Begin Again with Davina McCall - Is Alcohol Deadlier Than Drugs? This Is The Most Dangerous Drug! Drug Myths Exposed. Professor David Nutt.

Episode Date: December 5, 2024

In this episode of Begin Again, Davina is joined by Professor David Nutt, a renowned drug researcher, psychiatrist, and former chief drug advisor to the UK government. Known for his bold stance on drug policy reform, Professor Nutt sheds light on the facts and fiction of drugs, the untapped potential of psychedelics, and reveals the factors shaping current drug policies.  Professor David Nutt’s Book: https://www.amazon.com/Psychedelics-Revolutionary-Change-Life_A-Expert/dp/0306835282 Follow me here: www.instagram.com/beginagain https://www.tiktok.com/@beginagainpod  (00:00) Intro (01:10) Why David Believes Drug Policies Are Fundamentally Flawed (07:12) The Impact of Drugs At Different Ages (08:49) How To Talk To Kids About Drugs (10:16) Media Backlash Against Drug Reform (15:54) Can Psychedelics Cure Addiction? (20:49) Understanding Drug Classifications (25:07) How Politics Shape Drug Policies (27:06) Shopify Ad (28:06) Ranking Substances By Danger (31:18) The Hidden Risks Of Cannabis Use (34:16) How Psychedelics Can Revolutionise Treatment (39:12) Psilocybin’s Potential To Treat Mental Health (40:30) The Future of Drug Reform (43:06) Deciding Drug Policy (45:22) The Counties Getting It Right (49:50) Should We Decriminalise Drugs? (50:32) Ecstasy Myths (57:47) How To Change Lives (59:42) Safe Alcohol Consumption (01:02:29 Alcohol and Driving Sponsored by: Shopify - Shopify.co.uk/DAVINA   SetArtwork provided by Kimi Zoet. Enquiries: [e-mail] https://g2ul0.app.link/oQMAPbdSGNb Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You felt that the world had drug policies wrong. The education messages were failing. We've seen this for over 100 years. Drug laws drive people to make... And that then made me question, well, hang on, I think. Why have we got drug laws at all? And we did two things. Let's ask the question, what are the harms of drugs people trying to avoid?

Each year, we've broken the record for the number of people dying of opids. There were children going to school who are giving their parents breakfast, because their parents has ever had it. What age do you think is appropriate to start talking to children about drugs? What we do know is that using earlier does seem to increase the risk of it. Why is your idea to not say,

okay, let's stop everybody from doing it? Two simple harm reduction measures almost eliminated all deaths from MDMA in this country. Very often people use drugs and alcohol they don't want to use anymore, but they can't stop. Thaedatadicts work almost immediately.

I'm changing the triggers that made me want to drink or take drugs in the first place. They're potentially transformational. So you know that to be true now. Where were you in your life? What was happening to you when you realized that you felt that the world had drug policies wrong? Well, it started off with me doing something useful with drug policy. And that's back in the early 90s.

And when the first deaths from... Existcy were coming along. And my old boss, my old PhD supervisor in Oxford, was David Graham Smith, was brought in by the home office to try to work out how would this stop people dying when they were using E. And because I'd done quite a bit of research up to that point on serotonin and obviously ecstasy works largely through serotonin system. He invited me to join a meeting at the home office to talk about how we could prevent people die. And we did some research and we took advice. and looked around the world and came to a really quite simple conclusion.

Basically, the people who were dying of being those days were dying because they were getting too hot. They were getting hypothermia. And they were dehydrating. Why was that? Because they were in clubs that were hot. And the clubs were being very cynical. They had turned off the tap.

Sometimes they'd even turn off the toilets so people couldn't get water, forcing them to buy drink at the bar. And we did two things. One of which still is personal today. We made it a regulation that all venues must give free tap water. And the other thing we recommended we couldn't make it a regulation was that all clubs should have chill-out rooms.

And those two simple harm-reduction measures almost eliminated all deaths from MDMA in this country. Why is your idea to not say, okay, let's stop everybody from doing it? Oh, well, because people like doing it. The hatred of ecstasy wasn't because it was harmful. They made it harm from it by, in any way, initially, by trying to make people do it underground and not telling lies about the harm. They tried to use scare tactics, but people didn't.

buy into that because they kind of knew when you got a million young people a weekend using ecstasy and very few of them are dying you know it's not that dangerous so the education messages were failing and why would you want to stop someone doing something that were getting a lot of pleasure

for a lot of people who say he say it was one of the best things they've ever done and they develop friendships which exist until today and getting rid of it was a political act like in fact almost all drug laws are politically driven. And the existing one was a peculiarly sort of hostile one. It was really the establishment attacking young people. So I came in, helped come up with a sensible policy to reduce harm,

and then got asked to join the government's advisory council on the misuse of drugs to try to bring more wisdom to drug policy. And it was kind of weird because even though we had made those decisions and there had been progress, when you, When I was sitting on the committee talking to people who were there at the time, it was clear that they didn't really want that. They just wanted to say no. So I said I would take over this, sharing this committee, which is a sort of scientific committee of the advisory council,

only if we could actually develop a proper way of estimating the harms of drugs. Through research. Well, through analysis, yes. through, you can't really research the harms of recreational drugs, because that's kind of, it's kind of difficult to do, you know, I mean, you can't set up an experiment where 10,000 kids go through a rave and 10,000 kids go into a rave on placebo. Now, you have to use sort of natural real world evidence,

but there's plenty of that around because quite a lot of kids are using stuff. So I said, let's have a policy that was based on a template of harm. I mean, let's ask the question, what are, harms of drugs they were trying to avoid. And amazingly, they pointed me, and we set up this scale of harms, and we started assessing different drugs on the scale of harm, and it became quite clear that there wasn't any obvious difference between legal drugs and illegal drugs in terms of the harms.

And that then made me question, well, hang on, I'll say, why have you got drug laws at all? What's driving the drug laws? And then you learn more about it. You learn about the history and about having it. the alcohol industry has sort of defended itself by denying the harms and also promoted fear of other drugs cannabis, particularly in ecstasy as well, trying to get people not to use drugs that they can't make a profit from

and it's continuing alcohol. And so I began to lobby for a policy which was actually based on science. And truth. Yeah, well, yeah, difficult in politics because politicians believe they're telling me, well, I was telling the truth. Well, I think what's difficult. is from as long as I can remember from when I was a little girl, you must remember this, just say no.

Yes. You know, just say no to drugs on huge posters everywhere. And then when a kid says yes, and they go, that was the greatest experience of my life. Of course they're going to go, this is rubbish. But don't look at that. That is exactly right. I mean, because I mean, the whole just saying now,

it's based on two completely false premises. It's based on the false premise that kids will actually just say no, but also on the false premise, if you lie to kids about drugs, they know they're going to work out very quickly you're being lied to. And then they'll just say, well, being lied to about everything. And then if you do have a sensible harm reduction message, they may not believe that.

Is there an age, we're talking about talking to kids, is there an optimum age to leave it for your brain, for their brain development, to start taking. Yeah, yeah, that's a really interesting question. I suppose the traditional way was to wait until you went to university or you were 18 when you were allowed to drink. By that time, your brain is pretty well formed. So if, I'm saying if, because I don't think we've got good evidence, but if it were the case that using drugs at a younger age where it's a damage of the brain, it's unlikely after the age of 18. but what we do know is that using earlier

does seem to increase the risk of dependence. That was the case of me. You know, I was 12 when I started smoking weed and that just went on and on and on and on. I think that's definitely true for my experience and many friends of mine that went down the same road as me. And that's partly because you have got less good control of your decision-making when you're younger.

So even if you You knew it was probably not good for you But even if you wanted it, it's harder for a 12-year-old to stop Than it is raising you And the same principle applies for instance To riding motorbikes and that We don't allow 12-year-olds to drive motorbikes If that were gradually increasing the age

We have people can drive motorbikes at all Because we know essentially If people don't start doing dangerous things Until they're over about 18 or 20 They're much less likely to die as a consequence or make silly errors, judgment. We just touched on advice that you can give children when you're talking to them about drugs.

Have you got any tips that you can share? Firstly, what age do you think is appropriate to start talking to children about drugs and what should you say? Well, I think you should be ready for when they ask the question and it might come at any age. It might come in four or five when kids walk. Yeah, I remember with my younger daughter,

going into a toilet in the airport in Sydney. And she said, what's that? What's that thing on the wall with a hole in it? And I said, well, that's where you put needles. Oh, what? And we have a little conversation about people using needles and why it's important that the needle goes in there and not on the floor, you don't pick it up and spike yourself

in the middle of a misleading aids. So I think when issues of atroves come along, then you should be ready to talk to them. My own view is certainly at junior school, there ought to be the beginnings of a dialogue about how you can seek help as a child. If you are worried. I mean, there are children going to school, literally, and under 11 who are giving their parents breakfast

because their parents are so out of it. And then they're going to school. I mean, those children really need to feel comfortable and ask the questions of teachers, not just being either ignored or built a shutout. Jackie Smith really didn't like this article that you wrote. Could you tell us a little bit about that? So by that time, I'd been supposedly advising the government on drug policy for about seven years.

And they were not really taking any notice at all. And then the Brown government came in. Everyone thought, great, you know, Blair, well, we couldn't trust him, but Brown, you know, Mr. Prudence. got the economy right, you know. And he said, we're going to have a government of all the skills or something or other. And we're going to be the first government that uses science to direct policy. And then the Science and Technology Committee said, oh, that's really interesting. So, okay, two years out of line, we're going to find out whether you actually did what you said.

And they set up, they set up the select committee to look at whether they had used science. I think it was in education, health, something else, and drug policy. So we sat in front of this select committee and it was brilliant. Because the select committee said, so what have you done to use science and drug policy? We, the drug policy, people said, they've done nothing. And then he spoke to the drug's minister and they said, well, you know, what are you going to do? to help them have evidence to revere their property. He said, well, you know, our policy is this,

is that we look at for evidence to support our policy. And of course, everyone burst out laughing. He even understood that it was exactly the, well-way around. It was sort of anti-scientific. And then they said, no, we've got to. You've got to allow the committee to review the harm and self-execency because they've denied it to us for 20 years. It had been a class A drug.

Worse than that, but it was the drug which was giving people the longest time in prison. Really? People were going to prison longer for possessing or selling MDMA than they were for heroin or crack. Wow, I didn't know that. No, they generally don't make that very explicit. And it was a time because I was part of that era. I mean, when there was a big bang, I took a lot of ecstasy, and it was the greatest, most loving.

It was a time where it felt like the football stands were a place of harmony. It felt like everywhere was different. It's certainly massively reduced football violence, didn't it? I mean, that's a crazy, crazy statistics. Police, I think, loved it. They did. Not them taking it. I should explain that.

Actually, probably. We don't have good data on the police. No, no. But they were definitely, they much preferred policing raves, but they got hugged in policing events. where alcohol was a drug of choice when they got beaten up. In fact, the police initially resisted. They didn't want ecstasy to be controlled,

but then they were incentivised. How? Well, it was made a target for policing. And essentially, political pressure was put on the police to support rather than resist criminalisation users. So they were doing that. They were finding evidence to support their policy. Well, yes.

They were struggling, though. They were really struggling to do that. And I'll get back to the story. So the select committee said, okay, you've got to let these guys review ecstasy because it doesn't seem to anyone that should be a class a trod. So we reviewed ecstasy and came to the conclusion. It shouldn't be a class A trod, maybe class D, maybe a class C. And just before the report came out,

I thought, well, maybe we could sort of put the debate into a broader sort of arena. Let's compare the harms of ecstasy with other arms. And I came up with this kind of, I think it was one sort of clever little idea. Let's invent a syndrome called equacy. Equacy, exorcist. But equacy stands for equine addiction syndrome. So let's look at the harms of horse riding compares with the harms of ecstasy. And I did research.

I looked at the harms of horse-sidious. In fact, I was so chilled by my discovery. I tried to stop my daughter's horse riding after that. It's unbelievable, isn't it? Yes. In fact, when I give talks on this, I ask how many people horse ride. And then I often say, and how many of you know somebody who's died of horse riding? So I put this paper out thinking, at the very least it would...

It would demonstrate. Exactly. People could realize that actually you didn't... You know, horsewagon, so it shouldn't be a class A activity, so why would ecstasy? By the world weren't absolutely married. Jackie Smith went absolutely ape. She rang me out when I was in my clinic, and she berated me for demeaning the harms of people who've suffered from brain injury from falling off their horses. How can I compare horse riding with an exorcine?

I said, well, there's got to be some metric of what's the threshold for banning a drug. Oh, you can't compare a legal drug with an illegal drug. You've got to have some criterion to decide if something is illegal. No, you can't do that. Shout, shout, shout. And it was a kind of very memorable conversation, not very satisfactory one. I really hope you're enjoying this episode. And if you can, give us a follow.

I was always quite amazed by the statistics of Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous because it did save me. Yes. But I was always amazed at how many people did fall off the wagon or it's very, you know, hard to come back once you've done that. You've got to kind of carry the shame. And although it's very welcoming, you can always come back after you've relapsed. But what it did do for me was it taught me a new way to live. So that means I'm changing the triggers that made me want to drink or take drugs in the first place.

And what Naltrexone and these other drugs don't do, they don't help you with your mind. Is that the thing that LSD or hallucinogenics might do for someone? to stop them from being addicted to something? Yes, I mean, it is, they seem to reset. They seem to break, in the case of addictions, they seem to break this ingrained loop where whatever happens, the answer is the drug or the drink. And they seem to fragment that repetitive brain processes.

Does it change the way your brain processes things then? It does. It particularly changes the way, if you want to change, it helps you fundamentally change it. It does. It breaks these, let's say, these thought loops, these reverberating thought loops, which you've acquired, if you're using a drug, you, every time you use a drug, you know, you've acquired pleasure and the desire and you've repressed other approaches. Very often people who use drugs and alcohol, they don't want to use any more. But they can't stop. Their brain has become autonomous. And as he can fragment the autonomy and put your brain back to where it was before you started. And what was intriguing and really, really sad. Was that those six trials that Wilson stimulated could have saved millions the millions of alcoholics.

But in 1967, the Americans decided to ban LSD because it was associated with the anti-Vietnam war movement. So they banned the drug and they put it in Class A and Schedule 1 so it could not be used.

And there hasn't been a trial of LSD in any addiction for the last or whatever it is 57 years. And how many people have die as a result. Just suppose, back of the end of the calculation,

in the last 57 years, 100 million people, it's about 2 million, now it's 3.5 million, but over 50 years, on average, 2 million people a year die as a result of drinking 2 years. Suppose you'd save 10%. Maybe it was more, maybe in 20 or 30, but suppose it was just 10%. That's 10 million lives saved.

How many lives have been saved by the ban on LSD. Well, probably none, because we're not sure the ban which is not recreational use. Maybe it was a thousand, I don't care. Call it a million. The equation's so stacked in favor of the therapy did he so.

This is the worst censorship of clinical treatment in a history of the world, all based on the false premise that if you banned LSD, then people would stop protesting the war. And of course, the Vietnam War ended and the protests ended. But they didn't reinsticate access

to second ethics because by that time, drugs have become a moral issue. They're not a health issue. And I still feel like they are a moral issue. Well, they are. They have been, the last government, one that's just gone, has taken a really very moralistic approach. And all Home Secretary's have done that since Theresa May. And what's really dishonest about that?

is that David Cameron's autobiography, I was stoned every afternoon on the banks of the Thames and I still got three Hays at A and I got Swartzford. Michael Gove famous for his cocaine parties, but when he's Minister of Education, teachers caught having taken cocaine are banned from education. So you can run education in this country

with people ever know with a strong history of cocaine use. You can't be a teacher because he accomplished. get convicted. So clearly it's not the drug. You know, the policy isn't about whether the drug imperish or function. It's about the fact that, you know, you got caught and he didn't get caught. So just to explain what class A, B and C are and what drugs are in each class and which is considered the most dangerous of the classes.

Right. So this is quite a nice model. One of the reasons I agreed to work with the government is I thought, We could use this class schedule model. This is met the matrix quite helpfully for education. So it goes like this. The class determines the penalty for using. Okay. So class A, you can go to prison for life.

Just for using it. Oh, sorry, for using or dealing. Dealing or importation or either, yes. But the, yes, so currently for using it's seven years for Class A. It's five years for Class B and two years for Class C. And then if you're dealing, it's life 14 years and seven years. So can you tell me what's in Class A?

So Class A, well, there are some very dangerous drugs in Class A. And just really make it clear, not all Class A drugs are illegal. Wow. Heroin is class A, because it's a medicine. So just to be absolutely explicit, the medicines are scheduled. The schedules say whether it's a medicine or not, and to make it even more complicated, if you're going to schedule one, you're not a medicine. So heroin is a medicine.

It's a Class A drug. So if you've got heroin without a prescription, you go into prison for seven years, but it's a Schedule II drug, which means it can be prescribed. Whereas matching mushrooms are a Class A drug and a schedule one drug. So they're not allowed to be used, even if there is quite a daughter of many blemittance. And if you are using them illegally, it's potentially up to seven years in prison for possession, up to life for importation. I really want to talk to you about that in particular in a minute. But could you take me through?

What would a Class B drug be then? So Class B drugs, like amphetamines. Right. And ketamine now is a class B drug. And those are both medicines. So they've both scheduled two drugs there. And then Class C drugs are drugs like benzodiazepines, like cat. That's a lot of medicine.

So that's scarce. And that's the schedule one. So. Where's cannabis? So the Missuses of Drugs Act was brought in in 1971. So what's that? You know, it's 54 years old. When it was constructed, cannabis was a real problem.

Because they didn't know. They didn't know where to put cannabis. In fact, they put some cannabis as class A, if it was in a liquid form, and some cannabis, as you've had sort of horrible falling, class P. And that's just, well, to everyone, that seemed ridiculous. So the only drug that's ever been down classified in the Missus of Drug Act is cannabis. Because at the turn of the century, two important things happened. The House of Lords did an overview of medical cannabis.

brilliant piece of work. You read it today, the science is perfect, this rationalisation, the audience, and then the Wernselman report, which I sat on, was another brilliant piece of work and said basically,

cannabis should be Class C, because it's not anything like it's harm to class A in class B. So all cannabis was recommended to go to the C. And those days, when the Ransomun report came out, the newspapers were all over it.

They said, this is fantastic. Why isn't it? cannabis legal. Wow. That's a turnaround, right? It was, it was. And David Blunkett, Home Secretary, said, okay, well, of it clearly, it looks like cannabis is in the wrong class, so contracted the ACMD to review it.

ACMD reviewed it, came to the conclusion, yeah, it should all go down to Class C. And a month before that happened, I remember that month, vividly, because the world went mad. There's all the newspapers which said it should be legal, suddenly decided it should stay as class A. something happened. To this day, I do not know what drove that transition. I mean, it seems like it always has been, and the papers, between politics and the papers, the press.

Can I think of a drug law that isn't largely political? And the answer is possibly now with some of these very powerful synthetic fentanyls, which are very, very dangerous. The synthetic cannabinoids, they're very dangerous. But why do we have those? we have those because the drug laws essentially drive people to make more and more toxic compounds. They're always forcing. We've seen this for over 100 years.

You stop people using a drug, which is not necessarily completely safe, but not particularly harmful. And it started with the ban of smoking opium. It started with the attack on Chinese people in the east end of London. smoking opium in their little pipes. That was a political ban, driven to some extent, by drug companies who wanted to control the... They'd gone from opium to morphine, so they wanted to get rid of the plants.

They wanted people to be taking life of it. What happened then? We banned smoking of opium. People started ejecting morphine. That's not good. And then you go to the banning of alcohol. People started drinking methanol in go to... That's prohibition.

Prohibition has... for almost every single drug driven people to make more toxic goods. And when you say to politicians, look, I've got 20 examples over the last century, why do you think it's going to be any different? Why do you think prohibiting cats or nitals oxide is going to be different?

And they don't answer because they don't care. But any particular time, it suits a political agenda. I mean, all they said was alcohol is the most harmful drug in the country, presently. Not because it's the most harmful drug to the users, I mean, I believe most people drink. But because most people drink, it's the most harmful drug overall. And so, you know, let's be honest about this.

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And get this. When you sign up, you only pay one pound per month during the trial period at Shopify.co.uk slash divina. How's that for a bargain? That's Shopify.com.ukuk slash divina and join the gang that's working smarter, not harder. I really want to talk to you about that graph because you've just said that alcohol is the most dangerous,

not just to the user, but also to society. And there's that amazing graph of the danger to yourself in one colour and then the danger to society in another. That's right. And I was so blown away by that list and where all, the different drugs sat. Alcohol being the most dangerous. I wasn't surprised to see sort of heroin,

I think it was cocaine or crystal meth in the top four. That didn't surprise me. But I was very surprised at the other end, I think because I'd always seen hallucinogenic as being very dangerous because we're always told you take a hallucinogenic, you either run into the sea and just drown yourself or you jump off a balcony.

That's right. Were you surprised when you'd started really looking into these effects what the order was, or was it something you actually knew? No, and it was interesting because the first reports that the Home Office endorsed in back 2007 in the Lancet. And that was a nine-point scale of harm, which I invented. And there was a great guy called Larry Phillips, who's a professor at London School of Economics. And he emailed me, he said, this is what you've done is interesting, but there's better ways of doing it. I said, well, you know, come in time me.

He said, we've got to use this new technique called multi-criturian decision analysis, which looks at all the different harms rather than just the line and I cannot. I said, that's fantastic. And in fact, the head of the MRC at the time was a friend and a guy also interested in drug policy, Conen, Blakemore. And he funded it a little conference to develop essentially what the harms of drugs. Assess what the harms of drugs. It turns out there are 16 harms of drugs. There were nine harms of the user, things like whether you die, whether you get cancer, whether you go mad, you addicts, etc.

And there are seven harms to society to others. So we came up with those. We wrote definitions of them. And they are now the basis on which the Home Office makes decisions about drugs. But when you take those 16 variables and you score 20 drugs, as we did in that chart, and you put it all together, and then you wait each of the 16 criteria. It's very hard to know what the answer is going to be until the computer chugs away and then out it comes. And I was surprised when alcohol came out of the most harmful.

But quite a long way. Signific. And that's because of the use. You know, 80% of people in Britain drink something. I think every family in Britain has been damaged one way or the other by alcohol. Either someone drinks too much or someone's been driven over by a drunk driver or by someone who's been drunk. So it's the widespread use of alcohol that makes it the most harmful. And if you just look at the harm to the user, then obviously cracked cocaine, crystal meth heroin.

They're more harmful to the user because they're more likely to kill you each time you use it. I think another one that really surprised me actually because I thought it came higher than I was expecting it to was cannabis. Yes. Cannabis kind of sat in the middle, didn't it? Sat in the middle and I was like, oh, I didn't think it would be that high up. What are the dangers of? Yeah, so, well, cannabis is interesting because, yes, it's definitely higher up than mushrooms than LSD. But that's partly due to the facts that it is more widely used.

Right. So we reckon 6, 8 million people using cannabis in the UK. So not as much as alcohol, but mushrooms, you know, mushrooms, you know, out or about amylia. So the social harms of cannabis are, you know. And also because people use it, they often use it repeatedly. And so there's a higher risk of things like dependence. Would this be a good example of perhaps young people might start using cannabis? because it's seen as the least problematic drug.

In people's minds, they kind of say it as the safest. You know, it's natural, it's weed. And then they don't have the mindset or the emotional maturity to understand themselves to use it appropriately. You know, we were saying 18 is quite a good age to start something, but lots of boys in particular, I think, start when they're much younger. Yeah, it's a really intriguing question. And I could answer it in different ways.

I could answer it. And I've been asked this question a lot. What advice would you give to a child? Would it be not to drink or not to say cannabis? It would have to be not to drink. So many more people die teenagers. Drinking, underage drinking is a terrifying thing because of the violence, driving cars into trees, etc.

When you hear, you know, every Christmas you hear, two or three major accidents with four or five people killed in the car. And I think particularly for young girls that put themselves in danger because they are... Yeah.

So if you want to stay alive, it's better not to drink than we use cannabis. What I would say, though, is it using cannabis on a regular basis in your teens is generally not a good thing. No. So I do quite a lot of lectures to schools

and kids say to me, well, you know, what am I thinking about And I say, well, you know, I think personally, I say if you're going to do your, you know, when you're taking your A-levels, I wouldn't, I wouldn't do your accounting A-level stone. But maybe, maybe in your art, I don't know. You know, I think it's okay. If you're going to use cannabis, you've got to use it sensor. Like all drugs, you know, you need to know what the benefits are risk. And if you get dependent, then you really should act.

You need to know it can cause dependence. So there's no doubt about it. So I just want to get on to magic mushrooms because we were talking about that being put in class A. Yes. And I was absolutely astonished to see LSD and mushrooms right at the bottom. Mushrooms being the least risky or causes the least harm. That's it.

The least harmful to you and to society. In fact, I think would I be right in saying no harm to yourself? Well, no, nothing is completely harmful. As I like to point out, between about five and ten people a year in Britain, die of water poisoning. Right. Okay. But at least a million people a year are using mushrooms.

The government's own data going back last 20 years says there might have been one death. Right. That's the, you know, tiny, tiny, if you take that as obviously the most serious, I'm at, some people have panic, some people get anxious. as a result during the trip. But the thing is, they're intended only to be used once, two, twice, three, four times a year. So you don't get dependent. And, you know, if you don't like them, you don't use them.

And that's why the safety is proven by this very, very wide use. The first clinical study we did with psilocybin, which is the active ingredient, magic mushroom juice, The first scientific study we did, we started in 2012. And to get a clinical study approved, you have to go to an organization called the MHRA, the medicines and health care regulator authority. And we'd like to do this study. And they said, well, how do you know that side of sight is safe? Because you haven't done any animal risk, you know, typically drugs.

You could do animal research, toxicology. And we said, well, no, look, we're an academic group. we can afford to do that. And actually, I don't think we need to because we, you know, we know from your own government data. There's a million people a year using it without harm. He said, okay, that seems sensible. Is it quite hard because psilocybin is a class A drug

to get any research done? Or is it becoming easier? Is it? It's still a nightmare. It's got worse. Theresa May, I think, was angry that we started doing this research. And then she brought in an extra level of, regulation. But let me just

tell you, before I get on to her, let me tell you at the beginning. So in 2012, the study side of side, we have to write a grant. We got a grant from the Medical Research Council in Britain. You know, it's a pioneer a lot of medical studies. And I was surprised, and I think, this is

quite radical, you know, illegal. And why do we get it? We got it because they made out a special call for helping people who depression was not responding to conventional treatments. So we said what we think based on brains, science, and also based on some of the healthy volunteers have told us, psilocybin would improve mood.

So we got the grant. It was a three-year grant. It took a year to get ethics approval. The ethics for it, he said, well, it's far too dangerous to cure psilocybin to depress people. We said, why? They said, well, they might go mad. And I said, no, no, people.

They might kill themselves. The third time I sat in this ethics committee, and I thought, if they said no, no, it's gone. So I said, okay, well, look, what do you want? And they said, well, you have to do a safety study. And that means you have to give it to 12 people and then follow them up for six months. And if they don't die, then you can do a proper test, controlled study. But I thought, we have to say yes, because otherwise we wouldn't do anything. So we said yes, okay.

So the main outcome for the first study was whether they lived or died, and the secondary outcome was their moot. But that was easy a bit. That's getting the drug, it's controlled class A schedule worn drug. There's only one place we could find in the world that would make it. It took 32 months. No.

Of a 36-month grant. Just to get it? To get it. Oh, my God. I mean, and that's all because. Because, well, it's very dangerous driving there. I had to have a special safe, put in my office, bolted to the floor on the wall with a camera to make sure I wasn't going in there

and licking the left of my shoes. And I said to the, hang on, guys, there's a pharmacy here that's got heroin and fentanyl. Why can't I just put it there? And they said, oh, no, no, because that's, there's a schedule two. This is here to one. I mean, if anyone's going to break in, they're not going to. sit why I'm like kind of psilocybin you're going to steal. But is this kind of unthought, you know, the perverse consequence is a regulation?

So you know that to be true now that psilocybin can have treat depression? Yeah. It's normal. We've done two studies. Not only have we done studies showing it treats depression that other treatments don't work for. But it works in a very different way in the brain. It is actually another way of lifting depression. It's an alternative.

I mean, I think that's quite important, really. If you got high blood pressure, you've got a choice of five different kinds of ways of lowering your blood pressure. And if one doesn't work, the other might. For depression and two psychedelics, you have one or ECT, which most people don't want. Now you've got two, and they work in different parts of the brain, on different receptors, at different speeds, academics were almost immediately.

So they're potentially transformational. But we can use them clinically, except in research. And so we can only treat people who are in a study. And people, well, we haven't got money to keep. You can't keep doing studies because you know the answer. So we've got to change the regulations and get it to more people. I saw something where somebody had cancer. It was a young man.

And he was really struggling with leaving his wife and child. and he talked through this experience that he'd had where he turned into a tree and his kid and his wife walked past and touched him and it helped him so much realize that he would still be there even when he'd gone. That is what... I mean, historically, psychedelics were often used

to help people come to terms with death and dying. I mean, it generally not known, but actually, you know, the great... the great intellect, the great writer of a psychedelic thing. He, his partner gave him LSD as he died. And to me, that's actually something I think should be available to anyone at once. And they're helping studies now. There have been two control studies done in the States,

people with terminal illnesses, like motor neurone disease or cancer, and who've been given sinus syndrome. And it's helped them come to terms of dying for the exact reason. for the exactly the reason you elucidated there. Under psychedelics, you see that you are pirates of the universe. But under psychedelics, you see they're much bigger. People often talk about their bodies of atomizing. They're going into another universe, another place, often just somewhere like heaven or a mountain.

And that realization that, you know, you never disappear. And I suppose it's sort of bit back to the old, the old sort of Christian thing, you know, we come from the ground and we go, but we don't, we never, we don't completely die. We just, we configure it somehow. And that people find that really quite reassuring. I mean, you talked about at the beginning about,

you know, people are always going to take drugs recreationally, but let's not forget all the tribes people that have taken it for centuries and centuries, It is just part of their lives, part of their religions, part of their ceremonies. And I think as I've got older, definitely since I've passed 50, I am seeking a more spiritual life. Like I'm looking for answers. I'm understanding that death is coming for me. It's a kind of different path that I go on.

And that's why I think I'm finding this knowledge so interesting and that I wish. Well, I mean, I suppose what I should ask you, because you're the man that knows everything, is what can we do to change this in our society here in this country? If you can't do it and you're the committee that is supposed to be advising the government and they're not listening to you, then how do we do it? Well, I'm not on that committee anymore. No, I know, but I mean, you've been there. I've been there.

And the answer is, in one way, really simple. You just take drug policy out of politics. And your feeling towards this government, would they be brave enough to do that? Yeah, it's a tricky one. There are people in the Labour policy who are definitely on site. The Labour Chief Whitby is a trustee of my charity drug science.

Very keen on policy change. There are several very outspoken members of the Labour Party who had mental health issues themselves, alcoholism or bipolar disorder, and they're on my podcast and they want change. And they've got a big enough majority to do it and get away with it. The question is whether, here's Starlin, who of course is,

it's interesting, you've got Starmer now, and you've got Camilla Harris in America, you've got people who've come to political power as a result of incarcerating lots of people. I would hope he was a big enough man to say, okay, you know, that policy wasn't my policy. I was, you know, head of the CPS. It wasn't, I didn't develop. I was just doing my duties of civil civil civil.

I would hope he would realize it actually, current drug policy, there's so much more harm than good, particularly to disadvantage communities. Exactly. And isn't the proof just overwhelming, though? Isn't it completely ridiculous that it's not? not happening. I don't understand after everything that you've said and the proof is there. Why isn't it changing? Well, I think it is because of elections. It's very noticeable. The drugs did not figure in the last election. What's Portugal doing right? What is their policy? Well, 20 years ago now, the Portuguese realized that they had a rising age crisis.

and they had an awful lot of people in prison for drug offenses and they did something really radical you can't put everyone in prison despite what I think some politicians would like you've got to have a professional policy so why don't we treat drug use as a health problem so basically they stop

you arrest someone who's using heroin or I've got heroin in possession of heroin using so rather than put in the in prison, you say, we're going to treat you. We're getting a real option. You know, you can basically on a treatment program or you can do crazy service. So we take away the enormous burden of criminal...

Once you criminalize someone, it's almost impossible for them to get anywhere in life other than a menial job or... And if you don't want a menial draw, you deal drugs because it's not going to get a decent income. So they took away the stigma of criminality. fast numbers of people in treatment, managed to reduce the police budget,

reduce the... Really? Yeah, absolutely. They reduced the police budget. They reduced the number of people in prison. And an amazing statistic. In the first 15 years, I haven't seen the 20-year date here,

but the first 15-year date of a portraiture. They reduced deaths from heroin to a third of what they were before. Wow. And they also managed to massively reduce the HIV. rates. Over exactly the same time course, which is the time course, pretty much of the last Tory government, 15 years, we have doubled death rates from hell. Wow. Because we have

basically continued prosecuting people and we have massively disinvested in treatment programs. So year on year, over the last four years, we have broken each year, we've broken the record for the number of people dying of opiates. What, compared to all other European countries? No, compared to ourselves. Oh, we're just going up and up every year. Four years in a row, we've broken a new... I mean, that in itself is, I mean, sure,

that actually is a condemnation of the policy. How many other countries do you think are doing it right in Europe? And surely aren't they just kind of glowing examples of what we should be doing? Well, yes, the Netherlands have done it right through very long time. particularly cannabis. Amazing, what the Dutch did, as you, I think most people know, was they decided to allow in some townships, if the mayor, chief of police, and a supplier wanted to,

they could set up a coffee shop. The coffee shop didn't sell coffee, the coffee shops are cannabis. It's tightly regulated. People, so tightly regulated, you couldn't get alcohol and coffee shops. You couldn't get coffee in coffee. And you couldn't smoke tobacco in the coffee shop, interestingly, trying to break the link between smoking cannabis and tobacco. And they did that because they knew their kids would want to use cannabis,

as we spoke in earlier about it. They just wanted something different pretty the law of it. But they wanted them to get cannabis without having to go to a dealer because they knew, and we know, if you go to a dealer for cannabis in this country, almost always, they will try to sell you as heroin or crystal at the same time, or crack. And they wanted to separate those markets.

And it was amazingly successful. They had massively lower levels of heroin use in their teenagers than we have. And surprisingly, they had actually lower levels of cannabis use as well for two reasons. One is it, if it's legal, well, it's not so true. Yeah, it's not so cool, is it? Yeah, yeah, exactly. But also, you know, the cannabis they were getting was kind of certified cannabis. It's not laced with anything stronger.

And it's not, you can have a choice, whereas 95% of all cannabis on the streets of Britain today is skunk. So it's 50% to EAC, which is a more dangerous form of cannabis than the traditional sort of horrible cannabis used to have resin with 5, 6% to EACC. Is there an idea that you could decriminalise all drugs? And that would have the same effect.

of people. Yes, exactly. Now, the WHO and the United Nations have almost unanimously, all the different sections, have asked for that policy. Oh, really? But we need to be quite explicit is decriminalization of drug use. Right. Obviously, not dealing. Exactly. Yeah. That's right. Because criminalising drug users, as we mentioned just a minute ago, if you criminalise them, what can they do? Well, the best thing they make money, the best thing they do is deal drugs. So you don't want to create that market. And so that is a kind of, I think most people in most branches, obviously there were

countries like Russia and China. They like executing people. But in most countries, decriminalization of personalization is seen as their way forward. And a couple of American states have started doing that. Have they? Yeah. But you do run into a problem. De-criminalisation does need to be, as it was done in Portugal, does need to be done in the context of help. You can't just say to some what, we're not going to prosecute you when they're using vast amounts of drug. You've got to help them get off the drug as well. So you need a joined-up policy. And unfortunately, the American states that have done all the townships haven't. for classic

classic American problem the healthcare isn't, it's something that the individual owns is not so many of the state office.

Yeah, I mean, and healthcare in America is prohibitively expensive and if you're an addict you're not going to have any money left. You know, that's a classic. Exactly.

You spend it all on drugs. What was fascinating was you was talking about all the prisons that have closed down it makes sense that you close down a prison and you open a treatment centre with much more positive effect and churning out healthier people who aren't going to go on and recommit

or get caught on drugs again. I quickly just want to go back to ecstasy. You talk a little bit about how governments really hated this idea or that people in government really hated this idea of a drug because it was actually called empathy. Yes, we talked about that. Yeah. I mean, ecstasy is a really classic example. of how the media and then politicians can completely distort the value of a drug.

So, ecstasy's chemical name is MDMA, all right? MDMA was rediscovered by a man called Sheldian. He was a chemist who was making all sorts of different amphetamines. partly so the US government could have standards to work with, and partly because it was interested in them. And he made MDMA, and he said, wow, this is remarkable. This is different from other amphetamines. He said this gave me a clarity of thought and a sort of sense of inner well-being

that no other amphetamine had done. Amphetamines said to gee, you are amphetamine. And he said, this was pretty different. And he said, he gave it to his wife when his son. his wife was a therapist. He said, wow, this is amazing. I'm back in love with you, Sasha. We should be using this for couple's therapy. And it was legal. That's not legal. And he made lots of bits. And she dispersed it around her friends who were therapists. And it was quite widely used. Thousands of couples were treated, were put into a couple, into a session to help them heal their

marriages under MDMA, which makes perfect sense because we take an empty run. You know, it makes you feel warm and loving to other people. including someone you might have been running with yesterday. And it was called empathy because that's what it does. I mean, when I heard that, I thought that's such a lovely name for it because I think that is exactly what it achieves. If the name had not been changed, it wouldn't have been banned. But it was legal.

A club owner in who stood, I think, in Texas, discovered it, heard about it, said, oh, we have an illegal amphetamine. Let's sell it. Started using it. People said, we love this. And he said, yeah, but we can dance. It's actually, you know, it is like an ecstasy. And so we can change the name to ecstasy.

Got to Ibiza, the rave started. And there's nothing that the establishment, the old white male establishment of both meat, The media and politicians hate more than young people having ecstasy because they'd never had it. It's kind of a jealousy thing, you know. Absolutely. It's a sort of deep-seated resentment of people having something that they have and can't have. They wanted to punish them.

And then you find out that it doesn't cause the kind of harm. Oh, the story's even worse. Yeah. The story's really worse because they knew they couldn't ban it on the grounds of horror. because it wasn't causing harm. So they created harms. How do you mean? How would they do that?

Well, they funded scientists. The science of MDMA is some of the worst science. Maybe is the worst science ever done. They funded scientists to trawl around and find evidence that MDMA harms you. Now, there were some deaths I mentioned earlier about the, you know, the highest, thermion and that, you know, but, you know, way fewer deaths and you might get, you know, certainly get with opioids or with alcohol, for instance. But they had to find something else.

And there's a truly horrific experiment where this particular group in, in Jones Hopkins, they decided to give monkeys ecstasy in the same way, they said, in the same way as it's used in raves. So they gave these monkeys. They gave these monkeys supposedly ecstasy. And they put them in a room overnight with flashing lights, and they played a lot of rock music to them. And the next day, some of the monkeys were pretty ill.

And they said, and they cut and killed them, and they cut their brains up. Look, there's damage to their brains. Excessy causes brain damage. And we read this page, we said, it's clearly wrong because it was true. People wouldn't be walking home after Braves. They'd be crawling and they'd be dying and they're not.

And there was a big scientific outcry about this paper. This paper was published in the leading American journal called Science. And it was all the front page, you know, exorcism. It was obviously, well. And eventually they were forced to go back and check the results. And they hadn't given them NDNA.A. They gave them crystal meth. Where they were, they say it was an accident.

I mean, who would know? it was probably an accident. But the fact is that scientists were preparing to believe rubbish data because it served the political purpose. And that narrative carries on. There's still people still saying, well, we're using MDMA therapeutically, but people are saying, well, what it calls blame damage, and the answer is probably not if you take the flight in a safe environment.

Could you tell me about your charity for drug science? So when I was booted out, sacked by Alan Johnson in 2009, a couple of days later, I got an email from a guy. I said, I'm Toby. I never heard of him. And he said, I kind of write computer programs and it helps me make money on the stock exchange. I said, oh, that's great. He said, I would like to fund you. I'm outraged by the fact you've been sack. I would like to fund you to set up an independent ACMD. So I was on the advisory council that misses the drugs, helping the government make sensible decisions, supposedly, about drugs failing. He said, why don't we set up an independent committee? I'll give you the money that they have to do that.

So I did. And for the first three years, he funded. I said the charity, it's called Drug Science. And it's actually probably the leading place in the world, where you can go and get the truth about drugs. Because we've got no political pressure. We can say anything we like. we can tell the truth about,

our strapline is the truth about drugs. And if you buy the book, drugs without hot air, yes. Just going to hold that up again. That's a process got to support the charity too. So drugs without hot air is basically what you just talked about. It's just plain truth with no hidden agendas, no reasons to lie.

We just want to tell you the harm and the good or the fund that you can have on all of these drugs, what they are. There's lots of charts in here. Like you said, I think every parent should read this book. You've got great advice for parents. how to talk to your kids in there.

But also I think it's quite good that you've set this up because it means that you are in place for when the government does decide to take drug policy out of government. Yes, these. Would we accept a commission to find drug policy? I think we, yes, if the conditions were right, I think we would be very interested in helping them.

There's one more thing I want to talk to you about before we finish very quickly, and that is at the limit. So I think it's 14 units a week. And I often laugh because I see friends and I think you are literally going, I'm going to keep drinking until they get to 14. Like they're not happy unless they've done their 14 units because it feels like, I keep going, no, that's the maximum amount that is kind of good for you.

But you've just said that no amount of alcohol or the WHO says that. What's your take on that? And can I ask you about legal limits for driving? Because I read something very interesting that you wrote about the, different legal limits for driving and how we think that the legal limit is fine for us to drive, but in fact, it has quite a profound effect on your driving at a much lower amount. Yes. So, alcohol limits, yeah, that's a hugely controversial topic, isn't it?

And it varies across almost every country in the world. So let's just look at the health aspects to start with. Currently in the UK, recommendations are 14 units a week. for both men and women. It used to be 20 years ago. It was 28 for men, 21 women. Wow. It's been brought down.

It's been brought under 14 and 14. Now, it's really important to emphasise a week. Because I remember when I was interviewing Adrian Childs. Hugo Day. And he came and he said, well, yeah, David, I was all right on Monday. I managed to stick to 12 units. Adrian at... It's a week.

Oh, my God. I thought you wrote about it in his book. He's a lovely guy. So it's not a day and it's not a target. Yes, that's what I think. It's not a target. But if you stick to 14 units or less a week and do not drink it all in one go.

Ah, okay. Don't save it up for Saturday nights. Friday or Saturday night. that if you space it out, the best way to drink 14 units is to have two or three days when you don't drink at all. So literally liver recover. If you stick within 14 units, men or women, your risks of coming to harm from alcohol are very low. Okay. Go beyond that, then this is peculiarly of what we call exponential curve.

As you go beyond 14, it's up to go steeper, steeper, steeper. And if you go up to, you know, you go up to, you know, a hundred, you know, or more a week, you know, it's a massive, massive risk of harmful. So, yeah, stick to under 14. Alcohol will give you the benefits, I presume you're looking for it, with very low risk of harm. And driving? So driving is, yeah, alcohol impairs driving.

And it impairs driving in two ways. He appears driving. For people, because it makes people think they're a better driving than they are. It was a brilliant study done of London bus drivers in the 1950s. It was one of the very first. of studies it actually looked at scientifically the impact of alcohol on driving.

And they had these two ballards and they gave bus drivers and they found that the majority of bus drivers when they were drunk would try to get through. They'd underestimate the width of the ballards and they would struggle and they'd run into them. But there was a small

group, the very anxious introverted people who would actually be more they'd be less shaky. They could actually try more accurately on alcohol. Which is, of course, another factor in why, you know, when people drink, I mean, darts players, you know, they're allowed to drink alcohol because it makes them much less, you know, takes away the tremor. Whereas Olympic athletes aren't.

I didn't know that's why darts players were allowed to drink alcohol, helps with the chenna. That's so funny. Well, say they're not allowed to. The reason it's not banned. Yes. Whereas in some, there are other sports, you know, I mean, I think the pentathlon where you have to shoot, they don't allow you to use alcohol because it would reduce the tremor. Make up its sense.

So alcohol can have, you know, it's another example. It's not just sociability benefits. He can't have some of the minor benefits. But judgment, once you get to the limit, the 80 milligrams percent limit we have in Britain, doesn't mean that you are safe to drive. It just means that you're safer than if you were above it. And the question is, what will be a level in which there was almost no increased risk of accident? Because 80 milligrams, the current driving limit, more than doubles your risk of an accident.

I mean, that's mad, isn't it? I would agree with you, but it is. That's why the Scots recently brought it down from 80 to 50. Other countries have done that, and we've seen that sort of has reduced risk. Some countries have brought it down to 20, and that would make the most sense. Under 20, for almost any driver, there's not a major impact, except for very young drivers. Young drivers are more affected by alcohol than other drivers, probably because they're less tolerant to alcohol

and probably because they're also more impulsive. Listen, David, this has just been amazing. I knew you were going to be fantastically interesting, but I had no idea you'd be so lovely. So thank you. Thank you very much. Very much. I've really enjoyed talking to you. I have to.

And when we have our menopausal product, call me. Bring you back. Call me. Yes, I go. Thanks. Thank you very much. Thank you.

There we go. Thank you. Thank you.