 Our final speaker for this opening ceremony, it's the closing ceremonies. Yep, wrapping it up. So pleased to introduce Professor Carla Hart. Professor Hart is the ZIF Professor of Psychology in the Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry and the author of the award-winning book, High Price, a neuroscientist's journey to self-discovery that challenges everything you know about drugs and society. Thank you, Carl. Naomi didn't mention that I'm also the chair of my department of psychology, and if anybody knows anything about management, you will know that, for example, my heroin use is a lot easier to manage than my colleagues. So I got to say, I noticed that we have all Americans on the panel. I think this is because we are being punished for our awful president, and so we're making it up by doing free service, so I think that's what this is about. I have to say, I wasn't going to come to this meeting. I've been trying to decrease my public sort of exposure for a number of reasons. One reason is because I think that there are so many good young people who can do this and should be doing this other than me now. We heard from Louise and other folks, so that's one reason I wasn't going to come, and then there's another reason I wasn't going to come. I wasn't going to come because I'm working. I'm trying to finish my new book, and I'm almost there. And if any of you all have done any serious writing that requires some self-disclosure, you know it's some painful shit. And I have to go inside and look at myself deeply, and it's not pretty. And when I'm in public, it's hard to hold back the tears thinking about all the horrible things that I have done, all of the horrible things that we as a society, as a world, has done in the war on drugs. And so I didn't want to be in front of you crying. But Lucy O'Hara, she can ask me to do anything and I'll do it. And Lucy's one of the sweetest people that I know. And so she convinced me to come. And what I discovered when I came is that I wasn't coming for you. Actually, you were here for me because I learned in interacting with you all that I needed to be here with you. I needed to see you. I needed to hear you. And I needed to feel the love. And so thank you all. Thank you. And I have to also acknowledge Lucy's father, Pat O'Hara, for making her. So thank you, Pat. No, I have to acknowledge Pat because ten years ago, Pat invited me to this very conference. And it was the first time that I came to this conference. And without Pat throughout the years, I wouldn't be as healthy. So thank you, Pat. And finally, I have to acknowledge some of my intellectual partners, people who helped to sharpen my ideas and minds who are here. My brother, Fabrice from France. Fabrice, are you in the house? Fabrice, I have to acknowledge Fabrice. Daniel Wolf from OSF. I love arguing with Daniel about ideas. Thank you, Daniel. And finally, I have to acknowledge many of you all know the slogan, nice people take drugs. Everybody knows that slogan. But you won't probably know that the slogan was created by Sebastian Sebill when he was running release. Sebastian, are you in the house? Yeah. I really enjoy arguing with Sebastian and running ideas past him because he does that white male British thing, you know, that authority kind of thing. And it's lovely to argue with him. Now, let's get to the business at hand. I like to pick up from where Louise left off. We actually got together and wrote out talks together and she gave part one. And now this is part two. So the issue at hand is kind of simple. We have a problem. We have a problem with our current drug laws, drug policy. And the major problem, as I see it, as Louise sees it, is that, well, there are three major problems. One is that it limits your individual rights and freedoms. That's a major problem. The problem is so pervasive you don't even recognize how awful and how big that problem is. That's a huge problem. Another problem is that it hampers medical access to people who are suffering pain or whatever. It also hampers medical research. And finally, there's a problem which many of you all have talked about throughout this meeting. And that's related to it increases human rights violations, things like racial discrimination, incarceration. It also increases unnecessary deaths. So it's a major problem, our drug policy. I mean, this is huge before it died. It's huge. And so we are faced with a challenge. And our challenge is how do we develop, implement policies that respects individual civil liberties and enhance public health and safety? I know that safety was last because in this current scheme, safety is always first and it's not your safety. It's the safety of the habs, not yours, of the people who are in power. But that's our challenge. We have the challenge of balancing those things, individual civil liberties and civil rights with public health and safety. Now, I'm here today to present some solutions. One solution, the major solution is this. We just need to change that shit and implement schemes and implement schemes that are not punitive. It's simple, very simple. We need to implement schemes that permit adult access. This is simple, not complicated, as you all and some other folks have made it. By the way, we are all family. So when I say you all, I mean me too. This is where we're all family. I'm speaking to the public. This is our, I mean, I'm not speaking to the public. I'm speaking to this group. Now, the question for me is how do we get there? How do we get there? So when I think about how do we get there, I think about the fact that we are an oppressed group. People are suffering, people are dying, and I think about what civil rights leaders have done in the United States. People who are my heroes, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, James Ball, and those kind of people, what do they do? They engaged in civil disobedience. That's what they did. And many of the achievements that they were able to accomplish was because of this civil disobedience. And so I'm suggesting to you, I'm telling you, that's what we must do. We must engage in civil disobedience. Now, what do I mean? What do I mean? I'll take you back to 1963 when Martin Luther King was in the Birmingham... I'm sorry, I'm sorry, that's the U.S. government. They do that shit when I speak. Back to 1963, when Martin Luther King was sat in that Birmingham jail, and he wrote his famous Birmingham letter from the jail, one of the things that he said, he said many things. By the way, that's the problem for me. That's one of the greatest pieces of works in literature. It's only about four pages. I suggest you read it, particularly if you're going to be in this struggle. One of the things that he said in that piece is that one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. Now, what that means for us? The drug laws, we all agree, I've heard this all week, we all agree that the drug laws are unjust, unfair. As a result, if you're going to really be down, you have an obligation to disobey those unjust laws. Otherwise, you're not down. I don't care how you cut it. Yeah, I recognize what's happening in the Philippines. I recognize what's happening in places like China and Iran. I also recognize that there were people in the United States in the 1940s, 50s, 60s, and even before that gave their lives so I could be here, a black man before you all, and do this work so that I could get an education so that my family could be okay. They paid the ultimate price with their life. I recognize that. So you have to look in the mirror and see if you're willing to do the same because I assure you, anything in life that's worth doing is not without risk. If you're not willing to do that, well that's cool, at least you know it, but don't pretend to be down. Now, so when I think about this, in terms of our collective responsibility as a community, it is incumbent upon us to think about those who are paying the price now, those people who can't get their medications, who are suffering, those people who are in jail, those people who have been killed. It's incumbent upon us to, when we get the microphone, to make sure we highlight their plight, make sure that we acknowledge them, make sure that the world knows what's happening to them. That's what we can do as part of this civil disobedience. Make sure that those are the people who are our heroes, not me, not people who run these organizations, it's not us, it's the people who are paying the ultimate price. Those are the people whose names we should remember. So make a commitment to make sure that when you get the microphone, you have pictures, you have their names, the people who are paying the ultimate price, the people who pay the ultimate price. Make sure you do that. That's one of the things that we can do. Civil disobedience. Another thing that we can do, and Luis and I, we talked about this earlier, and she was supposed to set you all up, but she was more gentle than me. The second thing is that we can get the fuck out of the closet about your drug use. You got to get out of the closet about your drug use. You know, it's like, I know it's difficult. It's hard for me to tell people that I'm a heroin user. But then when you do heroin, you'll be like, what the fuck, this is great. Why is this hard? Now, of course, I say that with some tongue-in-cheek because I don't want anybody coming to me with stupid messages about how potentially dangerous it is. Of course I know. I'm a neuropsychopharmacologist. I know what I'm doing, but I suggest you do something that you don't know what you're doing. But there is a wide range of classes of drugs from which you can pick. And there is a wide range of expertise to help you do this or to help others do this. But if you are or you have not used any of these illegal drugs that are doing this work, you have to ask yourself, why not? You really have to ask yourself, are you a victim of the misinformation? That is so pervasive. You must ask yourself that. Now, when I say get out of the closet, I don't want to leave this activity. This... I don't want to leave this activity to only people in drug... and the people who are in those drug users' unions. I'm proud of them for being out of the closet. I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about the respectable people. People who wear suits. People who look like me. Well, white people. People who are respectable. If you do this, what you do is that you demystify drug use. You will see it's no big deal. It's like taking your morning caffeine. Nobody's upset about that drug. That's how most drug use is. Certainly that's how most of my drug use is. It's not that I am self-medicating, although being a chair of psychology, you might want to do that, but it's not that. It's just that I enjoy feeling nice. Now, the third thing that you can do is to stop conflating societal problems with drug use. We have become so accustomed to blaming drugs for everything, so much so that if you listen to politicians and even some in this room, if you listen to them, it sounds like all we need to do is get rid of drugs and our society will be utopia. Bullshit. We know that. We know that. We know that the majority of people that use any drug are not dependent, not addicted. That tells you that you have to look beyond the drug. You have to look at psychosocial environmental factors. You have to look at other factors and go beyond the drugs. And so when we stop conflating drug use with these other problems, then we can actually start solving people's problems. But as long as we are conflating these other problems with drug use, we're not going to help people. We will only give law enforcement more fodder to go after the drugs themselves and therefore go after people for whom we care. Now, I want to close with this. First, foofa thought. When I think about these high-profile organizations or high-profile commissions, the Global Commission is one, and many I have friends on the Global Commission and I love them. People like Ruth Dreyfus, really one of my favorite people in the world. The Global Commission is comprised of former, primarily former, heads of states. I am so looking forward to the day when current joins the former. Until that happens, until we continue to make this point, we are primarily engaging in academic masturbation. Thank you for your time.