Nick, Fraser, Chris and Peter talk (soberly) about prohibition of harmful substances.

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Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by Tell Me Studios for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm Fraser McGruer and I'm here with Chris Wragg, Peter Coghill and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights and this week we're discussing why such a big deal is made about drugs and their prohibition. Nick, you've got something to lead us in on.

Yeah well recently the Royal Society for Public Health came out and said that we should test, provide sort of free drug testing at pop festivals because having trialled it last year they were able to remove quite a lot of harmful substances, you know, things that aren't actually what users thought they were. So they, you know, that contained cutting agents like boric acid and benzocaine and various other kind of harmful things. So as far as you know their advice is this is not going to, you're not, we're not going to be able to stop people bringing drugs to concerts but we can make things better given that they are going to do that. That's the argument but of course the counter argument to that which is the sort of the prohibition argument is that well in a sense you're making it less of a deterrent, you know, the people shouldn't be, whatever that means, shouldn't be taking drugs either because they're illegal or for some other reason and by effectively making it less dangerous you're taking away some of the deterrent value and also, you know, potentially effectively condoning it. So it's, that was, you know, a controversial thing for the Royal Society for Public Health to say and I think we're

going to discuss why it's controversial. Well let's keep on with you Nick, what's your view

on these findings and what they did? What you mean? Well I mean, well it is, I mean in a way my view, well I think we're going to cover different angles of the argument because it's really not a straightforward issue, you know, I think my view actually if it had to be really kind of boring and sitting on the fence about it is that I am pro-prohibition and pro-legalisation depending on the drug for reasons that I think I can explain. That sounds reasonable, that sounds

reasonable. Who wants to come in? I think, well I think it might be helpful to talk about what prohibition is trying to achieve and the different drivers for prohibition. So you ban something that you don't like or is bad for various reasons. Speaking Welsh. Yeah, so yeah, well, and Welsh might be bad for you, I don't know. So we ban the sale but not necessarily the use of various different types of drug, largely for health reasons. So things like cannabis and the stronger varieties of it and lots of class A drugs that are actually very harmful to your health, even for single use but definitely for prolonged use. So there's a very strong argument for the control and for the, to try to limit the use of these drugs for public health reasons. But often these pro-prohibition policies are clouded by a moral obligation to certain types of drugs and certainly that was the major driver for the banning of alcohol in the United States at the beginning of the last century. It was really largely a moral argument, it was the sort of puritanical Christian fundamentalist lobby groups that said no, alcohol is inherently bad, it gets you, it takes you closer from God, so let's ban it. So that's another reason. But a third often forgotten about or not sufficiently sort of investigated or quantified reason are all the additional benefits, disbenefits that drugs or non-use of drugs have. So the revenue that casual drug use produces for criminal elements within society is huge. And that has lots of knock-on effect in terms of criminal damage etc and murder rates and all sorts of things that potentially could be removed if you in some way regulated the drug economy and that would

have enormous knock-on social benefits. Okay. I mean I think there's a couple of things I'd say in response to that. One is, I think while you might conflate moral and rational reasons for doing things, I think, or for banning things, I think morality actually is often driven by irrationality. So, you know, when people say something is bad, like the prohibitionist or the temperance movement was driven by the problems caused by alcoholism. I mean my great-grandfather fell off a roof, but based on having been, he was locked in his bedroom because he was an alcoholic and going on binge drinking, sort of, well binges, and in order to try and get himself out, he climbed onto the roof and fell off. It seems like being locked in a room to cure

you of alcoholism was the real problem there. Well, like, you know, this is a really good metaphor. It's a really good metaphor for, you know, whether or not, you know, when you're trying to stop someone doing something, the fact that you might be inducing greater harm, how morally relevant

is that? But the point is, in deterrence terms, you know, it wasn't a great advert for alcoholism falling off a roof. Yeah, but presumably he was sober at the time. I'm not entirely sure of the family history of the whole event, but the point was... Right, so before you go on, I think the point

was they're locking him up, it's fine, they just didn't do a good enough job of it. But anyway...

Indeed, and that would be the argument for a lot of prohibitionists, would be to say, look, you know, yes, we have all these harms, but that's because we're not enforcing it strongly enough. That

would be the... But the point is that, you know, that effectively the morality behind the movement, so his wife and subsequently family members, children and so on, were very sort of abstemious in their religious viewpoint. So it's not that people think alcoholism is somehow intrinsically morally bad, it's the consequences are harmful of the use of a particular substance

or whatever the resource is. But I mean, the point is that sometimes the disapproval is way out of line with the harm. And there's another question really, which is why, and I think this is, I raise this as a puzzle really, why it is that we disapprove of drug type harm, but there are certain kinds of harmful activities that we don't disapprove of, totally frivolous things. So things like mountain climbing, for example, going up Everest is about one of the most dangerous things you can do. But no one's talking about prohibiting it. You know, no one's saying, well, you should, it's morally wrong to climb up mountains because you might die and your family

will be destroyed. Quite the opposite. We sort of celebrate people. Yeah, right. And I think

there's a sense, I honestly think there's a sense that people think drugs are cheating. You're having fun, but you're simply not putting in the effort. And I've always sort of thought that was a bit odd. It seems to me, actually, drugs are almost a way you can have your cake and eat it. Cake was in fact once used as a phantom brass eye drug. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, because there is evidence, I mean, look, just every single society on earth uses drugs. There hasn't, there is no culture that does not use drugs. We're fighting against something which is, you know, absolutely ingrained in human nature. And indeed, there are some fairly plausible theories that drugs, you know, psychotropic plants have co-evolved with humans because they provide us with sort of neurotransmitters and things that are expensive for our bodies to produce. So it's very much like, you know, the way that certain other sort of nutritional plants have evolved. It's just that instead of giving us, you know, proteins and carbohydrates, they give us neurotransmitters, which is an interesting idea. But the point is, you know, aren't drugs, if we don't think drugs are fun or the kind of fun you get from drugs is allowed, if you think you're not allowed to have that kind of fun, it's very straightforward. Drugs are bad, should be banned. I think it only, the reason it's an interesting discussion is because drugs are obviously fun. And they're, you know, in some circumstances, very helpful to people, the psychotropic effects that they have. So let's stick with those things. So, I mean, a really good hard, so hard case, an easy case, actually, for prohibitionists would be something like heroin. There's a lot of related deaths, you know, it's, and it leads to lots of social harms. It's, you know, the harm is very big there. Something like cannabis is really, it's very hard to make a case that on harm grounds, that that should be prohibited. So cannabis would be a good battleground, you know, for the arguments, because it's very, it's almost no one really, I think only one person has ever recorded that being dying of cannabis poisoning. That's to say nothing, of course, of things like, you know, people have crashed their car under the influence, or perhaps that I think there is some evidence of long term psychiatric damage and stuff. But, but I mean, let's assume that it's relatively harmless and fun. What is the big deal there? Well, hold on before we sort of answer

that question. I think there is a difference between taking drugs and climbing Everest, which is the climbing Everest in itself is not necessarily bad for you. Lots of times it does result in something bad, someone falling off. Yeah, but that's true of taking a lot of drugs.

Well, no, but there's nothing bad for you about taking cannabis. Well, there is there isn't there

is. So for example, it depends on how you take it. But let's say if you in the majority of cases,

people smoke it. Okay. Yeah, I know. But that look, okay, you don't have to let's say that you could take you could just take ingest it orally or something. Yeah. So let's make this as hard as possible. Because that's the more interesting case. You know, let's, let's assume that cannabis is the fun of cannabis outweighs the harm. So assume that, assume that we were to be

put lots of scientific investment in, in, in, in casual drug use to make it as safe as possible. So you've got a form of cannabis, which has none of the negative effects often associated with smoking is in a controlled dosage format. So you know exactly how much you're taking. There's lots of public health guidance about how much you should take. And you can

Yeah, you know, but what's sorry to cut across your word also, in what sense is climbing Everest not intrinsically harmful? It's the whole point doesn't harm you every time, which with some

drugs, you can say that, I mean, but I think if we just cut through this for a moment, as you were describing that there, Peter immediately, I just thought, God, that just doesn't sound any fun at all. Okay. And so immediately just go, Oh, I'm not interested. Yeah, all the glamour of

it being illegal. But you have the same thing with beer or with alcohol. So you have you have lots of, you have high availability, you can go anywhere and buy it. But what you're getting, you're you're assured that it's of a high quality standard, there's no pollutants in there, which are going to be negatively affect your health other than the alcohol itself. But there's lots of public guidance out there to help you to not to not take too much. And if you are taking too much, there's special services around to help you get get better. So to ask the question we

posed at the beginning and and before I interrupt him what Nick said there as well. So what is the

big deal? What is why? Well, I think the sort of the more interesting question is that if you if you do have something that you can agree, so if you've got a perfectly safe drug, that creates pleasure, and there's no downside to it? Well, that's an easy question. Yes, there's there's no there's no case to be made for prohibiting the use of that substance. Well, no, I mean,

there clearly is in the mind of prohibitionists, because that is more or less the case with cannabis. You know, that is more or less about as close to what you just said as possible.

But I suppose for me, the question is, does so let's assume that those prohibitionists who are arguing the case that something that is harmless, and only has upside, or at least the upside, significantly outweighs the downside are wrong, which we probably agree on. The question is, for things which which are harmful, or which there is debate around, or which we would, we would seek to limit the use of does pro does prohibition work? Well, I think and I think this

is that you can probably introduce a fairly straightforward model, which at least bounds what variables are in play here. So I think in general, and it does, as I as I said, totally depend on the drug, but in general, like generic sort of drug, prohibiting it will lower the number of users, that's fairly uncontroversial, but it will increase the average harm per user, for all sorts of reasons, because you're more likely to end up taking poisons, you might get diseases, you can have less support, if something goes wrong, blah, blah, blah. So, you know, basically, we're talking about making this trade off between fewer users and more harm per user, you know, effectively concentrating harm on the people who are, you know, the most enthusiastic about taking the drug, and we'll do it even if it's prohibited. And I think, you know, there's there's

legislative prohibition, but there's also resource prohibition. So take a country like Iran, which borders Afghanistan, you know, the the world's creator of opiates. Iran has the largest per capita usage for for opiates of any any country in the world. But it actually has very prohibitive sort of rules about the trafficking and usage of of those substances. So legislatively, there is, you know, there is prohibition, but in practical terms, there isn't prohibition. Then you've also got the issue of the indirect effects of prohibition. So in Iran, again, there is a moral framework, religious framework around the banning of alcohol. So, you know, there is an argument that not being able to use alcohol will drive people towards using opiates. So you know, you have you have a morally enforced prohibition of alcohol within the country, that may actually lead to increase in usage of something definitely more harmful. So I think Iran's a really interesting test case for all kinds of all kinds of reasons of, you know, how prohibition is not just a case of creating a law about something. Yeah. And I think, you know,

absolutely. And it's totally possible to think of other kinds of interventions which don't involve making something illegal. There's all kinds of things which we might disapprove of, which we wouldn't contemplate, you know, making making illegal. You know, there's all kinds of if you take things like the influence that parents have on their children, for example, a lot of those the kinds of choices parents make could be much more harmful. But we're not we wouldn't contemplate making it illegal to behave in certain ways as parents. I mean, sometimes we do like, you know, with the corporal punishment, which I think is illegal now. But I mean, you know, there's all kinds of choices that people make, lifestyle choices that people make that are stupid, you know, getting into a lot of debt, for example, or, you know, gambling or, you know, there's a lot of things that people do that are bad for them. But we don't think about law as a resort. We think about advice and support and citizens. I don't, I suppose I'm saying, let's not even if you thought people shouldn't do it. There are other things other than banning it. And banning it does seem like a very, it does seem to increase harm, obviously, primarily because it will necessarily be in the hands of criminals. But the thing is, I mean, I don't know whether we can widen a bit or step above this discussion. And just, I don't think we've really got into why it is that it's

such an emotive debate. That's what I don't understand. Sorry to interrupt. It's so we are close to wrapping up here. Okay. And to answer that, one of my suggestions might be is the immediacy and the sort of strong cause and effect you can see with drugs quite quickly. And it's quite obvious, for example, even with something like cannabis, for example, the effect that has on someone's behaviour. That said, with alcohol, I mean, you could say the same. And yet, that tends not to be prohibited these days. But yeah, just given that we're getting close to the end here,

let's try and kind of reach a conclusion. Yeah. So the reason I think it's morally potent is to do with sort of cultural memory and or observation. So I think everybody has this fear of us becoming like the lotus eaters on Meninx, you know, or indeed, like, you know, Chinese society, after the opium wars and the sort of enforced sale of opium into the Chinese market, and that you would have, you know, complete degeneracy within society and listlessness and, you know, that drugs, particularly opiates, are viewed as having this very, very corrosive effect on us at a societal level. And I think that's what drives the morality behind it is this terror at us devolving into that kind of situation. Peter? He was just taking a drag of his spliff

Yes, sorry. Yeah. So is it so but it is, is that is that an irrational fear? Is that is that? Do we think that I think that's quite a rather sort of somewhat irrational? Because if we were able to, because if if, if we didn't have alcohol, if alcohol was invented today, we might treat it like a new class A drug and not completely ban it. But we have, it's been around so long. And it's, it's sort of it's part of a lot of culture is to drink to share a drink and to drink with with a meal. And we've, by and large, people do suffer from alcoholism. And my family's been affected by that. But by and large, people develop personally, through support of their family and culture, they have a means of using it responsibly, so they can have fun when they aren't being expected to do important things and make decisions. And then by the morning, they're okay. And they can get on with their job function. And they can function.

Yeah, because they'd all be stoned off their mind. Right, listen, we've got to finish this off just before we do. A quick survey, which drug do you feel you could not live without?

Take a moment to think about this. Yeah, so for me, it's exercise and the... Yeah, but it's true. Undoubtedly, when I'm injured, which occurs to me quite regularly,

I get withdrawal symptoms. So he gets serious drug-related harm, basically, from this exercise

drug of which he speaks. Yeah. Peter? Caffeine. I can't do anything in the morning without a

cup of tea or coffee. Yeah, this is genuinely challenging because I love alcohol and nicotine. The combination is absolutely brilliant. I think, although, you know, I really... The sort of things I think about in association with alcohol use, which is, you know, sitting in a beer garden, lovely cold glass of craft ale, you know, having a nice relaxing afternoon chatting. That's kind of the ideal setting. That's what I think of. You know, I'm emotionally attached to that kind of use of alcohol. However, I think depriving me of nicotine would be worse. I think on my daily life, I would probably find it actually harder. I can go without, you know, I gave up alcohol in February just for... Peter and I did it just for a laugh, really, as a kind of experiment and for health reasons. And it was not problematic at all. But giving up nicotine, I think I'd find that very, very hard. Because you're physiologically addicted. Yeah, but what's the difference between that and just really enjoying something? But I mean, I have tried to give up smoking. I tried for years. You know, giving up smoking is easy. I've done it loads of times, as Mark Twain said. And I've never managed to succeed. So now I've gone electronic. So hopefully I've reduced my harm at no cost to my nicotine consumption. I think for me, it would have to be crack cocaine.

I just, it's just incredibly... You love that stuff. You can't get through a podcast session without it. Absolutely. I don't know how I would do without it. For me, it's caffeine. I love tea. Okay, let's stop there. So, gentlemen, thank you, as always. I'm Fraser McGruer. I've been here with Nick Hare, Peter Coghill and Chris Wragg of Aleph Insights. Thank you, as always, for listening to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast. And until next time, bye-bye.