 Good evening, I'm Peter Szaroszy and you are watching Drug Reporter Cafe. Today we will speak about unhappy birthdays. They are unhappy because these birthdays are the birthdays of drug laws that caused immense suffering to people, at least according to their civil society critiques who launched campaigns to remark the anniversaries of the adoption of these laws in Belgium, where the drug law is 100 years old, and in the UK where the misuse of drugs act is 50 years old. So I'm happy to introduce our guest today, Esther Kintzova, from the Transform UK who is a research and policy officer, hi Esther. Hi. And Stefan Leclerc from Fedito Grissel, which is a federation of drugs issues in Belgium, hi Stefan. Hello. So let's start, talk about the law in the UK and your campaign. So why have you launched this campaign? What is the main message of your campaign? Yeah, so like you said, the campaign is marking the 50th anniversary of the misuse of drugs act, which is one of the key pieces of legislation for drug regulation in the UK. And we're running the campaign in collaboration with three other organisations, Drug Science, Release and UK Law Enforcement Action Partnership. Our key message is that essentially the misuse of drugs act is not fit for purpose. And not only that, but it was never really fit for purpose. Since it was given royal assent on the 27th of May in 1971, it was it has just caused unimaginable amounts of harm or has, whilst it has been an act, harms have been seen. And it has remained largely unchanged since 1971. It's failed on one of its key purposes, which is to reduce drug consumption. And instead, while it has been in place, it's increased increasingly damaged public health and exacerbated social inequalities. We've had 50 years of this damning legislation and ultimately we can't afford to have 50 more. So that's why we've launched this campaign now. What about Belgium, Stefan? Can you talk about your campaign a bit? Yes, it's a special year. It's difficult to put these topics on the agenda. And we want to try to have this slower removed and changed. And so we launched the campaign in February, which was really the day of the law that is from 1921. So it's really another time. No foreign woman could not vote. I mean, it was another world. This, this law has been modificated a little bit, but the base is still the same. And so we will be campaigning all year on to try to put this topic on the agenda in the parliament, for the government, in the Senate and try to have somewhere something that could start a real debate on analyzing what has been the impact of this law. And we want a new one to be based on science. And at least we would like also to have the decriminalization of drug users. And yeah, we have started with this title, Unhappy Birthday. And we are producing a lot of messages for the politicians, but also about for the general public about also destigmatization of drug users to change the vision people have on drug users and drug policies. And we will see what goes. Thanks. So let's suppose I'm like a skeptic man on the street who would like to ask you, like, what evidence do you have that these drug laws don't work and they have harms? But that's that's a question to both of you. I'll go first. So I think if you look at the data, we can see that since the time the act that has been in place, it's had little to no effect on the legal drug market, which is now estimated to be worth around 9 billion pounds in the UK. And to add to that, the total cost to society of illegal drugs is estimated to be about 20 billion pounds. And in fact, the government's own recent independent review on drugs, which was commissioned by a former Home Secretary, found that the government interventions to restrict supply have had limited success and have noted the resilience of the market makes it doubtful that more funding or police intervention would have any significant effect, showing that the main premise of a misuse of drugs that interrupt supply is not working. And in fact, it further has acknowledged that enforcement activity has sometimes had unintended consequences, including increasing levels of drug related violence in the market, and also negative effects of involving individuals in the criminal justice system. And that's only the conclusion of one phase of a report of an independent review. And we have had many that have over the years and over the decades been showing that this is not working and we need reform and have been largely ignored. Tragically, we have hit another record year for drug related deaths in the UK and it's steadily increasing over time. We've now 4,000 around 4,300 drug related deaths and recorded in 2019. And Scotland has declared public health emergency. To add to that, more people, more than a third of people in prison are there due to crimes relating to drug use and a significant proportion of stop and searches by police are under the misuse of drugs act, which is just demonstrating that criminal justice approach, despite how really ramping up is never actually shown any effective results. As I said, yeah, that over the past 50 years, there have been numerous reports. And most recently, the government's health social care committees, as well as the Scottish Affairs Committee have both called for decriminalization for personal use of drugs and for the introduction of drug consumption rooms, which the government has rejected. And this pattern, we have actually demonstrated in a resource that we have created online, which is our timeline in which we aim to document the UK drug policies since 1971. In detail, it looks at well, aims to try and capture the key moments of drug policy by incorporating drug related deaths, drug use data, prosecutions, stop and search, drug seizures and so on, to demonstrate what the reality was happening under the current drug laws, and to really focus on both like political and socio cultural changes over time. So I would actually ultimately say go and look at that timeline, because I think it paints a picture of how over the years the misuse of drugs that really has been fading in the UK. Yes, when designing a campaign, it's not easy, like how can we, from which point of view, what do we save to which public? It's not easy because it's linked to so many things. The drug policies are linked with so many things. And so I guess on one side, we want to try to bring these facts and try to have different sectors connected to the drug sector, different politicians, different political groups, to at least recognize some facts, agree on the facts of what's happening, what are the results of the investment that have been done so far in terms of policing and, well, the drug policy we have now. We can compare what's invested in security, in health, and within health, what is for prevention and risk reduction, and what is for treatment and try to be open about all this. So with our campaigning, we are really trying to make this clear and simple and tackle economic issues, security issues, human health issues, social justice, and public health. And this is something we are trying to bring to the general public because it's not easy to have people that are not interested in drug issues to get interested in this because most people think, oh, this is not related to me. This is for people that are using drugs. And so this is difficult to speak outside of our own bubble. We, the European networks, and people working with drug issues. So we try to produce some short video clips, two-minute clips from different types of people, professionals, some well-known writers, but also a doctor, police officer that is working in an ant drug squad and he finds his job useless. And so it's interesting to see these people that bring not the type of discourse we are used to hear and make it clear and simple for people that don't know about these issues. And at the moment, we see that it can be also interesting in linked with COVID issues in the world right now. We hear a lot. We have to base our decision on science. This is something that we are hearing a lot of the time. And we want to say this about drugs too. And so it's difficult for them to say no. And so this is one of the main things I think we are pushing no. And you cannot say no to that. And this seems to be quite interesting too. This year it's different than other years to say this. I think that's a really good point because it's exactly what we've identified is that everything, the whole rhetoric currently has been we need evidence-based policy solutions. And what we've seen in drug policy is that actually that hasn't been happening necessarily. And you can't have this juxtaposition between the two. So I think it's a really powerful moment to say, well, if it is being promoted so much by governments at the moment, then why are they not doing it in other areas? And actually also off the back of what Stephanie said, we are also producing short videos. We'll be launching 50 stories on the 50th anniversary, which is the 27th of May, which will also be showcasing how people have been affected by the current drug laws, both personally and professionally, and why they think they need to be changed. Which I think demonstrates, I guess we've both, and we know this to be true, is just you need the stories of people who are actually experiencing this. They're really powerful to a campaign movement. And so I guess that's why we've both decided to use those in ours as a key message. We want also to launch collaboration with institutions that are more recognized from the general public than ourselves. So like Doctors of the World and on English, Metsat Jumond, this type of organization or Amnesty International. So we would like also to have collaborations with also even health insurance to bring on the question of the difficulty here in Belgium to have take home naloxone, for example, doesn't exist in Belgium. So we want also to go and work on really concrete topics that we cannot put on the table right now ourselves and have big institutions join us and promote also our campaign. There's a lot of talks now in the US about the war on drugs and how we should end the war on drugs. But for example, in Europe, what we have, it is not perceived as a war on drugs. And we don't have the same level of mass incarceration. And we don't even talk much about the racial side of drug policies here. But I suppose that it also exists, although even if we don't talk about it, so I suppose that in your countries, there is like lots of incarcerations caused by the repressive drug laws. And also, I suppose that the drug laws disproportionately affect ethnic minorities and migrants. So is that the case? Do I see it well or that this is similar in the US and Europe? But there is not so much difference. In Belgium, half of the people in jail, it's related with drugs or connected with drugs issues. It's half of the people in jail. So that's something we know. It could be done much better and that will not go into this. In terms of profiling and the impact of the drug law towards a certain public or neighbourhoods, we don't know if I don't have at least the facts so clear like that. But yes, we see that drug use is in all parts of the population, not all the same for the age, but all socio-economical profile use drugs. And then the people that do get a fine or a problem, it's not the same proportion. So there is an impact that is on the most vulnerable parts of the population for sure. And this is also one of the reasons and one of the message we want to work on. And also, it contrasts with the official police discourse, which is we focus on traffic and we focus on that. But then when we see the numbers, for example, in Belgium in 2018, there were more than 35,000 registered, I don't know how to say this correctly in English, but registered facts related with drugs just for cannabis, 35,000. This is a lot of just drug users, not traffickers. And these people, well, they are from some neighbourhoods, more than other. So it does still has a big impact, even on just cannabis users. Esther? Yes, similarly, more than a third of people in prison are there due to crimes relating to drug use, which is frequently inquisitive crime to fund drug use. And so that is clearly it is a problem, despite perhaps maybe in conversation, it's not as overt as in America is an issue. Similarly, we have often heard around like discussing around the world with drug issues that the US is experiencing a drug related death crisis. But actually, with the most recent figures, certainly it would seem that we need to talk more about Europe with Scotland looking like the drug death capital of the world at the moment. And that's highly concerning. And to add to that, with on the racial profiling element, we have, I think we need to do more, we need to do more to discuss that issue. But it has come out recently that black people are nine times more likely to be stops in search than white people. And disproportionate amount of stop and searches are under the misuse of drugs act for the reason of drug possession. So that clearly is we definitely do have a problem with that. And it is actually coming more to the forefront now. The video you are watching now is produced by the Rights Reporter Foundation, a nonprofit organisation, which is not supported by any governments or political parties. If you like this show, please support our work on our website, drugreporter.net. Make a donation today and become our supporting member. It makes a difference. Thank you. You told us why we have to reform drug use, but do you also have proposals on how would you reform drug laws? Do you have any concrete models of decriminalisation with which you would follow? Because there are different ways how you can reform your drug laws. Well, first, if we could get an agreement with everyone in Belgium that what we have isn't working, that would be great. If people would have more courage to just and just take act, not not, I mean, act that this first step would be really already wonderful. And then, of course, we would ask them then, okay, let's sit and decide what else we could try even for a few years, try something new different. And on these new propositions, we don't have just here one perfect proposition. Let's do this. And within the people that are joining us in this campaign to change the law, there are people that agree on that it's not working, but we don't all agree between us on what should be done. But that's fine. We want to do this with others. We want to discuss this. And in Belgium, at the moment, there is an agreement between the three big federation that are regrouping all the main professional centers working with drug issues. So all the treatment centers, all the people doing prevention, that's in Belgium around 170 or 180 institutions working with drugs, the main ones. And right now, we have an agreement that we all want to push for decriminalization of drug users. So this is a first level. This is the minimum we would want. And we all agree on that. So that's already something. And so I am not speaking about small activist groups. I am talking, this is the federation working on drug issues in Belgium. So this is something quite interesting. So it's so interesting that a federation like mine joined this type of campaign, because usually this doesn't come from this type of institution. It comes more from smaller activist groups. So here, my federation is joining this campaign, which is really nice. And in my federation, we also did, and we had a work group that worked during one year and a half to prepare a model for decriminalizing and regalment and regulating cannabis in Belgium. Now, this is only my federation in Brussels. The other ones are not on this proposition, but for cannabis, we define a full model, for example, of what could be happening in Belgium from producing, distributing, and controlling the whole circuit in terms of regulating cannabis. And we have a special focus. If we propose a model for Belgium, that would be a mix between different options that could live together, that would combine auto-culture of cannabis, but also cannabis social clubs. So the non-profits sector would have big part in managing the cannabis issues. And on the side, also the therapeutic medical cannabis part of the circuit related with pharmacies and another type of management system. And if there is a commercial model, it would have to be really, really well regulated by the states in order not to repeat the mistakes that were done with alcohol or tobacco and the role that these big industries played in this. I'm kind of at risk of echoing Stefan and a lot of these things because I think we're probably experiencing very parallel idea of how this campaign is going because we're very much also at the beginning of just needing consensus that the current drug laws are not working. That is where we're starting from and we want that to be cross-party and we need parliamentarians, but the public are like to realise that it touches everyone that drug policy needs to change. So we're currently aiming to get as many parliamentarians as possible to sign up to a statement that calls for a reform and new legislation instead of the current misuse of drugs act and to take a public health approach rather than a criminal justice approach. So we really hope that we can just garner as much support as we can from that. I think there is a sort of atmosphere, perhaps a fear of politicians speaking out for drug policy reform in the UK and we really want to create an environment in which they feel like they can have the confidence to speak out about it. We do have lots of existing politicians who already are very good strong advocates on drug policy reform and we want to be able to add to that group and make sure that there is a public conversation around it. It isn't just silent reformers. To add to that therefore, yes the ultimate principle is that we want the reform, we want acknowledgement of reform and we want to call for new legislation and we need to start there. In terms of alternative drug laws, Transform believes that we should move to legal regulation of all drugs as we've previously set out in a lot of our literature, essentially establishing a risk-based licensing system for drugs. So that's our core aim for drug policy reform but however within this campaign we just want to get consensus on reform itself and see where we can go from there. But to add to that there is actually a private members bill in Parliament at the moment which has been put forward by an MP which is proposing a review of the misuse of drugs act and we really welcome this bill and hope that it succeeds and hope that we can garner as much support for it within Parliament as we can because it really is definitely a step in the right direction and it's good that there is something now on paper happening in the House of Commons. So in the end it will be a political decision to reform drug laws. So can you describe us the political situation around drug laws right now in your countries? Who is against, who is supporting reform? Is there really a strong support among the political parties or the government of these issues? So the political situation is quite complex in Belgium with our different regions and languages and many political groups. There are groups that already proposed also some interesting bills but that didn't really made it to the to be really debated in the Parliament in the end. This will have to be done at the federal level and there are differences between the political groups. Some are more progressives, some don't really care much about this issue. It's not in their priority and we don't really know, they don't really have a clear position and some other party could really be the classical zero tolerance, hard position that you can see related with extreme right kind of political strategies. So we have a bit of everything and we have a lot of parties so it's not like we have to convince one or two big party, we have to convince a lot of parties and it's not easy because it's not on their priorities either so it's really not easy. What about the UK? Yes so we have a majority conservative government which is taking a zero tolerance hard line criminal justice approach to drug policy. We even just trying to set up drug consumption rooms has been difficult against the UK government that they've been quite reticent to support any sort of change and as I previously said they've rejected two recommendations from separate committees to set up drug consumption rooms and also to look into decriminalisation, personal possession. So that is sort of, it's a difficult environment to be working in and it would be naive to not be aware of that. On the other hand there are some good politicians in other parties who are definitely aiming for reform and actually two parties have legal regulation in their manifestos so there is some hope in that but I think we are, yes we are an interesting situation. I mean very recently the leader of the opposition Labour Party, Keir Starmer described our current drug policies as roughly right which is obviously a concern and it is very disappointing for us to hear that however he did end that with saying that we need to be having a discussion so we're really hoping that that means that that is just fear of all lack of confidence for speaking out about drug policy reform in the public. I think many politicians are tied by the media to how they present so yes we're really at the bottom but we're really trying to like get garner support from the bottom up and try and get there but there are obstacles certainly. On the other hand we do have a lot of work that's happening in Scotland so that's very interesting and I think that the issues in Scotland will possibly tip over the edge of the idea of opening up drug consumption rooms so that will be something to watch in the UK at the moment. Okay so before we conclude our conversation here can you also share some lessons learned about your campaigns which which maybe other organizations in other countries can you know benefit like what did you learn about what works in mass communication, what arguments work, what arguments did not work or what tools worked in communication so something like those lessons. Let's start now with Esther. I think we're very much at the beginning of this campaign as we're planning to run it for right up to its full 50th year next May so it will probably be easier to come back to me in a year's time to be able to properly reflect on how things are going. I think one of the issues is obviously that this is currently in a campaign entirely based online due to COVID restrictions so we're having to be really creative about how we get our messages across and then second to that due to COVID we're trying to establish contact and communication within parliament with MPs that are totally overwhelmed by COVID issues so it's sort of kind of trying to get through the barrier of emails that they are receiving at all times. However we've had some of the very interesting things that we've thought about that and we are we have got an event in parliament virtually happening in May so I think that will be quite a good alternative to what would have usually been an in-person lobby that we organized throughout anyone's child campaign. The other thing I think that has been really powerful is and Stefan referred to this earlier as well is pointing to how different things were back then and certainly we don't have 100 years but 50 years is still substantial enough and so we've been putting out some graphics to really simply present how much things have changed in the last 50 years and how outdated and outmoded the misuse of drugs act is in relation to that so for example we've been we've done a sort of mix of light-hearted graphics such as pointing out what a phone looked like in 1971 but also wanted to strike a more serious tone around how attitudes in society and towards health have really changed since 1971 so we've used the example for example the ability to fire women from their workplace for being pregnant was was legal in 1971 was the same year that our drugs were created it's just there's a sort of disconnect between where we were and how are we still here with some things and have really progressed in others so I'm not sure if that's really answered the question but we hope that it will be effective as we go along. I guess for us it was really important to use this momentum it was 100 years since 1921 so we did get some media attention because there was an anniversary so this had to try to have this topic in places where it isn't usually so this has worked because the week of the anniversary we really had interviews and we had we were present in all the media radio press and also a little bit on tv so that worked that was nice what was also really nice is that the way the media covered the topic was quite good which is not so easy to say because maybe 10 years ago we would have had a big opposition and stupid headlines ridiculizing the topic this has happened a lot in the past and we have not had that so that was good we people the journalists were really asking interesting questions the debates were interesting and we're not just polarized so it was this was quite a good surprise but then the real impacts we don't know we don't know yet we will see if really somewhere there can be a working group at the state level or somewhere else where this question will be discussed openly and this is too soon to say maybe in the end of the year I can tell you more about that and then on really communication on our communication strategies we really try to group different types of messages messages that are against stereotypes messages to remind some of the facts and we try to to have references for all the things we say to have scientific references so it's on the tactical level we have small slogans so we compare direct use with maintaining I don't know you said it's going to the mundane or car driving so simple things to help people get to the heart of the issue but then being really serious about what we are saying so I hope next time we will when we will discuss about these things we won't speak about anniversaries but because we won't have this obsolete and outdated drug laws but we will speak about the how how the criminalization went in your countries Esther Stafan thank you so much for for being with us today thank you for having me and thank you so much for those who are watching us on on Facebook please stay with us on social media and remember Drug Reporter Cafe is operated or run by a non-profit organization so please make a donation today if you like this video show and if you would like that to be continued thank you very much goodbye