Did i answer your question . I dont know very much about this issue. I havent read the book yet but i was surprised that you said this was the only family camp. I thought they had their families. Yes the full terminology in world war ii internment custodial detention was a rest and to be clear crystal city was the only family camp specifically designed for families. In other words they were just bothers there and all families. Like at Hart Mountain they didnt have families style eating. They went to mess all Something Like that to and then of course it was the only multiple nationality family camp. The internees and crystal city that i interviewed including those at heart mountain and other places thats what they called it. This is a true family camp so language is kind of you know. Understand crystal city was not close until 1948. Is that correct . What was the reason for the approximately three threeyear delay in closing the camp . You could just sort of thing about on time of day. Went to have got them, what do you do with them . And its sort of the same problem that obama has right now. The people that were left there that didnt have anyplace to go that hadnt yet repatriated there were lawsuits going on to try to keep some of the internees within head lawyers that were trying to stave United States so they werent buying the ball and going anymore so it just took them out long to get rid of everybody. What kind of interaction if there was any went on between the different nationalities at the camps . Well you know the answer is they all went to the same Swimming Pool but pretty much they lived separately in the camp. They were mistrustful of each other. The japanese were mistrustful by woods say its fair to say of the germans and vice versa. One of the reasons the Geneva Convention does not allow people and countries in wartime to put multiple people together is because of those conflicts and they certainly happened and that rings up a lot of the narrative of the camp. How many people were there in the camp with sumi and the other people . Thats a really good question. Over the course of 1942 to 1948 our best estimate is about 6000 but that was a low estimate is they stopped counting at a certain point. So its about 6000. Thank you for the question. Why were these families exchanged and not just troops captured in war . Why were they exchanged . Why were the exchange and not enemy troops . Werent they the ones who are mainly exchanged . Some of the people that came back were american prisoners of war and there were some other camps that word exchanged to an people in crystal city they just needed more people to exchange because roosevelt had a very vigorous policy so that families in crystal city had to be added. We didnt have enough german and japanese exchange. Also the president was concerned concerned. He would have rather exchanged civilians that didnt have a whole lot of knowledge than. But they had a whole division in the state department called the special war problems division. This was a very special war problem so there really was a game of chess. The japanese and the germans had their chests and we had ours. One final question. I grew up in brady texas and there was a world war ii prison work camp in brady. Several of the people who were interned ultimately ended up living in brady with married women from brady in integrating into the community. Did any of that happen in this . Absolutely. Did any of them stay in crystal city . Did any of the internees stay in crystal city . They have reunions all the time. I dont really think so. Crystal city there were 13,000 People Living in crystal city during this time. The highest number ever because it was a tiny little place. I want to thank you all for your incredible interest. I just think you especially old friends here and my aunt came from houston, my mother sister and all of you guys its just great to see you and thank you so very very much. [applause] Woody Guthrie is most famous for his writing of this land is your land that he was much more than that. He was born in 1912 in okemah oklahoma so we are very proud to have his work back it up, where we think it belongs. He was an advocate for people who were disenfranchised, for those people who are Migrant Workers from Oklahoma Kansas and texas during the dust bowl era. They would find themselves in california literally starving and he saw this vast difference between those who were the haves and the havenots and became their spokesman through his music. Woody recorded very few songs of his own. We have a listening station that features 46 of his songs in his own voice. That is what makes the recordings that he did make so significant and so important to us. Super thrilled to be hosting what i think is the first talk we have posted for a book blurbs by both gnome and chomsky and elton john. This blew my mind. So that is really also terribly exciting and finally im excited to have a book this is something new about the drug war. We all know the drug war is bad and awful. I dont need to tell you that if you are living in baltimore youd know that the drug war is bad and awful. But its really exciting with someone with the talent of writing and journalism like johann hari comes along talks to people figures out a way to tell the story in a way that makes us see new things and gives us a different lens than a different optic on something we know is horrible and in telling that story gives us a way to do with it and create a better future. Im terribly excited to welcome him and im glad you all came out. [applause] thank you for coming. When the war on drugs is being launched the man who launched it Harry Anslinger said they were someplace in the world that proved more than any other that it was going to work. He said if you look at this place it would prove that if you cracked crack down hard enough if you are rested enough people if you are consistently tough drugs and drug gangs would disappear. That place was baltimore. How is it working out for you . I feel like before i start i should apologize for something which it might be able to tell from my voice im not from here. Ive spent a lot of time in the u. S. And i have never felt selfconscious about it until i started this book. I went to tyler texas. I went to this hitman the only hitman that has made it out and lived to tell the story. He is in prison now. I went to a jackinthebox. Do you know what it is . Is like a fast food chain which is responsible for at least one of my chins. I went in and said to the women can i have my quarter with cheese and she said to me what . I said could i have a quarter with cheese and she said do you speak english . And i said matta my people invented it. [laughter] what i want to talk to you about as i said before is now 100 a year since drugs were first criminalized. I realize when they were coming up to the centenary i had a personal reason for wanting to think about it. We have drug addiction and my family. One of my earliest memories was trying to wake up my and not being able to. I realized even though the something going on for 100 years there were lots of basic questions that i didnt know the answer to and my teachers never told me and my government had never told me in your government had never told me to why were drugs banned in the first place . Why do we carry on with the drug work proves that a lot of people think isnt working . What really causes drug use and drug addiction and what are the alternatives . We talk about in such an abstract way. Its like a philosophy seminar about how the world should be. I wanted to find out how it affects real people all over the world so i set out on a journey and i ended up going across Nine Countries 30,000 miles and spending time in talking with loads of different people from my transsexual crack dealer in brownsville brooklyn to a scientist who spent a lot of time beating hallucinogens to mongoose to see what happens. The only country in the world that has two criminalized all drugs with incredible results. The main take away is almost everything we think we know about the subject is wrong. Drugs are not what we think they are. Drug addiction is not what we think it is. The alternatives are not what we thought they were. I tell the story in the book through the stories of real people whose lives were changed one way or another by this war are the alternatives. I want to talk to you tonight about five or six of the people i talk about in the book. One of them is in the 1939 Billie Holliday stood on stage in new york city and she sang a song called strange fruits. Its a song against lynching. Her daughter said to me you got to understand how shocking this was to have an africanamerican woman standing in front of a white audience in the hotel where she was not allowed to run run walk to the front door. She went to the Service Elevator singing a song against lynching. That night according to her biographer, Billie Holliday received a threat warning from the federal bureau of narcotics. They said stop singing this song song. The man who ran that girl was a guy called terry anslinger the most influential person anyone has heard of. He took over the department of prohibition just as alcohol prohibition is sending. And he had to find a new purpose for his department. He is driven by two really strong hatreds good one with a hatred of addicts and another was hatred of africanamericans. This guy was regarded as a crazy racist by the crazy racist of the 1930s. Billie holliday if you look at this writing he was obsessed. Billie holliday was everything he hated. Africanamerican women was a heroin addict and he thought jess was this mongrel evil music that was disordered and a sign of chaos and he would write these memos were he would listen to the lyrics. When he gets the motion he thinks he can break across the ocean and he said that is what they do think renees heroin. Bill is a Billie Holliday growth of the last city in essays that didnt have a sewage system. She grew up in an area called pig town which gives you some sense of how was seen. Billie holliday learned something. She made her suffer promised. She was not allowed in the stores because she was an africanamerican pitcher promised herself she was never going to bow her head to anyone. When she gets the start from Harry Anslinger she says in fact screw you. Im an american citizen that i will sing my song and do what i want and thats the point in which the stalking and killing of really holiday began. Harry anslinger hated employing africanamericans. It was kind of hard to send a white guy to harlem. Would be kind of conspicuous. Dewey fletchers job was to follow Billie Holliday for two years a much everything she did. And he fell in love with Billie Holliday because she was so amazing. He was ashamed of what he did next. He busts her. She is on trial. She said the trial was called the United States versus Billie Holliday not to tell. She is sent to prison and button button Billie Holliday gift south she needed a license a cabaret performers license to perform anywhere that alcohol was certain i would give it to her. Her friend said to me what is the cruelest thing you can do to a person . To take away the thing they love love. Thats what we did a addicts all over the world today. A female chain gang in arizona had to wear a tshirt wearing a tshirt and digging graves. Billie holliday and all that suffering relapses. When shes in her early 40s she collapses in new york. Shes taken to a hospital. The hospital refuses to have her because shes a bad trade she says to one of her friends the mark connex agents are finished with her theyre going to kill me in there. Dont let them. Theyre going to kill me in there. On her hospital bed she is diagnosed with liver cancer. Their roster in a hospital bed. They handcuff her to the hospital bed. I am to be the last man who is still alive that was in the room room, an incredible man. They take away her candies and her toys and she has and she goes into withdrawal. One of her friends insist that doctors give her methadone. She starts her cover. 10 days later they took the methadone and she died. Whatever friend said she felt like shed she had been vitally registered from mike. Heres the thing Billie Holliday insists on singing her song creature would go anywhere they have her no matter what they did. She always sang and it really helped me to think about the attics of my life. If we are honest theres a bit of a drug warrior and all of a sudden a bit of all of us that thinks someone stops you and feels angry some of the time. Help me to know that addicts can be heroes. Her friend abby ross Billie Hollidays friend said to me Billie Holliday was not week. Billie holliday was a stronger she could be. I wanted to understand how those dynamics continued into today and i was introduced to someone, one of the best people i know a former transsexual crack dealer in brownsville brooklyn. Chino was conceived in 1980 when his mother was raped by his father who was an nypd officer. Hes a child of the drug were in the purest sense and deborah his mother nothing was done to prevent the transmission of aids among drug users and the thing that did help to prevent the spread the distribution of was a crime under the drug. Now you act. So his mother dies. When these 13 he becomes a crack dealer on the corner. Chino helped me understand the dynamics with drug dealing. I guess it was a liquor store on the street. If we go into that liquor store any of us tonight and we try to steal vodka and i apologize if you feel like doing that after a speak they will call the cops and the cops will take us away. That liquor store doesnt need to be violent. If we go to a local weed dealer or coke dealer and we tried to steal their goods they cant call the police. The police will come and arrest them. They have got to be terrifying. They have to fight you are till you out and established a reputation to be so bad that you wouldnt dare take them on. She had to learn to be terrified. Chino had to shoot at people and be aggressive and violent. The sociologist for the bush lies of the prohibition culture of terror. This is got nothing to do with drugs. If you banned milk and people still want to buy milk exactly the same dynamic would happen. This is not about drugs. This is about prohibition. Youll notice that the liquor store where they are the people who work in the drinks aisle at walmart that never happens. Under alcohol prohibition they work under each other. What happens is chino starts to rise to the crips. He is sent to a youth prison detention facility. It cost a Million Dollars a year. I dont know if theres anyone here that could think of what we could do for 1 million a year. If you have any ideas im happy to talk about them. Chino rices his whole life is malformed. He starts using crack as he put it to me because i wanted to know what my mother chose over me. When chino was in his early 20s he gets out of prison and search to read about the drug war and you discover something that blows his mind. This is not a lurid nature. This isnt something that just happens in the world is not like the tsunami. Its not like a hurricane. This is a political choice. What happened to chinos mother will happen to chino his life in the rikers all of that did not happen. Chino became a campaigner against the war on drugs. His First Campaign was to shut down the youth prison he was put in and he succeeded. Spar for it no longer exists. Chino was an articulate in explaining how much this is still about what it was about with Billie Holliday. He also kind of judy garland was a heroin addict that he told julie garland to take longer vacations until the studio she was going to be fine. 70 of the people who sell drugs in the United States are africanamerican and make up 65 or senata people go to prison for it. Just outside baltimore at the same time chino was selling on this block a person called lee maddox was standing on the i95. Lee maddox was a cop and she was arresting anyone she could find that she suspected of being a drug user. Lee had long hair and a hot temper. Her job was to get numbers. If she knew a few busted people the cops get to keep 80 of everything they take. If they find your coke in your car that can take your car away and it was paying her wages. Lee could not have been a stronger believer on the war on drugs. Her best friend lisa who used to share a and a lookalike was murdered why what she believed was a drug gang. She signed on to be a cop with one reason in mind to destroy drug gangs. But lee is an honest person and you notice something. When you are caught if you arrest a rapist the next week there is less in your town. If you arrest a dealer its always someone else on the corner but if you bust dealers the murder rate asked the goes up. He was like why would this be . How can that be . What she discovered is chino establishes a reputation. He controls his blog. If you kill or arrest chino you trigger a war between rival gangs. He started turf war. Huge numbers of people are killed in these turf wars. There are 10,000 deaths figure in the United States. Three 9 11s and theyre not just dealers. There are stories in my book about a 3yearold girl playing on her stoop in west baltimore gets hit in the crossfire. He didnt know what to do with this. Another of her best friends and agent who believe strongly in the drug war goes to an undercover drug bust and be shot by the dealer who just thought he was another dealer. And we goes and looks at his body and she thinks i can do this anymore. Lee put the police force and retrain civil lawyer and now she spends her time getting convictions wherever she can for the drug arrest she did as a cop. Lee is actually here today and im so proud to know her. Shes an extraordinary person. [applause] i wanted to know what life is like on the supply route. This dynamic we are talking about as Charles Boutin writer put it the war on drugs and the war for drugs. Thats horrific in a lot of places and in the city is one of the worst. Theres one city i can think of for its even worse, the city of forest. Most drugs run through the border of texas in el paso. They would stay in el paso because its not safe to stay in war as in every morning i would walk across the bridge. If you walk across the ridge it feels like an american city. Theres a kfc in a dennys. You can buy a flatscreen tv. Murder is effectively legalized. Theres a twoperson murder conviction rate in juarez and that 2 didnt do it. The way it helps me to understand the story of what has happened there is a story of mary seller. She never used drugs are like no one in her life used or sold drugs that she happened to live in she had a daughter named ruby who is 14 years old. One day a guy turns up at her woodwork store called sergei. He turns up because i have a kid, i did some work. Have you got anything i can do . Mary was a softhearted pertinence of person so she decides to give him a job. He starts to flirt with her 14yearold daughter and she is like get out of here. Ruby runs a way to go with sir j. And mary goes to the police and she says this guy is 21 and he is having an affair with my daughter is 14. The police did nothing and she is a bit puzzled. She is angered and her daughter wont come back. Her daughter gets pregnant and married his heart broken. Ruby has a baby. One day marisela turns up in ruby is not there. But her baby as they are and sir j. Says ruby ran away. She went off with another man. Marisela says no she didnt run off with another man and be for child with you. No she wouldnt do that. He said well thats what happened. Marisela decides to distribute leaflets all over juarez saying abc my daughter . A kit and hes terrified. She has to drive out to the desert with him and he says to her by helps dispose of your daughters body. Sir j. Killed her and i can tell you where he dumped the body. She goes and she finds the bits of her daughters body. She goes to the police and the police wont do anything and she still doesnt understand quite why. Marisela eventually campaigns and manages to get him in trial. In he breaks down and apologizes to her and he admits what he did did. Two weeks later he is acquitted and he disappeared. Marisela discovers the sergei worked for the mexican drug cartel. Gimp in the Housing Project in armed criminal gangs selling drugs. The Housing Project is going to be a lousy place to live by 17 of economy of juarez is illegal drugs. When i first went there i was shown around by the reuters correspondent. I said this is important. He said you dont understand when the cartel wants to kill someone they pay the police to do. Marisela would not accept that there was no justice in the age of prohibition. She would not accept it. Desert and after three years she finds them. She goes to the police. And they go away again. And she goes and stands outside the Governors Mansion and she leads a protest and she has become a symbol of everything. She stands outside and she makes this amazing speech about how people in mexico deserve justice. And in front of all of the police a man walks up and shoots her in the head. And a woman whose wages you pay the head of the Drug Enforcement agency, was asked about the 60,000 deaths of civilians in the last seven years and i urge you to look it up. She said that it was a sign of success on the war on drugs and when i went and talked to her i said to her stay with me with what she said. I said were your friends and she said we were terrified that sometimes your love is stronger than your fair. And its something in the hope of that so i contrasted what she said that really stayed with me. Another thing i wanted to understand was what causes drug addiction. If you wouldve said to me four years ago i wouldve said heroin causes heroin addiction. For 100 years weve been told a story that is so obvious that it has become part of our common sense. And we think that the first 20 people [inaudible] that we would physically need hair when that we would physically crave it. And that there may be something wrong with that theory and if any of us stepped out into the street and are hit by a car and we break, we will be taken to the hospital and its likely that we will be given a lot of morphine which is harrowing. Its much better than street heroin which is five or 10 . You will be given out for a long time, that has happened at Johns Hopkins in any university in baltimore, its happened at every hospital in the United States and the developed world people are being given a lot. And he wouldnt know is that your grandmother was not turned into a junkie by her hip operation. Its what we think about, if its right, those people should be leaving as addicts but that doesnt happen. And so i didnt know what to do with it because it seems so weird. We talked to a man named Bruce Alexander and he explained to me that the addiction, the one that i believe has a series of experiments that were done early in the 20th century as few can go home and do them yourself, you get a rat and you put it in a cage and give it to water bottles, one is water and one is with heroin or cocaine. If you do that the rat will almost prefer the drug and almost always kill itself. So there you go addiction confirmed. Until 1970 one individual says wait a minute, its got nothing to do lets try this differently, so keep this experiment, he built rat park. Its got friends, tunnels, everything they could want in rat park and of course they tried this because they didnt know what was in it. But in rat park, they dont like the drug him and they hardly ever use it, none of them ever overdose, none of them ever use it in a way that looks compulsive i think theres a human experiment all around about this do what he does is he says this is the right wing theory that is flawed and the lettering theory is that it takes you over and hijacks your brain. He says that its not a morality and its not your brain. Addiction is an adaptation to your environment. There was a fascinating experiment going on at the same time called the vietnam war 20 of american troops were using this. If you look at reports from the time they were really worried. They were like my goodness, all of these people are going to come back and we are going to have hundreds of thousands on the street. What happened . All of the study show that they came back and almost all of them just stopped. They did not go into rehab or withdraw they stopped because they got taken out of the jungle where you dont want to be and its a nightmare and you could get killed at any moment, you go back to your nice life with your friends and your family and the equivalent had been taken out and be put into the second. And so i was in the war on drugs was based on the idea that the chemicals cause of the addiction and we need to physically eradicate them. So i dont think thats possible physically to eradicate these chemicals, we cannot keep drugs out as easily. We pay a lot of people good luck keeping it out of the United States, but you can at least understand that that has a philosophical appearance. But if that is not what causes addiction, the vast majority believe that those dont become addictive, it is isolation and pain, it is also the drug war that is built on the idea that what we should do without it is inflict more isolation and pain on them. In that reason they took me to this solitary confinement and there are desperate addicted women and i suddenly thought this is the closest you are ever going to get to a human reenactment of the cage that guarantees addiction. When they get out the site with billie holiday, they wont be able to work or do the things that they love. And i think it has deep philosophical applications. A guy says we shouldnt use the word addiction but bonding. Human beings have an innate need to bond and the bond that we have is mostly with each other. But if you are deprived of the ability to bond with each other whether youre traumatized or cut off or humiliated or isolated, you will bond with something that gives you pleasure, that might be a roulette wheel but you will bond with something and if we want people to give up their bond, the moment that we talk about this we talk about how this could be individual recovery and we need to talk more about social recovery as well, something has gone wrong not with just individuals but a group. We have created a society where he number of our fellow citizens cannot bear to be present without being heavily medicated. The telling you to stories about the end of the war on drugs. Good news, the war on drugs has begun to end. And i went to the places where it has begun to end. I thought that if i go there and it didnt work it could be the most oppressive and book ever written. But actually what i saw blew my mind. In the year 2000 the same time that we were standing outside baltimore a man called bud osborne was living on the streets near downtown vancouver. They have the worst concentration of attic in america. It was reported that the place at the end of the line people called it the terminal city. His friends were dying all around. So if you start to overdose, no one else sees you your body is found two days later. Bob said that i have to do something about this, i cannot just watch all my friends die. And he also thought what can i do, i am a homeless street at and he had a very small and simple idea he got together the addicts and died when we are not using why dont we patrol the alleyways and have a timetable and if we spot someone, we will call an ambulance. And they started to do it. And a few months past and the overdose rate started to fall. That was great in itself but it also meant that the addicts got to think of themselves differently. And so they said they started to go to Public Meetings about the menace of the addicts and they would sit in the back and listen and they would say i think the were talking about us. And sometimes people would be really angry and they would say things like you leave your needles lying around. They say that is fine, we will extend it to collect them at the end of every day. Then bob learned about frankfurt, germany. A place that you could go we could use heroin and then they said we are going to make it happen and they started to talk about this. Picture that romney. A wealthy rightwing businessman. And they started to follow him everywhere they went saying that addicts will be taken to a local military base. And they started to follow him everywhere they went and they carried a coffin and the coffin said Something Like he will die and this goes on for two years and they start to get disillusioned because nothing is changing and people are still dying in huge numbers. One thing he said is that who are these people. And he just spends a lot of time with addicts. And his mind is blown. He had no idea. And so i learned when it comes back to this i hold a press conference and is the chief of police and corner, he has a chance to sam never going to talk about addiction again because they understand it better than anyone and we are going to openness first room in north america and have the most compassionate drug policy is in the things are going to change. They open the first injection room and they are so horrified. So theres a rightwing candidate in that candidate is beaten by a more liberal candidate who wins and keeps it open. The result are in 10 years later. Overdose has gone by 80 and an average Life Expectancy has improved by 10 years. He only get stats like that at the end of the war which his likeness. Bob died last year and he was only in his early 60s. But it takes a toll on you. They sealed off the streets to have a Memorial Service enormous crowds of people came and huge numbers of people knew that they were only alive because of what he had done. They think they are powerless and what can they do i want to tell you that you are so much more powerful than what you know. And this includes the saving of thousands of peoples lives. It can never be taken away now. He did that by starting monday on one street with a bunch of alex. And i also wanted to go to the only place in the world that decriminalize all drugs from cannabis to crack and i wanted to the story about this. Portugal had one of the worst drug problems in europe. 1 of the population. To be fair to them a stop on the panel comes back and says decriminalize everything but then heres the crucial next step, take all the money we currently spend on arresting drug users trying and imprisoning drug users. Lets use all that money on really good judge treatment and its mostly not what we t the biggest things hab and some of it is psychological support hugely valuable. The biggest thing is we could all be drinking vodka now. Why are we . Is because we have got something to do. We have meaning and purpose in our lives. We have things who want to be present for in our lives. The bully wants to be present for. Game of the portuguese to criminalization was to make sure that every addict in portugal had something to get out of bed for so the biggest element of the program of subsidized jobs. Say you had a problem and he used to be a mechanic. When you are ready they say if you employ this guy for a year we will pay half his wages. Or microloans or groups of attics to sell businesses. The group of 15 attics addicts have this incredible support group. If you are one and 14 that have relapsed the other guys have a strong incentive to support you and get you clean. And its been 14 years now and again the results are in. Injecting drug use is down by 50 in portugal. Although studies show addiction is down trade overdoses massively down and a guy named and i cant say portuguese names iis get them wrong. He led the campaign against the criminalization. He was the talk top drug cop in portugal and he is what a lot of people watching as we think and if you are criminalized will have all sorts of problems. And im paraphrasing everything i said would happen didnt happen everything the other side said what happened at any talk to me about how ashamed he was that he spent 20 years arresting and harassing drug users read and he hoped the whole world followed portugals example. I dont want to get to i knew but i believe ive seen the future and it works. You know to wars began in 1914 two global wars. One is the war on drugs that hasnt ended and what is the First World War which lasted it it to 40 years. You know that some aging amazing images of the great enormity and france with all these graves stretched out for miles and miles. Try to imagine if all the people from the war on drugs were buried in one place who would be there. You would have Billie Holliday and the song son she never got to sing. You would have leaves friends lisa and dead. He would have loved friend to die behind dumpsters. He would have a lot of people who were loved by people in this room. We have got a choice. We have got another century. We can fill that graveyard with far more people or we can choose a policy of love and compassion that will save a huge number of those lives. Its up to us now. Thank you. Thanks very much. [applause] so any questions . We have time for some q a so if you would like to ask a question there are mics in the aisle right now. Please line up and use the microphones. I would say two things, almost all the questions have been firm men so im going to police is that we have half women. You think theres a connection on the war on drugs and alien to my buddy meant illegal aliens and i started giving an answer like evil smuggling and mexican cartels. He said i mean extraterrestrials. I dont think extraterrestrials exist and he was horrified so as long as your question about that i will be very happy. If anyone wants to come because its being filmed. If you just want to ask a question and come to the microphone. You mentioned a country that is legalize all drugs i believe. Can you describe the country and how is that working out . As far as helping society and young people and how are they being educated for its usage . Is an important distinction. Decriminalization means you dont punish people for using. Legalization into established a legal route to getting the drugs to portugal made decriminalize and it deals with some of the problems about others. The way i explain it is they shot down orange to the new black but they still have breaking bad traits i went to a country where they legalize heroin. I am also a swiss citizen in switzerland legalize heroin. This is really shocking because switzerland is really a rightwing country. When i was talking to someone about the war on drugs. He said i know we should do about the war on drugs. We should is that we are book is about . If you are a heroin addict you go to a doctor in the doctor will refer to the clinic and did not clinic you can go wherever you want to go and they will give you heroin. They will give you of whatever doesnt care when you asked for and you cant take it out with you but you can be given at there. One was unexpected. So they could carry on for as long as they want with a heroin and shes like yeah but the fascinating thing is almost everyone because their life stabilizes with the chaos of street is having to scramble for street use and all the prostitution most of them start to get their life together. They get jobs and they choose to reduce the heroin because their reality gets better. They choose to stay in reality longer and 70 of swiss people voted to keep that policy. Probably because theyre so much less street crime. Street prostitution in to. There was much less mugging, much less violence so there was legalization. Can we take a woman . I promise well we will come to you. Thank you. Hello. I work for a Provider Agency that does communitybased alternatives for kids in juvenile detention. We use a rapper and advocacy approach. Its all about connections to you are helping to impose peace but last week that was in pennsylvania and harrisburg at the capitol talking to a legislator who very clearly was like people are attics and they make those choices and we have to punish them. What is a narrative that we can use for those of us whose experience tell us what youre saying in your book that we can use for naysayers and things like back . Or positions of authority and power to make those changes . You may think its like fluffy or feelgood or you want to have a thug kind of than what i think is great. That is sorely needed and really important. I guess what i would say is we have had a massive dehumanization and american britain and other places. Theres no other minority i can think of where when they die lots of people say they brought it on themselves bear member went and the whitehouse guide or the kid from glee lots of people were saying they brought it on themselves. Even a person at alton john guide wouldnt say good. It would be really extreme if they did that. Its about humanizing addicts and telling the story so its about people coming out. Like how did we change . 1963 the riots, two theaters in in 2000 years ago people were being persecuted. The defenders of people the proposition was to say they are not evil, they are sick. That was the proposition in people toga stories that people in their lives and incredibly people all over the world said im and im not the way you think i am. So partly stories about it coming out like you have black lives matter which is hugely important. I think we need the message addicts lives better. When the horrendous things i did for the book was i went to arizona the place about the chain gang and i interviewed to who works in prison right. Tell me about something that shocked you. And she went through this long list list. Somewhere down the who is she said there was a time i put that woman in the cage and cooked her. That was bad. I do the facial expression like youd guys did just then today said sorry donna could you go back a second . There was a woman named marsha powell. She kept being arrested for having math or for prostituting herself to get mad. In her early 40s and one day she was in a prison and she was suicidal. The doctor didnt believe she was suicidal but to punish her for making noise they took her and put her in this cage in arizona, and exposed cage in the desert. And they left her there and she screamed and she begged for water and the guards mocked her and eventually she collapsed him by the time they called an ambulance she had been cooked. No one was ever criminally punished because addicts lives dont matter in our culture. And when they found the father of her children got the story of her life which is heartbreaking like Billie Holliday. She was a prostitute as a child. I think its partly about explaining addiction is caused by pain and we need to tell a lot more real stories of real addicts and you know i think most people are pretty compassionate. Most people are decent people and most americans had gold of you. If tell the stories i think that vindictive lets cook them in cages mentality will not thrive. Thank you. Thanks. Hi. Hello. I was wondering if you decriminalized everything in portugal do you think that the differences in American Society that the same thing would work in the United States because its a larger country with a more Diverse Society and social problems that they are lots of it in portugal . Professor Jeffrey Miron said if you add up all the money spent on the drug werent over taxes you would raise from drag jack city tax them the way we tax alcohol you would have ordered 3 billion a year. You could do what portugal did on steroids for 43 billion a year. Thats an enormous sum of money so yeah transferring the money from something that makes addiction worse to something that helps people to turn around their lives absolutely would work. Of course the details of the different than what works in mississippi may not work on the upper east side. We need to experience cautiously and be humble and say some of it will work in some of a while but i have to think it would work United States. We have parties in the legalization of marijuana in colorado and washington could i tell the story of how that Incredible Campaign by fantastic people was one in colorado. I think thats the short answer. Can we go to a woman next . Hello, come forward. Im sorry, the light is blinding me. I literally couldnt see you at all. Ive a question on the process of researching and im wondering the broader connections that you made great how much of that became clear as you are traversing geographic space and how much was part and parcel of the at analysis . No one asked me about the process of writing the book. Im so happy. Amygdalas book the riders like it if anyone wants to be a writer pleased by that book. Its amazing. Has a brief analysis from thoreau. Apparently i know nothing about nature either. Apparently they want to find to be hibernate on the word is you look for a big jar catch the b. And hold that theyre permanent. If you open the jar that be will freak out and find the direction of the hive so you cheese chased to be you lose it and catch another another be left that wants another be let that one can only do that 10 or 15 times you find the hive. That was basically the process of writing my book. I started with a list of people who i thought were interesting on the subject and i said well should i talk to . I found lee and i found so many people. It was a really fascinating process that led me and sometimes you would speak to a chain of nine people. You didnt get anything ported suddenly i would find lee. So thats the process. Hi. Hello. I was very interested to hear your take refreshing to hear that the fundamental cause of addiction is paid and the solution whether its the dysfunctional solution or a societal solution would be providing bonding. I was just simply curious, have you do you have any familiarity with the sociologist rene brown and her work in the shame and the unspoken role that shame has in our society is almost a universal cause for disorder unhappiness and malcontent . I came across her work a number of years ago. She is also from texas and as you said you have had a chance to visit. It changed my life. To hear those words get again in a different context was something i felt like i wanted to take a moment and reference. You are the second to recommend this. I will definitely come i promise i will read it. A video on Youtube A Tedx talk that went viral. It was one of the most harrowing moments of her life to talk about shame because she herself is very introverted and struggles with it herself so theres a genuine nation nature to the way she comes across watching that was what led me to the rest of her work. There someone i wrote about in the book is a fascinating person. During the holocaust in the budapest ghetto there was a woman called judith marcase who is about to be murdered by the nazis. Her parents have been murdered by the nazis in auschwitz but she didnt know it yet. She went up to christian stranger and to take my baby take him. The christian stranger did and that kid grew up to be a doctor and some people will know his work. Hes a fantastic person. He started to work with hardcore addicts and what he noticed was there was one thing they all had in common. They all had horrific childhoods childhoods, sexual abuse physical abuse, far more then represented by the wider population. He himself had addictions. It was really pragmatic in his life. He would compulsively buy cds which you never listen to what is not quite crack addiction that he would abandon women in the middle of labor and go buy cds. He started think about the childhood chum he had and the childhood chum of these people. The Adverse Childhood Experience study survey and they basically started on children and for every seriously traumatic event that happens to a child they are two to four more likely to be an injecting drug user. What he explains as its related to the shame they feel. When you are a kid the way we internalized the way our parents treatise. Usually its her mother piketty can be anyone. If youre upset and pain your mother reassures young columns you down. Other times you reassure yourself. If you react to their crime with indifference or indeed hostility you will treat yourself like that as she that as you get older and you will be much more likely to need external soothing and external drugs. First i thought are these different theories but then it occurred to me if you go through childhood, its much harder to trust the world. There a lot of people in the world that know this. You are much more likely to be isolated. Shall we take a woman. Hello. Thank you for your question. I had a question about the u. N. Convention on drugs and whether you had any opportunity to talk to anyone affiliated with the u. N. And changing policy internationally . Yeah i interviewed the woman who used to be the head of one of the main u. N. Drug agencys a british woman. The origins harry and slinger the man the place is rolling killing Billie Holliday was the crucial figure. He said i had made up my mind dont try to confuse me at the facts. And its very important as global drug war is imposed from United States. The way it worked as at the end giving about mexico, mexico had a really good drug policy. They kept drug legal. There was a doctor and charge of drug policy. He said marijuana wasnt probably should treat alex with compassion. And mexico refuses so and slinger cut off off the supply for illegal opiates to mexican hospitals and they ripen and give me agony. Britain resisted in some ways and basically the u. S. Is dominant at the end of the second world war. Its one of a few things the u. S. And the soviet union agreed on. So these two superpowers unite to write this disaster, so the u. N. Office of drug control is this body that imposes the drug war mainly funded by the u. S. Under u. S. Pressure. And one other thing about that analogy to the question but even the u. N. Odc that threw me, if i said to you what proposed in proportion of currently illegal drug use doesnt do any harm to the user. You dont become addicted and dont have any Health Problems no harm at all its 90 the overwhelming majority which is kind of hard to get your head around because if i said to you picture. User you picture yourself at a bar having a beer. If i say to you picture a cocaine user you picture an attic because the nature of the drug cocaine is no more likely to be addicts. Its because the drug war drives normal drug use underground so we dont see it. We just dont know about it. You would be pretty foolish if you were to come up to me and announce on facebook or anywhere that you are cocaine user. Your boss is googling and you dont want that. So the drug war creates this weird effect to reinforce itself and distorts a picture of drug use that then needs the drug war itself. Anyway thats my free association. We were talking to those folks. Its about talking to those guys and it the political change happens by talking to the people at the top. Be honest i was never going to get that change. Chomsky says he disagrees speaking truth to power. I dont need to tell the truth. He knows he is just a psycho. We dont need to tell the truth to those people. We need to make them change and the only way to do that is to bond together and demand it. A brilliant answer. Thank you. [applause] i am doing a story right now about the impact of the war on drugs and a community that you call the ground zero for the war on drugs in baltimore and they are kind of addressing when he talked about how the conditions create the addictions and not the drugs. They are community that is kind of trying to keep the police away from what they are doing and the police have a new plan to send all these new officers into this community. Are there other examples you know of for these types of holistic communitybased efforts where Community Members are just trying to organize themselves prevent out the war on drugs is a federal policy but in baltimore to implement it by local law enforcement. I know there are laws in marijuana in maryland to decriminalize or legalize elsewhere but with heroin and harder drugs it seems like theres no end in sight. To legalize now were easing some of the punitive measures being faced. Also the stats stuck out to me about how when you are rested one drug dealer theres so much more violence that results in it that and i know you said its crazy to try to reason with people in power but it seems like people are just ignoring that her people in power are ignoring that are pretending thats not reality. Thats a really interesting question. The best example is vancouver. A guy named matthew fogg i quote in the book a speech he gave. If you have got a law that is broken by half the population which the drug laws have been you cant put half of the population in prison. So what are you going to do . You are going to go to the most unpopular groups and he said in a speech he was a cop in d. C. And im paraphrasing. He basically went to his boss one day in said hey bost y. When we to drug raids do we only go to the black neighborhoods but im pretty sure whitefield to drugs. His boss said Something Like of course they do but why people get lawyers and why people know judges and white people know journalists. Go for the lowhanging fruit. Im all for moderate form but compassion in the framework of the drug war would get us very far. An incremental change is better. It improves one persons life really and im in favor of. Im not one of these people who says things should stay bad to prove how bad they are. An incremental change is good but i dont tank, people say a shift in policing sure those things can be beneficial but ultimately if we have transferred drugs to armed criminal gangs and we have got drug lords against despised minorities is going to be awful. Im sorry thats not more hopeful. And its worth saying we talk about heroin legalization is Different Things for different drugs. No one wants there to be a crack i went to cvs. You have to understand that they have at the moment is anarchy. Unknown criminals sell unknown chemicals to unknown users in the dark. We dont know whats going on. We already have so what we need to do is expand regulation legal preparation to cover that. We havent done anything new. Those webs of regulations exist for illegal drugs. We have one web for alcohol that i would encourage people to expand to cover cannabis and party drugs like ecstasy. We have a web of regulations by powerful sleeping pills at cvs much to my dismay because i have jet lag at the moment. That would have a preparation where you have to go doctor and to cover that you would cover things like heroin as they have been in switzerland so successfully. The things i crack and meth is hard to know. You might have an adaptation of the vancouver model for some safe spaces where you can use provided you didnt leave. But its about, legalization doesnt mean and anarchic freeforall. What we have now is anarchic freeforall. Legalization is a way of regulating and extending control. Should we go to the next woman in the line. You are in fact the next one in line. I have a couple of questions. You want to just ask one because we have quite a few people. My question is came a little bit late so little bit wayside in the purity dresses but how did you come to this topic are your research and what is your background with drugs in your initial mentality before you started understand why drugs . s been up to secretly we have addiction and my family and tranquilizer addiction and that was up to the National Like a lot of people you have that background. I was eyes drawn to relationships with addicts and i was an on and off relationship with a person at a very good bad crack problem. Would you consider the clinics in switzerland and also in vancouver to be analogous to methadone clinics are gigantic where or even nicotine patches . All those places prescribed it as well. The something as complex as human addiction you need to have a broad menu. Anyone who says theres one solution to addiction and i found it and its this is a charlatan and you should listen to them. Addiction is complicated and Different Things will work for different people trade methadone should be on the menu abstinencebased treatment. Theres a whole range of things. I dont want to take anything off the menu. I forgot to mention ive got to make in my speech. Its important to understand there is a chemical component to addiction. Its not like the story we are told is false. We actually know statistically from an experiment that people in this room would have taken part in what percentage is. We know Menthol Cigarettes are less addictive than tobacco cigarettes and a compelling part of tobacco is nicotine. When in the early 90s they invented nicotine patches there was this huge wave of optimism by officials who said great smoking is going to end because you get the drug you are addicted addicted to it that the filthy carcinogenic smoke. There are people wearing nicotine patches in this room wanting a cigarette. 17 the people that use nicotine patches can stop and 83 cant. Thats also 17 is the camo component is enough to stop your addiction. Thats a lot. You can stop 17 of smoking thats a huge number of lights. Im not for a minute dismissing that the 70 is less than 83 and 83 as is all this other stuff we are talking about. There isnt that the woman next. Lets just go for it. Dan boozman. I like men but anyway. First of all thank you seriously. Its not just about the addiction are people who are seen as addicts. Its about the fact that you are creating a more vibrant conversation about pain in the human species and how is the human species we need to learn to face emotional pain and learn to deal with it and more intelligent ways because it affects all kinds of things. In Baltimore County we have a school we call a consciousness school. We work with everything attics and nonaddicts and all walks of life and we teach people how to bond with themselves. And with one another. We use holistic techniques medication breathing and movement and all kinds of things. I have the honor of being able to train what we call psychospiritual facilitators to help people people with these really departure themselves including addiction and not just addiction of substances but addiction to behaviors. I would just love to hear from you. I know what i say to people. I read your thing about love songs. You should be singing love songs to i know what i say to the people that i train. When i have a concern about whether loving these people too much is going to somehow make them codependent like to be manipulated by an addict. I know what i say to the people i train i would love to hear what you say. Thank you for what you said and thank you for the work you do. Its a big question. When you are saying that i pictured the clinic in portugal they went to. Im blanking on the name. The name is in the book. It was so amazing. I cant remember how much longer it was as i went to tent city in the chain gang. It was six months or Something Like that and there were all these addicts in this room and they were being massaged and taught to play trust games and how to express their feelings. I really wanted to fly back to arizona and grab those women take them to this clinic in portugal. I actually want to write more and research more about how we do the things were doing. Come and talk to me afterwards because i would be really interested. I hate the concept of codependency. Its loving someone. You know that show called intervention. I think intervention is a deeply evil show. It is the importing of the drug were logic rate the idea that you should say it does connection is the main driver of addiction. The idea that you should say to addict im going to cut you off and we are always a group going to cut you off unless you go to rehab which by the way this worked very well. Thats barbaric. Thats the exact wrong thing to do. The thing to do with addicts in your life and this is very hard and im not saying its easy and i find it reticular difficult for various reasons is to say ike unconditionally love you and whatever you do whether you were clean or whether you are using, what do you are sick or whether you are well i will always come and sit with you and be present with you. Thats the only thing you can ever do that will help an addict and it will be really hard and a lot of the time you wont be able to stomach it but its the only thing thats ever going to work. To develop a language that motioned codependency to love. Thank you. We have time for two more questions. Really am. Hello. Im currently homeless and a 2016 canadas mayor for baltimore. You have given me a lot of work to do for my platform including legalization of marijuana. My question to you is this which i find with any societal issue we have the money to do it tomorrow however if we end the war on drugs tomorrow with all of these great things that have been done in other countries where opposing capitalism. Its like trying to get the money out of politics so you are taking jobs away from billions of people in the prison industrial Industrial Complex etc. That facilitate the war on drugs so what are the steps to oppose that and eventually solve the problem . Is a super interesting question. Thank you. And i hope people vote for you. One the biggest backers of the antimarijuana legalization california was the Prison Guards union and i found that so depressing. You are right some people will lose their jobs when in the wind drugs. Order agents some cops although i can think of Better Things cops could be doing. Prison guards. What i would say is lets retrain those people to provide compassionate love for attics. There are loads of stuff they can do. Sometimes people say as well and this is a real concern actually. If you legalize it can have a huge number of young men who have made a reasonable living drug dealing. In some places is like taking General Motors out of detroit. This is the case in