 I've got my condition as a result of fighting in the front line of the war of troops, because these gangsters are even more violent, these are more vicious than anyone you've dealt with so far. And my head was starting to hurt, you know, and I'm thinking I'm not going to get out of here. Because you have a fascinating story and for our friends at home, Neil is probably the country's most or one of the most successful undercover policemen. I'm privileged to know two former undercover detectives, both of whom have over or at least one of whom has overcome some huge issues with trauma. I also had Peter Blexley on the show, speaks very, very highly of Neil, being one of the country's leading detectives. So thank you on behalf of the podcast, Neil. Shall we go back to when you joined the police, which I've just been reading about? Yeah, if you like. I joined the police in 1989. And the reason I did that, I didn't have a sort of boyhood ambition to join the police. I wasn't one of these people who always wanted to do it. But I went to university by mistake. Why I ever thought I would enjoy a business studies course. I have no idea. So I dropped out of that. And then I was wondering what to do next. I was considering backpacking around Europe actually, because a couple of friends had done that fruit picking and that kind of thing. That sounded adventurous. But then I saw an advertisement for the police in the newspaper. So unable to make my mind up, I flipped a coin. So I was literally flippant about my career choice. But once I got into the police, I did get this sense of duty that I really should try and do a good job. Unfortunately, I was crap at it. I was no good at it at all. The first couple of years, I almost lost my job several times. I didn't realise how much of a naive 19-year-old I was when I started in the police. But I survived the first two years, just. And then I moved to the north of the county because I was working in Derbyshire, went back to the north of the county working at Gloucester. But then I improved enough to eventually get an attachment to the drug squad in 1993. And that's when my career took off, I suppose. Because one of them asked me if I wanted to have a go at buying some crack cocaine, which I thought was a really strange suggestion. I was given £20 and directed to this blue terrace door in Normanton in Derby, knocked on the door and said, can I have a ting, please? And after a conversation, he sold me this £20 rock of crack. And I came back to the drug squad, like, there you go, I've got it. And that then defined the next 14 years of my life. Because that kind of low-level undercover work was entirely new in the UK. It had been going on in America for a good 20 years. But undercover work in the UK was kept to the more sophisticated, high-end undercover work that Peter Blacksley used to do. But this working your way up from the street level up was new. It was a new tactic. And it's interesting because that first chap I bought off, when I was walking away said, you take care now, don't get yourself arrested, which I thought was really nice of him. That's really nice advice. But it's important to note that, because on that first occasion, it wasn't really that difficult. Because he didn't know that there were cops out there trying to catch him out this way. And not many people did. So to start with, it was not too difficult. But of course, he went to prison. And people talk to each other. And suddenly, all of the organized crime gangs, which run the supply of heroin and cracking and are in cities, they suddenly knew that there was a new tactic out to get them. And so it became increasingly difficult. The very beginning I was doing operations for a few weeks, but that quickly became much longer. And I ended up traveling all around the UK, well, all around England, working for no less than six or seven months at a time. Because it became more difficult to actually gather the evidence. Yeah, so that's how I started as a young cop. But it's probably worth noting that the reason that there was suddenly a drive for new tactics in 1993, and the reason that took me to that door buying that crack cocaine is that for a few years, there had been a growing moral panic in the UK. And that moral panic was about crack cocaine. And we'd had this moral panic for years, literally years before we actually had any crack cocaine on the streets, because the tabloid newspapers were publishing stories every week about how crack cocaine was destroying America and destroying communities with a heavy emphasis on black communities. And it wasn't so many years before that Nancy Reagan had, you know, was right across everyone's TV screen, saying one smoke of crack cocaine and you're addicted for life. It'll destroy you in one instant. Shall we? Is it the right time to point out that all husbands, cronies, were importing it into the country in the first place? Well, allegedly the CIA, you know, it is suggested that the CIA had something to do with some of that to fund various foreign military endeavors. But I think that sort of detracts from some of the truths about crack cocaine. The first truth is that she was talking nonsense was Nancy. It's no more likely to suddenly get you hooked than the brandies that got Nancy Reagan hooked. You know, she I mean, she was notoriously an alcoholic. But she was no more likely to be an alcoholic than anyone is likely to have been someone to develop a problem with crack. There are, you know, they're around the same kind of percentage of people who do develop a problem with those with those drugs. So, you know, to create a moral panic about one drug and not the other is literally a deception. It's just the persecution of a minority. And some of the social deprivation in America, and where problematic drug use took hold, you know, that there are social and health drivers behind this and the political rhetoric to blame minorities for these problems is a way of avoiding the political reality that you should be doing something about those social drivers. So, you know, we can talk about the CIA and the wars, but that's that's a distraction really from from from the real from the real issues if you forgive me for putting it in those terms. No, it's fine. So, yeah, so quite quickly, I was I was working for no less than six or seven months at a time. Now, I should point out at this time, there was there was no training for this. There was no training at all. So I was literally just trying to learn on the way. And a few years later, I helped develop the training for other undercover cops. But in those first few years, it really was just trying to work out what happened. Now, to start with, I presented myself as a bit of a traveling Scali. Now, you don't sound like you've got the accent that wouldn't understand what that word means Scali. So it's a sort of Northern term, like a traveling thief, someone who would have a go at any bit of thieving. Mate, do you know, do you know who runs the drugs trade where I live? It's all run by Liverpool and gangs. Well, well, yeah, I mean, that's that's around that. That's true for as far north as Aberdeen and as far south as as Brighton in the UK, you've got you've got Liverpool gangs doing that. So you so you understand Scali then. So so I would dress up as a Scali, I would be there with my Nike Air Max trainers, my full tracksuit, you know, no disrespect to anyone listening, who's really into their sportswear. It's just that in the 1990s, that really was the uniform of thieves. So so that you know, that would open me a few doors. You know, I could talk that kind of talk. But I quickly realised that actually, the people with the most connections, the people who knew all of the dealers, who could help me out the most with the people who were really on the fringes of society, people who were living in squats or homeless or were sort of on the fringes of that kind of community, people who had the most problematic drug use, the people with the most trauma. So I realised that if I dressed up a little bit like them, I could fit into that community. It opened up much more doors for me. So that's what I started to do. And I got extra scruffy and started hanging around in squats and getting to know people like that. And I learned that in order to facilitate what I needed, then it was best to manipulate the most vulnerable people in those groups. Anyway, it's a harsh reality that in undercover policing, the vulnerable people are the easiest to manipulate. And that's what I'm about. I'm about manipulating entire communities and, you know, the individuals that can help me do that. So I picked on the vulnerable people. And that that brought me much more success because they knew all of the people I could manipulate them into into introducing me up the tree, climb the ladder and get close to the people who were the regional suppliers and start dealing with them directly. And sometimes by increasing the quantities I was buying or making myself out to be a bit of a dealer, I would be traveling and selling this elsewhere. So that was that was the tactics I used. But there was for my support crew, because the way the way that the tactic or rather the procedure developed around me, because I would be traveling around the country on loan to different police forces. And procedurally what happened eventually is that because of the growing evidence of corruption that existed as a result of the illicit drugs trade, a system developed. And by sorry, by this stage there was a specialist regional department which became responsible for running my kind of work. It was called the East Midlands Special Operations Unit. And the strategy they developed is that wherever I would go to a host force, I would have to have a set team, a certain team around me. So I'd have to have someone looking after my technical equipment, exhibits, someone specifically designated for intelligence, backup teams, so that very key roles around me. But before I got there, they would all be given a lawful order that they would not to ask me my real name and not to ask me where I was from. So I was using the same pseudonym for the gangsters as I was to the cops I was working with. And that was to protect me from corruption. So I was cocooned and sort of separated really even from the cops that I was that I was working with. Obviously that policy that became, you know, that written policy is in itself an admission that corruption is endemic because otherwise those safeguards wouldn't be needed, they wouldn't be needed. But it meant that I became a figure of some bemusement, you know, and fascination to those cops because it creates a bigger air of sort of mystery, doesn't it? Oh, there's this undercover cops going to come and work for us and we're not even allowed to ask him his real name or where he's from. You know, it creates that sort of mystery and separation between me and them. But, you know, we tend to break it down with Hema. And I remember one day working in Nottinghamshire, I was being I was being dropped off in Nottingham. And I developed a technique that week, whereas if I took my clothes off at the end of the day and put them in tightly in a plastic bag and put them in a warm place overnight, they'd smell really bad the next day. For me, this was quite useful for cover, you know, to fit in with people. But anyway, they were driving me to a place I needed to be dropped off and they were winding the window down and sticking their heads out the window saying, you know, you smelly bastard, you're going to make this car stink all day. So this was making me laugh. But anyway, they dropped me off and I looked a real mess. And that day I was going meeting heroin dealer, who I'd been buying weights off for a while. He was someone I trusted. But he was being driven around in a taxi this day, but he still made me walk over a mile to meet him in a certain place. And it was just on the edge of what was then, it might still be now, but then it was the the edge of the red light area in Nottingham, which was near quite a sort of sort of posh area, really, but near to where they have the goose fair. And there's this long curving road. And I was walking along and I heard this voice say, sex for sale. I thought, I know this is Nottingham, but it's half past one in the afternoon, that seems quite forward, you know, to be shouting wears like that, a half past one in the afternoon. So I carried on walking. And I heard again, sex for sale. I couldn't see anyone because it's a long curving road. And again, I heard sex for sale. But then I saw her as the curve as the curve in the road straightened a bit. I was walking towards her. And as I walked towards her, she looked me up and down and said, cheap sex for sale. I thought, well, I suppose that's a testament to how scruffy I look. So I suppose I've done a good job there. And I walked past her and I went to carry on and meet the dealer. And then later on, you know, after I'd bought some heroin, dropped, did an evidence drop, bought some crack, went back and the debrief and the team at the end of the day so I could tell the intelligence guy everything so he could go and research and cross reference things. The team sat around listening to me and I told them about this. I told them about this woman off in cheap sex. And they all laughed. And I've done training to police all over the place when I've told them about this. And the audience always laughs. Wherever I go, generally people laugh. But you know, I look back on that day and I have no idea what the dealer looks like. I can't remember. No idea. It's just one face in an endless, endless sea of dealer's faces. But I can close my eyes and I can see her perfectly. I can see her very clearly. I know exactly what she looks like. Because she was tall and slim and she wasn't a day over 21, I would say. And she was clutching a kind of special brew, super strength lager. And the reason that she was clutching that kind of special brew brew was because she was struggling with the withdrawal from heroin. And it's that withdrawal from heroin that had taken her to the streets of Nottingham to offer me cheap sex. Now, I was the agent of the state that day. Consider the resources that had gone into just my support team and my wages and all the technical equipment. And you know, drugs policing is the most expensive policing. There's more money goes into that than anything else. Consider the resources that have gone into me. What? Theoretically, to prevent problematic drug use or to prevent drug use. Whereas the person that actually needed help as the agent of the state, I just walk right past her. She doesn't get any help. We just keep fighting this war. And I just keep going after the endless sea of dealers. And so that, you know, that's what sticks with me. And that was one of the first instances where I realized or began to realize, because actually, I was resistant to the obvious conclusions, if I'm honest. But that was one of my doubts started creeping in that there's something not right here. Because I'm seeing all this pain. And we're fighting this war so aggressively. And we're not doing anything to help people's pain. Why do you think, Neil, that you have that all important quality of empathy when I think it's fair to say good percentage of coppers. Yeah, this is such a big subject to try to cover in a sentence or two. But I've seen the way coppers talk about young people. So you take a young person, they come from an underprivileged background, you know, background traditionally ostracized, discriminated against, living on maybe a sinker state, the dad's doing this, the mum's doing that, if indeed, the dad's around, probably not, right? And in the police that I'm talking about size, that kid is the problem, right? And it's, and I think we're all a little bit like that when we're young servicemen. I don't know at what point you, the balance tips. And yours clearly when when you're relating to this woman, you had empathy there. So, yeah, I mean, there's a few things to unpick that from, I mean, I think times are changing. That's the most important thing to say. And now, a large number of police do understand are becoming trauma aware. And they do understand that this war on drugs is a disaster. You know, there are increasing numbers of cops that realise that. And a lot of that is because of the work of LEAP, and LEAP UK, that the organisation I'm part of, you know, we speak to police, we have a presence online. And we're helping the social movement grow within police. But the most important thing to note is that the stigma, not just within policing, but within wider society comes from the fact that this the behaviours have been criminalised, and that minorities have been criminalised as a result of our drug policy. You know, the most dangerous drug to society and individuals is alcohol. You know, this has been proven, there's a very famous paper published in the Lancet in 2010 by David Nutt and others, that shows that alcohol is substantially the most dangerous drug, and that some drugs which society considers to be dangerous are actually not so much at all. So this is about prejudice, misinformation, and most importantly, it's about the criminalisation of people. Because, you know, drugs are an inanimate object. We say that drugs are illegal, but it's actually the behaviour of some people has been made illegal by policy which has no foundation in evidence at all. But the trouble is, once somebody is made a criminal, then in the eyes of the public, and particularly the police who have to carry out laws, that creates a stigma. And, you know, there's a hardcore of police who are very resistant to the kind of things that we say at least, I say, because actually they see drug laws as a really useful way of catching bad people. And they don't distinguish between somebody who burglars a house and somebody who has a gram of cocaine in their pocket. They're just bad people you catch. And actually, section 23 of the Misuse of Drugs Act, ridiculously huge, you know, one of the powers in the war chest of the Misuse of Drugs Act, that they just see that as a useful way of catching people. And of course, that plays out on the streets in the way that it exposes unconscious bias and endemic, and, you know, systematic racism in society. Because, you know, if you're a black person, you're 10 times, at least 10 times more likely to be stopped searching for drugs than you are if you're white. And that's because this othering of people that our drug policy contributes to means that prejudices are exposed and amplified. Because, you know, drug policy, it's about other people. It's about the behavior of those other people, much the same as the laws against homosexuality. There isn't really any difference. It's about the behavior of individuals. It's about individual liberty. I mean, as a young cop, I didn't care about liberty. I cared about security. You know, the classic police view that individual liberty should be sacrificed for the greater security. You know, I didn't really understand the nuanced politics then. But I didn't care about, you know, about someone's liberty. I would have quite happily gone get a search warrant and smashed someone's door in and searched the house without really much care about what that meant to that person's individual freedom and liberty. Now, I'm very sensitive to it now because I've learned. But when it comes down to our drug laws, this is a serious breach of liberty which is affecting the whole fabric of society. If someone is gay, then that's them. That's who they are. And it's their mind. It's their body. It's their sexuality. It's not for the state to interfere with that. If someone can't stand alcohol but likes to use cannabis to unwind after a long working week, then that's them. They're different to me. But it's their mind and their body. And it's important that that should be respected by the state. In fact, it's the responsibility of the state to make sure that their behavior is made as safe as possible through regulation. I understand that now. And it's obvious once it clicks, once you understand the damage that's been caused by infringing on individual liberty, then this attempt to restrict the behavior of some people is what gave birth to organized crime. We didn't have organized crime until we had drug laws. It was birthed by our attempt to control some people's behavior. And it is the continuation of drug prohibition which keeps organized crime powerful. And this powerful organized crime is corrupting our entire society. It's corrupting our criminal justice system. It's corrupting entire nation states. Look at Mexico, Guinea-Bissau in West Africa, Narco States. People use different drugs for different reasons. And obviously what you just referred to there is interesting because the dance music scene did go hand in hand with some of those drugs, in particular MDMA of course. And that's what drove its popularity because it goes so well with that scene. It goes so well with dance music and so did some of the hallucinogens like LSD. But although I did work in some nightclubs and I was exposed to that scene to a degree and I did work that scene. I loved the music by the way. I loved the whole scene I really did. It was fantastic. I'm a big dance electronic music fan. But almost all of my work was an entirely different world, entirely different. The world that I inhabited mostly was the heroin and crack cocaine scene which was completely separate from any of the other drug markets at all, completely different. And it was primarily focused around the problematic heroin and crack cocaine scene which is a very minority place indeed actually because it's around 10% of people who use crack cocaine will have a problem with it. Which is the same for most drugs actually. It's about 10% of people use alcohol. It's slightly less for cannabis, slightly more for cocaine, around the same for unvitamin. But it's around the 10% mark. The outlier of that is heroin because for heroin it's 25% of people who use it will develop a problem with it. 25%. But sometimes people get surprised with that figure because we're taught that heroin is only problematic that everyone who uses it is problematic and that's what the public have been led to believe. It's not true. 75% of people who use heroin have no problematic relationship with the drug whatsoever. That's quite a shock to some people. But that 25% is very high which means that there is a huge market. There's an enormous amount of money to be made in supplying the people who do have a problem. And that's the kind of world that I lived in. So it's a much darker world than the adult party drugs like MDMA and LSD. Not least of which because, in fact, almost primarily because the court sentences for dealing heroin and crack are much higher than other drugs. And so there's the much greater risk for those involved. And this is a very important point for anybody out there who thinks that the solution to drugs is just bigger sentences and tougher laws. Because that's the opposing view quite often. That you just need to lock them up all for life or you need to put them all on an island and kill them all or you need to, all these kind of aggressive responses that arch prohibitionists will come out with, they say, we're just not tough enough. We can get him tougher, we'd solve it. Well, no, it doesn't actually. You get tougher, all it means is the market becomes more violent. The most violent drug marketplaces in the world are the places that have the death penalty for dealing. Sri Lanka, Thailand, Singapore, wherever it is, or China. It just means that the marketplace is more violent in response because of the bigger the risk, the more you have to threaten people to not grass you up, the more people you have to murder to make sure they don't tell the police. You ramp up the violence. If you ramp up the threat, the deterrent in these marketplaces, the net response is just more violence. You never ever reduce the size of the market and it's the most awful illusion that's ever been made in public policy that deterrence actually makes any impact on the drug markets. So yeah, there's a world of difference between the dance music scene, that beautiful cultural explosion actually that was the dance music scene, especially in the UK, that wonderful artistic expression, that coming together of people, that breaking down of social barriers that you describe, it was a beautiful thing. It's a wonderful thing. And it really did have great social benefit in breaking down barriers. And I wonder if, I mean, you know, dance music scene's not gone away, but you just wonder with the sort of xenophobia and sort of isolationism and populist nature of the way that politics is going around some places in Europe and the UK. You just wonder sometimes if we're not just missing that sort of cultural spark a little bit at the moment. I don't know, but that wonderful scene, as you say, is a world apart from the kind of grimy scene that I was involved in. And the place that I was moving as an undercover cop, that was, that's a result of not caring for people who need help. You know, it was because it was gangsters preying on the vulnerable people. And that became the theatre of war. And people like me were coming in and manipulating and taking advantage of the vulnerable people in order to continue fighting that war. That's the reality of it. You must have seen some pretty atrocious stuff, mate, because one of our, one of the dealers in my city used to go out dancing with us, you know, everyone would go to this club. And he used to sell a few bits and pieces. But I think he was also, you know, there was always that, that bridge wasn't there. A bridge isn't, there was always that connection between the party, fund drugs, take a pill on a Saturday night, dance your ass off and then, you know, go and look after the kids on a Sunday, you know, no problem there. But then there was also the link between the more problematic use. So I don't know on a scale of 100%, it's probably 10% in that dance club, having a great time. But when they go home, they still, they're in the world of addiction still, you know, their life centers around it, they might be managing their, you know, benefits around it, selling benefits around it, selling this to get by getting the needles from the exchange, all this kind of this stuff. And this guy was one of those Neil, he was, he was sort of in the two worlds and he, he got his head chopped off. I think his, his Mrs was stabbed to death on the toilet by rival, you know, rival dealers or some somebody that he'd upset. And that's when it does all get a bit serious, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, that that's true. But again, I'm sorry, I wasn't trying to be devil's advocate. I'm just giving an example of one of the incidents that we experienced here. And I'm wondering if you had sort of similar stuff yourself. Yeah, I mean, you make a good point there. But again, I have to try and unpick how people view things like that, because people associate the violence with the drug trade. And in fact, I did an interview with someone yesterday. And they said, oh, so what, so what you're saying to me is as long as drugs are around, these things are going to happen. And I said, no, no, that's not the case. For as long as drugs are illegal, this is going to happen. And, you know, the violence comes from something quite often from something called a freelance effect. I'll try, I'll try and explain it with a, with an anecdote. I one of one of my biggest operations was in Northampton. And I'd actually given up undercover work at this point, because one of the vulnerable people I had manipulated and actually when he was in police custody, because he got, he was committing defences on bail, he got roped into it all, he ended up being suicidal when he was in police custody. And the reason for that was that he saw me as his one friend in the world, the only person he could trust, the only person. And so my betrayal of him was the final straw for his life of, he was already trying to deal with childhood trauma. This was the last straw for him. So this was emotionally, this was a, this has destroyed me really, it was awful. And I gave up the work, but I was tempted back into the work because the DS who run these operations, he knew how to manipulate me. And he said to me, look, Woodsy, we need you to do this job because these gangsters are even more violent. These are more vicious than anyone you've dealt with so far. These, these, this gang's using gang rape as part of their reputation building, that they're intimidation. You know, they're doing the normal kind of gangster stuff, kidnappings, mamings, all that kind of thing, but they are also raping people. So we really need you to do this. And he said, look, we've had two people try and get close to these already, and they've not managed to. And by this stage, I've sort of become a little bit of a troubleshooter to try and step in where there was this kind of lock jam. So he manipulated me really emotionally manipulated me into saying, well, we need you to do this because we need to catch these violent criminals. So I set off again into this, this long-term operation in Northampton. And what they've done, this gang was from Birmingham, but they taken over the whole supply in Northampton, which is much the way that goes on now with what people talk about with county lines in the, you know, it's big gangs from in a city take over the supply in the smaller cities or smaller towns. And they, and they dominated it there. So it took me several weeks to get an introduction to these people. I manipulated people into introducing me. And I remember the first time I was taken to meet these guys, I was taken into this snooker club and directed into the Jantz toilets, went in there and the door burst open, this hooded figure came in, he went into the cubicle, stood in the toilet and looked over the top of the cubicle and said, what's this? And the guy that was introducing me started talking. But then as he starts asking me questions from the cubicle, the door burst open again and these four hooded figures came in and started walking around me slowly. And every so often, one of them would headbutt me on the side of, on the ear, or one of them would nudge me slightly and the other one would punch me in the ribs. And all the time I'm being interrogated and the guy who was introducing me being asked questions. And then he's rephrasing the question to try and catch me out. And, you know, I knew the reputation of these people, you know, one of them was implicated in seven different murders in Birmingham. He's the guy who was, who sourced the machine guns for the murder of Latisha Shakespeare and Charmaine Harris. So I knew, I knew the calibre of these people and my head was starting to hurt, you know, and I was thinking, I'm not going to get out of here in one piece at all. This is it, you know, they're suspicious of me. I'm going to be left beaten and bloody in these toilets, you know, and that's what, because that's what these people do. And just as I was resigning myself to that, then suddenly he said, all right, then, what do you want? And I went, I'll have one on one, please. And I gave him my 40 quid and he gave me 0.4 of crack and a 0.4 of heroin. And I was in then I got his phone number and I was actually into the inner circle so that I had, I got permission to buy directly from that gang rather than going to their runners and the separate people. I'd managed to work my way into them. And then for the next few months, I gathered evidence of conspiracy, working out who all their runners were. So I found out all about the network, the sex workers that were dealing for them, the runners, the people doing the stashes, stashing the money, the whole network. And there was, there was one point, because at one point in operation, you need to start getting corroborative evidence. So I'd started wearing a camera, very tiny camera with a bit of technical equipment called an eagle. But I thought one day that day that maybe the day before they got a little bit suspicious of me. And so I decided this morning not to wear the camera because I was a little bit nervous, which turned out to be an incredibly good decision because that day they snatched me and showed me into the back of this van. I think it was a people carrier. I was struggle to remember this detail, but put me in the back of this van and got me, take me to the edge of this park in Northampton. Got me out and said, right, strip your 5.0. We know you are. And just so that they had showed no doubt that they wanted me to do as I was told. One of them lifted a top up and now there was a gun shoved in the top of his trousers. So he made it quite clear that I had to do as I was told. So I stripped naked thinking, thank goodness I wasn't actually wearing the camera today because I had no doubt at all that these people were capable of the most foolish and extreme violence. So I had no doubt that my life was at risk. But you know, I remember thinking they said, come on, I mean, your heat, your 5.0. I remember looking at this guy thinking, you're not old enough to have seen Hawaii 5.0. But it's amazing how, you know, culturally, this slang still exists. But anyway, I survived that day and a few other scares with them. But you know, after seven months in Northampton, I knew that I had met every single person connected with that trade, everyone. I'd got everyone's phone number. I've got evidence against everybody involved. There was no one else to meet. I called everyone. So we could call it, we didn't call the strike. There were police from five different counties, the surrounding counties in the East Midlands area came in to help. Enormous amounts of resources, huge amounts of cops, 96 people, 96 people were arrested in that operation, including the six burger bar boys who were running the whole thing. Anyway, the intel cell contacted me after the dust had settled, the person had been keeping his ear to the ground following the impact of it. And he said to me, yep, we managed to interrupt the heroin and crack cocaine supply in Northampton for a full two hours. 96 people arrested, seven months of work, almost getting myself killed, moments of genuine terror to interrupt the supply for about two hours. Now, if you're a problematic heroin user, that's not even enough time to withdraw before suddenly there's a phone number and someone else jumping into that marketplace and supplying the commodity that you want. Now, I can't say with certainty that it was the infamous arrivals of the burger bar boys, the Johnson crew. The Johnson crew and the burger bar boys, it's been their sport for a few years to kill each other. They've got their, you know, classic rivals. I can't say it's the Johnson crew that took up that opportunity that was created, but you can picture the scene, can't you? They're all sat around having a smoke and one of them gets a phone call and he starts laughing. He says, boys, put the call in. Look what the police have done for us. They've got rid of the burger bar boys in Northampton. We're going to make a fortune. And that's what happens. That's what the police do. Whenever they have what they announce as a successful operation, they create an enormous opportunity for a rival or series of rivals to make an enormous amount of opportunity. And what that almost always inevitably means is an increase in violence. Now, I, you know, I speak to cops as part of the law enforcement action partnership. I speak to cops literally all over the world. And this is noted within police intelligence everywhere, at every level from street right up to cartel, wherever police have a success, violence goes up. Because if you create a gap in the market and it's so lucrative that it tends to be fought over and where it's fought over, violence goes up. So, you know, you have to put that into context of what this is doing to our society. When you realise that police are really good at catching drug dealers, and we are really good at it. If you give the police twice the resources, they'll catch twice as many dealers. But that's the problem because it increases violence. Now, you have to separate this from all other forms of criminality. If a cop arrests a burglar in a town, burglaries will go down. Because you will reduce crime by doing that, by catching that guy. Because there's very relatively few people willing to commit that crime. If you arrest a drug dealer, crime goes up. Because you never reduce the size of the market. It doesn't matter how many dealers you catch. It doesn't matter how many tons you seize. It doesn't matter how many doors you kick in, arrests you make. The market is never reduced in size by police action. But police action does change the shape of the market. And that changing shape is only going in one direction. Well, that, Neil, I should ask you, I'm just again going on my own experience. Were there ever dealers that you just left alone? Because, for example, they may have just been dealing to their mates. It was party drugs. Was there any kind of policy is what I'm trying to say? Well, in turn, well, it depends on what level of policing. I mean, the kind of stuff I was doing, I would never go near anyone just dealing cannabis or low level pills or something like that. Because my main, my drive was catching heroin, dealing gangsters. That was that was my remit. And that was that that was the, you know, for undercover policing, the authority for that undercover policing, according to the Ripper, the regulation of Investigary Powers Act 2001, states that undercover policing can only be used where conventional policing is not possible or has failed. So it's literally the last, you know, the last option, the nuclear option. So it should only be used for the most serious things, you know, theoretically. Although I was wrote into investigating in some nightclubs, but only where the people in control of the supply within that club is using violence or connected to a serious organized crime group. In terms of policing as a whole, well, it depends on what era, you know, in the 1990s, well, after 1997, in particular, the worst mistake of the Blair years, well, apart from the Iraq war, you know, push that aside, that the word the worst domestic policy decision of the Blair years was to encourage the use and actually mandate the use of measurable targets within public service. So for example, 25% of a teacher's time became proving that they were teaching. In the police, suddenly there were targets and ways of measuring performance. It was all about increasing performance. And what that meant is that cannabis arrests would count as an arrest and cops would be measured on these things. So, you know, people that really should be left alone were not. And those targets really did impact on a lot of people, particularly with drugs. And that was a very grim time that people, a lot of people not aware of, you know, this target-driven philosophy is no good at all. And that philosophy just doesn't exist the same in policing anymore. It doesn't. And not just because of austerity, but because there has been a cultural shift in policing and moved away from that sort of new labour disaster. So as I say, it depends on what era. Now, if you look at policing now, there's a really interesting cultural shift, actually, that a lot of people are not quite aware of, that whereas in 1999, a young PC might have been congratulated for arresting seven cannabis users with half a gram of cannabis in their pockets. Nowadays, that would not happen with culturally within police. So you say you've got a cop in Birmingham and he's part of a busy shift. And they're going to call after call after call, emergency call. And he decides to arrest someone for a gram of cannabis. Culturally nowadays, that's not going to get any congratulations. In fact, that cop's more likely to be accused of being a lazy so-and-so. Like, oh, what are you doing taking up half a shift, picking on someone for that? You know, oh, well done, you know, someone's likely to be mocked and actually criticised by their own shift for doing that. Because, you know, because by doing that, you're making the rest of your shift work harder on real work, rather than the easy pickings and easy work of processing cannabis against some poor person whose life's going to be ruined for that conviction. So, you know, there is a cultural shift in policing, which is which is really interesting and encouraging. And it's part of the wider tapestry of a sort of police awakening, really, that this war on drugs is only causing harm to people. And there are better things to be doing with your time. Yes. Neil, I should ask you, and Blex talked a bit about this. He said he got in situations where to maintain his cover, he had to take drugs with his, you know, with his sources or his contacts. How, how was that for you? Was there any kind of policy in place if all this is all so new? And was there times? I just mean, I'm talking from again, from experience, when you go to a dealer's house, you buy something and they chop you up a little line and go there, Chris, there's, you know, there's your little well, or at the very least, they pass you a spliff, right? How was that for you? Yeah, I mean, I actually very rarely had to do any drugs. And in terms of policy, I just took the view that, look, if I had to do something to maintain my own safety, then that's down to my own judgment. And bosses can either, you know, they can, they just have to wear that. And I only got encouragement and understanding from the people I worked with. But for the most part, I didn't have to do it. And I've developed some interesting ways of getting around it. I remember once, once a dealer was extremely suspicious of me in a car, and it was actually, I was driving, I had to draw, I was driving a car as part of my coverup with that. A guy who'd introduced me was sat in the passenger seat, the dealer was behind me, and they were very suspicious. So I actually cooked up, I cooked up in a syringe, you know, practicing how to do it, cooked up a small amount of the bag, you know, drop my filter in the spoon, I cooked it up first, put the filter in the spoon, put it into a syringe, drop my trousers as if I was going to go into my, into my groin, which is a common place where very problematic users go into because it never properly heals up. So you can go into the same hole over and over and over again. So it's quite common. Drop my trousers as if you go into my groin and inject into the car seat. So that, that was, that was quite useful because, you know, you can casually have a line of coke or smoke or crack cocaine, that wouldn't scare me at all. But you can't be casually doing that with heroin, you know, because people have intolerance. But there was one quite scary time when I had, I had to have some amphetamine, and that's because I'd made a huge mistake in this operation. I've been going in this pub for weeks. And the place was almost cartoon-like. It was, it was ridiculous. It's like in a village in Leicestershire. And gangsters were meeting there from Nottingham, Derby and Leicester. It was a real weird meeting and trading point. And I, the mistake I'd made is that I had made myself out to be a connoisseur of amphetamine, which, which I wasn't at all. You know, but I would talk about, you know, having some really great methamphetamine, some good old fashioned 60s style blueies, all, you know, all this kind of stuff. But the trouble is, this reputation meant that one day this main gangster came in and said, hey, you, I've got a present for you. And he held up this plastic Sealy bag, see-through bag, with his pink toxic looking goo in it. You could almost see it dissolving the plastic in front of your eyes. It smelled like the urine from a glue sniffing cat. Now, you've done your amphetamine, you know what I mean by that, don't you? You know, you know, that sort of toxic, toxic urine smell. And he says, go on then. I have some of that. I guarantee you've never had anything like that before. And I'm thinking to myself, yeah, you've got no idea mate. So I stuck my little finger in, because I knew I had to, because the problem I had was he picked up on a momentary reticence on my face, which created a slight element of doubt on his face. I picked up on that slight element of doubt, which made me think I've got to throw water on this fire straight away. I've got to reduce this suspicion. So I stuck my finger in, puts it in my mouth. I could almost feel the mouthfuls are forming instantly. And then I swallowed it, and it's burning the back of my throat. And he said, you're going to need more than that with your tolerance. So I'm thinking, oh, great. So I stuck my finger in again, shrugged a bit more in. Anyway, I didn't have any tolerance because I wasn't this connoisseur that I was making myself have to be. And in no time at all, within 20 minutes, I was, I was in problems. I was getting extremely high very quickly. So I made my excuses declaring my need to go and find a party somewhere. And panicking got to the safe location where I quickly explained that I might be struggling to write my notes today. So, but I mean, I knew enough about it that, you know, you have to have a very large amount of I'm better into overdose. I wasn't worried I knew I wasn't in any medical danger. Having said that though, this was an amount which was going to be beyond comfortable. Quite quickly, I was not in a good state. This is a very high anxiety, horrible, horrible feeling. Most unfetterment at that time was only 5% pure. This this came back at 40% pure. I was a mess, I really was hard to get driven home. Which is quite a journey. And I remember thinking, actually, when I'm being driven home, I've got eight cans of stellar in the fridge. That'll take the edge off this. It didn't at all. I didn't even touch the sides. I couldn't even feel the alcohol in the slightest. It just meant that eight hours later, I got a hangover. But I didn't I didn't sleep for almost three nights. That's how extreme that was. It was an awful experience. Mind you, my house has never been so tidy, I have to say. And you lost half a stone. Yeah, yeah, I didn't eat a lot. It was a liquid diet for a few for a few hours. But yeah, no, I didn't eat a lot. Yes, my gosh. A couple of things. Do you remember that feeling? I'm just going on the beginning of your book now. When you're reading the literature from the, I'm going to call it the police college or whatever your training academy is called. But do you remember the feeling? Because just reading your book evoked feelings in me, I haven't had for, you know, 35 years. And that was the, I'm going to join something and they're going to ask me to do this. And I'm going to have to do this training and I'm going to wear this uniform. And I'm asking you because we get a lot of young people on this channel, Neil, that are considering joining up or many of them are joining up. And I'm just trying to link him with where where their minds must be. Yeah, I mean, when I started in the police, it brought up feelings that I'd got through my childhood. I am a big reader and one of my favorite types of fiction when I was a teenager was things like the Patrick O'Brien naval books, the C.S. Forest, things about sort of duty and, you know, in an historic setting and doing the right thing for king and country, you know, being brave against the odds, all of those kind of things, that sense of duty, the sense of doing the right thing for the right reasons, you know, all of those kind, all of those kind of things were evoked. Now, you know, I was flippant going into the police, but very quickly I got that sense of duty. I also got that sense of belonging and also I did long to become part of a team and have that camaraderie with colleagues. And that is a great thing to experience. I mean, it took me a while to experience it because to a degree I felt I wasn't up to the standard of my colleagues and a lot of them were suspicious of me, you know, could they trust me, could I back them up, you know. So it was very, very difficult for me in the first couple of years because I wasn't good enough. And I did have to grow up very quickly. But once I was into that team environment and certainly once I got into undercover work and I got that respect of colleagues, you know, it's a great thing to become a part of. It is, it is. The problem is though from my perspective, and I suppose with this I have something in common with some people I know from veterans for peace who have found themselves morally damaged by things they've done in the military. I've ended up morally damaged and it's a function of my PTSD. It's part of our mental health problems is that I have moral injury. Moral injury was first identified with veterans returning from the Vietnam War, having found themselves doing things which actually breached or were against their internal sense of ethics. So what I ended up doing actually breached my core beliefs and my core moral makeup because that sense of duty and doing the right thing for the right reasons that became part of me as a teenager reading those novels was being breached by the reality of my actions and what I've actually done once I understood the implications of them. So, you know, there is risk in this is what I would say and we need to be aware of what our core values are and whether what we do matches those core values. And in policing I found myself at the end once I'd come to the conclusions and I realised that this war on drugs was causing huge harms to individuals and our society. I found myself not being part of an organisation where I felt at one as a team with my colleagues but quite the contrary I felt I was in the enemy camp so to speak because whereas there were good people I worked with, some good people, there was a lot that really were not and there were some colleagues that I did a job in Brighton my last job of this type and they referred to problematic heroin users as smack heads and you know one of them died one day and they literally laughed about it saying I will shoplifting will go down today because we know how prolific he was and that's the way they saw it and it's so so dehumanising that it made me feel nauseous and you know I felt I was I was so so much in the wrong place and that was really hard to find myself in that situation I mean you know obviously I changed and I had changed I'd used my empathy in an aggressive way I now call it weaponising empathy I used it against people to manipulate people but eventually you know I understood what was going on in the lives of these vulnerable traumatised people so I changed and I realised and the cops these these unpleasant people around me hadn't realised but it was just amongst bullies and vicious people you know because they they bullied me for my views and my questioning their behaviour you know they were an unpleasant bunch of people they were awful now I'm not saying all cops are like that I'm just saying that because of the criminalisation of drug use it has led to the point where we do have some elements of our police like that and that was hard to deal with and it's one of the things that contributed to my mental health crisis really in not belonging to this organisation that was around me. Yes it there's so much we could discuss there Neil I mean there's before we do though before we do I can see I assume that you can edit this okay so that I can go just visit the toilet for five minutes yeah let me put your pause and you do that no rush at all yeah there's a lot of parallels in what you're saying with with the armed forces well the police are an armed force but you know the the regular military and I suppose fundamentally at its root is the fact that these agencies are a part of the state apparatus aren't they they're there to maintain the status quote to a degree they want you know young uneducated naive personnel who are still foolish enough to believe you know to believe the bullshit um and and this is this is a this is a big part of it and I don't I'm not really going anywhere with this Neil I'm just sort of like trying to speak my mind but it's so hard because you either understand what I'm saying now you you have no idea what I'm talking about and you probably think like bad guys you know they're the bad guys and and and I mean everything is there's just everything is confused you know we have this notion that alcohol we oh that's okay whereas as you pointed out and you're a top undercover or you've been a top undercover policeman working in this area and and now you're a leading proponent proponent for drug reform um I'm someone with 30 years experience in the in the drug world I'm a substance misuse specialist I've been on both sides of the fence if we want to call it that and I'm telling anyone listening now you know alcohol is is the worst one and yet I'll still get people right to me and say you know I shouldn't even be talking about these subjects it's like all right but if I want to talk about getting pissed that's that's absolutely fine even though my two best friends both drank themselves to death in the last two years right um so I kind of get it Neil I one of the problems I've had on the podcast is getting some guests to come on if they've had a military or service like background and I'm just going to say this it's because they're so indoctrinated into worry and what the group think of them um it has such a power of full effect to indoctrinate young people into into our forces whatever force that may be maybe not perhaps the fire brigade but I'm guessing it it it will be there to a certain extent and the one of the things I've really worked on in my life and I've done quite well is I've detached myself from my ego because the military and the the the powers that be in the government they control your ego when you're young when you're that person they control your left brain as it were and to move away from that and free yourself as an individual to become and to learn empathy um to learn what we were really put on this planet for and it's not this fucking horseshit right getting quite angry now because I'm seeing what they're doing to the children in the schools and it's just so so wrong but but you've got to detach yourself from that and you've got to to realise that um you know the way these departments operate is they control that ego and it's it's a very powerful thing and it does affect all of us as I've got ultra I've just had to cut it off I'm afraid I'm a free agent I do what I won't want I want when I want um because I don't hurt I don't set out to hurt anybody you know none of what I talk nothing you know I give advice I try to give young people the benefit of my experiences but it is a sad thing when you see some aging veteran and they're basically the still the bully that they were all the time they were in the forces they still trying to put that service mentality into their it's not into their life because it's fine if people can live how they want it's when they want to then put it on to other people and you're like dude you left 20 years ago why are you still you know living by these rules and we know why you know we know why they do it's the power of indoctrination um and yes Neo I I completely understand where you're coming from it's it can be an incredibly stressful environment when someone like yourself is clearly a thinker you're a you're a thinker um you're more in tune with what's really going on not with not what the power powers that be want to tell you is going on and I can imagine you got in situations where it felt chalk and cheese with your colleagues and there was quite a lot of bloody chalk if that makes sense yeah yeah but that's true I mean the the most of the most extreme exemplifies the one that I've just talked about which is in in Brighton um because you know I've I've been used to working with professional people you know what were the one thing about the kind of work that I did is that the teams that were put together around me tended to be the people who were who were the most qualified and or who really you know who were flyers you know the who were people are really good at the job so so they were almost put into that role as a reward you know to have a different to be part of that different operation for a few months but in Brighton it was the complete opposite they were absolutely bunched and they were a nightmare they really were the DS running it was just obnoxious he just in a briefing he just he just held court and just picked on people and it's just a you know wherever you get that kind of bullying canteen culture within a disciplined organization it's it's extremely toxic but this was doubly toxic because they were dealing with people that they looked down on them to the point that they looked they saw them as inhuman but I mean that I suppose they hadn't had some of the experiences I'd had and I'll give you another example of where you know just to highlight just how unjust it is to see someone as less than human in these circumstances in in Northampton I got to know a young woman who went by the name of Uma I don't think it was a real name it was I think it was a street name and Uma I got to know she was a fascinating woman young woman and she was a problematic heroin user and I remember her saying to me one day but that you know the week after she'd be doing a tolerance break and she said I can stop the gear I can stop the gear anytime I want to and I do quite often I'm going to stop next week I'm going to do a tolerance break when I stop for two weeks because you know it gets cheaper if you have a tolerance break she says I can't do it for too long she said I can't stop for too long because I start to get suicidal again because from her perspective what she was using heroin for was to blot out the memories of her childhood because heroin's a great painkiller of the body it's also a great painkiller of the mind and it blots out memories because when she wasn't on heroin she clearly remembered the feeling of her uncle's fingernails when she was being sexually abused and that's the trauma she was blotting out and for her taking heroin was a very rational decision indeed now most drug use is rational profess to call her to Columbia University makes that point very well most drug use is rational and certainly it's rational for her very rational decision because actually arguably it was keeping her alive it was preventing her becoming suicidal because that's how she was dealing with the trauma of her childhood and that's how she lived that's how she was keeping herself alive and functioning but she was really she was a beautiful person one day I thought it was quite early on and I realized that people were suspicious of me you know who's he where's he come from he's always got the money what who is he so one day I decided to play at rattling that you know I have a day making out myself that I was on my ass didn't have any money and really playing rattling I knew how to play rattling and anyway I saw rumour this that morning and she looked at me and said hey mate you're hanging out are you rattling are you struggling a bit I says yeah I haven't even got the energy to graft you know I'm struggling and she reached in her pocket and pulled out of five and gave me five quid and it's quite clearly the only five pound that she had and I says yeah but mate you're going to need this what you're giving this to me for and she said oh no don't worry I've just had a hit um I'll be I'll be next I'll be fine for the next four or five hours you need it more than I do so in the simplest and purest generosity you could you could imagine from her perspective at that point in time her my need was greater than hers at least for the next four hours or so that is the purest generosity that's two people who see each of that someone who is traumatised who sees someone else who's traumatised who without even giving it a second thought thought thought about that other person thought about thought about me and my my situation and you know I've not seen generous generosity that pure anywhere and but that's not uncommon amongst problematic heroin and cocaine users on the streets that's not uncommon at all there is a sense of community and care for each other that people would find astonishing and it just goes to show that when the human condition is really up against it care for each other really can shine through and so when you consider just how stigmatised people like umar are and how they're stepped over when they're on the on the streets wrapped up in a sleeping bag and begging for money when they're stepped up or over and looked down upon people don't understand the situation they're in and just how good some of these people that these people can be and how generous and you know I just wish people understood that more generally because the dehumanising aspect of of the way things are as a result of the criminalisation of their behaviour is awful and it doesn't seem to be improving and I don't know when this goes out to the public but yesterday uh was announcement of the another another record increase in drug deaths in Scotland which now makes Scotland the drug the highest drug deaths in Europe again but even higher than the USA and I don't see any change in policy or stigma as a result of those drug deaths you know imagine if there'd been road deaths suddenly increased by that much it'd be headline newspapers for for days there'd be arguments arguments between different the political parties about how best to deal with it there'd be criticisms of the sitting government for the lack of for them not predicting that this would happen and not having measures in place to prevent these this there would be there would be pictures of young people who had died as an example of this disaster that's happened by these record increasing road deaths there would be absolute shock and outrage well there is way more people die from drug overdoses than die on our roads significantly more they're dying in traumatic situations they're dealing they're dying in poverty they're dying on our streets they're dying uncared for because policy has put them in that situation and we need some outrage you know we need some outrage about this because these people are there are there are they're they're just like us they're humans who have just not had the same fortune or they've had more trauma than we have and they need care they don't need to be ignored and stepped over yes very well said Neil I was incredibly impressed by or touched I should say by James English English's homeless for Christmas documentary there were parts in that where you just saw the states that some of these human beings got themselves into just to try to escape pain that's what it is at the end of the day trauma is pain there's so much work people like myself could be doing there to enable those that are suffering to see to see away away forwards and it's and it's all um you know it's not happening in fact his documentary motivated me so much again I don't know when this when our podcast is going to go out Neil but next Tuesday I'm doing a stunt called running homeless for Christmas and I'm I just got to thank James English for this I was so taken with what he did for the homeless population that I'm going to give up my Christmas to run 200 miles around my local running track running is a some silly thing I've seen to keep my hand in over the years so it's and I didn't want to impinge on James's documentary prowess and and do the same thing so he went homeless on the streets of Glasgow for Christmas um and yes it's and I guess there's a ray of hope at the end of the tunnel or light at the end of the tunnel when you see somebody within a month of being off the street and they've managed to start getting some balance in their life and by balance I don't mean stopping substance misuse because that's not been my you know it's not you know abstinence what is what I'm trying to say is a very misunderstood concept it's far more important to understand cycle of change and what is relapse and what is lapse and how does that work to to educate you and go forward but um when you do see someone that they're starting to get it back together within a month of being off the street you don't recognize this person you don't read that and I'm not saying I'm not saying that from a judgmental point of view I'm saying that I think a lot of these you know bully boy policemen that we talked about and people that look down their nose in society at others and hopefully that's not that's a situation that's improving but I think they'd be surprised if you could see this person a month after they've had some support and they've had some input and they've had some love and empathy and and um and and some planning done for them and and a bit of housing or whatever it might be it's like oh my god was that guy that guy it's yes are we ever going to see it Neil are we I know that we have to be um positive and hopeful but I think this whole the whole war on drugs is again just another tool of the sociopaths that seem to run the whole this whole show and at the minute and I don't want to go talking about the thing because it gets us in trouble with YouTube but they managed to lock the whole world down for the sake of if I understand it's right 85 year old people with underlying health issues that might die which is what I thought death is supposed to be right if they're that powerful enough to get to do what they've done what's the way forward with respect to the war on drugs well that's a good comparison I'm not going to comment on the on the virus policy obviously but it's a good comparison to make that you know that there are huge numbers of people dying and there's been no shift in policy to care for them and that's been an epidemic which has been going on for a long time and been growing so it is a good parallel to bring you know and but it needs to have it needs to have political motivation but in order for the political motivation to happen we have to have the social movement grow because politics follows public opinion it doesn't lead it and you know the need for drug policy reform it's a social justice issue and like any other social justice issue it change comes from social movement rather than political leadership you know so homosexual homosexuality wasn't made legal by political leadership per se it was about the social movement same for the death penalty or whatever the social movement is whether it's feminism if this is social movement which brings change not political leadership so if anyone is listening to this or watching this and you find yourself agreeing with this or even or being educated by it and you think okay yeah we need change we need this war on drugs to end we need a different policy we need regulated drug markets we need decriminalization we need harm reduction we need to take care of the people well if you will do believe these things either you believe them before or whether you're convinced now then you are part of this social movement and i'm looking at you you're part of this social movement and it's important that you take the responsibility to continue to make the social movement grow which means you have to talk about other people with other people about this direct other people to listen to this podcast or other things or listen to direct them to the law enforcement action partnership uh leap uk leap euro wherever we are listen to us and write to your mp engage in the political process you can change this if you're a labour supporter get involved with the labour drug policy reform group if you're a conservative supporter support and get in touch with the conservative drug policy reform group all people that we work with at leap the green party they have the best i would say uh drug manifesto the liberals have some good policies as well the smp have some brilliant outspoken uh uh members particularly ronnie cower and is a favorite of mine plied comry they have some fantastic people who advocate drug policy reform arvon jones is a leap uk member pcc for north wales leon wood um leader of plied comry she's brilliant on drug law reform former probation officer herself you know there are politicians who you can engage with and encourage but politicians follow follow public opinion they that that's the way that democracy works i'm not going to criticize a politician for going where the votes are or where they perceive their constituents constituency votes are because a politician has a view outside drug policy reform they want to stay in power in order to put forward other policies and they can't stay in power unless they follow the views of their electorate so we have to make them realize that this social movement is growing and has grown enough that it's in their political interests to advocate changes in policy to save lives make our society safer and that's up to you it's up to all of us to make this social movement grow that's this is how we change things do we need to put a focus neil um by this i mean there as you said the the biggest expenditure in our police force goes into the war on drugs okay we should also not forget the massive cost of keeping somebody in prison and i'm not talking about the cost of the taxpayer i'm talking about where that money goes which is more and more and more we're moving into a theater where this money goes to private individuals private companies clearly these individuals the ones that are selling the police equipment the ones that are running the prisons um the ones possibly that also are controlling the drugs that come into the country do we need to put a focus on on them because they're these are very powerful players they're they're either high very high up in the corporate world they have a lot of swing on our politicians they probably have most of the politicians in their pocket um and like i say these guys are just corporate criminals on a huge scale which is why they probably played a drug game as well right you know it's the left hand and the right hand sort of sort of scenario um do we need an audit neil of where this money is going who it's going to what what what their conflicts of interest are yeah i mean you make an interesting point there um and in terms of the corporate interest in the uk that that that can be easily overstated but let's just i'll cover that with america for the moment because american prisons are private um one of the most powerful lobbying groups in relation to drug policy in the united states is actually the the prison officers unions and the police unions and the prison officers that uh unions that you know they belong to private industry and you know different states have actually contracts with private prisons to provide those private prisons with a minimum number of people as inmates which is really twisted and so yeah absolutely in those terms an audit would make it quite clear that there's a huge corporate financial interest in maintaining the war on drugs criminalizing people and locking them up you know the america is a is in a mess as a result of the war on drugs they now have 25 percent of the world's prison population and the the the population of america is only five percent of the world actual population so that's an extraordinary incarceration rate which is a social disaster for our free community right across the united states that's not the same in in the uk you mentioned private prisons actually believe me or not the number of private prisons has actually gone down in the uk over the last decade i think we're at 11 at the moment and you know that they a couple have been retaken back into state controlled there isn't a great push for private prisons in the uk and it's a very minor issue so the private industry thing isn't necessarily the same in the uk but i wouldn't want to emphasize that as a driving force anyway to be honest because you can put it in much simpler terms that you made the very valid point that it's expended to put keep someone in prison well keep someone in prison for a year is 45 000 pounds that's an enormous amount of money quite often people get sent to prison because of problematic uh substance use now if you consider the most regularly problematic drug is heroin if you consider that if you supply somebody with heroin as part of a heroin assisted treatment clinical setting so so government providing clean heroin rather than that person buying it from organized crime that cost 12 000 pounds a year now heroin assisted treatment is the most successful treatment for problematic heroin use in the world we have the evidence of this from switzerland but it works better than any other kind of therapy it works better than most drug treatment systems including opioid substitution therapy where people are given methadone or subutex instead of heroin so actually providing clean heroin is the most effective way to get people through treatment and actually into some kind of recovery but even for those people who do not end up coming off heroin it's still better for them to be given clean pure heroin from the government rather than going them to organize crime and if that person is alive and safe who cares if they're on heroin i don't care if that's what they need if that's what they if that's what their situation dictates as long as they're not having to deal with gangsters and be sexually exploited for it fine it's better for them it's better for us it's better for everyone it's also significantly cheaper significantly cheaper the cost of treatment people even the most expensive forms of any treatment is still way way cheaper than policing the whole criminal justice system cost the court systems the cost of prisons you know that the financial difference is absolutely enormous and in terms of an evaluation which you alluded to well there's never been an evaluation about the the advocacy of prohibition drug policy never if you were to really break it down and and and look at the benefits benefits versus the cost the policy would be gone completely completely gone i mean just policing policing alone it doesn't reduce crime drugs policing increases crime so it can't be there can't be any cost benefit there it makes policing harder you know it makes our society more violent over time we end up having more violent murders to investigate we have a knife crime epidemic where teenagers are stabbing each other you know that's not come out of nowhere that's come out of decade of drug policy you know i mentioned earlier that the county lines this phenomenon of children being exploited to sell drugs it's not just county lines they're being exploited to sell drugs in the city centers as well that's not come from nowhere explain nil for our friends at home what county lines is for those that don't know yeah okay so county lines is the phenomenon where children are being used from the the the big city hubs to transport and sell drugs in smaller drug markets and the the three predominant cities which which do this is London Birmingham and Liverpool and so gangs from those cities exploit children to transport the drugs quite often uh rectally they get them to shove them inside themselves transport them trains or drive them to places and then those children are put in position for a couple of weeks at a time they're given the phone number which is the line the phone line and they are directed to deal people customers and deliver so they're the foot soldiers in the in the trade quite often it's an adult sat comfortably in Liverpool who's taking the call and directing the child to to deliver the drugs or meet the person to sell them and but it's not just county lines where they're traveling outside the city children are also exploited within the city centers as well to deal all sorts of of drugs but this is not just happened because someone thought it was a good idea it's not just suddenly appeared you know and this is a recent phenomenon that children have been used in such a widespread way in the last over the last six years it hasn't come from nowhere you know if you'd said to a heroin dealer in 1974 who couldn't believe his look that that the the British government had stopped prescribing heroin to people and he now had this wonderful customer base that he could he'd exploit and they call his money if you travel back in time and said to that 1974 heroin dealer dealers like you in in in in in a 45 years are going to be exploiting children to deal your commodity he'd probably be quite offended he says no no one would ever do that who would do that he would who would exploit children and put them at risk in this trade he'd probably be offended that that you can think he would ever do that but yeah this has happened so why has this happened well I told you about my operation with the burger bar boys in Northampton didn't I where they'd taken over the control of Northampton from Birmingham and and they were making the money from doing that but they were all adults they were all hands on it was all adults doing the transporting of the drugs and the selling of the drugs the deliveries and holding the cash and all that kind of thing and all of those adults got caught and they got adult prison sentences because they were caught so organized crime always adapt to police activity always so it's the logical strategic decision to employ children to carry out those tasks to do the deliveries to do the stashing to do the transportation because children are the perfect strategic buffer zone between investigating police and dealers by using children they cocoon themselves they create this buffer zone and protect themselves means they're much less likely to get caught the children can get caught but to the gangsters the children are disposable they're cheaper labor they're easier to manipulate they're easier to scare into not telling the police what's going on and there's an endless supply of them so you know when you see the newspapers as I'm sure in a few weeks time there will be a press release from police saying we've rescued 80 children we've caught 20 adults well the elephant in the room when you read that newspaper about 80 children being rescued is that rescue those children that means another 80 children are going to get corrupted into the into the into the trade that that's the reality of it that no one's admitting to no one's facing up to because over the last six years year on year more children have been dragged into the trade and exploited for it and not a single police action has reduced the number of children involved because police never reduced the size of the market and this is going to get worse you know but how how bad does it have to be you know how many kids have to get murdered how many children have to be exploited in this trade and sexually abused blackmailed before we actually realise this policy is an utter disaster changed direction yes I'm not even going to pretend I know the answer to that Neil it's it's a very sad fact of life it's something that adds pain to my life or it attempts to add pain to my life every day because I'm I've obviously involved in this this area I want the best for all people that's just you know that's just how I am and and when you've been socially excluded it's a very it's not a very nice place it's also incredibly damaging on your psyche and in fact I just tell you an interesting thing that really ties into what you're saying Neil is I was never damaged by the actual like physical effects of of of chronic drug use even though I lost my completely lost my mental health etc etc even though I like I said I ended up with £1.87 to do my my fortnightly shop and and and ended up in utter squalor right none of that is what scarred me what what was the harsh thing is the social exclusion you know all I was was a very damaged young man trying to make sense of this of myself and this life and I did it this way you know and that's if people want to judge that that's that's nothing to do with me but what what was the the the thing mentally that makes it so hard is society's reaction to you yeah society's reaction everyone oh fucking get off that shit yeah you know oh you see what he's and and it and it ah it's you know you live you live in a very solitary existence you're doing something you don't know why you're doing it you don't know why it's spiralled into what it has you don't understand childhood trauma that actually you've been you know you're not you're not a happy cookie right and this is a coping mechanism you know and and it's you know Neil I'd go out my front door I hold my head up as high as I could because I was I had that much respect for myself even when I'd lost maybe self-confidence self self this self that I still held my head up because if I was going to get through this thing there was nobody walking this planet that was a better person than I was or or worse we were all equal and I was just going through an education phase in my life um and if people didn't like it that wasn't my fault right but I'm sorry I'm going around the houses a bit it's just such a hard thing trying to explain when when in our society because there's no education about mental health right and substance use and the real things that are important that affect all of us that is always hard trying to say stuff in sound bites that every single person will understand or without upsetting this group because they think you're trying to say this when in actual fact no you're just trying to smooth the way for all of us but that damage that psychological damage it was nothing to do with the substance or the substance use is to do with society's treatment of me when I was going through a mental health condition um you know uh so sorry I don't know if I don't know if that helps anybody listing or if that makes sense Neil but um yes it was a harsh that was the hardest thing it was it was I used to just say people will leave me alone just just let me be let's stop getting on at me to change to be like you are just let me be I'm not hurting anyone you know okay I used to shoplift bovril I'm the bovril bandit but that was the hardest thing everyone wanted to change me and I irregardless of what you think about substance use I was on an educational process that ultimately gave me my dream life I'm not suggesting everybody does what I did I say I always say you live your life you just let me live mine thank you then we're all good Neil can we finish uh we'll finish up talking about books because you're an author at least twice over now is it yeah two books yes mate massive congratulations um and I read some of your book earlier it's very very well written is that something that came naturally to you or oh no no I have to put a shout out to my to my co-writer js rafaeli um so for good cop bad war which is which is my memoir a lot of the stories from undercore work is in there um I was paired up with js because you know I mean I can write blogs and I can write some things and I'm and I'm not bad but you know it takes a really skilled genuinely skilled wordsmith to make a readable book I think and so that's so I told my story to js and and and he wrote it down and I think one of those one of the best decisions that a writer can make that was mortals mere mortals that can't make is what bits to leave out you know and how to make it concise and and and cut through to something so he would he would I would tell him all this stuff and there's so much just ended up not in the book so so js is the skill behind making it readable and then for the second book drug wars um drug wars was important for me to get out there because I mean it's essentially a history book but it but it but it's through lots of personal narratives different people's personal narratives and drug wars was important to me because you know when you talk to people about drug policy that they don't they don't have a sense of change over time that it's not always been this way and that things are getting worse and it's only if people realize that change that the change has been caused by policy over time that they can think oh well in that case we should stop and go back to how things were or we can we should find a different path so drug wars it's a bit there are some scary bits but because of the truth of the corruption involved in it um you know but I make no apologies for that it is the truth and it's a it's a history particularly of UK drug policy but but I loved the couple of years that that js and I spent researching that because we put a lot of work into the research and then and then the writing but but the writing talent is all js's oh it's it's very um honorable that you you give him credit I think I certainly know of authors that don't um but was it um what can we say was it an educational experience working with a co-writer then and the writing process oh oh god yeah absolutely it was um because you know he is he is a real talent but but I loved I mean the thing is I'm really good friends with js now and it was really good to get to know him and I learned a lot from him and and in terms of the research that we did together for drug wars you know we learned we learned together for that um yeah it was it was a fantastic experience he's it he's a guy with the brain the size of the planet so you know quite often I do these podcasts and people will then follow me on twitter afterwards but follow follow js as well because he's one of the great brains in British drug policy now was it um easy for you to get a publishing deal yeah they found me uh really I mean the agent found me um after I did an interview um for vise and he proposed that I that I do a book you know and I I hadn't really thought about doing a book I know I had to do something to try and convince people but obviously a book was about the best idea but I found it was a difficult decision to make because I'm an introvert I don't like too much communication with people I don't mind isolation so much and I don't like the attention at all I genuinely don't um I find it difficult so it was a real decision for me to do this and it's been um and it's something I just have to continually I have to keep getting used to you know if you'd said to me like back in 2014 if someone had said you're going to do it you're going to write a book you're going to end up speaking to audiences and some you know I've spoke to one audience in Newcastle it was over 2000 people and and I just laughed at you like why why would I do that you know but but this is the space I found myself in that I have the knowledge and the experience that needs to be shared and explained to people and that means I have to be in the public eye to do it so it's back to be it's back to a sense of duty you're a warrior mate in the traditional sense of warrior and warrior doesn't mean about beating people up or waving a sword it's it's a warrior's all about following the moral compass Neil isn't it and doing what is right and not being intimidated or frightened into going with going with the crowd and all that's going to do if you if you're that kind of person is you're making it harder for the next generation and you're stealing their freedom and their right to life so I commend you I commend you Neil very very much and on that note I want to thank you thank you for your fascinating story is there anything you'd like to add Neil or what what what does the future hold hold for you now what do you do alongside your your public speaking and and working on the books and the podcast because you've been on many now yeah I mean that well I just any any opportunity I have any platform I have to try and reach new audiences to explain these things because you know I do find like all of my colleagues at Leap we find that this isn't actually so complicated for people it just it just takes the platform to be able to reach people and explain it to them you know very few people will listen and think oh no that's completely wrong that doesn't make sense because it's not these these concepts these things I'm explaining are not that difficult really it makes sense once it's explained that we are all being conned to believe that our current drug policies are success because it's not at all it's a disaster and I know I've said this earlier but please just emphasise the fact that if you do if you have been convinced or you or inspired to do something more about it you are that social movement we all have a part to play and even if that is only following certain organisations on social media and always sharing what they put out because that does make a difference it increases our audience so please do follow the law enforcement action partnership on all social media channels that's not just Leap UK also Leap in the USA if you're if you're anywhere around Europe you know we have we have Leap France, Leap Germany, Leap Scandinavia, Leap Australia and follow the police movement for reform but also it's not just us cops and other law enforcement figures there are also other wonderful organisations out there that you can support a particular and very important one is an organisation called Transform Drug Policy Foundation they're important because they're the clever people who have all the answers to the questions because if you say okay it's all very well saying we need to do something about this how do we go about doing it with policy they know exactly they know how to regulate each individual drug market they have the answers to those questions they have a campaigning arm called Anyone's Child and Anyone's Child is made up of traumatised families they are traumatised families who know that their family that they wouldn't be traumatised if drug policy was different so you've got they've got brilliant speakers like Anne Marie Coburn who lost her 15 year old daughter to an accidental MDMA overdose Ray Lakeman from the Isle of Man who lost his two sons on the same night to MDMA lots of people who lost their children to heroin that they didn't need to have lost them it's our policy that's killed these children or it's parents who have had their children traumatised by them being sent to jail for for a for a drug offense or you know these are families who we need to listen to so that's another organisation I would recommend people could you say the name again just so I can write it down yeah the organised the campaigning arm of Transform is Anyone's Child so on Twitter it's at Anyone's Child and at Leap UK one of the most important things that we do is the events that we do when we pair up with Anyone's Child so so what we normally do we get hosted by a member of parliament or a counsellor or a university or someone and we invite all the prominent local politicians we invite all the local press we invite lots of community figures and you know a cop like me or former cop like me stood next to a parent who's lost a child explaining to that community that's very powerful and so if anyone out there is wondering well what can I do well if you have access to if you're connected to a local community if you have a village hall or you know the local mayor or you know a counsellor who might host this get in touch with us you know we we will come and do an event for you we do this all over the country and we have huge huge success in this you know we've had we've brought MPs onto our into the fold into the reform family as a result of these events these events are very powerful so if you can help organize one of these please do it will make a difference I promise you that but also you know if you just if your involvement is just going to be limited to social media that's fine you can do a lot on social media within a week or so there will be a new social media short coming out which we did with anyone's child and transform and it is designed to respond to police social media posts where the police claim that their activity is a success and so it's it's a video that's designed to be posted in the comments in response on social media on facebook and twitter wherever it is to unpick that a little bit and to say hang on a minute no you're not reducing crime here so please look out for that video it'll be featured prominently on the anyone's child and transform website and it'll put it'll be on our website eventually as well what's the title of it Neil I'm actually not sure what the title is it's probably not been decided but it'll be obvious what it is because it features me talking to a camera and mocking the police photo op policing it'll probably be some title be something around photo op policing because that's what it seeks to mock and unpick a little bit so yeah there's always social media things you can do but please follow engage on social media but if the only thing you can do is persuade one person whether it's your mother your father your sister your friend and take the time and persuade those people direct them to this podcast direct them to my TEDx video and you know the the other the other things the other resources that we have so thanks for letting me rant about that but it's important people feel that they can they can do something because they can not around to tool mate not around to tool it's what wouldn't be great if we were talking all this good positive stuff in our in our lives all the time and um giving giving voices to people like you Neil absolutely brilliant thank you so much thanks a lot Chris ah no and let's chat again you know maybe um you come on my live show and we'll take some questions from the from from all our friends out there and maybe clear up a few misconceptions for the the younger people that have been subjected to this let's just call it a brainwashing illicit agenda that's been forced on all of us um where the first uh the first victim of it all is obviously truth so yeah so everybody at home much loved you all thank you for tuning in to another edition of the bought the t-shirt podcast massive thank you again to to our guest Neil Woods and by Neil's book i'll put a link to it below the podcast get involved um in the projects that we've discussed i'll put links to them again underneath the podcast like and subscribe if i'm not asking too much and see you all soon