TRIGGERnometry - The True Cost of the War On Drugs - Ioan Grillo

Episode Date: August 8, 2021

Ioan Grillo is a British journalist and writer based in Mexico City. Get TICKETS to TRIGGERnometry Live with Andrew Doyle here: https://leicestersquaretheatre.ticketsolve.com/shows/873619472 Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/​​​  OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: https://www.subscribestar.com/trigger... https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod​​​ Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/​​​ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/​​​ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod​​​ https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod​​​ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod​​​ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We've got a zombie war on drugs now. You know, we've had 50 years. It's been a failure. We've now had a last year record overdose deaths in the United States. The level of violence in Latin America has been, in the last 20 years, there's been more than 2 million homicides in Latin America. Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kisson.

And this is a show for you, if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. Our brilliant guest today is a Mexican-based journalist and the author of several books about the war on drugs, including this latest one, blood, gun, money. Young Grillo, welcome to Trigonometry. Great to be here. It's great to have you, man. We're so excited, as you know, about speaking with you.

This is an issue we're really keen to talk about. Before we get into all that stuff, tell us a little bit about who you are, how are you where you are. You've had a very interesting journey through your life, haven't you? Well, I'm originally from the UK. I grew up just near Brighton. I did a few, a bit of a checker, a few things I did.

Before I get into journalism, I played in a punk band for a bit around the Brighton area. It was involved in pirate radio in London for a bit. And at 27, I went over to Mexico to get into journalism. Originally with a bit of romantic ideas of like, you know, running around with guerrillas, fighting military dictatorships and stuff. Arrived in Mexico in the year 2000 when things had changed very much and very early on fell into covering drugs, issue of drugs. I grew up in the southeast with a lot of drugs around then, a kind of bit of an opioid epidemic back then in the 80s. I knew about four teenagers or young men who died of

heroin overdoses around those times. So it kind of was very interesting to me connecting this issue of drug use, countries and communities that use a lot of drugs and countries which traffic and produce drugs. And we're just fascinated at the beginning with this kind of glamour and the riddles of the Mexican drug cartels. So I was covering the... this a lot and while I was there covering this it just blew up really from 2008. 2006 the government launched a military crackdown on cartels. 2008 was when the violence really exploded and it became like a weird hybrid armed conflict. I mean insane things happening. I found myself in situations I couldn't have imagined. I found myself like in a morgue with 49 bodies that had all been

decapitated, it all had their hands and feet cut off. Found myself just dealing with a really crazy situation in the country really bleeding a lot of pain. I thought I couldn't get this out just in news reports. So I wrote a first book about this, which turned into a trilogy of books about this, traveled around Latin America, looking at how this was playing out across the continent, Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Honduras, Jamaica, up in the US itself, seeing this. And I've been doing that since, really. You know, and I've now got more to doing some top TV series as well, but still out of it, writing away, living as a journalist.

It's great to have you on to talk about all this stuff, and there's obviously so much we could talk about. But we always like to start with the very basics for anyone who's coming to this conversation for the first time. I might not know much about it. What is the drug war, the war on drugs as we talk? What is it? Yeah, so if you look at drug trafficking in the modern sense, okay, it goes actually all the way back, to 1914. You had a thing in the US called the Harrison's Narcotic Tax Act and where they started taxing, like some,

and regulating and prohibiting some opium and cocaine back then in 1914, 1914, 1915, it came into effect. Because prior to this, you could just buy it. Yeah, I mean, there was some, like, local measures came in. But, like, very early on then, from, like, 1915, when it started really be, like, more national kind of drug prohibit, or kind of regulation, you had a drug trade from Mexico to the United States. So there's a case you can look at going back to 1916 of cases of people trafficking drugs from Mexico to the United States. Initially, it was often Chinese immigrants to Mexico.

Obviously, we had the opium war, you know, us Brits forced the selling of opium in China. The habits continued. People moved to Mexico, start planting opium in Mexico and trafficking it to Chinese Americans, some of the very first cases you can see in 1916. And right back then there was Mexican governors involved in the corruption. So you saw this kind of thing. Then the real war on drugs happens under Richard Nixon. The date is generally seen as being in 1971 when Richard Nixon, President Richard Nixon had this press conference where he said, public enemy number one of the United States is illegal drugs. And he had, you know, we're going to fight a war against them, a war on drugs.

And he talked in very absolutist terms in those days. It was like we will have an abolition of drugs from American life. Like there will be no heroin. You know, middle class parents, don't worry about your kids taking heroin. It's not going to happen. There will be no heroin available. That was 1971. Then he saw this escalation.

The drug trade in Colombia really kicking off the violence in Colombia, you know, Escobar, cocaine and drug habits in the United States really increasing. you know, drug consumption, Reagan amped it up, and then you've had this since then. Now I say now, argue now that really we've got a zombie war on drugs now because that, you know, like, you know, like what, you know, we've had 50 years, it's been a failure, we've now had our last year record overdose deaths in the United States. The level of violence in Latin America has been, in the last 20 years, there's been more than two million homicides in Latin America, more than two million murders.

So the level of violence, now a lot of this, when you see it on the ground, is more actually like an armed conflict you're covering. I mean, these are heavily armed groups, military crackdowns by governments. So you've seen a lot more death there than most of the Middle East. And a large amount is related to cocaine trade, not obviously not all the murders, but that's a large factor in this violence there. But there isn't really anymore the, impetus, the kind of real energy of people about let's try and stop drugs being in people's

life. They kind of accept and live with drugs now. But we still have this kind of prohibition stumbling on elements and this kind of enforcement and so forth. And, Yon, it seems quite clear to me. And I think to most people that the war on drugs simply doesn't work. Can you explain number one why it doesn't and the effects it has on these types of communities? Yeah, sure. So if you look at drugs, Let's take cocaine is one of the ones which is interesting to look at. And so people make kilo cocaine. First it starts off with a bunch of leaves from, you know, coca leaves in Colombia, Peru, Bolivia.

Colombia's the biggest producer. About $80 someone will get for like halfting a bunch of leaves. Some like, you know, peasant farmer down in, you know, Campesino down in Colombia. Basically goes through two chemical processes, it becomes a kilo brick of cocaine. which they'll stamp, you know, with their, with their label on. And that sells, depending on where in Columbia you buy, if you buy it in the countryside, it's cheaper. You know, it could be about $2,000 buying it for export.

Bounces up to the US, you know, even the southern US, wholesale you're talking about $40,000. On the streets, $100,000 plus, plus you cut it up with a bunch of crap. and then you'll make it double $200,000, $300,000. So the profits for that are just insane. I mean, we're all in the shit business

of journalism. I was about to say we're in the wrong business, my friend. Imagine any kind of business where you could like, anyone who wants to go into business and think, if I flip, you know, most businesses you might see

I have 20% markups. Imagine that you're saying, this is what drug dealers, it's the way they talk. Okay, you're going to, and I'm going to put in, you know, 100 grand, and I'm expecting to make

half a million out of that, you know, at least. It's like, you know, you're making so much money, you know, or more. I mean, you look at the, think of the markups on that level. So you get such an incentive for anyone to do this. So what happens is doesn't take a rocket scientist to do this. You know, it's buying products, selling products, moving products. So most violent people are often going to succeed in this.

Or people using calculated violence, calculated corruption. So you end up in Mexico with psychopathic, cartels in the way the stuff they do. I mean, the stuff so, you know, you cover there, I've covered there, is insane. I mean, like this mass covered a mass grave with the remains of 298 people.

And that was right next to a housing estate. And as they were uncovering it, the reek of that death, the reek of the bodies was then wreaking out, they were complaining about, well, we've got our kids playing in the gardens here, we've got the smell of death coming. I mean, that's what it leads to. But anyway, what

it doesn't work is, I think that amount of incentive and you're going to arrest people but doesn't, you know, someone else will take their place and, you know, Chapo himself will say this, you know, said this when he was, he gave a video statement and he said like, I'm not the only one doing this,

that those people involved in drug trafficking and that's true. So anyone's going to take their place. All people keep on taking their place, can keep on doing it. And unless, you know, and the governments in the West are not prepared for like a really authoritarian crackdown that could stop it. Like if it was a really authoritarian crackdown,

like saying anybody we see with drugs we're going to execute right way and cut your head off, then that might stop it. But just saying we're going to lock people up in prison, you know, they're always going to find more people who wouldn't have trafficked drugs. And the one thing that I always struggle,

because, you know, we talk to politicians on the show sometimes or journalists or people, messages who are quite influential in government or elsewhere. The one thing I always struggled to get people to understand is why this matters here. Why should anyone care about this? Yeah. I think two reasons. I mean, the first reason, which

might be hard to convince people, but you know, you should care about what you're connected to. One of the things about drugs, and I find fascinating is, you know, somebody, you could be, somebody could be snorting a line of cocaine in a toilet in London. And that has a journey.

That money you see. spent on that gram, some of that money is going to reach these cartels. So you actually got responsibility for caring about where that goes. Some of that money goes to paying a hitman who's carrying out those massacres, who's cutting up those bodies, who's leaving, like, you know, kids disappeared and a bunch of brutal stuff. It's not just bad guys being taken out with this. A lot of innocent people have died in this. So one you should care, but that's hard, it's quite a hard sell. Right. I mean, our phones are made in pretty much the same. same way. Yeah, yeah, it's quite hard sell. People say, like, well, you know, should you try

to have a campaign? Don't take cocaine because it goes, you know, people in, you know, like in some pub and someone's drunk and someone comes to offering, it's hard to kind of think. But the other thing is, what I've seen over the last 20 years in Latin America and Mexico is like a new type of armed conflict, a new type of violence. And you see how this can play out in the 21st century and how bad, what this can mean for society. It's totally changed the way I think I grew up here in the UK, I would not like police, you know, as a teen, it's a punk teenager. I'd be like anti-police and stuff. Now you see how horrific crime can be, how this can affect a society, what that means in terms of quality of life, standard of life for people when, you know, somebody's daughter is

disappeared and then brutally raped and murdered, when, you know, you have a mother who's a school teacher who describes her 18-year-old son, who's a philosophy student, being taken away by an armed group from her house and just disappeared and she's going around, morgues trying to find his only sign of him. These kind of things. Now, I know we're a long way from that now, but I do see in this country and in Europe,

society getting more fragmented, you know, like these kind of divisions and stuff, and we shouldn't take for granted because we've had a fairly non-violent society for many years, it's always going to be the case. Because historically, we're just as violent in Europe or, you know, as anywhere else.

So what is the solution to the war on drugs? It looks like the author... We're not going to do a complete, like they've got in the Philippines, where someone who's found with a bag of Coke essentially gets executed. This crackdown doesn't work. So what is the solution? I think...

I mean, I advocate for drug policy reform, you know, is that phrase. I mean, like, drug policy... Because legalization is, I mean, it's really as it's more complicated than just the word legalization. Because actually when you get into drug policy, you realize it's not just a button you press and it all stops. You actually have to get into the like nitty and gritty of drug policy and stuff. So drug policy reform, I see as representing saying the current policies don't work. We have to reform and reshape this and look for ways. Now part of that means elements of legalization.

So I'm in favor of legalizing marijuana. I think the UK is behind it. I think UK should legalize marijuana. I mean, for a lot of reasons. I mean, there's reasons of why should somebody be arrested. Why should there be gangs making money from selling weed, which is then an incentive and then drives violence and all kinds of stuff. Still today, you know, you have these really violent cartels in Mexico.

Still, no, it's a lot less now because of legalization in the States, but they're still moving some weed now. you still have the most violent players growing a bunch of marijuana trafficking into the United States in Baltimore there's still people selling weed on the street corners there and people getting shot over that so legalizing marijuana and then we have to get into a very difficult discussion about what we do with heroin cocaine crystal meth fentanyl which is other other things it's a difficult discussion I don't know the the The answers, one thing I do think we need to look at, we can agree on, is we need to really

take rehab very seriously, particularly in the US, but in the UK as well. We are very, say, fragmented societies. I mean, why in the US is there's so much drug addiction? Why are people hurting so much? And according to the American Medical Association, only 10% of people who need addicts who need rehab are getting it. So you've got 90%, you've got a huge amount of work just to try and offer people the help they need. And for every addict you get off heroin, that's a lot of heroin they buy because addicts are buying a lot all the time. Now, I do realize it gets into difficult things about cocaine, how we try and move on cocaine, on heroin, on crystal meth, but we've got to start having a conversation about this. Yeah, I agree. And it's interesting

as well what people assume when you start seeking practical solutions to this, because from my perspective, I've never tried cocaine and I don't want to. I've never done any hard drugs. It's not something that appeals to me because I've got morals, but seriously, though, but I also think you need to have a practical approach, right? And whatever we're doing now is just not working. And one of the ways you see that is what's been happening in Mexico, which you've been covering for a long time. I mean, from what I understand and correct me on this, Mexico is essentially not run by any, is run by the cartels. Most of the money that's made in Mexico

is in some way connected to the drug trade. Is that broadly accurate? That's probably a bit of an overstatement. Yeah. But like, I mean, the situation is horrific and a local level, that's true. I'll give you an example. So the carter, we don't know the exact amount of money. It's very, you know, because it's a black market.

But, you know, the estimates it could be, say, $30 billion of money from, trafficking drugs to the United States. Now Mexico's actually a trillion dollar economy. You know, Mexico's not a poor country. It's a mid-income country with rich people and poor people and people in the middle. But that 30 billion then goes, it's very concentrated in certain communities. So you have certain areas, certain cities, certain neighborhoods,

certain villages where drug money is the biggest thing. But then that money helps pollute and corrupt the entire system and a breakdown. And there's a level. One time, I was in a town on the border and we were, the cartel, local hotel was unhappy we were there. They were telling local journalists, you know, we're unhappy about journalists you snooping around being here. So eventually we had a talk with the cartel, with a cartel representative, a cartel guy from there, who came to our hotel with AK-47s in the back of his car. First thing, we don't want you filming here, blah, blah.

We were originally talked to him and, you know, kind of leveled stuff out. You can leave. You can be fine. No worry. And he said, if you have any problems with the police, you call me. That shows who runs the local police for us. I mean, and that's the level of insanity. I mean, you literally see cops, seen cops who have, you know, actually carrying cocaine in their car,

which they're running for the cartel, who have, like, cartel issued guns. The level, even more so, there was, you know, a case in Michoacar, another police officer a few years ago. His name was Tyson after the boxer kind of guy in it. And he was caught and gave a forced confession for the federal government. But in that confession, he was describing not only working for the cartel, not only murdering people for the cartel, but being a ranking cartel member and training young cartel affiliates, how to, like, butcher victims, how to cut off limbs, So that's a level.

When you have police force, police forces doing that. Imagine what law enforcement is like in those areas and how bad it is. Now, in terms of, you know, as you get into Mexico, a concept of like narco state, or is it become a narco state at that point? And then you've got presidents. I mean, right now, a guy who was the former public security secretary. Now, he was really one of the leading figures in the war on drugs. because I'd interviewed him before, kind of guy with a big, big, kind of square jaw,

kind of talked a good game. He's currently imprisoned in the United States on drug trafficking charges. So, like, that's the level of corruption. Now, you say it's a narco state, but then it gets more complicated because at the same time, you know, you say, well, the entire state is just illegitimate now. It's all drug traffickers, but then it gets more complicated because then you have, okay, you still have doctors who are working very, very hard fighting COVID. You still have teachers who are working hard.

trying to, you know, trying to teach kids. You still have people running electricity, collecting rubbish. All of these things the state is doing more functionally. It's not like where, say, an area where the Islamic state controls, or in Latin America, the Senderro Luminoza, the shining path in Peru, where they control the whole area, and they're very interested in changing the way people think and, like, changing, you know, turning them into, you know, into Maoist communists or Islamic State into, like, Islamists, extreme Islamists.

the drug cartel control an area, they don't really care what the school's doing. What they care about is controlling the police force, controlling the rackets, but they've got the drugs, but they're also into extortion, kidnapping, prostitution, stealing oil, illegal mining and a whole bunch of other things.

So you see a real breakdown, kind of like a warlordism. I think a lot of the world is suffering this kind of challenge to authority as well. Hey Francis, do you want to learn another language? No, mate. I'm English. If foreigners can't understand, mate, I just shout at them. Think about it. You could learn how to say penalties in Italian.

Leave it. But if you do want to learn another language, because maybe you want to have new experiences, live in another country, or maybe you just want to open your mind. My mind's open enough. If I open it up any further, my brain's going to hurt. This is true. But Babel's 15-minute lessons make it the perfect way to learn a new language on the go. They design their courses with practical real-world computers,

conversations and mind. Sentences you will use in normal everyday life. Sentences like, Oy Pedro, do you say this, poor for all. Thank you, Francis. And Babel's courses have been proven to be scientific. And Babel's courses have been proven to be scientifically effective across multiple studies. Their 15-minute lessons make it the perfect way to learn a new language on the go. It's available as an app or online and your progress will be synced across all devices. You can choose from 14 different languages, including Spanish, French, Italian and German. They've also got their own podcasts so you can brush up on your French and Spanish on the go. Start your new language learning journey today with Babel.

And before you know, you'll be able to be Spanish absolutely perfect. No, I mean, Gary. Right now, Babel is offering our listeners six months free with a purchase of a six-month subscription with our promo code, which is, of course, trigger. Go to UK.babel.com slash play. And use promo code trigger for an extra six months free. That's UK. Dot B-A-B-B-B-E-L dot C-O-M forward slash play promo code trigger.

And, Yon, is it, do they have that kind of relationship that Escobar had with the Colombian people, whereby the Colombian people loved him? Because, you know, he gave them schools. He provided them resources. He helped a very, very poor people. Or is it far more oppressive than that? So it's a very mixed bag. And I've been up to the village where old chapos from, met his mother, interviewed his mother, sat through a three-hour evangelical service, Christian service. His mom's an evangelical Christian in the church that he built. He built a paved road in that town. And, you know, it's a small town. He's obviously very, very popular there. It's all, you know, in that area. and everyone's into the cartel. And they talk about these communities, they talk about them, they call them Balientes or Brave ones, and they look up to them.

But then also you get a lot of people who see, well, these people are like demons. These people have, you know, they, you know, a lot of, there's a big movement in Mexico, particularly of mothers whose children, sons and daughters, have been murdered in violence. They often by cartel, by armed groups, or by the corrupt police

working with the cartels or by the soldiers fighting the cartels or the Marines something that's just like you know sort of mayhem out there and they're like

going around trying to find you know the bodies of their loved ones and there's one woman who I interviewed in the state of Veracruz who actually helped find

that biggest grave I mentioned earlier of 298 bodies she helped find it looking for her son after four years of looking for her son she found that mass grave

and after two more years, the DNA of one of the bodies was traced to her son. So she had that closure. So you've got this level of mass disappearances. Now it's complicated because it's mixed with cartels, mixed with the corrupt government. So people are like, you know, what's actually who we fighting with the cartels or the police? Because they're like conspiring together. But yeah, you've got that kind of mixed thing. But you still have, you know, the people look up to cartels as well. And it's, you know, during the COVID, they were handing out bags of goodies. you know, the beginning of COVID, when all the lockdown happened,

they were handing out these plastic bags of goodies of rice and eggs and good products and getting their loyalty from people at the same time. And we seem to have seen, particularly in Mexico, an intensification that you referred to since I think 2006, was it? Yeah, I think the 2008. Yeah, so there was a real big crackdown under President Calderon. You would have thought the government of a pretty big country with support from the United States at the time as well,

cracking down using the military, using the full force of the state to deal with this would have had a positive impact on dealing with it. And yet what we've seen seems to have been the opposite. How has that happened? Sure. I think two big reasons. One is a lot of the military corrupt. In fact, one of the cartel was actually a special forces unit.

Yeah. Wasn't it? The Zet. And I've interviewed one of the guys who was a military guy and was in that from early on. So, yeah, you had these soldiers, like hardcore soldiers who then flipped to the cartel. So that's the equivalent of like the SAS,

flipping to become a drug trafficking organics. Initially they were the enforcement arm and then they formed their own cartel. And they really, you could say, they were on to militarize the conflict. Right. Because when it, and I was covering this, first covering this as a young journalist,

worked for the Houston Chronicle in the States. And as this was kind of playing out, and you saw the violence was really up. It used to be like gangbangers, as they say, in the US guys. In fact, they'd have some of these American, like Mexican-American gangbangers would come over and be hired by the cartels before guys with shaved heads, tattoos, like pistols, like, you know, shooting and stuff. And then the set-dars were like, no, no, you know, we're going to do violence a different way. We're like AK-47s, body armor.

Bulletproof jackets, metal helmets, radios, organizing. So one of these early things I covered, there was a bunch of these gang members were sent to fight them and they killed them all, part them up, their borders up in a house and put a message saying, you know, send us some more pendezos like these

so we can kill them. Like, you know, pendezchos, meaning, you know, send us some more idiots like these so we can kill them. But also the military carried on being corrupt. You know, there was, you know, recently a case of a general who was arrested in the United States,

flew into the United States, was arrested, you know, charged on drug trafficking. They dropped the charges, setting back to Mexico. I covered a trial of two court-martial of two generals who were convicted on drug trafficking. So there's no, you know, it's not a big secret. It's, you know, the military themselves can be corrupt. They can be very, very violent. But also, if you look at it from a strategic point of view, and I think the government underestimated the threat there was in Mexico

in 2006 when it launched the crackdown. It's not like one cartel in Mexico, it's loads of cartels all over the country. So you start sending in the military to one place and fighting the cartel, then it starts kicking off somewhere else. Then the cartels start fighting back. So like as well, so they're fighting a military,

which might be even allied to a different cartel, and they start ambushing soldiers, ambushing police, kidnapping police, leaving the bodies of police, you know, kidnapping Marines. There was one case where some Marines were tricked by some local police who were affiliated to the,

to the setas cartel, that same cartel, into going to a bar without their weapons, were kidnapped and tortured and murder on video. So suddenly they're like, you're cracking down us, we're going to use violence to press you to back off. So you suddenly started having more of a conflict and escalation of the conflict. So now you've got, I mean, there was a situation in 2019

when some members of the police in the military attempted to arrest a son of El Chapo in Kulikin. And this is according to a... military account of this, 700 to 800 gunmen took to the streets, cartel gunmen, to put pressure to liberate him against 350 soldiers. They eventually, that day, under orders from the government and the military themselves felt betrayed, but the government said he'd let him go because people were terrified they were just going to start massacring everyone. They were out on the streets, they were using 50 cows firing. So again, I mean, it looks like, it looks like an armed conflict.

It looks like... So basically, to put that in context, I just like a lot of people, People in the West I don't think understand what we're talking about. That's the equivalent of a major drug dealer's son, let's say, in London or in Liverpool or in New York or in Baltimore, being arrested. Then nearly a thousand people armed with military-grade weapons are on the streets. And the government is like, oh, you know what, to avoid further violence, we're going to let him go. Yeah, exactly. That's what happened. Exactly, exactly what happened.

Yeah, very well put. Yeah. No, no, no. It's a good way. It's going to try and get that through to people when you, because people do see this as being some like, place you can't really relate to. Yeah. To try and say, imagine this stuff happening in England or whatever, in the US.

And, you know, imagine, you know, there being, you know, mass graves in fields next to an estate in Coventry or something. And suddenly they start digging up and found, like, you know, 200 bodies there. What that means for society when that happens. But isn't there also a fundamental hypocrisy, you know, in that? We've got America, you know, the UK, lecturing, you know. about drugs, the evil of drugs. Yet, they did a cocaine swab test.

In the toilet at the House of Parliament, it came out positive. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah. I mean, it's complete hypocrisy. That's what we have to talk about this. And I don't know, you know, can we legalise cocaine? I don't know the solution to that. Often when I do talks about this,

I'll ask people, say, who's in favour of legalising marijuana? And then most places I'll go, a majority will put their hands up. I say who's in favour of legalising cocaine just to get the reaction from people. And so I don't know totally the answer to this. But you often get a few people now kind of, what can we do with cocaine? I mean, cocaine is not as lethal as heroin or crystal meth.

But can you legalise it? Could there be a place, you know, could you go to an off-license and also go and say, I'll have a six-pack of lager and a couple of grams of Colombia's finest or not? Depends if you're in Liverpool, man. I don't know. But right now it's happening anyway.

So the fact is you go to the pub and there's a guy who's selling cocaine. And it's going to shit and it's cut up with crap. So you've got more danger as well of people having, you know, like wherever it's stuff they could have put with it. And in Mexico, there's people selling, you know, just in a town

we're working and there was a closing of a political event, in fact, and there was a van on the side and there was people just serving up cocaine there. I've been in the Fabella's in Brazil. on a table just selling, you know, yeah, what do you want? Kokein? They've got like little bags with the numbers there, cocaine, crack.

And the guys are openly there with guns with rocket launches on and stuff, with a grenade launcher as well, a grenade launch on. So yeah, I mean, it's happening anyway. The drug trade is happening anyway. We're not stopping it. So, yeah, we have to try and think about a better way out of this. And this is a question, I think many people probably don't understand the answer to and I, to some extent, don't.

Am I right in thinking that the reason Mexico is such a, such a violent place because of drugs is because it's the trafficking point to the United States, which is the biggest market for illegal drugs in the world. Why are all these drugs made in Latin America? Why they produce there? Yeah. So, yeah, it was exactly right. I mean, the United States is the biggest drug consumption in the world by far. Again, we don't know the real numbers, but there's estimates put out by the RAND Corporation. They have like, They put out commissioned by the White House, it's called What Americans Spend on Illegal Drugs. The estimate is about $150 billion every year that Americans are spending on illegal drugs.

So imagine that. You're next door in Mexico. You're the biggest providers for this. Cocaine has only, so coca is originally from the Andes area. That's the traditionally where the plants from. You still have groups in Colombia, more so in Bolivia, using indigenous communities, using the plants. They just chew it as like we take coffee or something. They chew it.

They're ceremonies as well. The ceremonies is used with, I went up to see the Coker fields in Colombia in an area there. And I went up with this one indigenous group. And it was interesting because this group had a bunch of ex-fark. They had various paramilitaries there. And it had this indigenous group who took me up to see it. And they simply, they didn't have guns.

They had this staff. And their thing was if they were ever like challenged, they'd like raise this staff and then loads of them come out. And like, so it was like, It was actually good security. It's kind of like, you know. Sounds like something like the avatar. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But no, but they were talking about they had these. They have, they're actually allowed some of them to grow coca for, you know, even in Colombia. So you know, so the plants originally from there historically. And it hasn't taken up. There was an effort a few years ago to try and produce cocaine in Nigeria. And it didn't really take off. There's been little efforts.

Even within, like there's been little efforts of like Guatemala, Mexico to make cocaine. But really it's the Andes. know, the climate, the conditions for growing coca leaves. Heroin can be made in a lot of countries, but Mexico's got good conditions, and it's right next to the United States, and same with marijuana. And now with the synthetic drugs,

so crystal meth fentanyl. So now they make fentanyl in Mexico, or they're bringing fentanyl and mix it up with heroin. What is fentanyl, by the way, Yow? Yeah, fentanyl is, so you've got the big class of drugs called opioids or opiates. which are opium-based things, which are like downers. People say they kind of bring you down.

Very good painkillers. And that's the biggest real addiction problem in the United States is really these. Opiates are the biggest really for deaths, because the level between what you can take and your body can survive with and overdose is much closer than with cocaine or some other drugs or marijuana. So it's very easy to OD on it. Very easy OD on it. And nowadays, you've got, I mean, you've had through the pharmaceutical industry

and you've got a lot of corruption really in the United States of people prescribing OPAs. I mean, it's been going for a long time. I mean, I've got friends here in the UK who got addicted to heroin after going into hospital and being given, you know, down as then as it's going back to the 80s. But in the US, there was like big pushing from the drug companies to like, yeah, prescribe them. You know, like, subscribe them opiates, prescribe them, you know, make money out of this, you know, yeah. And a lot of people making money and then people are hooked and then they're buying it illegally. So then the cartels start also make, you know, getting these formulas, making it, going to countries,

buying precursors, making it themselves. So now there's a big amount of money you can make. You don't need to be in the mountains growing opium leaves or coca leaves. You just got a lab somewhere, bringing some precursors, you know, you know, you know, bribe customs or like sneak them through. and this in a lab right by the border or any place and be making these opiates or crystal meth as well. It seems to me that, you know, drugs are so prevalent in America and the UK. And look, this is me with my tinfoil hat.

Please disavowal me of this idea. Are they not people really high up who have got their fingers in this pie? Because I just think to myself, it can't be so prevalent and people up top know what's going on or don't know what's going on. Yeah, it's an interesting idea. like you know sometimes I'll try and put you know write op-eds and try and be like end the war on drugs and do this you know can and just trying to push for real solutions because i get very frustrated now i feel like politics is broken yeah and i feel this is something we can't fix you know a lot of things

we can't fix you know we're not going to be able to find common ground on but this is something we should be able to fix it's like wrong and can't we find a better way it's like why they're not doing it you know so i try and put forward optimistic things whoever it is by an administration you know Boris Johnson, anything, you know, just move forward in this policy. And everyone says, you know, then people would be like, ah, you're so naive. You know, there's a bunch of people making a big money on this. They want this kind of disorder.

I don't know. I mean, my dad used to say you have conspiracy theory and you have to cock up theory. And often I will first look at the cock up theory. Yeah. But then also you have the cocked up conspiracy theory. So you have like stuff that can be like, you know, are there interests there of people?

I mean, certainly people, you have got bureaucracies there so you've got like the DEA a couple of billion dollars budget every year they've got an incentive to keep that budget to keep it they've got asset seizure

you know they're seizing you know drug traffickers can the biggest cash bust in the world ever was in Mexico 205 207 million dollars in cash in a house in Mexico from a Chinese guy

actually bringing in precursors for crystal meth that might Money is then asset seized by the Mexican government. They're going to have $207 million. You know, the US, you know, seize houses of people and stuff and then use that. So, yeah, there are interest there and people selling guns to drug traffickers. People selling guns to gangs.

That's a business. Banks, HSBC was caught. Big money laundering case there. You've got money coming in. You know, you're like, I know, I talked to a guy. A guy contacted me who was selling expensive watches to drug traffickers in Colombia. He was a Colombian guy based in Miami, but he was going to Europe. And he was selling, like, he was going to Colombia with like, I mean, we're talking, you know,

really expensive watches, $100,000 dollars apiece, go with a few of them, go off to these, like, rants of drug traffickers, sell them a few of these watches. The watch companies are happy with that. You know, he was their bestseller. Now, who can you find with that kind of money to buy, to buy, what you? So a lot of people make money out of this, and there could be interests, but I think also there's a lot of just broken politics, and we can't fix, you know, why can we not fix anything more? And why politicians, now this is actually also linked to the issue of refugees,

which is another reason actually your question about why we should care. Yeah. Right, you know, people flee violence in Latin America and then come to the United States, people flee violence in Africa and come to Europe. Different sources, different reasons there. But one of the reasons they're driving this. So people arrive, a lot of them have got asylum claims that are very strong, saying they threaten to kill my entire family,

they're working with the police. If I go back, they're going to murder me. That's driving people. And so, you know, you have to care because if countries are in chaos, it affects you. But then you get like, you know, So Alejandro Ocasio-Cortez, tweet, I know, America was involved in supporting governments in Latin America, in Central America

in the 80s. But how about right now? How about what's happening right now and how you can solve these practical things? But I think a lot of politics is more about like posturing than actually saying any kind of pragmatic solution to these kind of problems. That's what I find really odd about this whole thing, you know, because it's like many of the issues that we talk about, You know, you know us, you watch the show, we speak to people on the right and the left. We try and have that balanced discussion. And the things that you just mentioned, the stuff that people in America, let's say, on the right care about, the border, the border security, what they call. If you've got a continent of people who are being murdered and raped and disappeared and whatever, a lot of them are going to want to leave that and come to the United States.

So if you fix this issue, you're going to solve that problem to a very significant extent. Likewise in the UK, I mean, one of the things we've been talking about a lot recently is racial disparities, over-policing of certain communities, et cetera. And a lot of that is, in my opinion, down to the fact that there's a lot of people being criminalized for something that they didn't, they oughtn't be criminalized for. But if you create an opportunity to make as much money as you're saying for people who don't have many other options, that's what's going to happen. Then the police have to come in because of the violence. And then, you know, the 17-year-old with a bag of weed in his pocket is being treated in a very different way to somebody who's got the same bag of weed at Oxford University, right? So there's so many things that can be fixed by addressing this issue. Why do you think that, first of all, politics, you've alluded to some of it, but also just, you know, public sentiment isn't necessarily on the side of what we're talking about here.

I mean, I see a massive switch on the druggish over the last few years. I remember in 2010 I was on Charlie Rose show before his demise but I was on the Charlie Rose show and we were having discussion then and Charlie Rose asked about

drug legalization and sorry 2012 he asked about drug legalization and one of the other guests in our journey said it's a non-starter and this was a sentiment I heard a lot in older journalists like drug legalization is a non-starter

you mentioned it's just not going to happen. That year in 2012, they legalized cannabis, first of all, Washington State and Colorado, and then it's been spreading across legalized recreational marijuana. So that's obviously on the table now. So you have seen, and you've seen like, you know, just this last election, there was a whole bunch of these other votes in the United States. And Mississippi, you know, by a big percentage approved legalizing medicalizing medical. marijuana. So you've seen a big change in this. I mean, you go back to 30 years, you know, 30 years or

20 years, that wouldn't have happened. Do you have a website or do you plan to have a website? Well, if you do, then EasyDNS are the company for you. Easy DNS is the perfect domain name registrar provider and web host for you. They have a track record of standing up for their clients, whether it be cancel culture, de-platform attacks, or overzealous government agencies. Eno's a bit about that. So will you in a second. Easy DNS have rock solid network infrastructure and incredible customer support.

They're in your corner, no matter what the world throws at you, unless it's your ex-girlfriend, in which case you're on your own. You'd know about that. Move your domains and websites over to EasyDNS right now. All you've got to do is head over to EasyDNS.com forward slash triggered and use our promo code, which is of course triggered as well, and you will get 50% off the initial purchase. Sign up for their newsletter, access of easy that tells you everything you need to know

about technology, privacy and censorship. So there has been a big swing in public opinion on this issue. I'm not sure exactly what the surveys are now in the UK, how many people will be in favour of legalising marijuana here for a start. But I think there is a certain move with politicians. but I do think that politics has become very, very broken. And they're not looking at like solving practical issues. It's not like sitting down and saying,

I think the spirit that's lasted for a long time in the US, in Europe, if we can solve things, we can solve problems. We've lost a lot of that. And it's people now just like posturing, showing off their own kind of social media followers, attacking the opposition, not really saying how can we actually come together and find a real solution to this problem.

Do you not get frustrated about this? I mean, you must be, surely you're covering this stuff just absolute horror for what, two decades now or as long as you've been? And you're seeing that you're giving people information about what's going on. You talk about two million people being murdered in Latin America and no one seems to care.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, like, it's, I mean, it's been a crazy journey. And as well as, you know, some of the things that really strike with me, I spend a lot of time interviewing cartel members and gangsters, criminals. So it's spending a lot of time with people who are like serial murderers. Now, I, as a journalist, feel I've got, you know, it's important to talk to these people to try and understand who they are, you know, what they're going through. Some of them are evil or commit evil acts.

Some of them, you know, I can get on, or, you know, one can get on okay with them. You can find they've got nice sides to them. This one guy, I went out drinking in a nightclub with him. I didn't really know quite how deep he was in beforehand. You know, we did a big bucket of beer, kind of nice, you know, seemed like a nice guy. When we sat down, you know, did an interview with him later, and he was describing, butchering an entire family. He was describing decapitating people while they're still alive, which would be in the contracts.

You know, how they have that there. They decapitate them and, you know, how they kind of bodies are reacting to that. Later on, he was murdered. So you see this stuff and just repeating, repeating, repeating, repeating, just keeps on going. And yeah, I mean, I kind of think I had a certain naivety when I went into this. And then I looked back and read my first book that I wrote 10 years ago. I had this kind of optimism. We can solve this because it can be changed.

When I talked to a lot of people living in these areas, have that optimism. Their idea is this the way it is. There's violence and I'm going to try and make the best of this for myself. They're not thinking, oh, how can we change and move this situation? It is frustrating and I think we're losing, I think a lot of the gains we've made. I mean, you think there's got to be a way to stop this. If we can, you know, if humans can put man on the moon, all of the things that we can do, we can create nuclear bombs, how can we can we, how can we have, you know, in Latin America right now and in some US cities, murder rates which are like 50 times London. So if you think, London's bad at stabbing, imagine that times 50. What that

means when everybody knows several people who have been murdered. What that means in terms of you don't want your kid out by themselves ever because you're just, you're just, scared that something could happen, that you're constantly got that edge on it, and we can't, we can't stop that stuff. And even you compare it to like medieval London, it's the murder rates right now, to Latin America cities, a five times, six times the rates that were in medieval London. So it's not like it's this natural state of things that there should be this level of violence. Don't you think that part of the problem as well is that we conflate drug taken with morality? So, you know, if you take drugs, you ultimately become immoral. And if you're immoral, then you should

be punished when it's been proven time and time again that, you know, as long as there's going to be human beings, they're going to be taking drugs. We've taken drugs since time immoral. Yeah, we have taken drugs since time immoral. I think there's differences in the drug taking now compared to some of like, you know, drug taking before. I mean, things like the fact, you know, there was, we drink, you know, alcohol now, much stronger alcohol, we used to, people used to drink, you know, to be like a weaker beer or whatever. Now it's like, or a weaker one. and now it's like now we're doing mescal and vodka and that kind of thing um you know we've taken you know people took um say magic mushrooms um in you know like druids took them or

people didn't like ceremonies before but now people are just doing like lines of coke and and just taking drugs at kind of parties and people are kind of so i think i think there's issues there's quite big issues about the nature of modern society i think the nature of mental health in Montessati and the way that like, I mean, most people who become bad drug addicts have got problems, other problems. It's not just, it's not like someone's super happy, everything's going great in their lives, and they become like a bad drug addict. Some people take drugs recreationally. They go out, they get drunk, they take a few lines, and that's it. They can leave it, and they can carry on. Some of them are like in Parliament

or, you know, or like selling stocks or whatever. Other people, you know, they start taking them, you know, and then they've got a real big problem with this. And then they've become like a bad, addict and then people dive over those stuff. So I think we've got to look at these and I think this gets into bigger issues and it's kind of hard to solve but about I think about about people, about separation, about loneliness and about all of these things we have to kind of address as well. Yeah, it's a really good point. I wouldn't want this into me to come off as like us going, oh yeah, everyone should be taking drugs and there's nothing wrong with it at all because we know that there's a lot of problems that come with that. But I guess there's been a lot of

written about now that we know that the reason that. people take drugs often is to do with trauma, it's to do with suffering some kind of pain, is to deal with difficulty. And yeah, we've said, okay, you can take alcohol and drink yourself to death, and that's okay, but you can't take this other stuff. That, to me, is really the issue. But you mentioned the AOC and the conversation around America's past behavior in Latin America. Yeah. What has been the West's role in the war on drugs, and the violence you talk about in Latin America, has the West helped?

Has the West made it worse? Like what has been the impact of the attempts to intervene in one way or another? Yeah, sure. So historically, when you go back to Richard Nixon before, then the US really pushed this. So at a beginning, like the US pushed crop spraying in Mexico, is going back to the 1970s

and start saying, you've got to like use, you know, we'll give you military helioling. helicopters and new spray crops. And so the military then empowered and getting money to be cracking down on drug production, which then just shifted. So they actually began in Sinaloa. They ran them out of Sinaloa. They went to the second city, Guadalajara just grew in size.

Crop spraying in Colombia, which they never, no, never wiped out the cocaine trade. You know, you just spray crops, spray, spray, spray. It's whackamol. You know, you're going bang, bang, bang, and it's just all, it's springing up all the time. So the US and the U.S. And the U.S. was pressuring as a policy. So they just have a thing called certification. where they'd certified countries

for how much they were cracking down on drugs, supposedly. They had this idea this would work and it would stop drug trafficking, and it failed. So the US did this and pushed this for a long time. Now it's kind of a zombie war on drugs. Now this thing's just like carrying on moving. The drug trade is there. There's billions and billions of dollars in it.

People just carry on doing it. You've also got, which my third book looks at, the traffic of firearms. So now the United States has the biggest firearms market in the world by far. The last count or estimate was 393 million guns in civilian hands, which is more than the next 25 countries combined. From that, you have like a legal firearms market. You have a parallel black market.

From this parallel black market, you have guns flowing down, well, moving around to the gangs in the United States, all around the US, but also flowing down to Mexico. The last 12 years, you've seen more than 160,000. thousand firearms taken from cartels in Mexico and definitively traced to US gun shops and gun stores. The real numbers were believed to be more than 200,000 guns every year going down there. So this is trafficking, historic case of trafficking to heavy armed conflict, which again is why I think, I mean, are Americans, and some of these politicians, they're not know about that, some of these

politicians who are talking in, you know, in Congress, they're not know about these things, or are they not interested in real solutions to this stuff right now? Well, there was a scandal, wasn't there? It was Operation Fast and Furious? Yeah, yeah, exactly. To tell everybody a little bit about what happened there. Yeah, so Fast and Furious was an operation by the American gun police called the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

In 2009, 2010, it blew open and 2011, well, 2011, it really came out to the public. And what it was was that the ATF agents were watching people, cartel affiliates, buy guns and traffic them to the cartels. The plan was we're going to watch them. They tried to get some chips in the gun so they could trace them. And we can build up a big conspiracy case and kind of bring down the whole racket. They ended up watching 2,000 guns be trafficked to Mexico. one of them was found in the last safe house of El Chapo. Some of them got them bounced down to Colombia.

And then one of them was later used to murder an American border patrol agent in the United States. Which thing, it really blew up. And they just, you know, so they were like basically complicit in this. There was one guy who walked in the shop spent half a million dollars on guns. They were just watching him do it. There was, you know, it was a kind of crazy, crazy scheme. Now, this cut, you know, the politics this cuts different ways

and I'm trying to like, you know, bring this you know, left wing, right wing, whatever. I think on the drugs issue, a lot of left and right can really come together on this issue. I think we got, I think on the actual issue of guns themselves is more divisive in the United States.

Yeah. But this issue actually was owned by conservatives because it happened under Obama, under Attorney General Eric Holder. And so it became like, this is what the Obama administration has done and a kind of conspiracy they want to do this to kind of take away our guns.

In Mexico it was more of a conspiracy of saying, well, look, the US wants us to be violent. They're like deliberately, they're involved in trafficking the guns to us. They're watching this happen. So, yeah, it cuts, you know, all kinds of ways. Well, the thing is, you don't have to be anti-gun to be anti-trafficking guns to Mexican drug laws.

You can be pro-gun as well, but also want them to be legally controlled and none of this to happen, right? Yeah, exactly. and I interviewed one confidential informant who was a gun seller, and he was that. He was a gun seller, and he was saying, I don't want these guns going to cartels.

And he was actually ended up, you know, being, you know, with a hidden recorder, taping conversations with cartel affiliates. And then at the end, he was like, none of this came to anything. I was just doing this, and none of us came to anything. And he was making money. I mean, he was making money,

both being paid by the government to be a confidential informant and making money from the gun sales. It just sounds like a broken system, man. Yeah, yeah. And you say we've got a zombie war on drugs, you know, it's a broken system. Isn't it because we've kind of admitted that there is no solution to this problem, really? Yeah, I mean, like I said, you know, politics is broken and, you know, we've got to try and, you know, bring the conversation on.

Now, like, I think a lot of people now, probably most of you, as I'd imagine, would be in favour of legalising marijuana, as it's a guess. when you get to cocaine or someone's suffering or people like seeing like in the US now they've got loads of homeless people on the streets who are taking drugs so you think well decriminalisation isn't working there because it's allowing them to be doing

you know like just sitting there taking drugs on the streets what we're going to do about them these people need help a lot of them but also I think you know you've got another discussion about law enforcement So I think on the one side, I think we need drug policy reform. And the other side, we do need to take law enforcement very seriously in terms of stopping anti-social crime.

An anti-social crime, I mean in Latin America, I mean violently anti-social disappearances, I mean, rapes. And I mean, there, I mean, there's a very aggressive feminist movement in Mexico, in Latin America. But there they've got these grievances of life. like horrific, you know, every day you see a woman's being raped and murdered in their body left. I interviewed one woman who is going down to Central America. And she was gang raped by the members of the MS-13 gang. And it was kind of used as a weapon of conflict of violence against people.

So these kind of anti-social crimes and violence and in poor communities are the ones that suffer most from this. everywhere. And we need to take this stuff very, very seriously and say, how do we have law enforcement for that? At the same time, we're saying, actually on drug issue itself, we need to rethink this and just locking everyone up for this or just allowing an illegal black market in drugs, which generates money, which gives an incentive for people to have guns and fight over this. You know, this is not working. Do you think part of the solution could be, though, Yeran, is that, look, all our governments have spent a phenomenal amount of money.

money on COVID. And they're looking around, they think, right, we need to regenerate it. You know, we need to regenerate. We need to think of ways to make more money. Let's be fair, if you want to monetise something, marijuana is the best way to do it, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. And you've seen big incomes, you know, being generated in cities that have legalized marijuana and a lot of people in that business. And if it did happen in the UK, I'm sure, like, you know, you get some of the same old, you know, networks, soon as well. You know, networks, soon as jumping into that and, you know, weather spoons.

Yeah, Weather spoons or, you know, or the friends of Boris Johnson or whatever, you know, who like jumping into another. You know,

it'd be a big, big thing to invest in if it's only started like opening, like, you know, marijuana dispensaries around the UK. I'm sure, I mean, there's a lot, there's a lot of money in this,

absolutely. I mean, if you've got, um, an industry that's, I mean, again, these numbers are pure estimates or guest estimates, but, you know,

there was a UN thing, talking about $300 billion dollars globally. And that's $300 billion dollars, you know, governments can, tax or whatever. No, no, not all of it. You know, there's some drugs, maybe we can. I mean, I don't know if heroin you can ever allow people to go to the shop and buy heroin. But the thing is, this conversation doesn't need to be had in this way, does it? Because when we talk about

decriminalising things, let's say, we're not saying you can go into a pharmacy and buy a kilo of heroin. What we're saying is if you are a user of heroin, instead of putting you in prison, Yeah. We make sure you get the treatment that you need, which is rehab, which is psychological help to deal with your underlying issues. I don't think anyone's advocating that these really, really damaging drugs like cocaine, heroin, etc. should just be freely available to whoever wants them. I think there's got to be some nuance in the conversation. I think marijuana is something you could probably legalize, but other drugs maybe just decriminalized.

They've done that in Portugal. I think in Switzerland, to some extent, with heroin as well. there's places in the world that have found a way of doing this. It doesn't have to be like free for all, you know. Well, yeah, but there still leaves a problem, though, because when you, if you decriminalize heroin, so we decriminalize heroin in the UK, and let's say people spend,

and just out there's just out of, you know, like a billion pounds on heroin. So they're no longer going to arrest people who are like, who are just having this, being caught with a bit because they're heroin users, but it's still going to be a black market, illegal trade providing them. So you've still then got the gangs, you know, moving the heroin and making money from

it and having the violence. And you've still got the cartels or whatever. I mean, here a lot of heroin comes from, say, turtick, organized crime. What they do, though, is they give them the heroin. So, yeah, so that's another step. So that's another thing we could look at where you have government programs and you have things like methadone as well. There's also other, like, substitutes.

So we're like expanding those kind of programs. Now, again, it's still difficult. when you get into this because you have, you know, you might have somebody who's like, get some, you know, scripts, you know, from the government. Right. And then sells those. And I used to remember back when I was, you know, in the 80s, early 90s, remember people doing that, like get scripts for pills,

call them like jellies or something, some of like pills. And then I said they're like reselling them on the street and stuff. So it's difficult as well. But I think some of these, we have to, you know, have to look at this stuff. We have to try and find ways. I think one way to see this and a lot of problems is rather than, you know, these absolutist things of saying,

like which Richard Nixon, when he began the war and drugs, said, we will banish heroin from American life. We're not going to get rid of it completely, but we've got to reduce the harm, reduce the damage. So if the illegal drug money right now is, you know, whatever $150 billion in the United States, if you can reduce that by half, then that's $75 billion less going to organize crime.

If you can reduce it by two-thirds. So if you can try and see a reduction in this and reduce the number of people dying of overdoses, rather than saying we're going to get rid of this problem completely. You know, we've got a few minutes left. So obviously, whenever you talk about this issue, it's not a positive conversation, just given the nature of what we're talking about here, right?

But do you think there's any reason to be positive, any reason for optimism around this issue? Do you think there's any light at the end of the tunnel here? or do you think this is just an issue that's not going to get better in the foreseeable? Yeah, I try and be optimistic and not really pessimistic about stuff. I don't like the idea of pessimistic views on the world and stuff. And I mean, there are a lot of things driving in particular violence in Mexico. So it's not the drugs are in a way, you know, you could talk about Mexico as being,

rather than the Mexican War and drugs, the Mexican Drug War, which is a war being partly financed by drugs. They're financing an armed conflict. And maybe it's going to last a few years more and finally kind of calm down. And it's also about finding governability, finding police forces that can work in that. Which I think is a bigger issue as well across the world is like how you have, you know, how you create law enforcement that works. A lot of countries don't have functional law enforcement.

You know, there's something else we can need to take for granted. And there's a lot of problems with law enforcement in the UK. but it's a hell of a lot better than many, many countries. And the levels of violence here are better. But like, if you look at a positive solution or positive take on this, I mean, yeah, I mean, public opinion has changed massively on this issue. Generation-wise, things have changed. So, you know, people started taking drugs in a really big way, I think, in the West,

from the 60s onwards. That was when it kind of really blew up. When I was growing up in the 80s, there was all just drugs were already everywhere. So we're growing up around drugs then. And probably the same for the new generation now. They've grown up, I think maybe even less drug-taking now than there was in the 80s, 90s. I don't know exactly. It's hard to know.

So you get more used to it and then you get less, you know, now, it's kind of, if people, often people who are the most scared about drugs and the kind of old idea of the old war on drug stuff or the real fear, There was a film from the 1930s in the States, or 94, it's called Rifa Madness. Yeah, I've seen it. It's a classic, I watched it when I was high. Yeah, it is a classic.

And they're like, yeah, these people like, guy in a suit and tie and he smokes marijuana and then, you know, smokes some weed and he's just losing it. But now those have changed. So I think we've got the, the change in, a big change in public opinion. It's about, I think now it's about taking that and making that to actual change in policies.

Yoan, it's been a wonderful, wonderful interview. you. Before we do our questions for locals, the last question we always ask is, what's the one thing we're not talking about, but we really should be? Yeah, yeah. I tried to think of this before, to me, it was hard work. Don't give away the secrets of the game. It's meant to be off the cuff. Yeah, I don't know, off the cuff, okay. I was trying to think about this, but anyway, it's almost like everything's being talked about. I think, but I think one issue which is talked about, I think could become more,

and I see this coming back to England, is the kind of over-digitalization of everything. I think the way particularly England has become such a digital society. And it's in some parts of life where we don't need it. You know, like going to a pub and having to go on an app to order a drink instead of being able to go to a bar. I understand the health stuff there. But like this idea that everything's online, that every bank has to like close down its branches, that you can't, you know, talk to a doctor anymore. You have to go like and send emails. I think this is fracturing society more. I think one of the big challenges now is, I mean, it's also for all of us, you know, how we try and get a balance between digital life and, you know, in real life and

really seeing people and stuff. And I think that's one of the things we need to talk about more. That's a really good point. And for those of you watching, we're going to ask some questions. In fact, your questions from locals. So join locals. Check out our page there. And you'll be able to submit questions for our future guests and read the answers. But, John, in the meantime, thank you for coming on. Blood, Gun, Money, is your latest book. Everyone should get it, of course. I look forward to reading your back catalogue as well, because this is an issue I really find very interesting.

And thank you for coming on the show. Where should people go to check out your work and follow the latest in what you're doing? Yeah, sure. So I've got a weird name, it's easy to find. I-O-A-N, first name in Grillo, GRI, W.O. So it's just, you can just search for that. But you can see I've got a website,

young grillo.com. I'm on Twitter, some of the time. Not too much, I'm at a digital thing. but you can see that bit of stuff on YouTube as well you can check out and you can see them in a bunch of media outlets that have my stories as well fantastic thanks for coming on man and thank you all for watching

we will see you very soon with another brilliant episode and they always go out episodes and raw shows 7pm UK time Tuesday to Sunday or 2pm Eastern Standard time take care and see you soon guys we hope you've enjoyed this incredible incredible interview. Remember to subscribe and hit the bell button so that you never miss another fantastic episode. And if you believe that the work we do here at Trigonometry is important, support us by joining our locals community using the link below.