Real Time with Bill Maher - Overtime – Episode #588: Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), Katherine Mangu-Ward, Johann Hari

Episode Date: February 5, 2022

Bill Maher and his guests answer viewer questions after the show. (Originally aired 2/4/22) See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO late-night series, Real Time with Bill Maugh. Okay, we're here on overtime. Overtime is back. Where we answer your questions. Now that recreational marijuana use is becoming legal in more states and is gaining in popularity, will lawmakers ever admit that the war on drugs was basically ineffective? Well, you're the only lawmaker here. It should have admitted it 10 years ago. I mean, I don't understand how we can't legalize marijuana in this country.

I mean, you should think that that's one thing we can get bipartisan support for its building. Now, Nancy Mace, I think. Yeah. She's a Republican. Yeah. She's the one who, I said this years ago, I said the Republicans are going to steal this issue from the Democrats. If the Democrats don't jump on it. She's the one introducing legislation to nationally make marijuana legal.

I mean, yeah, it's funny, I once interviewed Pablo Escobar's son, Sebastian Marrakeen, and he said to me... Pablo Escobar. Yeah, his son, not... It used to be called Pablo Escobar Jr., but he changed his name for obvious reasons. And he said to me... That's not Al Chapo. No, no, no. He's the original, O.G. Escobar, right?

No, really. Yeah, exactly. He's the one from, like... Right. Exactly. And Pablo's... Narco Season 1. Exactly.

I get my... I have to get my drug lord straight. Okay. His son said to me, the only thing... only thing my father truly feared was the legalization of drugs, right? Because it would have bankrupted him. Well, so did Al Capone, worry about

liquor being legal, yes. Exactly. And one of the tragedies is, as you know, I wrote a whole book about this called Chasing the Scream. One of the tragedies of this is there are so many people dying in this country who would have lived if they had been in, say, Portugal, where they decriminalized all drugs took all the money they currently spend on, they used to spend on fucking

people's lives up, shaming them and imprisoning them, and spent it all instead on turning their lives around. And they went from having the worst drug problem in the European Union to the lowest drug problem in the European Union. That enormous numbers of people are dying who could live. We'll say...

Your magazine's brilliant on this, but... Yeah, that question did ask, when are we going to admit the whole war on drugs was a mistake, not just the marijuana bit. So I'm waiting for the rest as well. And your magazine's amazing on this issue. There's a... Wait, there's a gauntlet thrown down. What do you make of that?

Not just pot. Are you for anything else being legal? I'm for looking at the decriminalization of certain drugs, but let's start with the Marijuana Justice Act. And let's start with the legalizing. Just like in real life, we start with pot. That we move on to better drugs. We don't even have a majority right now.

If marijuana legalization is the gateway drug to legalizing everything else, I am a thousand percent. And it's important for people to know that legalizing drugs means different things for different drugs. In the same way that here, it's legalization. to own a dog, a monkey, and a lion, but the rules are different, right? In the same way, different countries have legalized drugs

in different ways. Switzerland, for example, legalized heroin. If you've got a heroin problem, they assign you to a clinic, you get it legally. Since they did that, you know how many people have died on legal heroin in the 15 years since they did that? Zero. Not one person. More people have died since we started doing this fucking overtime

of heroin overdoses in this country than have died in the 15 years of legal heroin in Switzerland. You can own a lion? You can't? Didn't you watch Tiger King? Of course I did not watch Tiger King. Of course I wouldn't patronize something like that. Really?

You could... No. Interesting. It's... I... No. Just no. You know, I once went to a party, this guy had a camel in the fucking...

It was in the beginning of building. He had a... It was like, you know, a theme party. Yes, I was like, you know, there's one thing if you had a big baller mansion out with a lot of... It was in a building. There's a camel in the lobby. They get up for his apartment. And there's a tiger in the back.

And like I said, I'm a Peter Bort. I was like, I started to make a... In the United States or something? This is in no way. What did you do? You can rent a camel to having your life... I don't know if it was a Christmas. I don't know what the fuck it was.

And I started making... I was getting madder and madder and matter and matter. And there was celebrities there. I started to get them involved. Tell this guy. And he's a friend of mine. I love the guy. Did you let the camel loose?

No, but... I'm almost got everybody behind me, and Arnold Schwarzenegger walks in and goes, where's the tiger? That's pretty good. Catherine, which country most closely resembles a libertarian-run government, and what could America learn from them? I regret to inform you that America most resembles a libertarian-run government,

which means that we are a long way from libertarian ideals. In the whole world? I think so at this point. I mean, you know, there are bits and pieces of other places that I would love to see us borrow, but I think that there's, you know, the thing that I think people who are asking that question mean is they mean to say, hey, you know, where's your libertarian paradise? Maybe it can't work or maybe sometimes they like to make Somalia jokes. And, you know, I think that really misses the point, which is that for me, libertarianism is directional.

It's let's go toward more freedom. Let's give people more choices. Let's let people make their own decisions where we can. And maybe we're never going to get to an ideal. I don't think, you know, I think a lot of political ideals are like that. But in the U.S., we really do have very, very powerful founding principles and norms that conforms to libertarianism in a lot of ways. We let people make their own choices. We let people bear the consequences of those choices.

Less and less. I mean, we tax way too much, especially in this state. You're still here, Bill. Still here? Is that the bench? I'm just still here? I'm alive. Speaking of marijuana legalization, this state

also has taxed way too much on that and kept the black market alive. But as much as we taxed, we do, I mean, we don't limit, somebody once put it this way, it won't cut down the tall trees. Right. And I think... All the emigree.

I know, like from countries where, like, you think, oh, you're from France. That's not a country. People usually like, oh, I got to get out of here. Or Canada. They say, that's why I want to be here, because there is still here a sense of freedom. There's so many shitty things about this country. But you can invent yourself, reinvent yourself over and over, and you can get as high up in the tree.

No one will stop you. Where they don't feel that in France. Right. And I think the reason that that's so important is not just because, individual people want that for themselves. It's also because we have huge problems. This world has huge problems. And I really don't think we're going to solve

them by rearranging the resources we have. We're not going to solve them by taxing a little more here and moving the money. We're going to solve them by innovating. We're going to solve them by somebody thinking up something big and new. And America makes space for that in a way that other countries don't.

All right. Thank you very much. Thank you. Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher every Friday night at 10 or watch them anytime on HBO On Demand. For more information, log on to HBO.com.