:04.760
And because of that,

301
00:20:05.450 --> 00:20:10.100
the successes that law enforcement have at that level are necessarily

302
00:20:10.160 --> 00:20:15.110
quite small. And as for the people at the top, well,

303
00:20:15.890 --> 00:20:18.920
the first problem is to identify them, who are they?

304
00:20:20.120 --> 00:20:23.600
Who starts the ball rolling, who is sitting at the top of the tree,

305
00:20:23.601 --> 00:20:27.380
sorry to mix the metaphors who is two,

306
00:20:27.381 --> 00:20:30.800
be the target and how is evidence to be obtained,

307
00:20:30.830 --> 00:20:35.390
linking them with something over which they

308
00:20:35.391 --> 00:20:37.520
have ultimate control,

309
00:20:37.730 --> 00:20:42.350
but in which they have no physical day-to-day

310
00:20:42.500 --> 00:20:43.333
involvement,

311
00:20:45.170 --> 00:20:48.190
sometimes very rarely.

312
00:20:48.400 --> 00:20:51.700
There is some success in targeting people at the top.

313
00:20:53.020 --> 00:20:56.740
A fairly notorious example of that was in Columbia recently,

314
00:20:57.520 --> 00:21:01.960
when I think his name was PEBLO Escobar was actually

315
00:21:02.170 --> 00:21:04.570
ambushed and shot dead by place.

316
00:21:05.650 --> 00:21:09.990
But the story leading up to that was absolutely

317
00:21:10.830 --> 00:21:13.710
blowing the levels of corruption involved,

318
00:21:14.430 --> 00:21:19.260
the power wielded by this man who controlled billions of dollars.

319
00:21:20.100 --> 00:21:22.470
He agreed at one point to go to jail.

320
00:21:23.280 --> 00:21:25.980
So he had a jail built on his property

321
00:21:28.260 --> 00:21:30.300
and he staffed it with his men

322
00:21:31.920 --> 00:21:34.950
and he fitted it out with his things.

323
00:21:36.270 --> 00:21:40.470
He established his own soccer team and played soccer with them,

324
00:21:41.550 --> 00:21:42.510
bizarre stuff.

325
00:21:42.540 --> 00:21:46.800
This was a man who was supposed to be serving a sentence for being possibly the,

326
00:21:46.801 --> 00:21:51.690
but if not the, then one of the largest cocaine bosses in the world.

327
00:21:52.920 --> 00:21:57.120
So those are some of the hurdles that are created by these

328
00:21:57.121 --> 00:21:59.430
huge amounts of black money,

329
00:22:00.060 --> 00:22:02.730
which are washing about in the international economy.

330
00:22:05.610 --> 00:22:05.880
It's mine.

331
00:22:05.880 --> 00:22:10.740
I believe that the only effective strategy is

332
00:22:10.741 --> 00:22:11.850
to attack the profit,

333
00:22:13.620 --> 00:22:17.790
to remove the profits from the distribution chain.

334
00:22:19.110 --> 00:22:22.530
How do we do that? I think there's only one way,

335
00:22:22.531 --> 00:22:24.750
and that is to remove prohibition.

336
00:22:26.460 --> 00:22:29.580
And in the case of heroin, for example,

337
00:22:30.210 --> 00:22:34.980
to make it available on prescription from licensed medical practitioners

338
00:22:35.910 --> 00:22:39.030
at its true market costs,

339
00:22:39.900 --> 00:22:41.520
which is about a dollar a dose.

340
00:22:43.470 --> 00:22:45.390
And I think until we get to that point,

341
00:22:45.510 --> 00:22:48.120
we're going to continue to have the same arguments,

342
00:22:48.150 --> 00:22:51.030
grappled with the same problems, pay the same costs

343
00:22:52.620 --> 00:22:57.120
and experience the same frustrations that we've been experiencing ever since

344
00:22:57.121 --> 00:22:59.520
early, I have to say last century. Now,

345
00:23:00.600 --> 00:23:05.160
when prohibition was first put in place in this country,

346
00:23:05.220 --> 00:23:09.540
following of course the lead of that wonderful Paragon from across the Pacific,

347
00:23:12.450 --> 00:23:15.480
the other one effective money is on the criminal justice system.

348
00:23:17.100 --> 00:23:22.020
The criminal justice system has been delegated the role of dealing with the

349
00:23:22.021 --> 00:23:23.880
aftermath of this trade,

350
00:23:25.200 --> 00:23:29.580
because there are huge amounts of money available to those who are unlucky

351
00:23:29.581 --> 00:23:32.190
enough to be caught except for the street dealers,

352
00:23:32.670 --> 00:23:37.470
but the ones in the middle rungs, you find that the criminal justice system,

353
00:23:37.471 --> 00:23:40.800
which is one of the three arms of government in our society,

354
00:23:41.550 --> 00:23:46.340
is occupied for inordinate lengths in that are being

355
00:23:46.341 --> 00:23:51.320
prolonged and promoted by the existence of the funds to

356
00:23:51.321 --> 00:23:54.830
pay for the representation for these people.

357
00:23:56.210 --> 00:24:00.740
It means that the government has to provide at least

358
00:24:01.550 --> 00:24:05.930
comparable sums of money available to prosecute these

359
00:24:05.931 --> 00:24:06.764
cases.

360
00:24:06.950 --> 00:24:11.450
It's an enormous waste of public resources in the institutions and in the funds

361
00:24:11.451 --> 00:24:13.820
that are required to actually conduct the proceedings.

362
00:24:14.750 --> 00:24:19.550
So there are a number of issues I hope that might promote some discussion

363
00:24:20.180 --> 00:24:23.360
on the subject at least of drugs and money. Thank you.

364
00:24:31.360 --> 00:24:32.260
<v 3>[Inaudible] Alfred McCoy.</v>

365
00:24:35.040 --> 00:24:37.350
<v Alfred McCoy>Thank you David. All too. We'll stand.</v>

366
00:24:37.920 --> 00:24:41.760
I'm a professor of history at the university of Wisconsin and when I

367
00:24:42.150 --> 00:24:47.040
profess I stand and profess let me finish Mr.

368
00:24:47.640 --> 00:24:50.340
Cadre's wonderful story about Pablo Escobar.

369
00:24:52.110 --> 00:24:57.030
As powerful as he was when he was finally tracked down and

370
00:24:57.031 --> 00:25:01.500
killed by a very elaborate and enormously corrupt operation

371
00:25:01.800 --> 00:25:06.540
involving the CIA and the Colombian military about which there's a,

372
00:25:06.870 --> 00:25:11.640
a wonderfully horrible book and recently published what impact did this

373
00:25:11.641 --> 00:25:16.140
prize of prizes have upon the flow of cocaine from Latin

374
00:25:16.141 --> 00:25:20.340
America to the United States? None but Pablo Escobar,

375
00:25:20.341 --> 00:25:25.110
I would submit for all his illusory power was compared to a real drug

376
00:25:25.111 --> 00:25:26.880
Lord, a Southeast Asian drug Lord,

377
00:25:27.390 --> 00:25:32.040
Amy or street punk Pablo Escobar at the peak of his power had a mere

378
00:25:32.100 --> 00:25:36.900
200 secretaries, 200 assassins. Okay. He was the equivalent,

379
00:25:36.901 --> 00:25:39.930
let's say of a medium-sized Los Angeles street gang.

380
00:25:40.230 --> 00:25:44.460
Let's talk about a real drug Lord. Couldn't saw chunky food,

381
00:25:44.490 --> 00:25:47.160
the king of heroin, the Lord of drug Lords.

382
00:25:47.490 --> 00:25:50.790
Now at the peak of his power in the early 1990s,

383
00:25:50.791 --> 00:25:55.650
this man who revolutionized the drug trade had an

384
00:25:55.651 --> 00:25:59.160
army of 20,000 soldiers. He had a,

385
00:25:59.310 --> 00:26:02.160
he'd built a city carved an entire city,

386
00:26:02.190 --> 00:26:06.150
not just a basketball court and his own private prison.

387
00:26:06.990 --> 00:26:11.280
He had a city of 10,000 people with a hydroelectric dam

388
00:26:11.990 --> 00:26:13.630
advanced medical surgery,

389
00:26:13.631 --> 00:26:18.360
a legislature for his for his independent

390
00:26:18.361 --> 00:26:20.670
state of the size of Tasmania.

391
00:26:21.930 --> 00:26:25.890
And the Burmese government decided to destroy console.

392
00:26:25.920 --> 00:26:28.860
They bought $2 billion worth of arms from China.

393
00:26:29.130 --> 00:26:31.560
They mounted a vast military campaign,

394
00:26:31.830 --> 00:26:36.660
the United States and all its power put a $2 million prize on his head and

395
00:26:37.140 --> 00:26:41.610
concise in January of 1996 was forced to surrender and he went into

396
00:26:41.611 --> 00:26:42.750
retirement. Again,

397
00:26:43.020 --> 00:26:47.880
what impact did the elimination of the most powerful drug Lord on the face of

398
00:26:47.881 --> 00:26:52.470
the planet? A man that controlled half of the heroin in the world,

399
00:26:52.530 --> 00:26:53.610
half the heroin in the world.

400
00:26:53.900 --> 00:26:58.070
What impact did this prize of prizes have upon the global drug trade?

401
00:26:58.460 --> 00:27:02.510
Not a thing. There wasn't a flicker in the international market.

402
00:27:03.320 --> 00:27:08.150
If I were going to make a film fire under the contract from the new south Wales

403
00:27:08.151 --> 00:27:12.170
film commission to make a film called drug trade. The movie,

404
00:27:12.560 --> 00:27:14.600
what I do is I'd stage it at bond diabetes.

405
00:27:15.140 --> 00:27:19.790
And I have Mr. Cowdrey in his suit and I'd have the Supreme court of the state

406
00:27:19.791 --> 00:27:22.280
of new south Wales. I'd have the tip staff,

407
00:27:22.310 --> 00:27:25.130
I'd have the officers of the drug squad in their uniforms with their guns.

408
00:27:25.430 --> 00:27:29.990
And I'd had them all with brooms at Bondai beach, with crashing waves, doing a,

409
00:27:30.080 --> 00:27:33.380
a 1, 2, 3 sweep high kick 1, 2,

410
00:27:33.380 --> 00:27:37.280
3 sweet pike kick because that's all the difference they make.

411
00:27:37.520 --> 00:27:41.990
They're fighting a vast, a vast power,

412
00:27:42.170 --> 00:27:44.600
something as powerful as the ocean.

413
00:27:44.780 --> 00:27:47.660
Something is obvious yet something as little understood.

414
00:27:47.930 --> 00:27:51.200
They're fighting a very powerful commodity. Now,

415
00:27:51.201 --> 00:27:54.800
when I was invited to speak here of the festival,

416
00:27:54.801 --> 00:27:58.700
ideas posed seven questions for them, this session, and one of them,

417
00:27:59.090 --> 00:28:02.480
there were three of them that seemed to be something that relates to my work.

418
00:28:02.570 --> 00:28:06.500
And I want to now deal with three of these questions. First of all,

419
00:28:06.501 --> 00:28:10.100
how does the invisible trade and drugs? Great, good question.

420
00:28:10.610 --> 00:28:12.980
I would argue that in fact,

421
00:28:13.220 --> 00:28:17.870
this power is of the drug trade derives from its character. Sure.

422
00:28:17.871 --> 00:28:21.290
As a commodity. Now we all know what commodities are.

423
00:28:21.440 --> 00:28:26.420
It's a very common word, but actually it's a word that has a far deeper meaning.

424
00:28:26.960 --> 00:28:29.570
The American anthropologist amend name,

425
00:28:30.350 --> 00:28:34.760
professor Sydney Mintz at the end of his career, wrote a wonderful book.

426
00:28:34.790 --> 00:28:37.340
That's full of knowledge called sweetness and power.

427
00:28:37.580 --> 00:28:41.120
And he was writing about sugar. And he said in this book,

428
00:28:41.150 --> 00:28:45.800
when the first English worker in the 18th century

429
00:28:46.130 --> 00:28:49.340
drank the first, his first cup of tea was sugar.

430
00:28:49.490 --> 00:28:52.730
This was an important historical act.

431
00:28:53.150 --> 00:28:56.720
The worker lifting the cup of tea to his lips or her lips,

432
00:28:56.960 --> 00:28:59.150
this transformed human history.

433
00:28:59.780 --> 00:29:04.760
And so it could be said that the opium trade, the global opium trades,

434
00:29:04.761 --> 00:29:08.990
which emerged at the exact same time as did the trade in sugar through the same

435
00:29:08.991 --> 00:29:13.940
processes is of course a commodity with exactly that kind

436
00:29:13.941 --> 00:29:17.300
of power at peak in 1900

437
00:29:19.040 --> 00:29:23.420
opium had become such a powerful commodity that there were at that time,

438
00:29:24.380 --> 00:29:27.440
41,000 thousand tons of opium produced in the world,

439
00:29:27.441 --> 00:29:31.670
then a legal commodity that would make it China's T

440
00:29:31.671 --> 00:29:36.010
crop, sorry. China's opium crop in 1900 was,

441
00:29:36.020 --> 00:29:40.940
let's say the same size as the Japanese tea crop or the Colombian coffee crop.

442
00:29:41.110 --> 00:29:41.441
In short,

443
00:29:41.441 --> 00:29:46.360
it was a large commodity pro producing the same kind of volume in

444
00:29:46.361 --> 00:29:51.190
1927% of adult males in China.

445
00:29:51.340 --> 00:29:55.840
One quarter of the adult male population were regular opium users.

446
00:29:56.020 --> 00:29:57.640
We'd call them opium addicts.

447
00:29:57.760 --> 00:30:02.530
So it was a bulk commodity with a vast population of

448
00:30:02.531 --> 00:30:07.090
users. After 1900, we started the great,

449
00:30:07.120 --> 00:30:11.290
what I call the great Anglo American experiment in prohibition

450
00:30:11.770 --> 00:30:16.360
recoiling from the excesses of the colonial opium trade that had made opium in

451
00:30:16.361 --> 00:30:16.690
a,

452
00:30:16.690 --> 00:30:21.580
into a commodity Britain and the United States launched a global

453
00:30:21.581 --> 00:30:25.660
diplomacy, which culminated in, in 1925,

454
00:30:25.661 --> 00:30:30.400
the league of nations passing legislation or passing treaties

455
00:30:30.580 --> 00:30:32.170
that were adopted internationally,

456
00:30:32.470 --> 00:30:36.850
which created an international prohibition against opium.

457
00:30:37.120 --> 00:30:37.841
And then today,

458
00:30:37.841 --> 00:30:42.730
the UN drug abuse fund is

459
00:30:42.760 --> 00:30:45.220
the heir of the league of nations.

460
00:30:46.000 --> 00:30:49.510
The effect of this prohibition was not to in fact,

461
00:30:49.780 --> 00:30:54.700
eradicate the traffic in opium to eradicate this commodity.

462
00:30:55.270 --> 00:30:59.710
It's simply transferred this commodity to a parallel

463
00:31:00.280 --> 00:31:01.113
vice economy,

464
00:31:01.390 --> 00:31:05.950
and it transferred it away from powerful trading corporations to

465
00:31:06.010 --> 00:31:08.170
now rising criminal syndicates.

466
00:31:08.830 --> 00:31:13.450
And this trade in this illicit trade in narcotics has proven

467
00:31:13.540 --> 00:31:15.430
incredibly powerful.

468
00:31:15.700 --> 00:31:20.650
And this invisible global trade in narcotics is incredibly resilient.

469
00:31:20.680 --> 00:31:24.160
It's also a trade and the traffic that we don't understand,

470
00:31:24.490 --> 00:31:27.400
although we have international body, the UN,

471
00:31:27.700 --> 00:31:30.130
and we have all kinds of, of,

472
00:31:30.170 --> 00:31:34.450
of national government agencies that are attempting to suppress this trade.

473
00:31:34.451 --> 00:31:39.150
In fact, we don't understand it very well at all for the past 30 years,

474
00:31:39.630 --> 00:31:44.370
the global campaign to prohibit this commodity

475
00:31:45.240 --> 00:31:49.380
has failed for 30 years. This illicit market,

476
00:31:49.381 --> 00:31:53.940
this vast illicit market has transformed us and UN drug

477
00:31:53.941 --> 00:31:57.510
war or our attempts at prohibition into stimulus.

478
00:31:57.780 --> 00:31:58.980
Let me give you an example.

479
00:32:00.300 --> 00:32:05.280
The first of four now five American drug wars over the past 30

480
00:32:05.281 --> 00:32:09.900
years was waged by president Richard Nixon in Turkey,

481
00:32:10.650 --> 00:32:14.700
Turkey then produced just 7% of the world's opium.

482
00:32:15.210 --> 00:32:19.260
And by mobilizing the tremendous power of the United States,

483
00:32:19.770 --> 00:32:24.090
president Nixon seated in effecting the absolute 100%

484
00:32:24.510 --> 00:32:28.740
total eradication of opium and Turkey Turkey then

485
00:32:28.950 --> 00:32:33.900
provided about 80% of the source opium for the production

486
00:32:33.901 --> 00:32:35.520
of heroin in the United States.

487
00:32:35.820 --> 00:32:39.230
So this was a tremendous victory in the drug war.

488
00:32:39.410 --> 00:32:43.700
In this grandmother of drug wars, it was an absolute and total victory,

489
00:32:44.120 --> 00:32:45.700
but given the, the,

490
00:32:45.701 --> 00:32:50.420
the mysterious nature of the international economy in the drug

491
00:32:50.421 --> 00:32:54.080
war, every victory soon becomes a defeat.

492
00:32:54.290 --> 00:32:56.660
Every victory becomes a defeat.

493
00:32:57.080 --> 00:33:01.790
The net result of the Nixon drug war was to send out

494
00:33:01.791 --> 00:33:06.740
invisible 10 rolls of stimulus that transformed the nature of the

495
00:33:06.741 --> 00:33:09.530
drug on five continents. Okay,

496
00:33:09.680 --> 00:33:14.570
let's look at how the simple eradication of just 7% of the world's opium

497
00:33:14.810 --> 00:33:19.100
in 1974, ramified and rippled around the globe.

498
00:33:19.340 --> 00:33:23.390
First of all, because demand was constant and supply was short,

499
00:33:23.510 --> 00:33:26.750
international price went up, that's economics 1 0 1,

500
00:33:27.080 --> 00:33:31.490
I got a C and I learned that and the result was to

501
00:33:31.491 --> 00:33:34.970
stimulate production in Southeast Asia. Now, where,

502
00:33:34.971 --> 00:33:37.160
what happened to this production,

503
00:33:37.161 --> 00:33:40.280
this increased production of heroin in Southeast Asia? Well,

504
00:33:40.340 --> 00:33:44.060
the Nixon administration fought battle to have its drug war in Thailand.

505
00:33:44.450 --> 00:33:48.590
And it sent a team of us drug enforcement administration, agents to Thailand,

506
00:33:48.920 --> 00:33:53.690
and they effectively cut the flow of the drugs from Thailand to the United

507
00:33:53.690 --> 00:33:57.380
States. So those syndicates then began exporting to two continents,

508
00:33:57.381 --> 00:34:01.280
which up to this point were heroin free Australia and Europe,

509
00:34:01.550 --> 00:34:05.690
and both by the end of the 1970s had heroin problems

510
00:34:06.350 --> 00:34:09.770
given the scale of their societies larger than that in the United States,

511
00:34:10.430 --> 00:34:13.880
in the United States, because there was a shortage of supply of heroin.

512
00:34:14.210 --> 00:34:19.070
We got a sudden rapid expansion in illegal amphetamine production

513
00:34:19.430 --> 00:34:23.990
and Philadelphia beat was known by the end of the 1970s as the speed capital of

514
00:34:23.991 --> 00:34:28.930
the world, not refer reference to motor racing, by the way in Latin America,

515
00:34:29.290 --> 00:34:31.130
the the,

516
00:34:31.131 --> 00:34:35.080
the shortfall of heroin in the United States stimulated in the traffic in

517
00:34:35.081 --> 00:34:39.820
cocaine and started the accelerated exports of cocaine from the Andes north,

518
00:34:39.821 --> 00:34:41.470
the United States, and in Mexico,

519
00:34:41.710 --> 00:34:46.000
there was an increased production of black tar heroin. So the elimination,

520
00:34:46.030 --> 00:34:50.740
this victory of the drug war in Turkey led to a vast expansion

521
00:34:50.920 --> 00:34:55.420
of both production and consumption of narcotics around the world and every

522
00:34:55.421 --> 00:34:59.170
subsequent victory in each of the drug wars that followed,

523
00:34:59.320 --> 00:35:00.820
serves as a stimulus.

524
00:35:01.420 --> 00:35:04.780
So how can we measure this?

525
00:35:05.440 --> 00:35:07.750
How can we measure this increase stimulus?

526
00:35:08.110 --> 00:35:10.630
That takes me to the next question.

527
00:35:11.050 --> 00:35:15.580
The next question that I receive is very simply is the cure worse than the

528
00:35:15.581 --> 00:35:20.440
disease is the attempt to prohibit narcotics worse than the

529
00:35:20.600 --> 00:35:24.670
traffic in narcotics? I would argue, yes,

530
00:35:24.730 --> 00:35:26.920
as long as drugs are prohibited,

531
00:35:27.190 --> 00:35:30.370
the drug war will continue to make the problem worse.

532
00:35:30.730 --> 00:35:35.530
Let me illustrate this with a few statistics after 30 years

533
00:35:35.531 --> 00:35:40.200
and for drug wars against opium there has been a six

534
00:35:40.560 --> 00:35:43.530
fold increase in opium supply in 1970,

535
00:35:43.740 --> 00:35:47.160
when the U S war on OPM started in Turkey,

536
00:35:47.460 --> 00:35:50.940
the world produced a thousand tons of illicit opium today.

537
00:35:51.120 --> 00:35:53.730
It produces 6,500 tons.

538
00:35:53.790 --> 00:35:58.380
It's gone from 1000 to 6,500 tons for the past 15

539
00:35:58.381 --> 00:35:59.040
years.

540
00:35:59.040 --> 00:36:04.020
The United States has been fighting a drug war in Latin America against cocaine.

541
00:36:04.190 --> 00:36:07.140
All right, between 1987 and 1999,

542
00:36:07.470 --> 00:36:09.630
the production of cocaine in the Andes,

543
00:36:09.631 --> 00:36:14.220
despite a massive us intervention has doubled.

544
00:36:14.280 --> 00:36:18.450
We've gone from 300,000 tons of Koka in 1987 to

545
00:36:18.451 --> 00:36:23.130
600,000 tons of cocoa today inside the United States,

546
00:36:23.310 --> 00:36:27.510
there has been, again, a massive war on drugs in the United States.

547
00:36:28.710 --> 00:36:32.880
The measure of this is our rising rate of incarceration from

548
00:36:32.881 --> 00:36:34.080
1930,

549
00:36:34.230 --> 00:36:39.180
until 1980 in a time of half century of dramatic change in

550
00:36:39.181 --> 00:36:43.080
the United States. One social factors remain constant. Okay.

551
00:36:43.590 --> 00:36:47.940
The rate of incarceration, the United States had a hundred prisoners,

552
00:36:48.150 --> 00:36:49.500
per hundred thousand people,

553
00:36:49.501 --> 00:36:52.920
a hundred per a hundred thousand people from 1930 to 1980.

554
00:36:53.250 --> 00:36:56.190
Then in the 1980s under president Reagan and Bush,

555
00:36:56.400 --> 00:36:59.640
we began this accelerated war on drugs domestically,

556
00:36:59.910 --> 00:37:03.990
which produced massive incarceration of people for possession.

557
00:37:04.200 --> 00:37:08.550
Today, we have gone from 100 prisoners per a hundred thousand population to

558
00:37:08.551 --> 00:37:10.950
650. Okay.

559
00:37:11.310 --> 00:37:15.600
One third of all the African-American males in the United States between the

560
00:37:15.601 --> 00:37:20.370
age, the age of 18 and 32 are in the criminal justice system.

561
00:37:20.700 --> 00:37:24.960
We are warehousing a third of the African male population.

562
00:37:24.961 --> 00:37:27.540
African-American male population between 18 and 32.

563
00:37:29.850 --> 00:37:34.350
The number of drug users in the United States has remained constant throughout

564
00:37:34.351 --> 00:37:38.760
the last 15 years of the drug war at three and a half million recently. However,

565
00:37:38.761 --> 00:37:43.740
the number of heroin users has gone from 600,000 in 1990 to a million

566
00:37:43.741 --> 00:37:47.250
today. The final question,

567
00:37:48.020 --> 00:37:50.850
would it be how much would it cost us?

568
00:37:50.880 --> 00:37:55.260
The final question was to concede that the trade in sex,

569
00:37:55.261 --> 00:37:58.500
drugs and money is worse than the disease.

570
00:37:58.830 --> 00:38:03.780
I would argue that decriminalization is perhaps

571
00:38:03.781 --> 00:38:08.280
the only way to deal with this enormous power of this

572
00:38:08.281 --> 00:38:13.200
invisible market. As long as drugs are prohibited,

573
00:38:13.710 --> 00:38:18.150
they will remain inside this invisible underworld economy

574
00:38:18.360 --> 00:38:22.980
with its incredible power to transform every attempt at

575
00:38:22.981 --> 00:38:26.700
prohibition, into stimulus. The harder we fight this,

576
00:38:26.880 --> 00:38:29.280
the bigger it will grow. All right,

577
00:38:29.400 --> 00:38:34.350
it is our entire attempt at prohibition is stimulating

578
00:38:34.530 --> 00:38:36.220
its growth. The harder we try to prohibit it,

579
00:38:36.221 --> 00:38:38.770
the bigger it will grow it is self-defeating.

580
00:38:38.830 --> 00:38:41.560
And moreover not only is it self-defeating in terms of drugs,

581
00:38:41.770 --> 00:38:45.820
it does enormous collateral damage to our society.

582
00:38:46.390 --> 00:38:49.090
So I would argue that as a first step,

583
00:38:49.300 --> 00:38:51.640
we need to decriminalize this.

584
00:38:51.641 --> 00:38:56.290
We need to unravel undo the entire prohibition and

585
00:38:56.830 --> 00:39:01.390
return drugs into the normal legal economy where we can manage and

586
00:39:01.391 --> 00:39:05.740
regulate them like we manage and regulate alcohol or tobacco

587
00:39:06.550 --> 00:39:08.590
without all of this collateral damage. Thank you.

588
00:39:17.820 --> 00:39:18.150
<v 3>[Inaudible].</v>

589
00:39:18.150 --> 00:39:19.350
<v David Marr>The microphone is there,</v>

590
00:39:19.351 --> 00:39:23.220
but I'm going to take the chairman's prerogative and ask each of the members of

591
00:39:23.221 --> 00:39:23.611
the panel,

592
00:39:23.611 --> 00:39:28.530
a question unanswerable Al and answerable arguments.

593
00:39:28.620 --> 00:39:32.740
Nick from your professional experience are answerable that that

594
00:39:32.970 --> 00:39:36.450
decriminalization is the only way to go. Let's briefly go around the panel.

595
00:39:36.480 --> 00:39:37.500
Why hasn't that happened?

596
00:39:38.580 --> 00:39:41.280
<v Nicholas Cowdery>It hasn't happened. I think because politicians</v>

597
00:39:42.930 --> 00:39:46.280
too nervous, too frightened to explore.

598
00:39:48.210 --> 00:39:52.380
We've heard just already today in a number of presentations,

599
00:39:53.310 --> 00:39:58.140
concern the lack of constructive political leadership in this

600
00:39:58.141 --> 00:39:58.974
country.

601
00:39:59.310 --> 00:40:03.450
And I don't think we need to look very far to discover just how true that is

602
00:40:04.560 --> 00:40:06.720
to what a large extent it is true.

603
00:40:08.520 --> 00:40:11.010
So there needs to be leadership.

604
00:40:11.040 --> 00:40:15.810
There needs to be a constructive engagement with people

605
00:40:15.840 --> 00:40:20.490
with you about what people want about what

606
00:40:20.610 --> 00:40:22.440
you want about what you think.

607
00:40:23.220 --> 00:40:25.740
Instead of having people at the top,

608
00:40:26.130 --> 00:40:28.920
telling us what is best for us now,

609
00:40:28.921 --> 00:40:31.320
until we can do that until we,

610
00:40:31.321 --> 00:40:35.370
the people can have some input into the fashioning of policy,

611
00:40:36.240 --> 00:40:38.730
unless we, the people can tell the politicians,

612
00:40:38.731 --> 00:40:43.470
if you take that constructive point of view and

613
00:40:43.471 --> 00:40:47.070
explore alternative possibilities, we will go with you.

614
00:40:48.240 --> 00:40:50.910
We will assist you to discover facts,

615
00:40:50.970 --> 00:40:55.440
to deal with the arguments in a constructive way until we do that,

616
00:40:55.740 --> 00:40:59.400
they'll be too scared to do it because they fear that it will cost them votes at

617
00:40:59.401 --> 00:41:00.234
the next election.

618
00:41:01.050 --> 00:41:04.260
And that's all essentially they're interested in whether or not they're going to

619
00:41:04.261 --> 00:41:06.000
be reelected next time.

620
00:41:06.370 --> 00:41:09.760
<v David Marr>But Al why are the spin doctors mustard against change?</v>

621
00:41:09.790 --> 00:41:12.460
Why do they come out with, with opposition?

622
00:41:14.560 --> 00:41:17.140
I'm a historian and we just tell stories data.

623
00:41:19.120 --> 00:41:22.360
Don't ask us to believe that in my movies, I'm a storyteller.

624
00:41:23.620 --> 00:41:26.620
<v Alfred McCoy>Let me tell you a story that may or may not answer your question.</v>

625
00:41:26.710 --> 00:41:29.290
Hopefully it does. In,

626
00:41:29.570 --> 00:41:31.960
in the last 30 years in the United States,

627
00:41:31.990 --> 00:41:36.980
there was only really been one politician with the charisma

628
00:41:36.981 --> 00:41:40.850
and the intelligence to really attack the drug war. And for all of his failings,

629
00:41:40.851 --> 00:41:45.260
that was former president Clinton. He's a very smart man and a lawyer,

630
00:41:45.261 --> 00:41:47.330
and he knew better than any of us.

631
00:41:47.331 --> 00:41:51.580
The damage the drug war was doing indeed writing and rolling stone magazine,

632
00:41:51.581 --> 00:41:55.330
sorry, in the interview with rolling stone magazine as he was leaving office,

633
00:41:55.331 --> 00:41:58.270
he confessed that, looking back on his administration,

634
00:41:58.630 --> 00:42:02.890
one of the things he deeply regretted above all of his failings was his feeling

635
00:42:02.891 --> 00:42:07.600
really to address some of the, from the drug war and he listed them off.

636
00:42:08.080 --> 00:42:11.830
So the question is why didn't bill Clinton who wanted to do something about

637
00:42:11.831 --> 00:42:15.940
drugs who was arguing? You'll be the most powerful man in the world.

638
00:42:16.030 --> 00:42:17.350
I'd say that's a fair statement.

639
00:42:18.130 --> 00:42:20.350
He was not only is the American presidency powerful,

640
00:42:20.351 --> 00:42:21.850
but he was a powerful American person.

641
00:42:22.060 --> 00:42:25.480
Why couldn't he the most powerful man in the world?

642
00:42:25.481 --> 00:42:29.230
The most powerful political leader on the planet with all of his phenomenal

643
00:42:29.350 --> 00:42:31.750
stuff, skills and intellect attack the drug war.

644
00:42:31.780 --> 00:42:34.690
And that's the story in 1994,

645
00:42:35.110 --> 00:42:38.770
I got a call from bizarre sources.

646
00:42:38.771 --> 00:42:43.420
It was routed from the Pentagon through a cupboard fair unit

647
00:42:43.490 --> 00:42:47.980
in in a military base near Washington DC,

648
00:42:47.981 --> 00:42:51.010
then through a think tank at Ohio university.

649
00:42:51.011 --> 00:42:54.850
And suddenly I got a telephone call saying, hi yeah,

650
00:42:55.060 --> 00:42:57.850
the incoming assistant secretary of defense for narcotic meds,

651
00:42:58.330 --> 00:43:02.710
once you to do a report on what's wrong with America's drug policy. And I said,

652
00:43:02.711 --> 00:43:04.750
oh great. I've been a critic for all these years.

653
00:43:05.170 --> 00:43:09.670
And so I wrote this report and I sent it in and I,

654
00:43:09.671 --> 00:43:13.360
then I got a call saying the assistant secretary really liked your report.

655
00:43:14.050 --> 00:43:16.330
And he wants you to come down to Washington and give a briefing.

656
00:43:17.020 --> 00:43:21.370
And this assistant secretary of defense, about 35 years old,

657
00:43:21.440 --> 00:43:24.040
he had a budget of $1.1 billion us.

658
00:43:24.310 --> 00:43:26.920
He had all of the military parts of the drug war under his command.

659
00:43:27.340 --> 00:43:30.940
And so I wonder the Pentagon and I gave a briefing to, oh,

660
00:43:30.941 --> 00:43:35.290
I think it was 60 senior drug warriors. There were, you know,

661
00:43:35.380 --> 00:43:39.160
there were admirals and generals and Marine colonels around a table.

662
00:43:39.161 --> 00:43:42.610
And then behind them was a whole row of people without uniforms are name tags.

663
00:43:43.450 --> 00:43:44.530
We all know where they're from.

664
00:43:45.220 --> 00:43:49.850
And and they all sat as I put my slides up and gave my presentation

665
00:43:49.980 --> 00:43:53.530
in a more elaborate and documented way than I did just now told them what was

666
00:43:53.531 --> 00:43:57.070
wrong with the drug war. And they all nodded and said, oh my gosh,

667
00:43:57.071 --> 00:44:00.850
that sounds sensible. And then the white house ordered 75 copies of my report.

668
00:44:01.420 --> 00:44:04.420
And I got another call from his secretary saying, this is looking good.

669
00:44:04.480 --> 00:44:06.550
You're going to be coming to Washington as a,

670
00:44:06.551 --> 00:44:10.210
as a consultant to help us undo this damage. Well, what happened?

671
00:44:10.510 --> 00:44:12.070
Well in November, 1994,

672
00:44:12.071 --> 00:44:15.250
the right wing Republicans captured control of the U S Congress.

673
00:44:15.251 --> 00:44:18.610
And instead of undoing the drug war, president Clinton,

674
00:44:18.720 --> 00:44:22.030
who had been unable to get any legislation from this Congress went for the

675
00:44:22.120 --> 00:44:27.100
omnibus crime act and hired a hundred thousand more police to put

676
00:44:27.101 --> 00:44:31.060
more people in jail for drugs that went, that that's the political.

677
00:44:32.370 --> 00:44:37.290
And as long as your ally upon leaders like Clinton to under the drug war force,

678
00:44:37.300 --> 00:44:41.790
it won't happen after a hundred years of prohibition to ideology,

679
00:44:41.850 --> 00:44:46.500
political structures of the legislative contest and the bureaucratic apparatus.

680
00:44:46.710 --> 00:44:51.390
We have created a very powerful prohibition nexus that cannot be

681
00:44:51.391 --> 00:44:52.530
undone from the top.

682
00:44:52.710 --> 00:44:56.820
It has to be demolished by a popular movement outside of government.

683
00:44:59.210 --> 00:45:02.040
<v Sadie Plant>Well, I agree with that last comment and I,</v>

684
00:45:02.041 --> 00:45:04.370
I've got two big things to say about this.

685
00:45:04.400 --> 00:45:09.110
I think the reasons why it remained the situation remains the same is actually

686
00:45:09.710 --> 00:45:11.990
they're bigger than I's review. Who've said, I think,

687
00:45:11.991 --> 00:45:15.650
I think it has to do with my opening comments about the size of the,

688
00:45:16.160 --> 00:45:20.630
of this underground economy. And if you, I mean,

689
00:45:20.631 --> 00:45:22.460
we all know there's any black economy,

690
00:45:22.461 --> 00:45:26.840
even people doing odd jobs and not paying their tax and so on is crucial to the

691
00:45:26.841 --> 00:45:30.020
balance of economic power in a legitimate economy.

692
00:45:30.680 --> 00:45:33.830
That that's true at any level. So if you magnify that,

693
00:45:33.831 --> 00:45:35.750
think about that on a global scale,

694
00:45:36.050 --> 00:45:40.910
the implications of eradicating this prohibited

695
00:45:40.911 --> 00:45:45.560
trade of rendering, it legal, the economic, the political,

696
00:45:45.561 --> 00:45:50.150
the geopolitical implications, I think are enormous. I mean,

697
00:45:50.151 --> 00:45:54.950
even I struggle to deal with the possibility of I've mentioned

698
00:45:54.951 --> 00:45:59.060
before countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, countries,

699
00:45:59.061 --> 00:46:02.480
and Southeast Asia that Alfred knows about the countries in south America that

700
00:46:02.720 --> 00:46:07.220
would have been taught to that the possibility of them entering the

701
00:46:07.250 --> 00:46:09.470
global legitimate economy,

702
00:46:09.471 --> 00:46:13.070
the kind of implications of that would have politically and economically.

703
00:46:13.070 --> 00:46:16.310
And that's just one, one implication. There were many, many more as well.

704
00:46:16.640 --> 00:46:21.350
I think there's something systemic here that it really has as

705
00:46:21.351 --> 00:46:22.184
Alfred just said,

706
00:46:22.490 --> 00:46:27.470
sort of prohibition nexus has become this kind of machine if you like,

707
00:46:27.500 --> 00:46:30.980
which really does no matter how powerful Clinton is.

708
00:46:31.340 --> 00:46:35.030
He is not in a position to single hand at the end, do that.

709
00:46:35.420 --> 00:46:39.050
The second thing that wants slaves that we're dealing with, as I said before,

710
00:46:39.080 --> 00:46:43.340
international law, most countries in the world with very few exceptions,

711
00:46:43.341 --> 00:46:48.260
Switzerland is one of the only exceptions are signatures to UN conventions on

712
00:46:48.261 --> 00:46:49.094
the drugs trade.

713
00:46:49.220 --> 00:46:54.140
So even if an individual countries such as Australia wanted to make

714
00:46:54.141 --> 00:46:58.010
some move towards legalization of any particular substance,

715
00:46:58.011 --> 00:47:02.630
they are breaking international law in doing so. So in that sense,

716
00:47:02.631 --> 00:47:06.950
there is this enormous monstrous machine governing the whole process,

717
00:47:06.951 --> 00:47:11.000
which even if an individual country wants to challenge the situation,

718
00:47:11.001 --> 00:47:12.650
it's very difficult for the politicians,

719
00:47:12.830 --> 00:47:15.950
all the people in that country to do so. But having said that,

720
00:47:16.010 --> 00:47:17.270
we all know that in Europe,

721
00:47:17.300 --> 00:47:20.660
there are several countries and several regions where in fact there is this

722
00:47:20.661 --> 00:47:25.610
popular change. Decriminalization is happening. It has happened in many places.

723
00:47:25.790 --> 00:47:28.010
If you go to Switzerland, you can go into a shop.

724
00:47:28.011 --> 00:47:32.110
You can buy marijuana can choose from a menu. It's very cheap.

725
00:47:32.111 --> 00:47:36.880
It's no problem. Obviously many people know the situation Holland,

726
00:47:36.881 --> 00:47:39.490
but it's not only Holland that has made that move. As I say,

727
00:47:39.730 --> 00:47:43.750
Switzerland is in a relatively free position to do so because it's not a

728
00:47:43.751 --> 00:47:47.020
signatory to the convention. And therefore it can pretty much behaviors.

729
00:47:47.140 --> 00:47:47.973
It chooses,

730
00:47:49.090 --> 00:47:52.390
but Holland is often in trouble with the UN for doing this.

731
00:47:52.391 --> 00:47:53.710
And the same with Spain as well.

732
00:47:53.711 --> 00:47:57.880
Several regions of Spain have already decriminalized in Britain.

733
00:47:57.881 --> 00:48:01.000
We haven't officially decriminalized, but we have tasks that we'd done.

734
00:48:01.001 --> 00:48:02.830
So just in the last couple of weeks,

735
00:48:03.190 --> 00:48:08.020
it's now no longer considered to be an offense to carry amounts of

736
00:48:08.050 --> 00:48:10.450
marijuana for personal use. And the same as now,

737
00:48:10.451 --> 00:48:11.680
beginning to happen with heroin.

738
00:48:12.100 --> 00:48:15.730
And there are other experiments happening in Europe. For example, in Rotterdam,

739
00:48:15.731 --> 00:48:18.220
there's a very famous church. The Paulus Keck,

740
00:48:18.880 --> 00:48:22.720
where humps Fisher has become a prominent figure. The pastor of that church,

741
00:48:22.900 --> 00:48:24.370
who does in fact sell heroin,

742
00:48:24.371 --> 00:48:29.050
as you suggested at market value at pure quality to a really a

743
00:48:29.051 --> 00:48:32.200
dwindling number of heroin addicts in that city,

744
00:48:32.230 --> 00:48:35.410
he really sees them as a particular generation.

745
00:48:35.710 --> 00:48:40.330
His policy means that that generation is not being followed by younger people.

746
00:48:40.750 --> 00:48:44.110
He's now looking at opening in fats and old people's home for the remaining

747
00:48:44.111 --> 00:48:48.100
heroin junkie. And he really sees that they will be the last generation.

748
00:48:48.101 --> 00:48:51.460
And that will be the end of the problem in that city. So it is happening.

749
00:48:52.470 --> 00:48:54.640
<v David Marr>Now let's open the questions. Yes.</v>

750
00:48:54.840 --> 00:48:56.730
<v 5>People have asked me my name. I'm Dean darling,</v>

751
00:48:56.731 --> 00:48:58.530
retired physics and the science chapter,

752
00:48:58.531 --> 00:49:03.390
the alumni association medal university. Now you and why you're not doing this.

753
00:49:03.870 --> 00:49:05.760
You people who want drug reform,

754
00:49:06.570 --> 00:49:11.460
you can talk Peto the drug laws quite simply quite simply by telling the

755
00:49:11.461 --> 00:49:14.850
pharmacological truth and exposing the pharmacological lies.

756
00:49:14.851 --> 00:49:16.110
And you're not doing that.

757
00:49:16.830 --> 00:49:21.120
The opiates that all the heroin and marijuana cannabis, if pure are,

758
00:49:22.140 --> 00:49:24.060
non-toxic compare that with alcohol,

759
00:49:24.061 --> 00:49:26.730
which causes permanent irreversible brain and bodies,

760
00:49:26.790 --> 00:49:30.180
that that'll damage on all the hangovers and all the rest of it. Now,

761
00:49:30.181 --> 00:49:31.650
you're not saying this to the public.

762
00:49:31.680 --> 00:49:34.380
The public are very confused because they're on the horns of this dilemma.

763
00:49:34.710 --> 00:49:37.500
You've got these terribly dangerous drugs on the one hand and we've got crime

764
00:49:37.501 --> 00:49:39.060
and the Mathew on the other. Now,

765
00:49:39.061 --> 00:49:43.140
the way he resolved as phony dilemma is you exposed the lie to be a law.

766
00:49:43.500 --> 00:49:47.640
The law to be alive, pot and heroin are not dangerous.

767
00:49:47.641 --> 00:49:51.330
Drugs of addiction. If you compare them with alcohol, death rates,

768
00:49:51.331 --> 00:49:53.070
addiction rates, withdrawal, overdose,

769
00:49:53.071 --> 00:49:55.770
destruction of body and brain cells and behavior,

770
00:49:56.790 --> 00:50:00.570
they are non-toxic compared to alcohol. For which in this country,

771
00:50:00.571 --> 00:50:03.510
we get the Queens on. It's the producers of alcohol. Now,

772
00:50:03.511 --> 00:50:05.760
the appalling hypocrisy and injustice you,

773
00:50:05.761 --> 00:50:09.360
people are not saying you can repeat, you can talk Peter,

774
00:50:09.361 --> 00:50:12.180
the track laws quite simply by telling the public,

775
00:50:12.181 --> 00:50:16.050
the pharmacological truth for a change in Holland. In 1996,

776
00:50:16.200 --> 00:50:19.890
there are 37 heroin deaths in Australia, same year,

777
00:50:19.920 --> 00:50:23.910
nineteen ninety six, six hundred and forty two. You asked the politician,

778
00:50:23.940 --> 00:50:28.270
how do you explain the vast difference between Holland and in,

779
00:50:28.271 --> 00:50:29.330
in heroin deaths?

780
00:50:30.290 --> 00:50:33.170
You all know about what you can go through the diff I can do this,

781
00:50:33.380 --> 00:50:35.450
but I haven't got time. Why don't you tell the public,

782
00:50:35.451 --> 00:50:38.720
the pharmacological truth and torpedo the drug laws?

783
00:50:40.550 --> 00:50:43.150
Yes. Now, how do you respond to that? The three.

784
00:50:55.270 --> 00:50:55.480
<v Sadie Plant>[Inaudible].</v>

785
00:50:55.480 --> 00:50:56.313
<v David Marr>To respond to that?</v>

786
00:50:56.360 --> 00:50:59.590
<v Sadie Plant>I would say the same. I mean, I think probably the people on this platform,</v>

787
00:50:59.920 --> 00:51:02.350
all saying that, you know, that's precisely the point. I mean,

788
00:51:02.650 --> 00:51:05.200
you're talking about hundreds of thousands of deaths.

789
00:51:05.710 --> 00:51:09.310
Alcohol-Related deaths in the country. Like Brittany, you're talking, you know,

790
00:51:09.370 --> 00:51:12.220
a handful of drug related deaths in comparison,

791
00:51:12.250 --> 00:51:16.330
even in the worst of circumstances that we have at the moment. Yeah. I agree.

792
00:51:16.870 --> 00:51:20.530
We all say and get it. I think the hypocrisy is not coming from right here.

793
00:51:20.531 --> 00:51:21.364
Is it?

794
00:51:25.180 --> 00:51:26.740
<v David Marr>Well, well, I mean, we can,</v>

795
00:51:26.770 --> 00:51:31.210
I think we can all read at any time and it's been said over and over again,

796
00:51:31.240 --> 00:51:33.490
pure heroin. Doesn't kill people. I mean,

797
00:51:33.491 --> 00:51:37.060
I think constipation is the worst side effect of your hair, pure heroin,

798
00:51:37.061 --> 00:51:41.230
isn't it? Alcohol is an extremely dangerous substance.

799
00:51:41.231 --> 00:51:42.100
A few years ago.

800
00:51:42.790 --> 00:51:47.600
Jenny Brockie made the most wonderful documentary in Sydney and she set up to

801
00:51:47.830 --> 00:51:52.660
go with ambulance crews to overdoses in Kings cross,

802
00:51:52.960 --> 00:51:55.840
and you know, what she made, what it turned out to be.

803
00:51:55.870 --> 00:51:58.210
And she allowed it to emerge so beautifully.

804
00:51:58.510 --> 00:52:02.680
In the course of the documentary itself, they weren't going to overdoses.

805
00:52:02.860 --> 00:52:06.280
They were going to drunks. It was a night, actually.

806
00:52:06.490 --> 00:52:11.170
It was night after night of servicing the damage of alcohol

807
00:52:12.010 --> 00:52:14.800
and the beautiful thing at the end of the documentary,

808
00:52:15.670 --> 00:52:20.410
which was that the same ambulance officers were going around in the weeks before

809
00:52:20.411 --> 00:52:25.060
Christmas collecting donations of alcohol for their Christmas party.

810
00:52:26.440 --> 00:52:27.940
It's a very fine documentary,

811
00:52:28.420 --> 00:52:32.860
but if ever you're in doubt about the clear message

812
00:52:33.310 --> 00:52:38.200
of the harmlessness and the pitfalls of drugs

813
00:52:38.230 --> 00:52:43.090
being truthfully put in a publication read Sydney's gay press in the

814
00:52:43.091 --> 00:52:44.440
weeks before Mardi Gras,

815
00:52:44.530 --> 00:52:48.160
it is the most impeccable impeccable

816
00:52:48.730 --> 00:52:53.170
analysis. This is the good, this is the bad, this is the pharmacology.

817
00:52:53.560 --> 00:52:57.880
Whereas the Howard government has recently put out and sent to every home in the

818
00:52:57.881 --> 00:52:58.714
nation,

819
00:52:58.990 --> 00:53:03.430
a document which lists amongst the side effects

820
00:53:03.910 --> 00:53:06.310
of marijuana. Euphoria.

821
00:53:10.590 --> 00:53:11.423
Next question.

822
00:53:15.210 --> 00:53:18.960
<v 5>We're hearing quite a bit about the effects of banning</v>

823
00:53:20.340 --> 00:53:24.840
the drug trade in that. But I'm concerned about

824
00:53:26.520 --> 00:53:29.400
bands on the trafficking of people.

825
00:53:32.070 --> 00:53:32.940
The people try,

826
00:53:34.740 --> 00:53:39.300
they're banning people from moving from one country to another,

827
00:53:39.330 --> 00:53:40.740
from one continent to another,

828
00:53:41.760 --> 00:53:46.500
and they're making billions out of trafficking

829
00:53:47.670 --> 00:53:50.460
them, dumping them over board.

830
00:53:51.360 --> 00:53:55.140
The the people that died in the buses,

831
00:53:55.141 --> 00:53:58.740
the trucks those places in Holland,

832
00:53:59.730 --> 00:54:03.690
the amount of people that's in concentration camps in Australia

833
00:54:04.800 --> 00:54:09.540
and the, how many of them have come out in the media that we know

834
00:54:09.541 --> 00:54:13.830
about how many of them are there that we don't know about

835
00:54:15.120 --> 00:54:20.070
and how much of the public money is going into keeping those

836
00:54:20.071 --> 00:54:24.420
people they're paying for the people that's

837
00:54:24.480 --> 00:54:29.400
supposedly looking after them keeping them in those concentration camps,

838
00:54:29.401 --> 00:54:31.200
under those shocking conditions.

839
00:54:32.460 --> 00:54:36.630
And we're not hearing very much about it in our media.

840
00:54:38.340 --> 00:54:39.960
They're making billions out of it.

841
00:54:39.961 --> 00:54:44.550
Who's making who's the basket chopping our

842
00:54:44.551 --> 00:54:45.720
federal parliament.

843
00:54:46.950 --> 00:54:51.090
The phrase is the package and that this making the billions out of the drug

844
00:54:51.120 --> 00:54:55.320
trade and the people smuggling and trafficking,

845
00:54:56.730 --> 00:54:59.610
they are the criminals. And it's not just those law.

846
00:55:00.840 --> 00:55:02.790
There's a hell of a lot more.

847
00:55:04.980 --> 00:55:05.813
<v David Marr>Well,</v>

848
00:55:06.390 --> 00:55:09.690
I think I would just say that's the first time I've ever heard it suggested that

849
00:55:09.691 --> 00:55:14.610
either of those two men were involved in people's smuggling, but but our.

850
00:55:15.420 --> 00:55:19.200
<v Alfred McCoy>Not mine, not your area. Well, one of the.</v>

851
00:55:19.260 --> 00:55:23.880
<v Nicholas Cowdery>Organizations making a lot of money out of illegal migration,</v>

852
00:55:24.810 --> 00:55:29.520
prohibited migration is a private company from the

853
00:55:29.521 --> 00:55:33.690
United States of America, which runs the detention camps in Australia.

854
00:55:34.860 --> 00:55:38.820
And I think it's a symptom of a development,

855
00:55:38.821 --> 00:55:42.630
which is very disturbing, and that is the conduct of private prisons.

856
00:55:43.620 --> 00:55:47.790
I have a great difficulty as a matter of principle in coming to terms with the

857
00:55:47.791 --> 00:55:49.710
idea of a private prison,

858
00:55:50.580 --> 00:55:54.510
the incarceration of wrongdoers is a function of government.

859
00:55:54.720 --> 00:55:55.980
As far as I'm concerned,

860
00:55:55.981 --> 00:56:00.150
it's something that's done on our behalf and something for which we should be

861
00:56:00.180 --> 00:56:04.980
responsible according to proper standards that are applied.

862
00:56:05.760 --> 00:56:10.440
The only objective of private prison companies is to

863
00:56:10.441 --> 00:56:14.160
make profit and to make as big a profit as possible.

864
00:56:15.000 --> 00:56:15.870
And if they,

865
00:56:16.080 --> 00:56:21.060
I was talking to somebody last night at the ed thing who told

866
00:56:21.061 --> 00:56:21.894
me that

867
00:56:23.080 --> 00:56:27.610
she had spoken to a principal of one of these companies in the United States.

868
00:56:28.270 --> 00:56:32.200
Apparently they get paid more for incarcerating,

869
00:56:32.230 --> 00:56:35.020
illegal immigrants than they do for incarcerating.

870
00:56:35.021 --> 00:56:38.260
People have been sentenced to imprisonment by courts.

871
00:56:38.980 --> 00:56:43.150
And so they're out looking for as many illegal immigrants as I can find to get

872
00:56:43.151 --> 00:56:47.980
into the prisons to make a high margin of profit. Just one example,

873
00:56:48.760 --> 00:56:51.070
we have some private prisons in this country,

874
00:56:51.071 --> 00:56:54.250
as well as the detention camps of warmer and a port head.

875
00:56:56.020 --> 00:56:58.060
And I think it's a very disturbing development.

876
00:56:59.710 --> 00:57:01.240
<v David Marr>Often. Yeah, I would.</v>

877
00:57:01.930 --> 00:57:03.100
<v Alfred McCoy>Say that in a way,</v>

878
00:57:03.101 --> 00:57:06.970
the analogy is a false one to say that the trafficking

879
00:57:07.450 --> 00:57:12.250
in illegal immigrants is directly comparable to the traffic and illegal drugs.

880
00:57:12.790 --> 00:57:16.120
Actually immigration is not prohibited it's regulated.

881
00:57:16.780 --> 00:57:19.590
And what we're, what illegal immigration is,

882
00:57:19.591 --> 00:57:24.580
is really simply people getting around the regulations of the market and they're

883
00:57:24.581 --> 00:57:28.960
punished as any manufacturer or retailer is for breaking commercial

884
00:57:28.961 --> 00:57:29.830
regulations.

885
00:57:31.080 --> 00:57:35.530
And if you look at the scale of problems in the irrationalities in the

886
00:57:35.531 --> 00:57:38.890
management of immigration, they're actually, although they are,

887
00:57:38.920 --> 00:57:43.240
they do produce accesses, they do produce incidents, they do produce problems.

888
00:57:43.600 --> 00:57:48.550
It's still a manageable problem for which there are possible reforms such as

889
00:57:48.820 --> 00:57:50.860
periodic amnesties or for example,

890
00:57:50.861 --> 00:57:55.270
in the United States Supreme court ruling that immigrants who were incarcerated

891
00:57:55.390 --> 00:57:57.700
can actually have access to the American courts.

892
00:57:57.701 --> 00:58:01.690
They are not deprived of their human and civil rights just by being

893
00:58:01.691 --> 00:58:03.970
incarcerated. There are reforms possible.

894
00:58:04.240 --> 00:58:07.540
The drug trade is not within this realm of rationality.

895
00:58:07.541 --> 00:58:12.130
It's not subject to such easy reforms. It is not regulated.

896
00:58:12.160 --> 00:58:16.510
It is prohibited and therefore it cannot be rationally managed.

897
00:58:16.840 --> 00:58:21.280
And what we need to do with drugs is move it from being prohibited,

898
00:58:21.340 --> 00:58:25.570
to being regulated, where it can be managed in a more rational way,

899
00:58:26.590 --> 00:58:27.423
say.

900
00:58:27.510 --> 00:58:29.430
<v Sadie Plant>Yeah, I think it's a bit more complicated than that.</v>

901
00:58:29.431 --> 00:58:30.870
I do think there is a relation.

902
00:58:30.871 --> 00:58:35.730
I know that some of the same people are in fact involved in both

903
00:58:35.731 --> 00:58:39.480
trades and the trade in people has recently for many of them become more

904
00:58:39.481 --> 00:58:41.160
profitable than the trade in drugs.

905
00:58:41.940 --> 00:58:45.150
The fact is I think that although we talk about prohibition and I do too,

906
00:58:45.151 --> 00:58:46.590
but strictly speaking,

907
00:58:46.620 --> 00:58:50.760
it's also the case just as officers with people that drugs also are not

908
00:58:50.761 --> 00:58:55.260
prohibited. They too are regulated. They're very strongly regulated,

909
00:58:55.680 --> 00:58:56.311
but I mean,

910
00:58:56.311 --> 00:59:00.600
Australia is one of several countries which has a legitimate trade in opium.

911
00:59:00.601 --> 00:59:04.290
For example, we, we obviously use opium and opium,

912
00:59:04.560 --> 00:59:07.170
opiate derivatives in many, many medicines. In fact,

913
00:59:07.171 --> 00:59:09.480
it remains one of the most crucial medicines,

914
00:59:09.840 --> 00:59:14.190
morphine coding any number of pharmacological

915
00:59:14.191 --> 00:59:18.450
preparations. So there is a legitimate trade in opium.

916
00:59:18.450 --> 00:59:21.120
The opium trade is not prohibited. It is highly.

917
00:59:22.190 --> 00:59:27.050
And this is also relatively speaking the same with the trading in people. Yes,

918
00:59:27.080 --> 00:59:30.620
there is some possibility for people to move around the world,

919
00:59:30.621 --> 00:59:34.490
but basically we live in a world that is supposedly globalizing,

920
00:59:34.700 --> 00:59:39.230
which in fact allows for the relatively free movement of commodities,

921
00:59:39.231 --> 00:59:43.640
with exception of drugs, of commodities and of money,

922
00:59:43.641 --> 00:59:46.610
but does not align for a corresponding free movement of people.

923
00:59:46.611 --> 00:59:48.200
And I think it really is becoming,

924
00:59:48.201 --> 00:59:52.070
or has already become one of the big issues of our time.

925
00:59:52.071 --> 00:59:55.400
And I'm really glad it's come up here because I think it's increasingly

926
00:59:55.940 --> 00:59:59.450
important. And as far as the matter of prisons goes,

927
00:59:59.451 --> 01:00:01.580
I don't think it really the issue isn't, you know,

928
01:00:01.640 --> 01:00:04.310
is it the state or is it a corporation that's running the prison?

929
01:00:04.311 --> 01:00:08.030
As far as I'm concerned on this issue, they're often both as bad as each other.

930
01:00:08.031 --> 01:00:11.840
They're both attempting to control the movement of people. And I, as I say,

931
01:00:11.841 --> 01:00:14.300
I think it's a very big issue that that should be addressed.

932
01:00:14.301 --> 01:00:17.150
Maybe it could get on the agenda for two years time for the next.

933
01:00:18.190 --> 01:00:20.380
<v David Marr>Thank God. We've got a disagreement on our hands.</v>

934
01:00:20.770 --> 01:00:23.200
I thought we were going to get through the whole afternoon in his cousin.

935
01:00:23.210 --> 01:00:26.380
Nauseatingly anonymity. Now we've got time for one more question.

936
01:00:29.290 --> 01:00:29.890
[inaudible].

937
01:00:29.890 --> 01:00:34.690
<v Sadie Plant>Continuing on from what you're saying about people trade I'd like to hear more</v>

938
01:00:34.691 --> 01:00:35.680
about sex.

939
01:00:39.520 --> 01:00:42.640
<v David Marr>Well, I think that's a very good idea. And maybe quick on it,</v>

940
01:00:43.060 --> 01:00:47.320
I'd like to hear more about six too, because a lot of people are taking drugs.

941
01:00:47.321 --> 01:00:50.620
I mean, one of the reasons to take drugs is to heighten the experience of sex.

942
01:00:50.621 --> 01:00:53.200
Isn't it? I mean, that's, that's one of the reasons why,

943
01:00:53.650 --> 01:00:56.530
why a lot of drugs are taken. Is that right?

944
01:00:59.380 --> 01:01:02.800
<v Sadie Plant>Well, first it depends what you're starting from. Well, I'm.</v>

945
01:01:03.070 --> 01:01:05.620
<v David Marr>Assuming we're talking about people starting from a low base.</v>

946
01:01:14.650 --> 01:01:14.921
It, of course,

947
01:01:14.921 --> 01:01:18.370
when people are extremely reluctant to talk from personal experience.

948
01:01:21.970 --> 01:01:25.900
<v Sadie Plant>Adding well, anyway, let's not go there. I think in many cases, you know,</v>

949
01:01:26.240 --> 01:01:28.330
that is obviously historical relationship.

950
01:01:28.570 --> 01:01:31.120
If we look at the drugs trade with prostitution,

951
01:01:31.121 --> 01:01:35.320
the two go hand in glove in many, many cases. And again,

952
01:01:35.321 --> 01:01:40.120
this is not unrelated to this issue about people trafficking because not only is

953
01:01:40.121 --> 01:01:45.040
this, you know, the desperate attempts of people to improve their own lives,

954
01:01:45.160 --> 01:01:49.060
a big motivation for people to be moving around the world and to escape from the

955
01:01:49.090 --> 01:01:53.710
most terrible conditions often caused by the war on drugs in the first place,

956
01:01:53.711 --> 01:01:54.544
of course.

957
01:01:54.940 --> 01:01:59.770
But also there is increasingly this traffic in women and children

958
01:01:59.771 --> 01:02:03.340
and men used for sexual and prostitution purposes.

959
01:02:03.341 --> 01:02:07.660
I think something like eight or 900,000, oh,

960
01:02:07.661 --> 01:02:08.770
I forget the figures now, but I mean,

961
01:02:08.771 --> 01:02:12.340
it is a phenomenal number of people who are being moved around the world for,

962
01:02:12.341 --> 01:02:16.150
for that reason. So, so clearly the two do go together, but there's also,

963
01:02:16.151 --> 01:02:19.090
you know, on the more hedonistic side of it,

964
01:02:19.560 --> 01:02:22.680
I think perhaps recently there has been a tendency,

965
01:02:22.860 --> 01:02:25.380
not so much for people to be using substances,

966
01:02:25.381 --> 01:02:30.120
say like ecstasy or Coke as a enhancement for sex,

967
01:02:30.121 --> 01:02:34.890
but often as a kind of alternative in especially in the era,

968
01:02:35.070 --> 01:02:35.520
you know,

969
01:02:35.520 --> 01:02:40.020
when I suppose really ecstasy and that whole dance culture did coincide with a

970
01:02:40.021 --> 01:02:43.290
great deal of fear about aids and other sexually transmitted diseases.

971
01:02:43.291 --> 01:02:48.120
And I think people did begin to explore in recent decades kind of alternative

972
01:02:48.510 --> 01:02:49.800
pleasures, if you like, you know,

973
01:02:49.801 --> 01:02:53.100
where it was once sex would have been the only option on the menu.

974
01:02:53.101 --> 01:02:57.690
So there's a lot of interesting intersections of the two.

975
01:02:58.550 --> 01:02:59.383
Perfect.

976
01:02:59.540 --> 01:03:03.650
<v Alfred McCoy>Just historically in the at the time when</v>

977
01:03:04.610 --> 01:03:08.840
drugs were finally fully prohibited in between 1914,

978
01:03:08.841 --> 01:03:10.460
and let's say the mid 1920s,

979
01:03:10.490 --> 01:03:13.130
both domestic in the United States and internationally through the league of

980
01:03:13.131 --> 01:03:14.660
nations, that,

981
01:03:14.661 --> 01:03:18.680
that also coincided with increasing restrictions on prostitution,

982
01:03:19.250 --> 01:03:24.230
the whole movement for the imposition of law of individual behavior that was

983
01:03:24.320 --> 01:03:29.300
applied par excellence of drugs was accelerated and applied also to sex

984
01:03:29.301 --> 01:03:33.650
and early syndicates in Australia and the United States combined the

985
01:03:33.651 --> 01:03:36.080
trafficking in drugs with prostitution.

986
01:03:37.190 --> 01:03:39.560
And actually in both Australia,

987
01:03:39.770 --> 01:03:42.890
I'd say and in the United States,

988
01:03:42.920 --> 01:03:47.510
lucky Luciano was a pioneer in this area. He was a major heroin trafficker,

989
01:03:47.511 --> 01:03:50.720
cocaine trafficker, and had about a thousand prostitutes working for him.

990
01:03:51.110 --> 01:03:52.030
And what, what,

991
01:03:52.040 --> 01:03:56.840
what if you look back the economic rationality within the syndicate of the

992
01:03:56.841 --> 01:04:01.730
combination of opiates with prostitution where it was several

993
01:04:01.731 --> 01:04:04.850
fold, first of all, it's physically demanding and degrading.

994
01:04:05.210 --> 01:04:10.100
And so that you actually opiates are an industrially efficient

995
01:04:10.280 --> 01:04:12.080
drug for the use of prostitution,

996
01:04:12.081 --> 01:04:15.080
particularly women that are engaged in serial lacks,

997
01:04:15.110 --> 01:04:19.840
multiple accidents a day and because the lesions and all,

998
01:04:19.841 --> 01:04:22.910
all of the abrasions that comes from that are of course,

999
01:04:22.911 --> 01:04:26.660
medicated by the opiates, as well as the degradation. Second of all,

1000
01:04:26.720 --> 01:04:30.440
the syndicate could have the prostitutes addicted and get them functionally

1001
01:04:30.441 --> 01:04:35.390
working for the drugs so that they would increase the output of the prostitutes.

1002
01:04:35.480 --> 01:04:40.220
All right, moreover, they would expand the retail the scale of their,

1003
01:04:40.221 --> 01:04:45.050
of their retailing of narcotics. And they got a perfect synergy between,

1004
01:04:45.110 --> 01:04:47.570
between the sale of a commodity and labor.

1005
01:04:47.840 --> 01:04:52.010
That was incredibly important in the early rise of organized crime in the

1006
01:04:52.011 --> 01:04:52.910
United States.

1007
01:04:53.720 --> 01:04:58.580
So historically was very important and the detaching of it has been

1008
01:04:58.581 --> 01:05:02.510
the, there has been a kind of move in the last couple of decades,

1009
01:05:02.511 --> 01:05:06.500
more to a effective decriminalization of prostitution, not legalization,

1010
01:05:06.501 --> 01:05:09.800
but decriminalization, which has removed it from the realm of syndicates.

1011
01:05:10.220 --> 01:05:12.110
But as long as both were fully prohibited,

1012
01:05:12.140 --> 01:05:16.430
they remained inside this underground universe where there was a incredibly

1013
01:05:16.690 --> 01:05:21.490
synergistic interaction that accelerated and amplified the power of

1014
01:05:21.491 --> 01:05:24.370
organized crime and contribute to the growth of this black economy.

1015
01:05:25.620 --> 01:05:27.570
<v Sadie Plant>Yeah. I was just going to say that it just,</v>

1016
01:05:27.571 --> 01:05:29.610
you just reminded me and mentioned that, you know,

1017
01:05:29.611 --> 01:05:33.210
the relationship has often been so close that I think it used to be said,

1018
01:05:33.211 --> 01:05:34.320
I don't know if it's still the case,

1019
01:05:34.321 --> 01:05:39.060
but in many countries where heroin was widely used on the street that you could

1020
01:05:39.061 --> 01:05:39.720
measure,

1021
01:05:39.720 --> 01:05:44.580
the price of a wrapper of heroin would generally be the price of a

1022
01:05:44.581 --> 01:05:46.350
blow job. Can I say that all the time

1023
01:05:49.290 --> 01:05:52.890
[inaudible] and that, you know, there's often been this exact parallel.

1024
01:05:52.891 --> 01:05:55.470
So if you want to know the price of one, if you know the price of the other,

1025
01:05:55.471 --> 01:05:59.780
it's usually the same perhaps, well, I think fortunately.

1026
01:05:59.790 --> 01:06:04.290
<v Nicholas Cowdery>We're moving away from the criminalization of prostitution and towards</v>

1027
01:06:04.291 --> 01:06:08.490
regulation that while now they,

1028
01:06:08.491 --> 01:06:12.060
the experience may be different than other jurisdictions in my state and new

1029
01:06:12.061 --> 01:06:16.680
south Wales. That is certainly the case. And it's very encouraging to see,

1030
01:06:17.220 --> 01:06:19.830
but in my state we also have the,

1031
01:06:19.950 --> 01:06:24.630
what I hope is the thin end of the wedge and a safe injecting room

1032
01:06:24.960 --> 01:06:26.760
established for heroin users.

1033
01:06:28.830 --> 01:06:33.480
I think once these things begin in one

1034
01:06:33.481 --> 01:06:34.171
jurisdiction,

1035
01:06:34.171 --> 01:06:38.790
they will spread to another and just keep my fingers crossed that it will

1036
01:06:38.791 --> 01:06:41.250
happen sooner, rather than later.

1037
01:06:41.850 --> 01:06:46.020
<v David Marr>On that slender note of optimism, we must have last stop now.</v>

1038
01:06:46.590 --> 01:06:51.420
But they'll Nick Cowdery will be speaking again. You're speaking again tonight,

1039
01:06:52.170 --> 01:06:55.800
so there'll be lots more opportunities to pursue this while we're in Adelaide.

1040
01:06:56.640 --> 01:06:57.600
Thank you very much. Indeed.

1041
01:07:03.780 --> 01:07:03.780
<v 3>[Inaudible].</v>