 Welcome to our panel. My name is Brendan Cox. I'm going to be the moderator today We are all from law enforcement action partnership as you might tell from my accent I'm from law enforcement action partnership in the United States. My name is Brendan Cox As I said, I'll be the moderator today I'm the chair of the law enforcement action partnership board in the United States my full-time job is with the law enforcement Assisted diversion, I won't give you too many acronyms, and I'm a retired police chief from the United States We are here to talk about a really important topic today about access for psychedelic treatment for law enforcement officers across the world We're in a crisis. We know we're in a crisis and we need action and we need action immediately So all the panelists here are going to share their own perspectives their own stories Where they come from why they're here why they want to talk about the subject why it's so important to tell you a little bit about Leap we are a group of current and former members of law enforcement that believe the criminal legal system needs to be reformed We believe the war on drugs is brought about really a nearly Irreparable harms between police and the communities that we serve and that we're a part of you know We don't just serve the community. We are a part of the community. We have believed that prohibition needs to end We want to unite and mobilize the voice of law enforcement to support Smart drug policy reform and criminal justice reforms that will make communities safer by focusing law enforcement Resources on the greatest threats to public safety not drug enforcement Promoting alternatives to arrest incarceration addressing the root causes of crime And working toward a healing police community relations We also believe that police and first responders health and well-being is at a critical juncture Hence why this topic is so important And that there's current their therapies available that need to be made available to police now And that there's blockades that are in place that need to be lifted and what better place than to address those Than where we are here this week So we want to make sure that our voices are here that they're unified and that they're heard We also want to acknowledge that our panel is not very diverse. We realize we're a group of men up here today We promise we'll do better We try we have a group. We're not just a group of men that are involved in leap We have a very diverse network our executive director wonderful woman We do have a much more diverse group and we certainly recognize that What we represent here today Does not look as diverse as we could be in what what is a very diverse Place as we sit here today. So without further ado I'm gonna have us do some introductions here and then we're gonna go ahead and start talking about what we hear So I'm gonna go from left to right to go ahead and do our introductions Thank you Brandon and thank you everybody for coming to this session it means a lot to see a good turnout for this topic and Just know I appreciate y'all being here Your attention is the most valuable thing you can give somebody and I'm grateful to have it for the time that I do right now So my name is Sarko Gergerian. I'm a working police lieutenant from Massachusetts in the United States of America I'm also a working psychotherapist primarily doing work with adults and Aspiring psychedelic assisted therapist and I've had some experiences that I'm gonna be able to touch upon Which have allowed me to experience the psychedelics and I want to be able to share that information with you and some of the barriers that are there for people to access these substances also an activist To intelligently bring the war on drugs to an end And I identify as a harm reductionist. I believe that life first policies are the way to go And I'm also a speaker with the law enforcement action partnership us and Very very happy to be here with you all. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks, Brendan. Good morning, everybody. I'm my name's Neil Woods I'm a board member of the law enforcement action partnership in the United States and an active part of the organization in Europe and the UK I'm also an author and sort of Full-time drug policy activist Morning everybody Nick Lynn from the United Kingdom and I'm a retired police officer And I work for open society foundations. I've been there for eight years, which is a big human rights Organization that some of you may know and I work on police accountability And drug policy reform and other criminal legal system reforms Hello, everybody. I'm Fabien from France Sorry for my English, but I will try to explain my my story later. I am a specialist in suicide prevention so Very happy to be here for speaking with you Thanks, gentlemen So what we're going to do is we're each going to talk and then we're going to try to leave plenty of room for questions We'd really like to interact. So as I said, so my former life, I spent 23 years in law enforcement I ended my career as a police chief in Albany, New York For folks New York, you all think of New York City. Albany is the capital of New York State about 200 kilometers north of New York City and When it comes to the crisis that we're in There is a large political context to a lot of the issues that we have going on. There is a crisis of confidence in policing not just since George Floyd was murdered, although that was Certainly one of the key contacts of things that not just happened in the United States But across the globe when folks saw that video because that was proof to many people That there were abuses that were happening in the communities that we serve and that were a part of and that those Those abuses are real and need to be addressed But that there are real issues Reports of police violence continue to increase across the globe, right and some of those reports We can certainly talk about whether or not that's because we're doing a better job of capturing What's happening in our communities and making sure that we're actually Tracking it and we're paying attention to what's happening. But we know that Regardless of what's reported in the news crime is actually decreasing. It's not increasing. It's decreasing So we know that we still have to look at what's happening. I know that in the community that I served Trust between the police and the community was paramount to being able to actually solve crime To actually being able to build relationships and to be actually to be able to solve Situations that happened every day whether it was a crime or not because for the most part the calls for service that we were Responding to his police officers were actually not of criminal nature We solved a lot of problems and a lot of issues that had nothing to do with what was on our penal codes And a lot of times the community that I was serving didn't look like me So it was very important that I actually had a relationship But if we didn't have that relationship and if we didn't actually make sure that we were seeing eye to eye We were gonna have a problem real or perceived the police or the community the community or the police That saying that principle of policing has been around since Robert Peel correct I don't want to steal from my UK comrades, but at the end of the day that has been there for a long time So simple fact is that we cannot do our job Without trust and confidence and we cannot have community safety without trust and confidence Yes, the lawmakers make the law the police ultimately wind up are responsible for enforcing the law but at the end of the day we need to have that confidence and We need to make sure that the officers that are out there doing that job are taken care of and Have the tools they need to do that job So this is where this piece comes into is the health and well-being of our officers I can tell you over and over again that officers are exposed to trauma They see trauma on a daily basis much like our veterans see trauma on a daily basis and if we're not paying attention to their health and well-being and We're not giving them access to the necessary tools to get better and to be taken care of Then ultimately we're doing a disservice to them as individuals To us as an organization and to the communities we serve and at the end of the day We are not serving community well-being and safety So if we're not meeting those goals, we're ultimately not meeting our mandate. I Know that I had officers over and over again who after those critical incidents fought through the stigma of Actually asking for help of actually saying I can't do this. I can't answer another call This is not good for my well-being. This is not good for my family. I'm having issues at home I can't deal with helping out with with my children. I can't deal with my partner I'm no longer living with my partner and my family. I need help Only to run into roadblocks because the therapies that were available for those officers We're not good enough to get them well enough to not only be able to live a healthy life But to get back to a job that they actually desperately wanted to take part in and that I Desperately needed them to ultimately be able to do because they were not only good Individuals good human beings, but they were good cops They were good at what they did and the community liked them They were officers that the community trusted that they could do their job So we need to be able to give them tools So when I worked with our city psychologists and doctors and I worked with our crisis team And it was what are we going to be able to do with this officer? Our only alternative was I guess we're gonna have to submit their retirement paperwork because they can no longer do this job When guess what? There was a therapy that was out there but one we weren't knowledgeable enough to get them to it and To the roadblock block of the fact that this was is an illegal substance and We are living in a time of prohibition. I couldn't say let's get them access to that treatment So we were stuck with that 135 line of duty deaths in 2023 Ranging in the United States ranging from officers and vehicle crashes to being shot To COVID-19 to leftover incidents from 9-11 The average number of officers who take their lives in the United States a year from 2018 to 2022 was 181 More officers took their lives than lost their lives in the line of duty in England and Wells between 2011 and 2019 163 police officers took their lives in France 78 Officers took their lives in 2022 Think about those staggering numbers. Those are just the numbers from The members up here of the countries that we ultimately represent This is an epidemic that affects every country of people in this room every country that's represented at the UN These are staggering numbers and these are numbers that are actually collected. We know that these numbers aren't all Accurate and we know that these numbers don't include retired officers and we know that these numbers are underreported We also know that we have a crisis in hiring Recruiting and retention when it comes to policing. We have that problem in a lot of different disciplines But we have that problem when it comes to hiring retention and recruiting officers, especially good officers So if we know that we're losing officers at hot at the highest rates ever and policing across the world and We know that one of those reasons is officer wellness Safety and well-being and we know that there's access to legitimate Scientifically proven treatment. We need to open that door So without further ado, I'm going to turn this over to the panelists so you can hear from them Fabien I'd love you to be able to talk about Your history in France. I know you have a personal story. I'd love you to be able to talk about that, please Thank you, Brandon When I joined the French national police forces in 18 years ago, I had a single goal To win the war on drugs That's because I watched a place leave as my friend suffered the ravages of problem you drug use Some of them even became international drug dealers So I wanted to be useful and I joined the police force in Paris to fight trafficking my first assignment a man shot in the in the head in the streets and During my first four years on the streets. I Intervened 25 times for the same reason Then I move I move on to the certificate investigation unit In this unit. I realized that even if the police do the best investigation and arrest a lot of drug dealer It has no effect on trafficking On the contrary as soon as one dealer is a red another takes his place always more violence I then move to the transiskate is our favor, which is like DAE in US In the Paris narcotics squad the best group of investigator into drug trafficking I said to myself at last I'm going to be able to work and to be effective in arresting the biggest drug dealers. I Was wrong. I saw the corruption. I saw violence Races and excesses within the police force Above all apart from few high-profile case with major seizure highlight in the major drug trafficking in Paris continue continues to grow We're still at the same time the head of France narcotics police. It's involved in an unprecedented court case is accused of protecting his informants Which is the France biggest cannabis important importer who imports around 250 tons of cannabis a year in order to secure Major seizure by arresting is client So I try to alert the police authorities To the effectiveness of this policy and above all to the damage it was causing not only to the public But also to the police officer the frontline soldier in this war My chief didn't appreciate it is and I became a traitor in their eyes Sidelined disgraced and push forward the exit my leader told me the group no longer trust you and The same day my girl left me everything fell apart and that day I Was too much suffering. I Went to my first police station In my car locked myself inside and put my gun in my mouth ready to fire. I Was an elish loop in which I wasn't lucid. I was in too much pain Then a miracle happened the car alarm Went off and wake me up from this nightmare. I Consider lucky myself very lucky to be talking to you today and Because of these drugs war and the violence inside the police. I suffer now from PTSD like many of my colleagues in France In my case After that I couldn't stand the medication What enabled me to speak freely without fear was a therapy with Mdma with psilocybin or even LSD It's ironic. I know because the drugs I wanted to fight ended up saving my life. I Think it's important to talk about my experience because I'm not the only police officer in this situation Over the last 25 years in France in the only national police forces 1200 police officer takes their lives 1200 There is an urgent need to get people talking and to offer every possible solution to police officer and I think Psychedelics are one of these solutions Obviously, we must stop the drug war. Thank you. Wow follow that Thanks Fabian I'm also diagnosed with complex PTSD. It took Seven years to get a diagnosis, which is completely common. Most people take that long To get diagnosed But I also have a diagnosis of moral injury. It took three psychiatrists and Multiple psychiatric nurses and various therapists to work out that that was an additional complex nature of my condition Now I've I've done a lot of social media. I do lots of interviews I'm very public about the fact that I suffer from PTSD and That has meant that I've been contacted by police officers from all over the world Who are very grateful for me to try and break down the stigma and talk about this publicly So I'm in I'm in contact content constant contact with many of these officers and They all have something in common. Well, they all have a few things in common one one of those things in common Is that all of them have suffered their? PTSD or moral injury as a result of fighting on the front line of the war on drugs I mean every single one of them. I'll give you a couple of examples One who was a detective. I knew actually he was a very gentle soul as a detective very kind very quiet and His his PTSD manifested when he drove a car into a wall straight into a wall and He was ostracized and treated with suspicion as we all are when we when we have a mental health breakdown within policing and nowadays He has developed a Symptom of PTSD, which is very common, which I myself. I'm very grateful I do not suffer from and that is a Temper an extreme temper so that when he has medical appointments He has to be accompanied because his temper has become legendary within with his medical practitioners He has to be chaperoned because he gets so angry. I'm very grateful that that is not a symptom But I personally have Another colleague who used to do exactly the same kind of undercover work that I did he now His symptoms are again significantly worse than mine. He can't leave his house without his support dog so he spends most of his time indoors doing very little and He can disassociate and lose entire days. That's why his support dog is there to look after him Now he also suffers from moral injury and when we talk and we talk often He's explained to me where some of his triggers come from and one of his PTSD Events is when he got attacked by a drug dealing gang and they beat him so badly They kicked him on the floor until he's they broke his back And he was left and he's left now with life changing industries and the injuries and he has a fentanyl patch to deal with The pain every day But he says that's not my worst nightmare. My worst nightmare is Somebody who committed suicide now In the United Kingdom there was we went through a period of time where where officers were encouraged to Target specifically regular offenders prolific offenders And so his sergeant instructed him to whenever he saw this particular Problematic heroin consumer you would he would stop him and stop and search him like every time he saw him That was an instruction from his sergeant and he said we did as he was told That problematic heroin user then took his own life and named That officer in his suicide note as one of the people that was adding to his pressures So my colleague may well have all of the trauma of his physical attacks, but the thing that's affected him most is The guilt about the harm that he caused to somebody else. I have moral injury Myself I've had more near-death experiences that I can actually count honestly Maybe I've blanks several of them out. I've had a samurai sword to my throat I've been stripped at gunpoint various events like that But again the thing that haunts me most of all is the harm that I've caused to other people One example is quite similar to my friend Nick's One of the people I manipulated when working undercover When he was in police custody He ended up being on suicide watch and that's because Whilst undercover he believed I was his one friend in the world the one person he could talk to and though so that Betrayal was what made him suicidal now That affects me as a human being that I have caused that harm to another human being I've caused that harm and this is the origin of moral injury now moral injury was first identified as a psychological Trauma as a medical condition in veterans returning from the Vietnam War Now we think of PTSD as being a military thing and moral injury has been a military thing But a good friend of mine who was a former former military veteran says to me well I've dealt with my PTSD in one way because what helps me said that I can leave that my battlefield is in another country They said I wonder how you feel that your battlefield is in the streets you walk walk into every day So the point I'm trying to make that is to not to minimize or compare People's suffering and trauma because people suffering and trauma is individual But what I'm trying to say in that comparison is that Trauma for police officers Has extra complications. It's really complicated But I have to emphasize that all of these examples I've talked about are all Because of what police are tasked to do because of a punitive drug policy Prohibition really is very much at the heart of this problem That's not to say that police don't deal with trauma every day. They do, you know I have horrific memories of being involved in in in Terrible dealing with terrible car crashes or dealing with with suicide or or people who have suffered serious sexual violence all of these things add up and one psychiatrist Described it to me as as the death of a thousand cuts, which wasn't necessarily a helpful comment from a psychiatrist But it did sort of help me understand that this is a multi-layered thing and It was also it also I learned to understand that When I did my first last operation I was already suffering from PTSD and So everything else was layered on top of that and it becomes complicated So this is urgent it is not just a create a policing crisis, but a political crisis and a great step in helping police and helping the community and also Edging is along towards a sensible drug policy Would be to make sure that we can get psychedelic therapy for police right now. Thank you Okay. Hi everybody My name is Nick Lynn. I was a police officer for 30 years in the United Kingdom I did many different jobs as a constable, which is like right at the start at the bottom level Right up to roles at chief inspector level I've been on the front line and I've also managed lots of police officers in many different scenarios As I said in my intro for the last eight years I've worked for open society foundations and actually one of the reasons I ended up working for open society right foundations because I Found It problematic the way in which the police my colleagues Were using our powers particularly stop and search actually so I worked with open society For ten years before I retired from the police and I've been there For eight years since as you've heard police officers in and indeed lots of first responders Deal with trauma over and over again their own as well as other peoples I have been to hundreds of car crashes fights murders sudden deaths Protests suicides. I've actually been to three plane crashes in my policing career and all of this has an effect You get trauma It can result in PTSD and a host of other unhealthy side effects Although I've never been diagnosed with PTSD. There must be some scars But many of my scars come from inside Policing the way I was treated by my colleagues and those scars are also from the way I as a black man have been treated by police officers in the streets Being stopped and searched Being assaulted by the police sometimes even when they they knew I was a police officer And when you complain that makes it even worse You get targeted because you can play But who suffers from police initiated harm the most? black and brown people indigenous people People lower down the social hierarchy or caste system or other social minorities like LGBTQ plus people This disparity is seen globally and whilst police brutality corruption and Abuse of power happens all over the world It hits us as in the list of groups of people that are just read out the hardest It has different labels racist proportionality race disparity Unconscious bias, but what it is is racism classism and many other isms Maybe none of this is surprising if you think about the way in which policing was developed the foundations on which it's built were racist Depending on and reinforcing social hierarchies So these defects the racism for example as structural its institutional racism But it lives and breathes in individual officers as well When officers join the police in the UK and but all over the all over the world they read some site the sort of declaration And they say I did it in 1985 actually a long time ago Saying that they will protect life and property and they do But whose lives and whose property is prioritized and why is some property? prioritized over other people's lives Policing is a flawed model which actually can't be fixed We need new ways of making people and community safe We need long-term investment funding support time for those new ways of working to succeed and thrive Or to fail and learn we need all of that That will ultimately ultimately mean fewer police officers and less policing in its current form With communities themselves finding better ways of keeping everyone safe That will take time lots of it in the meantime. We've got the current system of policing and we have to work with that But if we do all the same things that we've done for the last 40 50 60 however many years it is We will get the same results. So we have to try new things So how do we end up in this session or how do we make the leap to this session? I included that pun in there Psychedelics for police Giving cops mushrooms LSD ecstasy to give them their Netflix names sounds a bit crazy on the face of it You know this saying hurt people hurt people Well, remember this one hurt cops with their trauma and PTSD hurt people This happens when they're at work It happens when they're dealing with the public with their colleagues, but it also happens when they're at home as well and This hurt hurts black and brown people and the others I've listed the hardest too By the way, the so-called war on drugs is similarly built on racist and discriminatory Foundations and you know, we need to throw that in the bin, but I won't elaborate back on that back to the psychedelics I'm not suggesting Treating police officers trauma with psychedelics is the solution. It's not Policing needs structural reform and a reimagining of community safety with the right resources to back that up And we need an end to the prohibition of drugs and to deal with all substances in a way that prioritizes harm reduction health legal regulation Education all the things that we know actually work But as we travel along that road Treating cops suffering from trauma with psychedelics might reduce some harms for cops and the public It could reduce the racist outcomes from a flawed system it would be irresponsible for us not to try it and Psychedelics are a good thing Psychedelics can do good things for people including cops. I'm smiling for a reason when I say those words So we need your help to support these ideas to discuss them share them to be open to acknowledging That we have to true try new things to get different better results Psychedelics for cops might just be one of them. Thank you so I'm still in policing And my careers spanned 15 years so I've done patrol work front-line sergeant and then got elevated to lieutenant and While I was a patrol officer, I'm gonna go into this because I think it's important I Just I noticed that we had a lot of information in the police systems that we weren't using The police systems that are full of information that the detectives use to make cases for court Luckily in my community, I was given permission to use that same data set to search for people Just like the detectives do To find them and try to connect with them on a heart level get them to trust me so that I could offer them what they needed To keep them out of cages and coffins. I bring that up because I hope that that can help reimagine What policing could look like in the future now? I'm not saying We don't need good detective work because violence is inherent to the human creature it happens and sometimes Violence must be investigated in a careful and competent way to create a case for court That's rock solid and we all need to know that that can happen if we're the victims of violence But there's a gap and we can't fill it if we're allowed like my friend said to experiment And why shouldn't we I? Think our people deserve that our police officers deserve it as well So I want to touch upon something It's the unscientific nature of schedule one Now we know this is the case and I'm gonna point one thing out here and we can go on for a two-hour discussion about this but When you have fentanyl listed as a medicine Right and you have plants cacti and fungi on schedule one that have been used for centuries for self-care You know something's wrong and in policing we have this principle in the US at least called the fruit of the poisonous tree and when you build something on Some on a foundation That's untruthful It will eventually collapse The sooner the better Because we have to allow access to these substances to not only our police, but our civilians Our governments know they're safe Many of the substances listed on schedule one are actually not addictive Some people say they're anti addictive I Schedule one blocks access to psychospiritual religious development resilience and capacity expansion of our first responders and experts as Well as medical access to these substances The reason is because there's heavy stigma around getting a diagnostic label to access medicine My friends here talked about that If you get labeled with a Diagnostic label if you get labeled with depression or PTSD or anxiety You have some serious problems and if your whole life is built on that paycheck. It can be catastrophic So what do we know? These numbers are for the United States on an average career Police are exposed to 200 plus critical incidents in a career now a critical incident Just one is enough to send somebody's life sideways Just imagine a nervous system that has over 200 in it and Then when the person pops we act surprised Really? Come on We die five to ten years after retirement Guys, that's 10 to 20 years before our civilian brothers and sisters Is that related to the trauma? I think so We die by suicide at a rate two to three times higher than others in the population More officers die by suicide than attack on the street We survive our careers with subclinical PTSD depression and anxiety and our divorce rates are through the roof We have a problem You know and when I call 9-1-1 or my wife calls 9-1-1 I want somebody that's well That's rested. That's resilient to show up to the house to help out. I'm sure everybody in this room does as well Talking about the evidence base that already exists Australia Said there is enough of an evidence base to start prescribing MDMA and psilocybin and We're still waiting. I mentioned that non-addictive or anti-addictive nature of some of these substances I have firsthand experience about this and I will touch base on it and I am going to intentionally go over my time Many of these substances are already recognized as sacred sacramental compounds By the federal government in the United States What's that about? How can they be sacred sacramental compounds and schedule one at the same time? We lose over 100,000 people a year in the United States to substances labeled medicines While we keep plants on schedule one and send our Enforcers in to kick doors down and arrest people in high-stakes situations with weapons pulled out and pointed at human beings Two final points I Wanted to share with you How I access to MDMA in the United States? I was lucky enough to run across a gentleman named Rick Doblin at a chiefs of police conference Where he presented phase two clinical trial results that show Almost 70% of people who get MDMA assisted therapy Have their treatment resistant severe PTSD pushed into sustained remission This is still not available to people He was able to get me into a federally sanctioned research protocol for healthy normals For me to be able to access Pharmaceutical grade MDMA paired with therapy What I experienced was numinous love and sacred gratitude For everything that went into me being who I am in this present moment It changed my life forever. I have also been blessed with being able to access psilocybin and five MEO DMT in A sacred religious context because luckily in the United States of America that is a constitutionally protected right Here's my final point In front of you all I'd like to call upon the Biden administration To immediately do away With schedule one It's a lie it's killing our first responders and Our people enoughs enough Thank you all appreciate that very much. So we got about five minutes. So I want to open things up to everybody I just want to ask one quick question I just want everybody to be very brief in any responses, but especially Fabian and Neil from what you guys shared So we talk a lot about stigma and we talk about the fact that we want access and we're asking for everybody's assistance But we have been as police officers told the people that use drugs are bad People that use drugs are dirty and that the war on drugs is needed because we need to control those people So we're asking now officers to break that stigma and gain access So especially based on this source the one your personal stories that you shared and thank you for sharing those What do we need to do to break down that stigma for officers? So we make sure that they understand that no people that use drugs are the same. They're us We all use drugs and we need to stop that stigma What is our word of advice to our brothers and sisters that wear that uniform every day? I think It's important as nil say as I I do in France to Speak about that publicly because I think cops Inside have many many many open mind, but with the group It's difficult and I think as as nil as everybody here We can started one other things to Make cops share with trust Yeah, I think that's a good point There's not much I can add to that is other than that we just need to keep talking about this and with that in mind Leap we have this is the beginning of a campaign for us today the beginning We will be doing events wherever we're invited. So please invite us We we we will replicate this and and other work Wherever we're invited, but we will but we also have many points in the calendar For the next three years This is a long-term commitment for us to get people talking about this topic because it's it It's the it's the right strategy to be talking about this breaking down the stigma and We when we get the first cops in multiple countries receiving treatment and that treatment is Public knowledge then we will consider this a victory and we we won't stop until we have a victory Thank you both appreciate that so with that we will open things up to questions I'm the in the very back sir, and then I'll get to you sir. So I Nate Landau for the veterans action council first of all, thank you so much for all your courage of sharing your stories They know it's not easy We as veterans really identify our suicide rate in the United States is 22 per day, and that's just what's reported on A military level. It's a federal agency. So it's not gonna be easy, but the reform is top-down How can we help you on a local level because correct me if I'm wrong? Polices are either regulated by the city council or by the state. How can we help you on a local level? Thank you Thank you very much appreciate it. So I definitely think that I'll speak from from the US perspective I think pairing up more on the bill that you all were able to pass on a federal level To get access for veterans, which was amazing I think to be able to do that more on a state-by-state level which I think is what's probably needed for police Would be some amazing work. So I think if we could touch base on that I think that that is exactly what's needed. So thank you, and I appreciate thank you for all of your work all the way around But especially on this very much appreciate it Yes Again also with Veterans Action Council Michael Crow. It's really appreciate your your exposing your heart today and sharing your experiences Our work Involved adding post-traumatic stress as a qualifying condition under state medical marijuana laws Recognizing that the FDA was taking too long and that we weren't getting the medicines that we wanted in the in the pharmacy That was wildly successful But although we've been characterized as wanting you know heroin and soda machines or whatever It's not true and actually we've talked at great length with Rick Rick Dolvin about these issues because Well cannabis is a palliative Symptomatic relief that can be given to a wide array of patients as a take-home medicine. You're talking about inpatient a Psychotherapy assisted No, I mean psychedelic assisted psychotherapy So how do we bridge that? I mean we until we have FDA approved medicines and still we have you know actual Places where you can go receive this inpatient care. Well, how do we deal with? the Market demand that's being met by storefronts and access which again is not something that we approve of Generally for this type of treatment because of the nature of its inpatient You know success Yeah, I think I think it's a good point But I think it's it's more complicated than that because people need different types of therapy and actually I mean I speak to a lot of people who provide therapy that's happening now on the underground and most recently I met somebody who assists both military and police around Europe do Psychedelic therapy using psilocybin in in Amsterdam and his point was that he fills the gap in people's needs because he doesn't provide that therapy he just provides the setting and Coaches them before using it now you could argue that that is risky You could argue and some people will argue that that's risky However, there is a extraordinary success from that very simple very simple underground Application of these chemicals and that for some people just access to the drug is all they need They don't really need to complicate it. They don't need to be medicalized up Necessarily in that way, which is why we need an open dialogue about this We need to be working out exactly what people need We need to be flexible about it and sometimes simple about it, which of course means that apart from campaigning specifically for access to well-designed Psychedelic therapies we all we also just need to be campaigning to decriminalize this and increase access so that people have that choice So in a way the campaign also needs to be about making this as simple as possible Thank you so much for your presentations. My name is Aril Kislam from Norway. I'm calling myself for drug user representatives I am tears in my eyes and goosebumps So I want to thank you and your message is so important and so strong and you're here and you're in conferences and you're Alight in the media at least Neil Woods. I know but please make your statements in videos and spread them because it's really got to Needs to get through but I want to ask you one thing If you could give me a short explanation about you have been the first large line Prohibitionists what made you Change your mind But what exactly happened that you're sitting here now from that to this conference. What was the turning point? Thank you I mean, I'll give a quick answer which is you just see the futility of it all You know, you see how it doesn't make any difference. It's like is it King Canute's like trying to stop the sea coming in or is that the It doesn't work. You know, it really doesn't work and I suppose eventually because policing of The drug war is exciting actually. It's all the you know lots of kit and equipment and exciting operations So it's it's it really sort of drives you a bit crazy because you realize It's making zero difference actually what it's doing. What we have been doing is making it worse And I don't know how many years it took me to realize that but yeah I realized it and then and then you change what you do and and you sit in places like this and tell people Well, because I think as it's a it's quite powerful coming from us. Maybe so We already know this as well but the answer to hate is love and I love My friends and family who have relationships with intoxicating substances as well as the ones that don't Hello, thank you so much and I will try to be very quick. I'm Linus Taveras from Eurasian harm reduction association and young way of Lithuania So first question is about Approach to psychedelic therapy. Is there some discussion about Among you about paying attention to also indigenous knowledge system ethical guidelines provided by indigenous communities or dialogue with them and not only approaching through rigid Western scientific approach, but also spirit medicinal and the second one are there any Initiatives from leapside towards war and torn Countries like for example law enforcement in Ukraine. We have catastrophic numbers of people who has PTSD So yeah, thank you. Yeah, good questions I mean, we're not the experts in how we formulate the structures of these therapies But it we I'm working on what there's lots of us working on this in a lot of detail and you make a good point because there are hundreds and hundreds of years of expertise from Shamanistic traditions, which is essentially different types of therapy ways of using this and and incorporating it into community consciousness that people's Experiences need to be understood afterwards and the shamanistic experience Caters for that in terms of a philosophical thinking So there is a risk in overmedicalizing this and not learning the lessons of what's been practiced for a long time And I think we need to sort of fixed fit that and hard wire that into our thinking About psychedelics as as we learn because we've got many decades of learning about this to come to be fair because we've had scientific censorship Preventing access to this for the last 50 years. So we need to be aware of that shamanistic tradition on the second point We actually have representatives from Ukraine who are actually in the audience who are looking after Ukrainian veterans and we know them and I've also met Several Ukrainian police officers who are who are actually keen on on accessing this for their citizens as well So it is part of our discussions and it is actually part of our considerations that in pushing this agenda For police officers. We also are pushing this agenda for every single person that needs it around the world And we have a catastrophe going on at the moment in Ukraine and there are a lot of people who need this therapy Immediately, so we we have that very much in mind in saying the things that we do today at this panel Hello to all these wonderful people We are that people mentioned from Ukraine who supervised veterans When having psychedelic therapy It's been since 2014 when we started to have issues with Russia and It was in the form of war of combat situations so we had lots of veterans since then and that amount of suicides that amount of Alcohol issues were so terrific that I Decided to start having psychedelic sessions for veterans in Kiev in Ukraine and What I've seen what I witnessed pushed me to hear today because I saw so many stories of People who released their traumas who released their pain in one single session it took like six seven hours to forget all the Pain all the violence they witnessed and to start living from New clear background So I'm really thankful to you for sharing for doing what you are doing And I'm completely sure that this time is now when we have no choice but to Make psychedelic a therapy legal for people. Thank you All right. Well, thank you all we appreciate all of your attention so early in the morning You all enjoy the rest of your day. I know a few of us will be here If anybody else has any other questions enjoy the rest of your day Enjoy the rest of your week and thank you all for all of you that you are all doing. Thank you