So if ownership includes the right
to decide what substances we're going to swallow, snort, smoke, or inject, my body my choice.
We are in the middle of a population wide experiment here that we have not thoughtfully considered.
Pretty much every objection that you can raise against an illegal drug
can be raised with equal or greater force against alcohol, yet alcohol is legal.
This is a crime, a risk, and societies have the right and the duty to try to mitigate those crimes.
By what principle of justice do you lock someone in a cage for doing something that violates no one's rights?
As a society we have a right and a duty to protect people around people making terrible decisions.
Now for the main event arguing for the affirmative Jacob Sullum. Jacob please come to the stage.
Again tonight's resolution reads that Jacob will be defending except for
laws prohibiting the sale of drugs to
minors and driving while impaired all
laws that penalize drug production
distribution possession and use should
be abolished along with special sin
taxes on drugs taking the negative
Alex Berenson Alex please come to the
stage Jane please close the voting
Thanks
thanks Jane I know at some point I'm
gonna spill this water
it's a bit tilted all right see a few
years ago police in Habersham County
Georgia broke into a home in the middle
of the night they were looking for a man
who had allegedly sold methamphetamine
to a confidential informant a few hours
before the drug dealer was not there but
his uncle aunt and four cousins ranging
in age from 1 to 7 were sleeping in the
converted garage having moved there
after their house in Wisconsin burned
down as Feliz stormed into the room one
of them tossed a flashbang grenade a
blinding deafening explosive device that
is supposed to distract and disorient
suspects so they are less likely to
resist the grenade landed the youngest
child's crib where it exploded in his
face and nearly killed him causing
severe burns and a deep chest wound
the toddler spent several weeks in a
medically induced coma followed by
multiple surgeries aimed at
reconstructing his face and repairing
the damage to his chest
now several factors contributed to this
horrifying incident including a
questionable search warrant and reckless
military style tactics that never should
have been deployed against a home where
innocent adults and children were living
but the underlying cause was a policy of
using violence in situations where
violence is not morally justified the
event that precipitated this disastrous
raid was a peaceful voluntary exchange
between two adults one had money the
other one had a psychoactive substance
that legislators had arbitrarily decided
to ban such bans legalize police conduct
that would otherwise be universally
recognized as felonious including
breaking and entering burglary robbery
grand theft kidnapping assault
manslaughter and murder
the rationale for legalizing those
crimes is that forces necessary to
prevent people from using drugs that
might otherwise cause problems for them
but that rationale violates the
classical liberal principle that people
are sovereign over their own bodies and
minds according to that principle we
have a right to control our own bodies
as long as we respect the corresponding
rights of other people self ownership
includes the right to decide what
substances we're going to swallow snort
smoke or inject my body my choice when
politicians violate that principle bad
things happened starting with the
violence that is necessary to enforce
their pharmacological prejudices
sometimes the scale of that violence
makes it impossible to ignore the
anti-drug crackdown in the Philippines
for example has killed more than 12,000
people since the current President took
office in 2016 but even in our own
country
police periodically killed people in the
course of enforcing our drug laws
several years ago in New Orleans police
broke into a marijuana dealers home and
shot and dead
the officer who filed the lethal shot
said he thought that the unarmed dealer
was threatening him with a gun just this
last January in Houston police broke
into a home of the home of a middle-aged
couple without warning and immediately
used a shotgun to kill their dog which
set off an exchange of gunfire in which
both of the home owners were killed and
the warrant for this raid claimed that
the couple was selling heroin but police
didn't discover any evidence of drug
dealing and in fact it turned out the
warrant had been falsified another way
in which drug prohibition fosters
violence is by creating a black market
where there are no peaceful legal ways
to resolve disputes whether between
competitors or between buyers and
sellers one good example of that is what
we're known as crack related homicides
back in the 80s there was a study that
looked at all of the murders that were
classified that way and it found that
contrary to the impression you might
have gotten from politicians in Journal
these are not murders that were
consisted they were committed by people
under the influence of crack these are
almost entirely murders that grew out of
black-market disputes that sort of
violence combined with violence between
the government and drug traffickers
figured in the Mexican drug war that has
believed to have killed about 60,000
people between 2006 and 2012 the black
market that generates violence also
generates artificially high profits
since drug traffickers can earn a
premium by dealing in contraband a
recent RAND Corporation estimate figured
that Americans alone spend about a
hundred fifty billion dollars a year
just on four drugs marijuana heroin
cocaine and methamphetamine the
worldwide market is probably worth three
or four times as much profits from that
business strengthen murderous criminal
organizations and foster corruption
throughout the law enforcement system
such corruption is rampant in countries
such as Mexico and Honduras where drug
lords can't escape capture and break out
of prison with help from the same
officials who are supposed to be chasing
them down and locking them up but you
also hear pretty frequently about
drug-related corruption in the United
States I just give you a few recent
examples so this is just within the past
year or so DEA agents had a drug
trafficker buy a nice $43,000 truck so
that the agent could turn around and
seize it for his own use another case
involved the Customs and Border
Protection agent who was paid for 10
years to facilitate drug smuggling he
would leave certain gates unlocked yet
another case involved police officers in
Baltimore and Philadelphia who would
seize drugs and then turn around and
sell them and then you have a perennial
problem of correctional officers who
smuggle drugs into prisons as it did
during national alcohol prohibition that
sort of corruption tends to undermine
respect for the law so does the sense
that police are arbitrarily targeting a
small percentage of lawbreakers because
that's all they can manage to do for
arrest and Punishment especially when
enforcement has a racially
disproportionate impact one glaring
example of that is the
difference between federal penalties for
the snorted and smoke forms of cocaine
up until - starting in 1986 it up until
2010 the mandatory minimum sentences for
cocaine powder kicked in at weights a
hundred times as high as the cut-offs
for crack cocaine as a result low-level
crack dealers who were overwhelmingly
black tended to get more severe
sentences than higher-level powder
dealers who were more likely to be white
or Hispanic and the Fair Sentencing Act
of 2010 changed that ratio from 101 to
18 to 1 so if you do the math you'll see
that's exactly 82 percent less insane
also we saw stark racial disparities
when the NYPD cracked down suddenly on
cannabis consumers during the Giuliani
and Bloomberg administrations these
low-level marijuana possession arrests
had averaged less than 2500 under the
mayors that two mayors have preceded
Giuliani after 90 1996 they skyrocketed
peaking at more than 50,000 in 2011 and
blacks and Latinos that year accounted
for 84% of the possession arrests on his
face this was very puzzling the surge in
pot bust because New York supposedly had
decriminalized marijuana possession back
in 1977 but it was still a misdemeanor
to possess marijuana that is burning or
open to public view and defense
attorneys frequently complained that
police would Pat down young men
ostensibly looking for weapons which
they almost never found and then pull
out a joint or pull out a bag of weed
now it's exposed to public view now I
can arrest you another trick was to say
you know if you have any contraband on
you you probably turn it over to me
it'll work out better for you it did not
work out better no because that's now a
misdemeanor you can be arrested for so
when you combine that sort of tricky
with the with the that sort of trickery
with the routine hassling of young black
and Latino men that prevailed under the
stop and frisk program you can start to
see why police are widely viewed as the
enemy in neighborhoods they're supposed
to be protecting and those disparities
that you saw in New York are seen
throughout the country the ACLU asked
him
it's that nationwide black people are
about four times as likely to be
arrested for marijuana possession as
white people even though the rates of
cannabis consumption and the two groups
are about the same
altogether police in the United States
made more than 660,000 marijuana arrests
in 2018 more than 9 out of 10 for simple
possession so this is not dealing it's
not manufacturing most people arrested
for possessing small amounts of
marijuana are not going to spend a lot
of time behind bars but there are these
long-lasting ancillary penalties make it
harder to obtain an education get a job
find housing altogether including all
drug offenses police in the United
States made 1.7 million drug arrests in
2018 at any given time they're about
half a million people or locked up in
jails or prisons for drug offenses drug
offenders account for about half of
federal prisoners and about 15 percent
of state prisoners arresting all of
those people for conduct that violates
no one's rights unjustly deprives them
of their liberty and impairs their life
prospects it also hurts their families
and communities and it frequently
entails draconian penalties including
sentences of years decades and even life
for nonviolent offenses now
prohibition obviously makes life worth
worse for drug users by exposing them to
the risk of violence and the risk of
arrest but you also have the problem
that when you're in a black market you
don't know what you're buying if you buy
a bottle of whiskey you can be pretty
confident how much alcohol isn't that
not the same when you're buying when you
buy black market products you don't
really know what's in them for a
dramatic demonstration of that was the
crackdown on pain pills after which
opioid related deaths or in an upward
trend that not only continued but
accelerated why because people who have
been using opioids that were delivered
and legally produced reliable doses
we're suddenly using black market
products instead and these are widely
variable in terms of purity and potency
and unpredictable more likely you're
gonna make fatal errors fentanyl has
only compounded this problem because
it's increased the variability and this
is also phenomenal it's driven by Pro a
bitch
because prohibition drives drug
traffickers toward more potent
substances that are easier to smuggle
you also have the motivation to inject
drugs that are artificially expensive
which leads to and combine that with
rules that obstruct access to clean
injection equipment you're now spreading
AIDS and hepatitis you have soft tissue
infections as a result not having
sanitary equipment and one of the really
notable things about these burdens is
that for the most part they're falling
on people who do not benefit from them
because the people are being punished
are the ones were defying prohibition
the people that you imagine you're
helping are the ones who are deterred by
prohibition from making poor choices
that they would otherwise make and I
think that is is really morally
questionable even if you believe in
paternalism as a rationale for
government intervention which is not to
say that the burdens prohibition fall
exclusively on people who like illegal
drugs the rest of us all pay I shouldn't
ask everyone else pays in the form of
squandered taxpayer money diverted law
enforcement resources theft driven by
artificially high drug prices and eroded
civil liberties that the war on drugs
has been the main reason why the supreme
court for decades has been whittling
away at the Fourth Amendment's band on
unreasonable searches and seizures just
a few examples the court has said it's
ok to rummage through your trash without
a warrant
you can surveil private property from
low-flying aircraft without a warrant
you can impose mandatory drug testing
and public school students you can get
search warrants based on anonymous
informants who may or may not exist and
they often do not exist and you can
justify a search based on a cop's report
of a dog signal the war on drugs is also
the main excuse for the system of
legalized theft that's known as civil
asset forfeiture where they can take
money or other property claiming that it
is connected in some way to drug
offenses then if the burden is now on
the owner to get it back it often costs
more Jay get back the property and the
property is worth we could avoid avoid
these disastrous consequences if the
government decided to respect the
individual's right to control his own
body
including the substances that enter it
the government would still have a role
as does with alcohol and enforcing laws
against fraud protecting the public from
reckless behavior such as impaired
driving and defending parents authority
by imposing age restrictions on drug
sales but it would otherwise leave
adults free to make their own choices
thanks I did not spill my water I want
credit for that
Alex Barnes in for the negative Alex
take it away Wow I want to thank Jacob
for that also Jean thanks for having me
Jane thanks for setting up I think David
already won our debate but uh so it's
sort of funny that I'm up here because
until a few years ago I was a reporter
for The New York Times who mainly
covered the legal pharmaceutical
industry and for the last few years I've
been writing spy novels and then this
year at the beginning this year wrote a
book about cannabis which attracted some
attention and I think that's why I'm
here but it is sort of strange that I am
one of the seemingly leading voices in
the nation now about why we should keep
cannabis or not not legalized cannabis
why we should keep it in at most a
decriminalized state and and now I you
know I seem to be broadening that to
talk a little bit more about drugs in
general but the reason that is is that
there are so few people out there who
are willing to talk about why drugs
should remain illegal there is a
tremendous infrastructure to fight the
drug war but all of those people are
fighting tactical battles they're all
trying to whether they're doctors trying
to treat addicts or whether they're law
enforcement officers trying to make
arrests it's as if we have forgotten the
reason we do this and there are very
very important reasons to keep almost to
keep drugs illegal and we cannot we
discuss decriminalization versus
prohibition what those terms mean but
why it is as a society that we should
have bans on drug use you know Jacob and
a the libertarians and on on the other
side you know
liberal policy groups have have really
seized them the philosophical high
ground here and they've been making the
same arguments over and over and over
again for 30 years what was so striking
to me about Jacobs conversation was that
he could have said it 30 years ago
actually or 20 years ago or 10 years ago
and yet so much has changed in the last
30 years that really puts the lie to a
lot of those arguments
um you know the the the drug legalizes
you know sometimes they call themselves
drug reformers and and I admire Jacob
for having the guts to say it you know
to call himself a legalize er um they
they really make the same arguments over
and over again there's sort of an
inherent amount of drug use in society
we can't change that we we can own we
can't reduce that we can you know it's
gonna rise or fall on its own we can
only manage it and manage the
consequences um we can't stigmatize use
that that just hurts people who are
using that just discourages them from
getting help and drives them underground
the harm of the use is mainly to the
individual and that's where we should
you know that's where we should focus
our attention I'm Jacob said problems
for them problems for the user let's
let's focus on the user and his or her
problems let's not worry about the
people around the user and the problems
that that use may cause um the harm to
society as James said explicitly comes
from the drug war not the form of
pharmacological consequences of drug use
and and thus obviously the drug war is a
mistake some people will go so far as to
say the pharmacology of drugs does not
drive addiction that that you know
addiction comes from trauma growing up
that you know that most people who use
heroin even do not get addicted which is
true by the way most a majority of
people who use do not get addicted and
therefore we shouldn't we shouldn't
think of the drug as the problem the
drug is the solution the user is
treating - he's using to treat some
other problem in his or her life Oh
another another point legalize herbs
like to make is that all drugs are
basically the same
you know caffeine is alcohol is
methamphetamine is heroin everything is
this
and therefore they all deserve to be
treated under the same legal scheme
Jacob used the word arbitrarily to
discuss efforts to introduce
distinctions there and so and so the
legalize herbs have made these arguments
over and over and over again for 30
years and they've basically won they've
certainly won in the media
they've won in academia and and you know
there's there's almost nobody out there
who's who's willing to say you know
actually well you've been making these
arguments real life has gone exactly the
other way so let's let's look at some of
the public health changes in the last 30
years we stigmatize tobacco use tobacco
kills more people than any other
substance and we decided we didn't like
that and we stigmatize juice and the
vaping crisis notwithstanding we have
driven tobacco use way down in the
United States and all over the Western
world
we've stigmatized drinking and driving
very successfully and drinking and
driving this are down in the United
States and all over the Western world we
stigmatized drinking during pregnancy
and fetal alcohol syndrome went down you
can change patterns of use if you tell
people people don't really want to hurt
themselves you you can tell them things
truthful things and they will listen to
you and they will change their behavior
on their own at the same time we
embarked on a giant giant experiment
involving medically prescribed opioids
the amount of medically prescribed
opioids in the United States went up
about six-fold
between 1995 and 2010 and Jacob is wrong
when he says the deaths were not soaring
in the decade of the Ott's long before
we started to try desperately and
basically unsuccessfully to discourage
this the United States still has five
times the amount of opioid prescriptions
as it did in the mid 90s there has been
no change in our health that would drive
that that is a result of of doctors and
drug companies unfortunately making bad
decisions and these remember these are
medically prescribed they're usually
insurance paid and they have led to the
worst public health crisis
in modern American history half a
million people have died from opioid
deaths since 2000 and many of those
people were taking medically prescribed
opioids not fentanyl not heroin these
were people who became addicted and
couldn't stop and died and many of them
died very quickly the standardized
mortality ratio for somebody who's an
opioid addict a heroin addict I should
say I'm not entirely sure what the
number is if you're an oxy addict is
about 20 that means you're 20 times as
likely to die in the course of a year if
you're a heroin addict
you're about five times as likely to die
if you're a cocaine addict that's not
because the drugs are illegal it's
because being addicted to these drugs is
dangerous
it's dangerous for you and it's
dangerous for the people around you
so again if the problem is drugs and not
the war on drugs I don't understand why
oxycontin has killed all these people so
so the legalized errs have a solution to
the problems that legalization causes
harm reduction harm reduction means
trying to fix addiction generally trying
to fix problematic use and how do we do
that we do with rehab we do with empathy
for the user we do with support for the
user unfortunately none of those things
actually work the only thing that there
are only two ways to soon as we've
convinced people quit using drugs one is
for them to put on their own and the
other for opioid addicts is to give them
what the harm reduction community
euphemistically likes to call medication
assisted treatment medication assisted
treatment means giving somebody who's an
opioid addict a different opioid that
you hope won't kill them so you give
them subha suboxone or bewp and those
drugs are less likely to kill you than
heroin or fentanyl doesn't make you less
of an addict you still need the drug to
function but that is the only harm
reduction strategy that really works
that or quitting so so so what what the
legalized er say is let's let everybody
use let's not discourage it it's a moral
it's you know it's a moral neutral it's
neither good nor bad and we're just
gonna try to fix we're gonna try to pick
up the problems that inevitably result
from use unfortunately
this was true in China in 1850 and it's
true in the United States in 2019 it's
very simple the larger the population of
people you expose to dangerous drugs the
the greater the harm it's like giving
people cars that can drive 200 miles an
hour okay there is there no matter what
safety measures you put on there you're
gonna kill more people than if they're
driving at 75 the inherent extra risk
cannot be mitigated by harm reduction
it can only be mitigated on the way in
by discouraging use and that's what you
have to decide to do as a society and
societies can do this um
Jacob Jacob tried to argue that adults
should be allowed to use um if so we ban
texting and driving for example we ban
drinking and driving um you can you can
drive 50 miles drunk or on your phone
and be pulled over by a cop thirty feet
from your house
why because drinking and driving or
texting and driving are crimes of risk
we ban those things not because we know
they're gonna harm somebody but because
they increase the inherent risk and it
is the same with drug use that is the
correct way to think about drug use it
is a crime of risk doesn't mean that
everyone is going to be hurt it doesn't
mean that everyone is going to do
something terrible to his or her family
or to the people around them or commit
crimes to the finances or his or her
drug use it means that this is a crime
of risk and societies have the right and
the duty to try to mitigate those crimes
so obviously I know more about cannabis
then these than other drugs and one of
the interesting arguments that legalize
there's like to make about about
legalization is that somehow prohibition
drives up potency and because dealers
want to sell more potent product and in
this they they talk about prohibition
that was certainly do true during
prohibition but there's a big difference
between alcohol and every other drug
which is that alcohol is dosed by you
know the gram or the ounce or you know
in in the case of beer it's they're kegs
it's a big heavy drug to smuggle a lot
of it actually it does make sense to
give people more potent products with
cannabis / THC and with other drugs
that's not true these drugs are dosed by
the microgram the milligram the gram and
the fact is what drives use and potency
and danger is the user demand for more
potent drugs and that is the the
American experiment with cannabis
legalization proves that beyond a doubt
everybody who was in favor of
legalization said you know people are
gonna there'll be people who want higher
CBD products we're not gonna see a big
increase in THC exactly the opposite has
happened basically dispensaries are
selling 25 or 30 percent THC cannabis
flower cannabis when 15 years ago the
standard was 5 or 6 percent and a lot of
users for a lot of users even that isn't
enough they want near pure semi
synthetic extracts that are basically
THC user demand drives potency more than
prohibition so that is that is another
myth that legalized Irsay so what do you
do when you have all these problems you
deny them and J and you and you focus on
on an unfortunate an unfortunate few and
I will say police crimes because you
know the conduct Jacob described he
certainly sounds criminal to me cases
where the drug war has gone too far
where
where you where police have acted
unethically or illegally and you and you
ignore the fact that the vast majority
of child deaths in the United States the
vast majority in the United States has
far more child deaths than any other
industrialized country and I'm talking
on a per population basis come at the
hands of people using okay we are the
the legalization community has focused
our attention very successfully on the
harm that users face and it has somehow
distracted us from the fact that it's
actually the user is actually benefiting
from his chemical euphoria and on some
level the real the real harm the truest
harm comes to the people around the user
the innocence who have to deal with
addiction and innocence most of all
children whose parents are using and
can't take care of them and and for
every case that Jacob mentioned I could
unfortunately tell you ten of pair of
parental drug users who did horrible
horrible things to their kids okay so so
so we have a right and a duty as a
society to discourage drug use now we
can discourage it legally you know we
call that prohibition we can discourage
it through ad campaigns we can call that
stigma I would lump all of this as
prevention and we can make distinctions
between different drug classes and we
can make distinctions between the harm
that they caused and we can and should
do that as a society we should not just
say this is this is a this is a moral
neutral and we can't control it and all
we can do is clean up the after-effects
because that's not true and it leads to
higher use and higher use inevitably
results in more harm and more death
thank you
the bottle from Jacob you want to take
this bunny yeah sorry when I explain why
I say the drug laws are arbitrary not
that all drugs are the same or have the
same costs and benefits but for example
pretty much every objection that you can
raise against an illegal drug can be
raised with equal or greater force
against alcohol yet alcohol is legal so
the laws are arbitrary in that sense
they're not based on a scientific
evaluation of the hazards of each
substance which leads to a decision
about the legal status Alex mentioned
several things positive things that were
accomplished without prohibition
decrease in smoking which has gone down
dramatically over the last few decades
decreases in drunk driving decreases in
heavy drinking during pregnancy we
didn't ban alcohol we didn't ban tobacco
in terms of opioid prescriptions and
opioid related deaths certainly it's
true that people were dying after using
prescription pain pills typically by the
way in combination with various other
drugs the data out of New York City
indicate that 97% of so-called overdose
deaths are actually actually involve
combinations of drugs drug-related
deaths have been going up since the late
50s actually and this is all happening
under prohibition this is a long-term
trend and you're looking at people
engaging in reckless drug behavior
possibly getting more reckless for sure
the availability of pain pills has
something to do with the fact that pain
pills you know we're used but it doesn't
mean that none of this would have
happened in the absence of the increase
in prescriptions and in fact as I
mentioned when it prescriptions were
brought down by the government you
actually saw an acceleration of the
trend why is that the acceleration of
the upper trend in opioid related deaths
the open the the deaths death rate among
heroin users is roughly eight times as
high as the death rate among illy
illegal or non-medical users of pain
pills it makes it more dangerous not
less to crack down on paint
ALX Prabhu the idea of giving people
substitute Oh opioids that are in
controlled doses that are less likely to
kill them I think that's a good thing
that they're less likely to die if we're
worried about people dying we should try
to reduce the harms associated with
druggies it doesn't make sense to take
somebody who is used to using a certain
drug every day and throw them into the
black market where the drugs are far
more hazardous I would point out
availability doesn't automatically
translate into higher addiction rates
addicted related deaths or drug related
deaths are actually going down prior to
the Harrison narcotics Act prior to the
beginning of drug prohibition in the
u.s. the fact that that you legalized
something doesn't necessarily dalts
especially not by the way children which
is interesting we I didn't even expect
that it was counterintuitive but what
we're really interested in is the harm
associated with drug use increasing use
in itself is a benefit that means more
people are getting satisfaction they
wouldn't otherwise get what we're
interested in are they hurting
themselves are they hurting other people
and is it better in a prohibition
situation I would argue it's not and the
one final thing about the violence
there's violence inherent in the war on
I mean that's why they call it the war
on drugs so this is not just a few yes
these some of these cops growing ethical
and especially reckless it's true but it
is a necessary part of drug prohibition
that you use force to enforce it you
create these situations that have all
sorts of potential for going wrong even
if every cop is conscientious about
doing his job so you will have people
being killed and if these you know
somebody's not falsely this is this guy
in New Orleans was actually a marijuana
dealer as far as I know wasn't he wasn't
falsely aclu's accused it was on the
trumped up case had he actually had a
gun that would have been considered
justifiable justifiable use of deadly
force by the cop even though on the face
of it he's defending his own home
against armed intruders so violence is
inherent in the war on drugs you can't
eliminate it even if you you know all
cops are conscientious
five minutes we bottle I would just say
I do think I do agree with medication
assisted treatment I think it's the only
thing that works I think it's
unfortunate that opioids
once you become addicted to them have
such a hold on you whoever you are
whether or not you have childhood trauma
you know whether or not you have a
family
they are pharmacologically devastating
and they're so devastating that for many
people the only answer is a substitute
addiction which is less dangerous
why on earth we would want that product
to be widely available that a product
that anybody could walk into a store and
buy I have no idea and and so you know
Jacob didn't really dispute the numbers
that I gave you about standardized
mortality alcohol
aside from people who are heavy users
has no or a very limited increase in
standardized mortality well what were
talk about ratios of 1.1 maybe 1.2 and
then as you start to use more as you
become addicted it becomes an
appreciable number but you know most the
alcohol is is not as dangerous as these
other drugs the reason there's a lot of
harm with alcohol is because so many
people use alcohol okay if if heroin or
cocaine use approached anything like
alcohol use if even first time use
approached anything like alcohol use
because of the the propensity of people
become addicted we would have a
devastated society okay
cannabis use right now in the United
States is only in terms of casual use
the number of people who used last year
in the United States is about 42 million
okay more than four times as many people
used alcohol but because people don't
realize how addictive cannabis is the
number of daily users of cannabis is
almost as high for cannabis as for
alcohol
okay these drugs do exist on a spectrum
and although cannabis use is more I'm
sorry although alcohol use is more
physically toxic than cannabis use I
think anybody who reads the studies with
an
and mine is gonna realize that cannabis
use is extremely neurotoxic okay there
there aren't too many drugs that can
produce psychosis in people after a
single use and cannabis you cannabis can
not permanent psychosis but you know
when you when you have your edible and
you wind up in the ER because you think
your friends are aliens you've had an
episode it's true it happens you've had
an episode of cannabis induced psychosis
okay so so and cannabis is less
dangerous it's less dangerous than
cocaine it's less dangerous than heroin
it's less dangerous than the opiates
it's less dangerous than methamphetamine
it's still a dangerous drug we are in
the middle of a population wide
experiment here that we have not
thoughtfully considered okay and and in
terms of alcohol what we should be
trying to do with alcohol because a lot
of people can use it casually is is to
discourage the people who are heavy
users and probably do that with higher
taxes on it and you know and and
penalizing people who are you know who
are inebriated in public or who are
drinking and driving who are clearly
using in an unhealthy way we can't ever
prohibit alcohol we tried it it didn't
work there far too many casual users but
that doesn't mean that we want other
drugs to fall to follow the same route
as alcohol oh one one one last point um
Jacob I think would certainly agree that
the war on drugs has been aggressive for
a long time um crime in the United
States decreased dramatically between
1999 and 2014 we successfully apparently
prosecuted a war on drugs reduced crime
rates nationally reduced homicide rates
reduced rates of serious violence and
somehow we did all this while fighting
this horrible war on drugs now in the
last couple of years we've sort of taken
the we've taken the breaks or we've put
the brakes on the war on drugs a little
bit we've taught you know marijuana
arrests are actually down the the
legalization Lobby is increasingly
powerful in cities like Philadelphia and
Dallas there's
open you know there there are
prosecutors who are openly in favor of
legalization and guess what in the last
couple of years
both homicides and aggravated assaults
have started to go up again the
pharmacological effects of drugs are the
same whether they're legal or not and so
we should discourage their use thank you
thanks for spirited debate between the
two of you we now go to the Q&A section
of the evening people can line up and
ask questions at any time the rules are
and any time you can each ask the other
a question and if you'd like to exercise
that prerogative right now then do so if
you'd like to or we can wait for
questions and you can use that
prerogative later on I'm gonna do I you
you get you get as many as you want all
right then you must pick up the
microphone that's the rule here Jake who
do you think should pay for the
treatment for addicts are you willing to
kick in you know is that a serious
question no I mean I think it's it's
analogous to the question who pays for
addiction to lieu of the drugs are legal
or illegal you know who pays for alcohol
addiction
it's the same analysis I mean
libertarians are more skeptical of
forcing people to pick up the tab that's
everything then then you are obviously
but since you since well I wanted to
press you on the point about alcohol
actually so you said alcohol is not as
dangerous as these other drugs you
conceded that it is physically like
heavy drinking is physically more
deleterious than heavy pot smoking
correct absolutely
okay so also in terms of
affecting driving ability that is not
clea marijuana versus I think it okay I
guess I disagree or not I think it's
very clear that alcohol has a much more
dramatic effect on driving ability you
should you should look at the statistics
from all US states
well that but that doesn't go to the
relative effect on driving ability
that's established at laboratory studies
where they look at how how people's
performance is affected but okay so
that's what I'm saying is that that is
another difference if you look at
addictive liability I mean it studies
typically indicate the addiction rate
for alcohol is higher than with
marijuana it actually is higher than in
surveys I mean what do you buy this idea
that exposure to opioid pain pills in
itself causes addiction or is it a
function of the circumstances and I
think I think it causes addiction I mean
there are gonna be people who are more
vulnerable but if you expose everyone in
this room to a you know to a course of
oxycontin for a month or a week some of
those people will become addicted some
bastards already not yes the majority
not I I don't know if I'd say we call we
can argue about I mean how many people
here have used opioids opioid pain pain
pills okay show of hands yeah let's turn
on the lights okay we can see okay and
how many of you after your pain was gone
had trouble giving it up and and became
addicted okay I don't see any hands so
that's a hundred percent
we're not addicted they're actually walk
throughs there wasn't no no but actually
if you if you look at there was one end
okay so but if you look at the data on
on drug use disorder right among people
who use whether for non met for medical
or non-medical purposes it's about two
percent any given year versus less
something like nine percent of alcohol
you know drinkers who are have alcohol
use disorder in a given year which again
suggests that alcohol is worse or more
dangerous in that respect so I mean
there ways I'm sure which alcohol is
better too but it's it's tastier for one
thing but so I I just
yeah I I think it goes to the point of
the the distinction is drawn by the drug
laws aren't really based on an objective
evaluation of the rest question to us
was that you do not want to legally
prohibit alcohol use and the answer's no
no I do not think we should do that and
but I also think that if we're going to
talk about and the best the best way to
look at this is propensity become
addicted after after exposure which is
certainly higher for both heroin and
cocaine than for alcohol and marijuana
no it's not true it is true it is about
one in six for anybody who drinks and
about 1/3 for everybody here I'm sure
you have others but this is based on
data from the National comorbidity
survey okay
so alcohol comes in higher than cannabis
or prescription analgesics it comes in
higher than M fetta means it is slightly
lower than cocaine did you say cocaine
heroin or banned and we're the biggest
one you know what the biggest one is
though the highest rate of addiction
tobacco okay so goes to the point that
that the these distinctions don't
dictate what the laws say and and the
other aspect of this is a me mentioned
you know bringing down smoking is that
you have to you have to distinguish
between addiction and the damage that
addiction does because addiction in
itself is not necessarily damaging
people can be addicted to coffee as you
mentioned it generally does not cause
people much of a problem thirty ticketed
caffeine because they can get it readily
it doesn't have serious health effects
it doesn't disrupt their lives and then
you can separate nicotine from the
smoking which of course we've done with
these cigarettes you have something that
people can use throughout the day it's
not going to have a serious harm and
certainly much less dangerous than
smoking and so you've reduced the impact
that's harm reduction right okay Alex I
yeah that was a long question from from
Jacob do you have any answer you want to
give do you want to give it you have a
question I don't know if that was a
question or the question of comment
works
as an old professor of mine like to say
questions comments or short speech okay
all right question for the audience just
ask a question as a question don't no
need to identify yourself right so Alex
would you prohibit marijuana medical
marijuana that has not been brought up
which kind of surprised me and then for
Jacob are there any studies empirical
studies where drugs have been legalized
such as Colorado or Portugal and what
are the results has drug use increased
or decreased okay so so so this will
probably be my most unpopular answer of
the night I don't really think there is
any such thing as medical marijuana if
you look at the studies around cannabis
aside from a couple of very very narrow
conditions randomized clinical trials
have never shown that cannabis worse the
treat nearly any of the conditions that
it's said to treat and that by the way
even applies to pain okay you can
imagine what the market for a legalized
for a legal prescription non opioid
painkiller would be in this country
right now it would be it would be
somewhere it would be five or ten or
fifteen billion dollars a year a company
called GW Pharma which is a cannabinoid
pharmaceutical company based in the UK
for years tried to produce a th C CBD
blend that it was going to get FDA
prescription approval for to market as a
painkiller that effort collapsed in 2015
and 2016 when the largest clinical
trials of Sativex against placebo not
against opioids showed no benefit in
pain for four reasons that actually are
even a little bit unclear to me cannabis
does not really work in pain the the
conditions the THC and cannabis are said
to work for again there's almost no
evidence CBD and possibly other
cannabinoids may work in other
conditions CBD is epidural x is
prescribed DEA approved it's a
prescription drug to treat epilepsy and
children that's great I'm all in favor
of that I'm glad insurance companies are
covering it
but that does not mean that medical
marijuana is a thing it's not a thing I
would actually be in and Andy Andy and
the efforts to encourage people to use
marijuana from mild psychiatric
conditions are among the worst parts of
what the cannabis Lobby has done in last
15 years if I had to choose I would
choose full recreational legalization
over medical legalization because at
least then we would be talking about
this as a drug not a pretend medicine as
as a as the head of a cannabis company
said to me a couple weeks ago the
condition it treats is called not being
high do you want to adjust that question
Alex before yeah just briefly I actually
sort of agree with Alex that the medical
benefits of marijuana have been oversold
we can agree on that
I am a little bit more impressed by the
evidence I mean the FDA has approved THC
to treat nausea and restore appetite and
that initially for for cancer chemo
cancer chemotherapy and then later for
aids wasting syndrome so there's good
evidence on that point when the National
Academy has looked at this they found
substantial evidence for a few
indications you're right it's not nearly
as many as some states skip that no to
harmony and then go on to the question
mark Skousen puts you about the record
of legalization in other countries well
I mean Portugal didn't really legalize
but they aggressively decriminalized
such that use was no longer an offence
and they have suasion committees they
instead of arresting people putting in
jail they have treatment available they
seem to have had some success overdose
deaths went down transmission of
communicable diseases I believe went
down there hasn't been any obvious
increase in social social disruption but
that is by no means legalization I mean
just to be clear it's it's a form of
harm reduction and I think it as far as
it goes it's been pretty successful in
terms of Colorado or other states we as
I mentioned you see increases in use by
the
which I take to be mostly a benefit I'm
sure Alex disagrees but but to the
extent that it's not causing obvious
problems it's a benefit I mean people
are getting satisfaction they wouldn't
otherwise get I am pleasantly surprised
to see that underage use did not go up I
was not one of those people who are
saying there's no way that's going to
happen because what happens when you
legalize is that on the one hand it's
true if you displace the black market
that people the black market are not
checking IDs and they are serious about
checking IDs in the in the state
licensed businesses but of course you
have leakage from illegal markets so if
you have an older brother who's 21 or
older he may get pot for you you may
swipe it from your parents in the same
way that alcohol leaks from the adult
market so that was perfectly plausible
to me that that would happen it's kind
of amazing that didn't happen or hasn't
happened so far and in fact it's gone
down slightly teenage marijuana use in
Colorado and possibly there's something
to this idea that when you legalize it
and your parents are using it it's not
cool anymore
I'm not sure but that that's sort of
interesting in terms of other indicators
one thing that was legitimate another
thing that was legitimate to be
concerned about was an increased in
stone driving people would argue this is
just gonna add to the problems created
by alcohol it is possible that it might
that it could reduce the property of
alcohol to the extent that marijuana is
a substitute that remains unclear
whether it's actually serving as a
substitute if people are drinking less
as I mentioned alcohol isn't much more
dramatic effect on driving a building so
yes if you have more stone drivers
versus rather than drunk drivers that's
in debt improvement for public safety
it's not clear what's going on in states
like Colorado yes you do have an
increase in people testing positive for
marijuana but it does not and who were
involved in crashes it does not mean
they were under the influence at the
time of the crash or that the marijuana
use caused the crash so it's very hard
based on those data to figure out
whether marijuana's actually you know
causing accidents of their what
otherwise would not be so III have to
push back on this because that's just
completely untrue basically all the
stuff about driving here's the truth and
you can go to the Colorado diety and
look this up you can go to the
Washington diety and look this up
overall driving this in the states that
legalized first are up about 35 to 40
percent since 2014
now that's more than the national
increase in driving this even if you're
just for vehicle miles traveled and
population it's significantly more
that's a be driving desk where people
were under the influence of THC and you
can distinguish it is not true that you
cannot distinguish between active and
inactive metabolites of THC they do it
in tox screens driving deaths in which
people were under the influence of the
active metabolite of th e it's called
Delta 9 THC not THC COOH which is the
inactive metabolite those deaths have
approximately tripled in Washington
State they have approximately I believe
doubled in Colorado I'd have to check
that there are a couple things at play
here people generally will not chug
vodka while they drive they will vape
and drive and some people who've a pass
out when they vape and that is obviously
dangerous when you're at speed on a
highway it is also not true that the lab
studies show that stone driving is safer
than drunk driving and nor does the data
from the CD ot and the Washington do t
so we are all entitled to our own
opinions about legalization but the
facts about what's happened on the roads
are clear and they are not that that
legalization has made the road safer the
roads are demonstrably less safe in
Colorado in Washington right now all
right so I question this equation of
testing positive for THC is not the same
as being impaired people can test
positive at the cutoff which is used in
Washington or or in Colorado for
presumptive level of impairment it's not
the same as impairment I mean you people
especially people who are regular users
will will drive perfectly competently at
levels that are above the legal cutoff
so what it doesn't it's not equivalent
to being impaired you can't and you
can't just assume based on the THC blood
level in the National Highway Traffic
Safety Administration has made this very
clear you cannot equate THC blood levels
to impairments so unlike with alcohol it
just does not cause I particularly love
this argument because if the alcohol
industry if the spirits industry said
you know heavy drinkers probably can
drink two or
three times as much so they're BAC
levels for impairment should be three
times as high they would be tarred and
feathered but the cannabis industry will
make this argument with a straight face
well it's the question of whether people
are actually impaired not and and and I
actually think that argument has also
has some merit that in other words is
the alcoholics who are gonna be the best
drivers under the influence it's true
it's vice vice ya know it's not how we
do this true they should probably get
some dispensation but I are you for me
yeah but I have to you know again I'm
gonna differ anyway I just I wrote a
very long you know feature story about
marijuana impaired driving and I looked
very closely at the research about the
effects marijuana has versus alcohol I
interviewed a bunch of experts they all
agree now many of them are concerned
about stall driving a question but they
all agreed that that alcohol is a far
more dramatic effect on driving I think
that's very well established but we'll
leave it at that
next question hi I have a son who was
arrested seven years ago for growing
marijuana in a Kansas field he was
sentenced to three years in the
penitentiary of Leavenworth now I can't
vote now I can't do all of those things
for growing marijuana do you think that
that's an equitable punishment for that
crime Jacob I why did you say first I do
not there actually are people there
aren't a lot but there are people
serving life sentences for growing
marijuana to serve the recreational
market which is now a legal business and
in ten states so it's kind of
astonishing Alex um it's it's hard for
me to answer without knowing was he
growing one plan was he growing a
hundred plants a thousand plants was he
you know was he how many plants there's
good okay over 500 plants so you say so
your son was not growing for personal
use he was he was a drug dealer or a
drug trafficker really is three years
inequitable
sentence for that I don't know I do
think by the way that in general and
this is a whole different topic your
your crime should be your time should be
your time in other words once you get
out you should not face not being
allowed to vote you should not have to
disclose that certainly for non violent
felon
this is nonviolent felony so so that's
it's a different issue but that's it
that's a criminal justice issue I think
sometimes people get confused that
ending marijuana prohibition or fully
legalizing marijuana I should say
because we've really ended marijuana
prohibition but fully legalizing
marijuana would somehow and these
broader issues with the criminal justice
system and the social justice you know
social justice issues and that's not
really true there's a you know there's a
tiny number of people who are in who are
serving long prison sentences or really
in prison at all for marijuana I believe
the number in Pennsylvania you know
which has about I think 10 million
people and has 48,000 prisoners and
State Penitentiary's is about 80 so you
know this is this is not something that
a lot of people are in prison for I'm
not saying people don't get arrested and
I'm not saying there aren't racial
disparities in those risks but when you
look at who's actually in jail I mean in
prison it's it's not very many people I
mean I I guess I questioned the idea
that if you decriminalize you know
possession of small amounts that that
means you repeal prohibition during
alcohol prohibition it was legal to
possess alcohol if you had accumulated
alcohol before prohibition you were
perfectly entitled to have that alcohol
and to drink that alcohol they even
created loopholes for supposedly
non-intoxicating fermented beverages or
from ouu so that would be like growing
your own pot so but there was no
commerce in it that was legal except for
the male medical purpose medical
purposes which you probably like that
example yeah you can get a prescription
for alcohol there call probation yeah
or if you were lucky enough to be Jewish
you had a an exemption for sacramental
use not very good wine but still it will
get a buzz on so just the question but
yes yes my question my question is I
sense that you don't think people should
be arrested or face criminal penalties
for using marijuana or having marijuana
that's absolutely okay so my question is
how do you justify morally saying the
thing we want to prevent is the
marijuana use that's the real crime and
and but the person who does the actual
thing we want to prevent is not going to
get arrested but the person who merely
how
them do that by growing marijuana Fran
for example is gonna go to prison it
seems I mean ordinarily aiding and
abetting is not punished more severely
than the crime you're aiding and
abetting so how do you justify that
distinction so I mean you are correct
that we cannot have a scheme where where
the drug is not legal where we aren't
punishing a producer and a trafficker in
it so I mean that ultimately that is
true so the question is whether or not
the the user the individual who who
chooses to use a small amount for him or
herself or you know or on a daily basis
for him or herself we're gonna punish
that person as a practical matter or not
there's 40 you know 40 million people
used cannabis in 2018 we're not gonna
put them all in jail nor should we
that doesn't mean that we can't have
laws against the large-scale you know
farming of marijuana the trafficking of
marijuana and if we're gonna have those
laws you're right they have to have some
teeth are you saying else Michael
question you're saying that heroin users
cocaine users any user of an illegal
drug is not committing a crime we're
talking specifically about Kim in other
words cannabis users they're okay but
users of the other drugs they go to
prison I'm okay I'm not saying that they
go to prison okay okay
they could go to prison I am saying yes
they could go to prison that's right for
your report for possession and use of
these of these more dicey okay all right
actually okay just a clarification if
we're gonna be serious about this and
talk you know specifically obviously
those people should be sent to drug
court first they should have and you
know multiple chances but at some point
if the laws against us are going to mean
something for these drug if we are gonna
make distinctions which to my mind are
non arbitrary and are based on the
danger of the substance then at some
point we might say this drug is
dangerous enough that your continued use
of it is a crime not just you know not
just something where you're you know
gonna be sent to drug court it's a crime
actually next question
thank you both for debating tonight Alex
you've been arguing that drugs or risk
to society and that that's why they
should be banned if you ever tried to
buy life insurance you know that your
premiums go up if your smoker so given
the proven health risk to society that
tobacco causes why should that be legal
and after that woman who reminded me of
my mother and I can only imagine you
know I'm in jail for growing some pot
shouldn't all the why shouldn't all the
tobacco growers be thrown in jail as
well for producing a harmful substance
thank you so so I think you
misunderstand a little bit the it's not
so much the harm to society it's the
harm to people around the user okay and
tobacco doesn't cause psychosis or or
violent behavior um alcohol can that's
true but if you draw a line okay and you
put caffeine and tobacco on one end as
least likely to cause psychosis and
methamphetamine the hard stimulants PCP
LSD on the other and as most likely to
cause psychosis and you track that line
you will see that societal disapproval
of those drugs roughly tracks that line
because people don't like psychosis
they're scared of it they're scared of
the violence it produces okay the
opioids are sort of in the middle they
actually don't cause psychosis that
often they they have other problems but
that's actually and that's one reason
why the cameras lobby hates my book so
much because it says you've been saying
that the that cannabis is down here and
the truth is it's much much higher than
you think and that makes a difference to
how we legally so so there's the
tendency of drugs to cause violence and
then there's the tendency of drugs to
cause the specific kind of violence that
psychosis produces which is more random
and more likely to be targeted at people
who had nothing to do with the with the
with the user but and that is scary for
society and it should be but you still
make an exception for alcohol
you said alcohol tends not to produce
psychosis except in late-stage users
again it does it does produce but but I
mean I'm not saying alcohol doesn't
produce violence I'm saying that it
doesn't produce psychotic violence as
much okay comment about that question
well I know I don't
you can you can pick any particular
concern violence is one of them and it
will not track very well with the
distinctions that the drug drug laws
have drawn III don't know if we're gonna
get into your book very much fuck the
experience I mean the experience of most
people is that marijuana is not a drug
that tends to make people violent the
studies which I know you questioned but
the studies of the effects of marijuana
do not suggest that it is associated
with a violent crime not true the
studies that you dismissed I'm talking
about
the well in other words when the
operational Drug Control Policy
commissioned a report from in 2000 and
corporation they say and they flatly
stated that marijuana does not lead to
crimes of violence you disagreed with
that but it is a study nevertheless
eight years old and most of the studies
that I say in my book have been
published since then if you give a bunch
of people who've been screened against
any psychotic tendencies or any history
of psychosis small amounts of cannabis
in a lab setting you don't find that
cannabis produces violence that's not
where cannabis produces violence
cannabis produces paranoia and psychosis
in a small but real minority of users
and when those people have mental
illness or even if they don't some of
them get extremely violent
that's where cannabis produces violence
I mean let me press yet on a couple of
things about Anslinger I'm not about the
racist stuff I understand you don't like
that I will throw that part out but but
I you see you seem to be claiming that
he recognized what you are now
recognizing all right many societies
have read that that Egypt recognized
when do you reckon let me let me get to
the point which is that you know he
recognized this connection in other
words between marijuana use and violence
but at the same time you say you say
that law enforcement officials typically
do not report this but or haven't until
recently and the reason is that Mara you
had a wait till marijuana I got really
potent for this to become obvious so my
question is how was that Anslinger back
in the 20s and 30s was observing this
thing that
requires potent marijuana when the
marijuana was not very no no I mean
there's been a connection between
cannabis and violence that societies
have recognized the the you know people
in India recognized that in the 1890s
Egypt recognized it by the way the
notion that Harry Anslinger is
responsible for worldwide cannabis
prohibition is nonsense the Egyptian
government in 1925 was the government
that pushed for prohibition of cannabis
because it had experience with hashish
fueled violence so so cannabis even
weaker cannabis can produce violence if
you consume enough of it or if you
happen to be somebody who unfortunately
you know has a tendency to paranoia and
psychosis that that the drug brings out
what what Anslinger did what he was a
genius about doing was talking up this
and finding ultra cases just as you
found some very good cases about why the
war on drugs is a mistake he was a
propagandist he was not a scientist but
he happened to be right about the
science all right so just along those
lines since the the 90 the early
nineties or so marijuana use has gone up
substantially potency has gone up
substantially yet crime has prices fall
has fallen and a half absolutely crime
is multifactorial yes but you wouldn't
you expect expect a different result if
wider use of marijuana leads to more
violent crime no no crime is
multifactorial already next question boy
I really want to go watch reefer madness
right now I feel like you'd like it Alex
if you haven't seen it um my question is
for you who's you who's for Alex okay so
about enforcement of the drug war
so in 1933 during the prohibition on
alcohol the government tried to
crackdown on industrial alcohol alcohol
sold to manufacturing companies by
putting methyl alcohol in grain alcohol
rendering it lethal
subsequently 10,000 people died is this
justified I'd never heard that before no
it's not justified that was what
happened
yeah industrial alcohol was allowed for
industrial purposes but they
deliberately poisoned it so that it
wouldn't be diverted but it wasn't
diverted and the bootleggers didn't
always remove all the methanol and
that's yes that's that's for real
but that's I mean this may not be your
perspective but people today prohibition
is some of them seriously will make the
argument that you don't want drug used
to be safer you don't want to reduce
harm you want to maximize harm the
better to deter people from using drugs
and so for example the governor of New
Hampshire vetoed a bill to make naloxone
more widely available because he said we
don't want it to be widely available you
do all we don't want the reach to give
people the reassurance that if they
overdose they might be saved we want
them to think that there was no moral
hazard is a real problem but I think you
have to allow that so on right all right
both those things can be truly we agree
on that right next oh okay also for Alex
so you made the argument that drugs are
bad we should discourage drugs and then
all of a sudden at the end it jumps in
like the whole government should fight
the drug war to prohibit them it's that
last bit that I'd like to understand
better what's theirs crimes of risk you
had this idea a crime of a risk yes my
question is what is your limiting
principle meaning Bloomberg wanted to
ban sugary drinks if I you know I want
to do something and you say I say I
don't believe in climate change and you
say you think I'm threatening the
existence of the world do I go to jail
like what's your limiting principle for
crimes of risk so I think you can look
you can look at reasonable reasonable
measures of the effects on the user and
the people around him or her you know
sugary drinks are not gonna make you
hurt your family okay and they're and
they're probably only marginally gonna
change your standardized mortality ratio
so so you can you can draw non arbitrary
distinctions here now you know alcohol
because alcohol in some ways is like the
big you know it's always the big
legalize their argument because alcohol
does have risk it has significant risk
but I think legalize errs of other drugs
tend to overstate the risk of alcohol
not that alcohol doesn't have risk but
remember 165 million Americans used last
year so so so we can draw reasonable
distinctions comment
about the question I mean I think it's
it's problematic to say crime to risk
because what you mean is that some of
the people who do this who engage in
this behavior are going to end up
hurting other people
is there no way to distinguish do we
have to penalize everyone because some
minority is going to behave their
responsibly final question yeah right
okay neither of you addressed the cárcel
state in your opening arguments
specifically or an in-depth B on police
violence or in your rebuttals and I
would like to know how you weigh the
social moral and economic implications
against both your arguments for the drug
wars influence in mass incarceration and
I guess is a follow-on question Alex why
do you hate fun I knew that what does he
hate what fun
I'm designed life man and cut I guess
what your question is basically about
incarceration is that what you why why
were neither of you and addressing mass
incarceration as part of your arguments
or rebuttals what are your thoughts
unlike this social moral and economic
costs they're of a massive consommateurs
I think I did I did talk about
incarceration and why it's unjust for
crimes that violate no one's rights so
the proper you know penalty for growing
marijuana is zero euro time is the
Robert Bentley and so none of those
people should be in prison I would note
that anti-prohibitionist soar or
legalize errs tend to exaggerate the
role of the war on drugs in filling
prisons I met I mentioned the figures
the current figures are about 15 percent
of state prisoners and about half of
federal prisoners are there for drug
crimes
if you released every single one of them
we would still have way too many people
locked up in this country how many
people all together approximately you
said half of something a lot in the
fifth absolute number the total said
half of the federal prisoners know oh
it's I think it's around 100,000 and
then 15 percent of state prisoners yes
so I mean so you're talking about a lot
of people like I said it's about half a
million
especially if you include gels half a
million people locked up at any given
time for violating the drug laws but you
still have a huge number of people who
are there for various other kinds of
offenses and if you're serious about
attacking mass incarceration you not
only have to say well this wasn't so bad
a crime or this wasn't so violent a
crime but talk about what's an
appropriate penalty for violent crimes
and you know the US has this attitude
that you know 30 40 50 years the rest of
your life that's the right penalty and
it doesn't necessarily it's not
necessarily just it doesn't necessarily
make sense in terms of a public safety
payoff if you look at what happens to
people after they've been locked up for
four years they become much less likely
to recidivate at a certain point and to
keep old men you know locked up for the
rest of their lives even if they did
commit what you and I would all we'd all
would recognize as genuine predatory
crimes it doesn't make sense but that's
if you're serious about about tackling
mass incarceration you have to go beyond
the war on drugs and talk about the
punishments that we meet out for
predatory crimes this comment house I
mean that's all true the average
sentence for a murder in the United
States is 20 years and people tend to
serve about two thirds so if you kill
somebody and you're convicted you'll
probably do 13 or 14 years AGG assault
serious assaults you do two to three
years but I would just say this
so Jacob is right um as to whether or
not the United States has a mass
violence problem and I'm not talking
about I'm not talking about you know
mass shootings obviously that's a
problem too but we have 17,000 murders a
year we have 800,000 aggravated assaults
a year we have a lot of people in jail
because a lot of people commit crimes
unfortunately in this country and that's
a bigger issue than one that the
criminal justice system alone can solve
I personally don't when I look at the
sentences think they're hugely
overstated but I know that's an
unpopular position these days - but but
Jake but I do admire Jake for you know
telling the truth about who's een okay
on that note of admiration I guess we're
done right yes okay the cue a part of
the evening is over Jacob gets a
five-minute summary followed by Alex
take it away Jake okay so all drugs have
had risks there's no such thing as a
completely safe drug
certainly marijuana has risks alcohols
risk tobacco has risks heroin has risks
in many cases these risks are
exaggerated in many cases what we think
of as being a risk of the drug itself is
actually a risk that's created by
prohibition so people for example can
take opioids for years and years without
any serious health damage not true of
heavy drinking you will see serious
health damage the real problem is the
unreliable quality and potency in the
black-market and you know Alex says well
drug dealers are supplying fentanyl
because that's what drug users want it
for the by-and-large that's not true
they will tell you they would rather
avoid fentanyl fentanyl is much easier
to smuggle into the country just through
the mail in a small package you can get
a huge number of doses it's about 50
times as potent as heroin so the
economic incentives created by
prohibition encourage the emergence of
drugs like phenol then you have drugs
are even more potent than fentanyl
fentanyl analogues of various kinds this
is something that's being imposed on
people if they had their choice this
isn't necessarily what they would want
although there may be a few people out
there who love their fentanyl for the
most part this is something that's being
imposed upon them by both the
traffickers responding to the economic
incentives created by prohibition people
would prefer to know what they're
getting and not you know accidentally
overdose when they do when they take
their drug so I we need to separate out
the risks that are inherent in certain
drugs from the risks that are created by
prohibition and you have to include in
your when you tallying up the cost not
just the unreliable potency and
unpredictable potency in the black
market but also all of the ways in which
the law penalizes people for using drugs
that's also a cost is
justified to my mind it can never be
justified in principle because you're
punishing these people in order to deter
other people who you imagine will become
addicted and and have drug problems if
it weren't for the war on drugs and I
guess I just can't get over I'd make
both of these arguments and make the
moral argument and I also make a
cost-benefit argument and I think that
they they complement each other but I
just can't get past this idea that you
are using force and violence against
people or not violate and violating and
anyone's rights and even though Alyx
wants to go sort of easy on drug users
at the beginning he says if they if they
keep being bad they're gonna have to be
locked up I just don't get that by what
the principle of justice do you lock
someone in a cage for doing something
that violates no one's rights that's the
bottom line to me so the the
pharmacological effects of drugs are
completely independent from whether or
not they're illegal or illegal
that's the thing to remember about all
of this and so the question is whether
or not introducing a large group of
people to drugs like heroin or cocaine
or you know super potent cannabis is
likely to lead to negative societal
outcomes overall and we we've already
first of all we know that you know
introducing a large number of people to
alcohol some of those people get eaten
they get swallowed up and that turns out
to be true with cannabis - I I can't
really even imagine what it would be
like if people could could walk into a
store and buy heroin or cocaine the the
risks or methamphetamine and and what
society would look like because again
the the drug legalization community the
drug reform community has successfully
made this about the user when it should
be about everyone around the user
because those are the people who suffer
the consequences and don't even get the
high and and most of the time
those people are completely innocent and
so as a society we have a right and a
duty to protect people around people
making terrible decisions and we and we
can try to protect people from making
bad decisions themselves you know
obviously there's gonna be some people
out there who use you know who use
cannabis who use alcohol use tobacco who
use hard drugs or I shouldn't say hard
because well who use heroin who use of
cocaine but we can try to minimize and
discourage use or we can have a society
where the producers of those drugs are
allowed to advertise them on television
and have stores and compete to have the
lowest products possible and that will
lead to untold damage again not just to
the user but to the people around him or
her and that's what we should be
thinking about and that's why we have
the right to prohibit these substances
or to try to prevent their use is really
a better word because we can't prohibit
them they exist and some people are
gonna use them but we can we can be
encouraging in their use we can be
morally neutral and societally neutral
on their use or we can actively
discourage their use and we should
actively discourage their use thank you
all
well thanks to both sides for a very
spirited debate and we've we're opening
up the voting so please vote Yes No
or undecided on the resolution while
you're doing that I want to announce
again that the next debate will be
Tuesday November 5th Richard wolf who
has been called the leading socialist
economist of the country by Cornel West
who has been called by the New York
Times probably America's most prominent
Marxist economist will be defending the
resolution socialism is preferable to
capitalism as an economic system that
promotes freedom equality and prosperity
taking the negative will be me and this
debate is going to be held not here so
please we don't want any stragglers
walking mistakenly here on November 5th
it will be held at NYU's Kimmel Center
at 60 Washington Square South that's
only about you know eight blocks from
here on the sixth floor we're gonna have
our volunteers directly to the sixth
floor the whole is twice as large as
this one we want a lot of socialist
butts in the seats for that particular
debate we hope more socialists than
libertarians of free-market people will
be there we're going to do a major
promotion with the Jacobins with the NYU
students and with the new school
students because a Richard Wolff is
indeed an emeritus professor at the new
school and so and then of course we will
as we had in the last so slim debate
have Dave Smith out there hopefully not
in as he did in the past
alienating to many members of the
audience with some of his jokes so it
could be a quite a while looking evening
and I promise to be totally polite to
Richard Wolffe he's actually got two or
three years on me I regard him as sort
of my alter ego we both sort of learn
from the same people as I've revealed my
mommy was economy I learned socialism
even before Richard Wolff did and so it
will be a very spirited
all aspects of socialism prosperity
freedom and equality and I hope you can
be there November 5th again
Kimmel Center at NYU and how are you
doing Jane we need a little bit more
time yes
are the social so did I get to go for
free
well the socials gonna get huge just uh
I don't know you know whether or not I
won the debate uh and I I just hope that
if you're interested I have books oh
yeah points
forgive me Alex Wow did I let you out
come down the job sorry
yeah Alex wrote a book about marijuana
it's it's sold well balanced by the way
of course it has written a lot of books
that have sold really well a very
accomplished writer and no matter what
you think of his opinions an engaging
writer and I I'm just trying to the
mystery writer and lead writer for the
New York Times and so he'll be doing
book signing and sales and what's the
price Alex low price of $20 yeah just
list is 26 and if I sign it it's $19
okay just in the $20 bill one of these
and that's very efficient to buy the
book and that's of course what I
recommend to everybody just take $20
bills you know it's so complicated to
deal in plastic or a Bitcoin for that
matter so that's great Alex and thank
you very much for saying that I really
apologize for forgetting that in all of
the confusion about this $20 bill so and
so when we said I absolutely have to
dangle the tootsie roll in fire
okay here's the touchy well I thought
that Jane said it was an absolute sorry
thank you
Oh God okay uh yeah we began a yes vote
was forty eight point seven eight
percent yes vote in favor of Jacob and
he rose to fifty 8.54 he gained nine
point seven six percent of the vote and
now cuz you Alex you beyond was twenty
five point six one pretty good initially
and you rose to thirty five point thirty
seven if you do the math you to picked
up exactly nine point seven six percent
of the vote and and so
this is the first a postcard of to zero
well congratulations see you both
