TRIGGERnometry - The True Cost of the War On Drugs

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00:00:30.000 We've got a zombie war on drugs now.

00:00:32.940 We've had 50 years, it's been a failure.

00:00:34.900 We've now had our last year record overdose deaths in the United States.

00:00:38.580 The level of violence in Latin America has been, in the last 20 years,

00:00:43.580 there's been more than 2 million homicides in Latin America.

00:00:51.920 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry.

00:00:54.560 I'm Francis Foster.

00:00:55.960 I'm Constantine Kissin.

00:00:57.100 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

00:01:02.640 Our brilliant guest today is a Mexican-based journalist and the author of several books

00:01:06.920 about the war on drugs, including this latest one, Blood, Gun, Money.

00:01:10.920 Johan Grillo, welcome to Trigonometry.

00:01:12.700 Great to be here.

00:01:13.700 It is great to have you, man.

00:01:14.880 We're so excited, as you know, about speaking with you.

00:01:17.400 This is an issue we were really keen to talk about.

00:01:20.200 Before we get into all that stuff, tell us a little bit about who you are,

00:01:23.880 how are you, where you are.

00:01:24.860 You've had a very interesting journey through your life, haven't you?

00:01:27.100 Well, I'm originally from the UK, grew up just near Brighton, did a bit of a checkered few things I did before I get into journalism.

00:01:37.100 I played in a punk band for a bit around the Brighton area, was involved in pirate radio in London for a bit.

00:01:43.100 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.

00:01:54.800 arrived in mexico in the year 2000 um when things had changed very much and very early on fell into

00:02:02.220 covering drugs issue of drugs i grew up um in the southeast with a lot of drugs around then a kind

00:02:07.920 of bit of an opioid epidemic back then in the 80s i knew about four teenagers or young men who died

00:02:13.280 of heronovid doses around those times so it kind of was very interesting to me connecting this issue

00:02:18.400 of drug use countries and communities that use a lot of drugs

00:02:22.480 and countries which traffic and produce drugs.

00:02:26.680 I was just fascinated at the beginning with this kind of glamour

00:02:29.400 and the riddles of the Mexican drug cartels.

00:02:32.160 So I was covering this a lot, and while I was there covering this,

00:02:35.760 it just blew up really from 2008.

00:02:38.300 2006, the government launched a military crackdown on cartels.

00:02:42.180 2008 was when the violence really exploded,

00:02:44.760 and it became like a weird hybrid armed conflict.

00:02:48.840 I mean, insane things happening.

00:02:50.720 I found myself in situations I couldn't have imagined.

00:02:53.240 I found myself like in a morgue with 49 bodies

00:02:55.920 that had all been decapitated,

00:02:57.620 all had their hands and feet cut off.

00:02:59.780 Found myself just dealing with a really crazy situation

00:03:03.100 in the country, really bleeding a lot of pain.

00:03:07.140 Thought I couldn't get this out just in news reports.

00:03:10.120 So I wrote a first book about this,

00:03:11.820 which turned into a trilogy of books about this.

00:03:14.300 Travelled around Latin America looking at how this was playing out

00:03:16.980 across the continent, Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Honduras, Jamaica,

00:03:23.960 up in the US itself seeing this.

00:03:26.780 And I've been doing that since really.

00:03:29.240 And I've now got more to doing some sort of TV series as well,

00:03:33.160 but still out here writing away, living as a journalist.

00:03:36.360 It's great to have you on to talk about all this stuff.

00:03:38.680 And there's obviously so much we could talk about.

00:03:40.760 But we always like to start with the very basics

00:03:43.140 For anyone who's coming to this conversation for the first time,

00:03:46.180 might not know much about it.

00:03:47.560 What is the drug war, the war on drugs as we talk?

00:03:50.920 What is it?

00:03:52.260 Yeah, so if you look at drug trafficking in the modern sense,

00:03:57.180 it goes actually all the way back to 1914.

00:04:01.600 You had a thing in the US called the Harrison's Narcotic Tax Act

00:04:04.740 where they started taxing some and regulating

00:04:10.320 and prohibiting some opium and cocaine back then in 1914.

00:04:14.680 1915, it came into effect.

00:04:16.080 Because prior to this, you could just buy it as normal.

00:04:18.860 Yeah, I mean, there were some local measures came in.

00:04:22.420 But very early on then, from 1915,

00:04:25.380 when it started to really be more national kind of drug prohibition

00:04:29.100 or kind of regulation,

00:04:30.720 you had a drug trade from Mexico to the United States.

00:04:33.200 So there's a case you can look at going back to 1916

00:04:36.380 of cases of people trafficking drugs from Mexico to the United States.

00:04:40.980 Initially, it was often Chinese immigrants to Mexico.

00:04:44.600 Obviously, we had the opium war.

00:04:46.220 Us Brits forced the selling of opium in China.

00:04:51.220 The habits continued.

00:04:52.200 People moved to Mexico, started planting opium in Mexico

00:04:55.100 and trafficking it to Chinese Americans,

00:04:57.740 some of the very first cases you can see in 1916.

00:05:00.040 And right back then, there was Mexican governors involved in the corruption.

00:05:04.900 So you saw this kind of thing.

00:05:06.380 Then the real war on drugs happens under Richard Nixon.

00:05:10.480 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 in the United States is illegal drugs.

00:05:22.400 And he had, you know, we're going to fight a war against them, a war on drugs.

00:05:26.740 And he talked in very absolutist terms in those days.

00:05:30.640 It was like we will have an abolition of drugs from American life.

00:05:34.080 like there will be no heroin you know middle-class parents don't worry about your kids taking heroin

00:05:39.420 it's not going to happen there will be no heroin available that was 1971 then you saw this

00:05:44.080 escalation the drug trade in Colombia really kicking off the violence in Colombia you know

00:05:50.600 Escobar cocaine and drug habits in the United States really really increasing the drug consumption

00:05:57.260 Reagan amped it up

00:05:59.760 and then you've had this since then

00:06:02.720 now I say now, I argue now

00:06:04.540 that really we've got a zombie war on drugs now

00:06:07.480 because that, you know, like

00:06:10.540 we've had 50 years, it's been a failure

00:06:13.460 we've now had our last year record overdose deaths in the United States

00:06:16.680 the level of violence in Latin America

00:06:18.880 has been, in the last 20 years

00:06:22.300 there's been more than 2 million homicides in Latin America

00:06:24.580 more than 2 million murders

00:06:26.440 So the level of violence now, a lot of this, when you see it on the ground,

00:06:29.840 is more actually like an armed conflict you're covering.

00:06:32.080 I mean, these are heavily armed groups, military crackdowns by governments.

00:06:37.000 So you've seen a lot more death there than most of the Middle East.

00:06:42.920 And a large amount is related to cocaine trade.

00:06:47.220 Not obviously not all the murders, but that's a large factor in this violence there.

00:06:51.720 but there isn't really any more the impetus the kind of real energy of people about let's try and

00:06:58.640 stop drugs being in people's lives they kind of accept and live with drugs now but we still have

00:07:03.380 this kind of prohibition stumbling on elements and this kind of enforcement and so forth and

00:07:09.240 you know it seems quite clear to me and I think to most people that the war on drugs simply doesn't

00:07:14.140 work can you explain number one why it doesn't and the effects it has on these types of communities

00:07:20.680 Yeah, sure.

00:07:21.600 So if you look at drugs, let's take cocaine is one of the ones which is interesting to look at.

00:07:31.960 And so people make killer cocaine.

00:07:34.700 First, it starts off with a bunch of leaves from coca leaves in Colombia, Peru, Bolivia.

00:07:41.360 Colombia is the biggest producer.

00:07:43.100 About $80 someone will get for harvesting a bunch of leaves.

00:07:46.000 Some peasant farmer down in Campesino down in Colombia.

00:07:49.840 Eventually it goes through two chemical processes

00:07:52.800 and becomes a kilo brick of cocaine,

00:07:55.580 which they'll stamp with their label on.

00:07:59.760 And that sells, depending on where in Colombia you buy,

00:08:03.640 if you buy it in the countryside, it's cheaper.

00:08:05.660 It could be about $2,000 buying it for export.

00:08:10.960 Bounces up to the US, even the southern US,

00:08:16.160 wholesale you're talking about $40,000.

00:08:18.480 on the streets, $100,000 plus,

00:08:23.120 plus you cut it up with a bunch of crap

00:08:25.060 and then you make it double $200,000, $300,000.

00:08:28.380 So the profits for that are just insane.

00:08:31.000 I mean, we're all in the shit business of journalism.

00:08:35.060 I was about to say we're in the wrong business, my friend.

00:08:37.980 Yeah, imagine any kind of business

00:08:39.920 where you could like anyone who wants to go into business

00:08:41.420 and think if I flip,

00:08:42.780 you know, most businesses you might see have 20% markups.

00:08:45.080 Imagine that you're saying,

00:08:45.920 this is what drug dealers, it's the way they talk.

00:08:48.340 okay, I'm going to put in 100 grand

00:08:50.840 and I'm expecting to make half a million out of that at least.

00:08:54.640 It's like you're making so much money or more.

00:08:58.020 I mean, think of the markups on that level.

00:09:01.380 So you get such an incentive for anyone to do this.

00:09:06.500 So what happens now is it doesn't take a rocket scientist to do this.

00:09:10.860 It's buying products, selling products, moving products.

00:09:13.980 So the most violent people are often going to succeed in this.

00:09:17.640 Or people using calculated violence, calculated corruption.

00:09:21.060 So you end up in Mexico with psychopathic cartels

00:09:25.900 in the way, the stuff they do.

00:09:27.400 I mean, the stuff you cover there, I've covered there is insane.

00:09:31.840 I mean, I've covered a mass grave with the remains of 298 people

00:09:36.140 and that was right next to a housing estate.

00:09:40.940 And as they were uncovering it, the reek of that death,

00:09:44.060 the reek of the bodies was then reeking out.

00:09:45.420 And they were complaining about, well, we've got our kids playing in the gardens here.

00:09:48.220 We've got the smell of death coming.

00:09:49.900 I mean, that's what it leads to.

00:09:52.020 But anyway, why it doesn't work is, I think, that amount of incentive.

00:09:56.660 And you're going to arrest people, but someone else will take their place.

00:10:01.500 And Chapa himself will say this.

00:10:02.980 He said this when he gave a video statement.

00:10:08.240 And he said, like, I'm not the only one doing this.

00:10:11.020 There are those people involved in drug trafficking.

00:10:12.600 And that's true.

00:10:13.860 So anyone's going to take their place.

00:10:15.420 All people keep on taking their place, can keep on doing it.

00:10:19.080 And unless, you know, and the governments in the West are not prepared

00:10:22.980 for like a really authoritarian crackdown that could stop it.

00:10:26.980 Like if it was a really authoritarian crackdown,

00:10:28.920 like saying anybody we see with drugs we're going to execute right away

00:10:32.020 and cut your head off, then that might stop it.

00:10:34.680 But just saying we're going to lock people up in prison,

00:10:37.400 you know, you're always going to find more people who wouldn't do traffic drugs.

00:10:40.860 The one thing that I always struggle, because, you know,

00:10:43.360 we talk to politicians on the show sometimes

00:10:45.560 or journalists or people,

00:10:47.320 messengers who are quite influential

00:10:49.080 in government or elsewhere.

00:10:50.520 The one thing I always struggle to get people

00:10:53.020 to understand is why this matters here.

00:10:57.420 Why should anyone care about this?

00:11:00.080 Yeah.

00:11:00.940 I think two reasons.

00:11:03.280 I mean, one, the first reason,

00:11:05.120 which it might be hard to convince people,

00:11:07.840 but, you know, you should care about

00:11:08.760 what you're connected to.

00:11:09.900 One of the things about drugs

00:11:11.100 and I find fascinating is, you know,

00:11:12.480 So you could, somebody, you could be,

00:11:14.280 somebody could be snorting a line of cocaine

00:11:16.500 in a toilet in London.

00:11:19.900 And that has a journey.

00:11:22.320 That money you spent on that gram,

00:11:25.640 some of that money is going to reach these cartels.

00:11:28.360 So you actually got a responsibility

00:11:29.660 for caring about where that goes.

00:11:32.400 Some of that money goes to paying a hitman

00:11:34.980 who's carrying out those massacres,

00:11:37.140 who's cutting up those bodies,

00:11:38.900 who's leaving, like, you know, kids disappeared

00:11:41.100 and a bunch of brutal stuff.

00:11:42.900 It's not just bad guys being taken out with this.

00:11:45.700 A lot of innocent people have died in this.

00:11:48.060 So one, you should care, but that's hard.

00:11:49.540 It's quite a hard sell.

00:11:50.800 Right.

00:11:51.080 I mean, our phones are made in pretty much the same way.

00:11:54.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:11:54.100 It's quite a hard sell.

00:11:54.920 People say, well, you know, should you try to have a campaign?

00:11:57.160 Don't take cocaine because it goes, you know,

00:11:58.940 people are, you know, like in some pub and someone's drunk

00:12:01.860 and someone comes out offering.

00:12:02.860 It's hard to kind of think.

00:12:03.940 But the other thing is what I've seen over the last 20 years

00:12:08.120 in Latin America and Mexico.

00:12:09.880 It's like a new type of armed conflict,

00:12:13.800 a new type of violence.

00:12:15.540 And you see how this can play out in the 21st century

00:12:17.880 and how bad, what this can mean for society.

00:12:19.920 It's totally changed the way I think.

00:12:21.700 I grew up here in the UK.

00:12:23.060 I would not like police.

00:12:24.840 You know, as a punk teenager,

00:12:27.320 I'd be like anti-police and stuff.

00:12:30.540 Now you see how horrific crime can be,

00:12:34.540 how this can affect a society,

00:12:35.980 what that means in terms of quality of life standard of life for people when you know

00:12:42.160 somebody's daughter is disappeared and then brutally raped and murdered when you know you

00:12:48.340 have a a mother who's a school teacher who describes her 18 year old son who's a philosophy

00:12:53.120 student being taken away by an armed group from her house and just disappeared and she's going

00:12:58.200 around morgues trying to find is there any sign of him um these kind of things now i know we're a

00:13:03.900 way from that now but i do see in this country and in europe society getting more fragmented

00:13:10.300 um you know like these kind of divisions and stuff and we shouldn't take for granted

00:13:15.520 because we've had a fairly non-violent society for for many years it's always going to be the

00:13:21.060 case because historically we're just as violent in europe or you know as anywhere else so what

00:13:26.800 what is the solution to the war on drugs it looks like the author we're not going to do a complete

00:13:31.080 like they've got in the Philippines

00:13:32.720 where someone who's found with a bag of coke

00:13:35.340 essentially gets executed.

00:13:37.540 This crackdown doesn't work.

00:13:39.200 So what is the solution?

00:13:41.460 I think, I mean, I advocate for drug policy reform.

00:13:46.500 You know, use that phrase.

00:13:47.560 I mean, like drug policy,

00:13:48.740 because legalisation is, I mean,

00:13:52.620 it's more complicated than just the word legalisation

00:13:55.240 because actually when you get into drug policy,

00:13:58.060 you realise it's not just a button you press

00:13:59.660 and it all stops.

00:14:01.080 You actually have to get into the nitty and gritty of drug policy and stuff.

00:14:04.620 So drug policy reform, I see as representing saying the current policies don't work.

00:14:12.420 We have to reform and reshape this and look for ways.

00:14:15.140 Now, part of that means elements of legalisation.

00:14:19.040 So I'm in favour of legalising marijuana.

00:14:21.680 I think the UK is behind it.

00:14:22.760 I think the UK should legalise marijuana for a lot of reasons.

00:14:25.700 I mean, this is the reasons of why should somebody be arrested?

00:14:28.380 Why should there be, you know, gangs making money from selling weed, which is an incentive and drives violence and all kinds of stuff?

00:14:36.420 Still today, you know, you have these really violent cartels in Mexico.

00:14:42.320 Still, it's a lot less now because of legalisation in the States, but they're still moving some some weed now.

00:14:47.600 You still have the most, you know, the most violent players growing a bunch of marijuana, trafficking in the United States.

00:14:54.280 in Baltimore there's still people selling weed on the street corners there and people getting

00:14:58.200 shot over that. So legalising marijuana and then we have

00:15:02.380 to get into a very difficult discussion about what we do with heroin

00:15:06.160 cocaine, crystal meth, fentanyl

00:15:10.620 and other things. It's a difficult discussion. I don't

00:15:14.540 know the answers. One thing I do think we need to look at

00:15:18.440 which we can agree on is we need to really take rehab

00:15:22.200 very seriously, particularly in the US, but in the UK as well. We have very, sorry,

00:15:28.720 fragmented societies. I mean, why in the US is there so much drug addiction? Why are people

00:15:33.460 hurting so much? And according to the American Medical Association, only 10% of people who need,

00:15:39.280 addicts who need rehab are getting it. So you've got 90%, you've got a huge amount of work

00:15:43.260 just to try and offer people the help they need. And for every addict you get off heroin,

00:15:50.580 that's a lot of heroin they buy

00:15:51.800 because addicts are buying a lot all the time.

00:15:54.480 Now, I do realise it gets into difficult things

00:15:56.980 about cocaine and how we try and move on cocaine,

00:16:01.400 on heroin, on crystal meth,

00:16:02.820 but we've got to start having a conversation about this.

00:16:04.920 Yeah, I agree.

00:16:05.620 And it's interesting as well what people assume

00:16:07.880 when you start seeking practical solutions to this

00:16:10.940 because from my perspective,

00:16:11.820 I've never tried cocaine and I don't want to.

00:16:14.220 I've never done any hard drugs.

00:16:15.940 It's not something that appeals to me

00:16:18.720 because I've got morals, mate.

00:16:20.240 But seriously, though, but I also think you need to have a practical approach, right?

00:16:25.400 And whatever we're doing now is just not working.

00:16:27.640 And one of the ways you see that is what's been happening in Mexico,

00:16:30.240 which you've been covering for a long time.

00:16:32.960 I mean, from what I understand, and correct me on this,

00:16:35.780 Mexico is essentially not run by any, it's run by the cartels.

00:16:40.500 Most of the money that's made in Mexico is in some way connected to the drug trade.

00:16:44.300 Is that broadly accurate?

00:16:45.620 That's probably a bit of an overstatement.

00:16:47.500 Yeah. But like, I mean, the situation is horrific. And at a local level, that's true.

00:16:55.000 I'll give you an example. So the Carter, we don't know the exact amount of money.

00:17:00.140 It's very, you know, because it's a black market. But the estimates, it could be, say,

00:17:04.900 $30 billion of money from trafficking drugs to the United States. Now, Mexico's actually

00:17:10.080 a trillion dollar economy. You know, Mexico's not a poor country. It's a mid-income country

00:17:14.240 with rich people and poor people and people in the middle.

00:17:18.560 But that 30 billion then goes,

00:17:20.600 it's very concentrated in certain communities.

00:17:22.660 So you have certain areas, certain cities, certain neighbourhoods,

00:17:26.160 certain villages where drug money is the biggest thing.

00:17:29.880 But then that money helps pollute and corrupt the entire system

00:17:33.440 and a breakdown.

00:17:34.980 And there's a level.

00:17:35.660 One time I was in a town on the border

00:17:38.060 and we were, the cartel, local cartel was unhappy we were there.

00:17:46.420 They were telling local journalists, you know,

00:17:48.280 we're unhappy about journalists, you snooping around being here.

00:17:51.900 So eventually we had a talk with the cartel,

00:17:55.000 with a cartel representative, a cartel guy from there

00:17:57.600 who came to our hotel with AK-47s in the back of his car.

00:18:01.480 First saying, we don't want you filming here, blah, blah.

00:18:03.280 We originally talked to him and, you know, kind of leveled stuff out.

00:18:07.640 I said, oh, yeah, you can leave, you'll be fine, don't worry.

00:18:10.540 And he said, if you have any problems with the police, you call me.

00:18:13.680 That shows who runs the local police force.

00:18:16.860 I mean, and that's the level of insanity.

00:18:19.120 I mean, you literally see cops, seen cops,

00:18:24.820 who have actually carrying cocaine in their car,

00:18:28.060 which they're running for the cartel, who have cartel-issued guns.

00:18:32.360 the level even more so there was you know a case in Michoacán of a police officer a few years ago

00:18:39.640 his nickname was Tyson after the boxer kind of guy and he was caught and gave a forced confession

00:18:45.380 for the federal government but in that confession he was describing not only working for the cartel

00:18:51.060 not only murdering people for the cartel but being a ranking cartel member and training

00:18:57.180 young cartel affiliates how to like butcher victims how to cut off limbs so that's a level

00:19:03.980 when you have police force police forces doing that imagine what law enforcement's like in those

00:19:08.780 areas and how bad it is now in terms of you know you know as you get into mexico a concept of like

00:19:15.680 narco state or you know does it become a narco state at that point and then you've got presidents

00:19:19.780 I mean, right now, a guy who was the former public security secretary,

00:19:28.260 he was really one of the leading figures in the war on drugs.

00:19:31.480 I interviewed him before, kind of guy with a big, big kind of square jaw,

00:19:36.100 kind of talked a good game.

00:19:38.880 He's currently imprisoned in the United States on drug trafficking charges.

00:19:42.100 So, like, that's the level of corruption.

00:19:44.520 Now, you say it's a narco state, but then it gets more complicated

00:19:47.760 Because at the same time, you say, well, the entire state is just illegitimate now.

00:19:52.360 It's all drug traffickers.

00:19:53.220 But then it gets more complicated because then you have, OK, you still have doctors who are working very, very hard fighting COVID.

00:19:59.300 You still have teachers who are working hard trying to teach kids.

00:20:03.160 You still have people running electricity, collecting rubbish.

00:20:05.580 All of these things the state is doing more functionally.

00:20:08.900 It's not like we're, say, an area where the Islamic State controls or in Latin America, the Sindero Luminoso,

00:20:15.360 the Shining Path in Peru, where they control the whole area

00:20:18.920 and they're very interested in changing the way people think

00:20:23.100 and turning them into Maoist communists or Islamic State

00:20:27.820 into Islamists, extreme Islamists.

00:20:30.680 The drug cartel control an area.

00:20:33.280 They don't really care what the school's doing.

00:20:35.240 What they care about is controlling the police force,

00:20:37.420 controlling the rackets, but they've got the drugs,

00:20:40.160 but they're also into extortion, kidnapping, prostitution,

00:20:43.960 stealing oil, illegal mining, and a whole bunch of other things.

00:20:47.780 So you see a real breakdown, kind of like a warlordism.

00:20:50.760 I think a lot of the world is suffering this kind of challenge to authority as well.

00:20:55.420 Hey, Francis, do you want to learn another language?

00:20:58.760 No, mate, I'm English.

00:21:00.380 If foreigners can't understand me, I just shout at them.

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00:21:06.980 Leave it.

00:21:07.860 But if you do want to learn another language

00:21:10.200 because maybe you want to have new experiences, live in another country,

00:21:13.380 Or maybe you just want to open your mind.

00:21:15.880 My mind's open enough.

00:21:17.100 If I open it up any further, my brain's going to hurt.

00:21:20.060 This is true.

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00:22:19.780 You know what I mean, Gary?

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00:22:50.060 And Yon, is it, do they have that kind of relationship that Escobar had with the Colombian people

00:22:56.020 whereby the Colombian people loved him because, you know, he gave them schools, he provided them resources,

00:23:01.960 he helped a very, very poor people, or is it far more oppressive than that?

00:23:06.840 So it's a very mixed bag.

00:23:09.060 And I've been up to the village where El Chapo is from,

00:23:12.160 met his mother, interviewed his mother,

00:23:14.260 sat through a three-hour evangelical service,

00:23:17.080 a Christian service.

00:23:18.160 His mum's an evangelical Christian in a church that he built.

00:23:21.760 He built a paved road in that town.

00:23:23.740 And, you know, it's a small town.

00:23:24.740 He's obviously very, very popular there.

00:23:26.140 It's all, you know, in that area.

00:23:28.700 You know, everyone's into the cartel.

00:23:31.100 And they talk about these communities.

00:23:33.120 They talk about them, they call them valientes or brave ones.

00:23:35.780 and they look up to them.

00:23:37.860 But then also you get a lot of people who say,

00:23:39.820 well, these people are like demons.

00:23:42.340 These people have a lot of...

00:23:45.800 There's a big movement in Mexico,

00:23:47.920 particularly of mothers whose children,

00:23:51.720 sons and daughters, have been murdered in violence.

00:23:55.700 They're often by cartel, by armed groups,

00:23:57.660 or by the corrupt police working with the cartels,

00:24:00.240 or by the soldiers fighting the cartels,

00:24:02.860 or the Marines, something that's just like,

00:24:04.120 you know, it's a mayhem out there.

00:24:05.780 And they're going around trying to find the bodies of their loved ones.

00:24:12.200 And there's one woman who I interviewed in the state of Veracruz

00:24:15.680 who actually helped find that biggest grave I mentioned earlier of 298 bodies.

00:24:20.520 She helped find it looking for her son.

00:24:22.680 After four years of looking for her son, she found that mass grave.

00:24:26.900 And after two more years, the DNA of one of the bodies was traced to her son.

00:24:32.100 So she had that closure.

00:24:34.100 So you've got this level of mass disappearances.

00:24:37.140 Now, it gets complicated because it's mixed with cartels,

00:24:39.260 mixed with the corrupt government.

00:24:40.840 So people are like, you know, what's actually who we fight with,

00:24:44.120 the cartels or the police?

00:24:46.520 Because they're like conspiring together.

00:24:49.400 But, yeah, you've got that kind of mixed thing.

00:24:50.940 But you still have, you know, people look up to cartels as well.

00:24:54.140 And it's, you know, during the COVID, they were handing out bags of goodies.

00:24:57.820 You know, at the beginning of COVID, when all the lockdown happened,

00:25:00.200 They were handing out these plastic bags of goodies of rice and eggs and good products and, you know, getting their loyalty from people at the same time.

00:25:08.720 And we seem to have seen, particularly in Mexico, an intensification that you referred to since, I think, 2006, was it?

00:25:14.600 Yeah, I think 2006, 2008.

00:25:17.140 Yeah, so there was a real big crackdown under President Calderon.

00:25:20.460 you would have thought the the government of a pretty big country with support from the united

00:25:27.920 states at the time as well cracking down using the military using full the full force of the state

00:25:34.020 to deal with this would have had a positive impact on dealing with it and yet what we've seen

00:25:39.600 seems to have been the opposite how how has that happened sure i think i think two big reasons

00:25:44.960 um one is the a lot of the military corrupt in fact one of the cartel was actually a special

00:25:53.300 forces unit yeah wasn't it the setas and i've interviewed one of the guys who was a military

00:25:58.500 guy and was in in that from early on so yeah you had these um soldiers like hardcore soldiers who

00:26:04.520 then flipped to the cartel and so that's the equivalent of like the sas yeah flipping to

00:26:10.620 become a drug trafficking organization initially they were the enforcement arm and then they formed

00:26:14.580 their own cartel and then and they they really you could say they were the ones who militarized

00:26:18.480 the conflict right because when it um and i was covering this first covering this as a young

00:26:23.160 journalist working for the houston chronicle in the states and as this was kind of playing out

00:26:28.100 and you saw the violence was really upped it used to be like gang bangers as they say you know the

00:26:33.340 u.s guys in fact it was america they'd have some of these american like mexican-american

00:26:36.940 gang bangers would come over and be hired by the cartels before guys with shaved heads tattoos like

00:26:42.460 pistols like you know shooting and stuff and then the setters were like no no you know we're going

00:26:47.560 to do violence a different way we're like ak-47s uh body armor bulletproof jackets metal helmets

00:26:53.500 radios organizing so one of these early things i covered there was a bunch of these gang members

00:26:58.520 were sent to fight them and they killed them all piled them up their borders up in a house

00:27:02.740 and put a message saying you know send us some some more pendejos like these so we can kill them

00:27:08.160 like, you know, pendejos, meaning, you know,

00:27:10.160 send us some more idiots like these so we can kill them.

00:27:12.860 But also the military carried on being corrupt.

00:27:14.860 You know, there was, you know, recently a case of a general

00:27:17.740 who was arrested in the United States,

00:27:20.220 flew into the United States, was arrested,

00:27:22.300 you know, charged on drug trafficking.

00:27:24.060 They dropped the charges, sent him back to Mexico.

00:27:26.180 I covered a trial of two, a court-martial of two generals

00:27:29.840 who were convicted on drug trafficking.

00:27:32.080 So there's no, you know, it's not a big secret.

00:27:33.900 You know, the military themselves can be corrupt.

00:27:36.220 They can be very, very violent.

00:27:38.160 But also, if you look at this from a strategic point of view,

00:27:43.220 and I think the government underestimated the threat there was in Mexico in 2006

00:27:47.260 when it launched the crackdown.

00:27:49.480 It's not like one cartel in Mexico, it's loads of cartels all over the country.

00:27:54.320 So you start sending in the military to one place and fighting the cartel,

00:27:58.860 and it starts kicking off somewhere else.

00:28:00.840 And the cartels start fighting back as well.

00:28:04.140 So they're fighting the military, which might be even allied to a different cartel.

00:28:06.980 and they start ambushing soldiers, ambushing police, kidnapping police,

00:28:11.500 leaving the bodies of police, you know, kidnapping marines.

00:28:15.980 There was one case where some marines were tricked by some local police

00:28:20.120 who were affiliated to the CETAS cartel, that same cartel,

00:28:24.960 into going to a bar without their weapons, were kidnapped and tortured and murdered on video.

00:28:29.100 So suddenly they're like, you know, you're cracking down on us,

00:28:30.860 we're going to use violence to press you to back off.

00:28:34.200 So you suddenly started having more of an escalation of the conflict.

00:28:37.280 So now you've got, I mean, there was a situation in 2019

00:28:41.120 when some members of the police and the military

00:28:45.260 attempted to arrest a son of El Chapo in Culiacan.

00:28:50.640 And according to a military account of this,

00:28:54.280 700 to 800 gunmen took to the streets, cartel gunmen,

00:28:58.720 to put pressure to liberate him against 350 soldiers.

00:29:03.920 They eventually, that day, under orders from the government

00:29:06.160 and the military themselves felt betrayed,

00:29:07.920 but the government said he'd let him go

00:29:08.940 because people were terrified

00:29:10.980 they were just going to start massacring everyone.

00:29:12.580 They were out on the streets.

00:29:13.840 They were using 50 cows, firing.

00:29:15.920 So again, I mean, it looks like an armed conflict.

00:29:18.600 It looks like...

00:29:19.140 So basically, to put that in context,

00:29:20.960 I just, like a lot of people in the West,

00:29:22.440 I don't think understand what we're talking about.

00:29:24.120 That's the equivalent of a major drug dealer's son,

00:29:27.400 let's say, in London or in Liverpool or in New York

00:29:29.700 or in Baltimore being arrested.

00:29:31.960 Yeah.

00:29:32.700 Then nearly 1,000 people armed with military-grade weapons

00:29:35.940 are on the streets, and the government is like,

00:29:38.280 oh, you know what, to avoid further violence,

00:29:40.580 we're going to let them go.

00:29:41.920 Yeah, exactly.

00:29:42.800 That's what happened.

00:29:43.500 Exactly, exactly what happened, yeah, very well put.

00:29:45.960 Yeah, yeah.

00:29:46.440 No, no, no, no, it's a good way to try and get that through to people

00:29:49.360 because people do see this as being some place you can't really relate to.

00:29:53.280 Yeah.

00:29:53.760 To try and say, imagine this stuff happening in England or whatever,

00:29:57.340 or in the US, and imagine there being,

00:30:02.180 mass graves in fields next to an estate in Coventry or something.

00:30:07.480 And so they start digging up and found 200 bodies there.

00:30:10.540 What that means for society when that happens.

00:30:14.600 But isn't there also a fundamental hypocrisy in that we've got America,

00:30:18.980 the UK lecturing about drugs, the evil of drugs,

00:30:23.560 yet they did a cocaine swab test in the toilet

00:30:26.740 at the House of Parliament.

00:30:27.700 It came out positive.

00:30:29.060 Yeah, absolutely, yeah.

00:30:31.140 Yeah, I mean, it's complete hypocrisy.

00:30:32.840 That's why we have to talk about this.

00:30:34.000 And I don't know, you know, can we legalise cocaine?

00:30:37.640 I don't know the solution to that.

00:30:39.500 Often when I do talks about this, I'll ask people,

00:30:41.520 I'll say, who's in favour of legalising marijuana?

00:30:43.660 And most places I'll go, a majority will put their hands up.

00:30:45.940 I'll say, who's in favour of legalising cocaine?

00:30:48.700 Just to get the reaction from people.

00:30:50.400 And so I don't know totally the answer to this.

00:30:52.780 But you often get a few people now kind of,

00:30:55.220 you know, what can we do with cocaine?

00:30:56.900 I mean, cocaine is not as lethal as heroin or crystal meth.

00:31:06.560 But can you legalise it?

00:31:07.900 Could there be a place, you know, could you go to an off-licence

00:31:10.240 and also go and say, I'll have, you know, a six-pack of lager

00:31:13.240 and a couple of grams of Columbia's Finest or not?

00:31:17.140 I don't know.

00:31:17.440 Depends if you're in Liverpool, mate.

00:31:19.720 I don't know.

00:31:20.760 But, yeah, but right now it's happening anyway.

00:31:22.420 so the fact is

00:31:23.800 you go to the pub

00:31:24.540 and there's a guy

00:31:25.280 who's selling cocaine

00:31:27.060 and it's cut up

00:31:28.260 with crap

00:31:28.700 so you've got

00:31:29.580 more danger as well

00:31:30.880 of people having

00:31:31.640 stuff they could have

00:31:34.180 put with it

00:31:34.620 and in Mexico

00:31:35.660 there's people selling

00:31:36.560 I was just in a

00:31:37.920 town

00:31:38.820 we're working

00:31:39.560 and there was a

00:31:40.540 closing of a political

00:31:41.740 event in fact

00:31:42.360 and there was a van

00:31:43.300 on the side

00:31:43.860 and there was people

00:31:45.120 just serving up cocaine

00:31:46.120 there

00:31:46.360 I've been in the

00:31:47.280 favelas in Brazil

00:31:48.160 on a table

00:31:49.800 just selling

00:31:50.340 you know

00:31:51.200 yeah what do you want

00:31:51.880 cocaine

00:31:52.360 They've got, like, little bags with the numbers there, cocaine, crack,

00:31:55.820 and the guys are openly there with guns with rocket launchers on and stuff,

00:31:59.940 with grenade launchers as well, grenade launchers on.

00:32:02.780 So, yeah, I mean, it's happening anyway.

00:32:04.280 The drug trade is happening anyway.

00:32:05.260 We're not stopping it.

00:32:06.400 So, yeah, we have to try and think about a better way out of this.

00:32:09.480 And this is a question I think many people probably don't understand the answer to,

00:32:13.460 and I, to some extent, don't.

00:32:15.040 Am I right in thinking that the reason Mexico is such a violent place because of drugs

00:32:20.220 is because it's the trafficking point to the United States,

00:32:23.780 which is the biggest market for illegal drugs in the world.

00:32:27.540 Why are all these drugs made in Latin America?

00:32:30.600 Why are they produced there?

00:32:31.980 Yeah.

00:32:32.780 So, yeah, I'm exactly right.

00:32:34.740 I mean, the United States is the biggest drug consumption

00:32:38.260 in the world by far.

00:32:40.360 Again, we don't know the real numbers,

00:32:42.200 but there's estimates put out by the RAND Corporation.

00:32:46.360 They have, like, they put out a commission by the White House.

00:32:51.320 It's called What Americans Spend on Illegal Drugs.

00:32:53.640 It's estimated about $150 billion every year

00:32:55.860 that Americans are spending on illegal drugs.

00:32:58.360 So imagine that.

00:32:59.220 You're next door in Mexico.

00:33:00.340 You're the biggest providers for this.

00:33:04.480 Cocaine has only...

00:33:06.880 So coca is originally from the Andes area.

00:33:10.480 That's traditionally where the plant's from.

00:33:11.780 You still have groups in Colombia, more so in Bolivia,

00:33:14.680 using indigenous communities, using the plants.

00:33:18.100 They just chew it as like we take coffee or something, right?

00:33:20.960 They chew it.

00:33:21.260 There's ceremonies as well.

00:33:22.220 There's ceremonies used with...

00:33:23.220 I went up to see the coca fields in Colombia, an area there,

00:33:27.360 and I went up with this one indigenous group.

00:33:29.760 And it was interesting because this group had a bunch of ex-FARC.

00:33:33.840 They had various paramilitaries there.

00:33:36.360 And they had this indigenous group who took me up to see it.

00:33:39.300 And they simply didn't have guns.

00:33:40.860 They had this staff.

00:33:42.680 And their thing was if they were ever challenged,

00:33:44.420 they raised this staff

00:33:45.560 and then loads of them

00:33:46.220 come out

00:33:46.640 so it was actually

00:33:48.080 good security

00:33:48.800 sounds like something

00:33:50.400 out of Avatar

00:33:51.240 yeah

00:33:51.560 but they

00:33:53.240 were talking

00:33:54.120 they had these

00:33:54.540 they actually allowed

00:33:55.780 some of them to grow

00:33:56.540 coca

00:33:57.360 in Colombia

00:33:58.960 so the plant's

00:34:01.460 originally from there

00:34:02.120 historically

00:34:02.600 and

00:34:04.280 it hasn't taken up

00:34:05.840 there was an effort

00:34:06.640 a few years ago

00:34:07.160 to try and produce

00:34:07.720 cocaine in Nigeria

00:34:08.640 and it didn't really

00:34:10.380 take off

00:34:10.920 there's been little efforts

00:34:12.180 even within

00:34:12.820 there's been little efforts

00:34:14.140 of Guatemala and Mexico to make cocaine,

00:34:16.360 but really it's the Andes, the climate,

00:34:19.420 the conditions for growing coca leaves.

00:34:22.800 Heroin can be made in a lot of countries,

00:34:25.120 but Mexico's got good conditions

00:34:27.000 and it's right next to the United States

00:34:29.040 and same with marijuana.

00:34:31.600 And now with the synthetic drug,

00:34:33.540 so crystal meth, fentanyl,

00:34:35.760 so now they make fentanyl in Mexico

00:34:37.420 or they're bringing fentanyl and mixing it up with heroin.

00:34:40.120 What is fentanyl, by the way, Yara?

00:34:41.400 Yeah, fentanyl is,

00:34:43.080 So you've got the big class of drugs called opioids or opiates, which are opium-based things, which are like downers.

00:34:53.360 People say they kind of bring you down.

00:34:55.200 Very good painkillers.

00:34:57.180 And that's the biggest real addiction problem in the United States is really these.

00:35:01.580 Opiates are the biggest really for deaths because the level between what you can take and your body can survive with an overdose is much closer than with cocaine.

00:35:13.080 or some other drugs or marijuana.

00:35:15.380 So it's very easy to OD on it.

00:35:17.180 Very easy to OD on it.

00:35:19.160 And nowadays you've got,

00:35:21.120 I mean, you've had through the pharmaceutical industry

00:35:22.740 and you've got a lot of corruption, really,

00:35:25.080 in the United States of people prescribing OPS.

00:35:28.680 I mean, it's been going for a long time.

00:35:30.500 I mean, I've got friends here in the UK

00:35:32.100 who got addicted to heroin after going into hospital

00:35:36.200 and being given down as then as going back to the 80s.

00:35:40.360 But in the US, there was like big pushing from the drug companies

00:35:44.080 to like, yeah, prescribe them, you know, like prescribe them opiates,

00:35:49.440 prescribe them, you know, make money out of this, you know.

00:35:51.680 And a lot of people making money and then people are hooked

00:35:53.780 and then they're buying it illegally.

00:35:55.480 So then the cartels start also getting these formulas, making it,

00:35:59.040 going to countries, buying precursors, making it themselves.

00:36:02.900 So now there's a big amount of money you can make.

00:36:05.040 you don't need to be in the mountains growing opium leaves

00:36:08.320 or coca leaves.

00:36:09.940 You've just got a lab somewhere bringing some precursors,

00:36:13.360 you know, bribe customs or like sneak them through

00:36:16.160 and just in a lab right by the border or any place

00:36:19.340 and be making these opiates or crystal meth as well.

00:36:23.080 It seems to me that, you know, drugs are so prevalent

00:36:26.020 in America and the UK.

00:36:27.460 And look, this is me with my tinfoil hat.

00:36:29.180 Please disavow me of this idea.

00:36:31.840 Are there not people really high up who have got their fingers

00:36:34.640 in this pie because I just think to myself it can't be so prevalent and people up top know what's

00:36:40.580 going on or don't know what's going on yeah it's an interesting idea like you know sometimes I'll

00:36:45.920 try and put you know write op-eds and try and be like end the war on drugs and do this you know

00:36:50.820 can and just trying to push for real solutions because I get very frustrated now I feel like

00:36:55.460 politics is broken yeah and I feel this is something we can fix you know a lot of things

00:36:59.620 we can't fix you know we're not going to be able to find common ground on but this is something we

00:37:03.280 should be able to fix it's like wrong and can't we find a better way it's like why are they not

00:37:07.620 doing it you know so i try and put forward optimistic things whoever it is biden administration

00:37:11.880 you know boris john anything you know just move forward in this policy and everyone says you know

00:37:15.480 then people be like ah you're so naive you know there's a bunch of people making a big money on

00:37:20.360 this they want this kind of disorder i don't know i mean my dad used to say um you have conspiracy

00:37:27.300 theory and you have the cock-up theory and often i will first look at the cock-up theory yeah

00:37:32.080 But then also you have the cocked up conspiracy theory.

00:37:35.680 So you have like stuff that can be like, you know, are there interests there of people?

00:37:41.760 I mean, certainly people, you have got bureaucracies there.

00:37:45.400 So you've got like the DEA, a couple of billion dollars budget every year.

00:37:49.960 They've got an incentive to keep that budget, to keep it.

00:37:52.780 They've got asset seizure.

00:37:54.700 You know, they're seizing, you know, drug traffickers.

00:37:57.520 because the biggest cash bust in the world ever was in Mexico,

00:38:03.120 $207 million in cash in a house in Mexico

00:38:07.300 from a Chinese guy actually bringing precursors for crystal meth.

00:38:12.000 That money is then asset seized by the Mexican government

00:38:15.620 and then have $207 million.

00:38:18.260 You know, the US, you know,

00:38:19.920 sees houses of people and stuff and then use that.

00:38:22.600 So, yeah, there are interests there

00:38:24.060 and people selling guns to drug traffickers.

00:38:27.520 People selling guns to gangs, that's a business.

00:38:31.680 Banks, HSBC was caught, big money laundering case there.

00:38:37.180 You've got money coming in.

00:38:38.980 You know, you're like, I talked to a guy, a guy contacted me

00:38:42.280 who was selling expensive watches to drug traffickers in Colombia.

00:38:48.660 He was a Colombian guy based in Miami, but he was going to Europe

00:38:52.100 and he was selling, like, he was going to Colombia with like,

00:38:56.220 I mean, we're talking, you know, really expensive watches,

00:38:58.820 $100,000 a piece, go with a few of them,

00:39:02.160 go off to these, like, rants of drug traffickers,

00:39:03.900 sell them a few of these watches.

00:39:06.020 The watch companies are happy with that.

00:39:07.960 You know, he was their bestseller.

00:39:09.760 Now, who can you find with that kind of money to buy watches?

00:39:12.480 So a lot of people make money out of this,

00:39:14.460 and there could be interests,

00:39:15.860 but I think also there's a lot of just broken politics,

00:39:20.480 and we can't fix, you know, why can we not fix anything more?

00:39:24.380 on why politicians...

00:39:27.200 Now, this is actually also linked

00:39:28.660 to the issue of refugees,

00:39:30.400 which is another reason, actually,

00:39:31.260 your question about why we should care.

00:39:32.700 Yeah.

00:39:33.400 Right.

00:39:33.740 You know, people flee violence in Latin America

00:39:36.940 and then come to the United States.

00:39:38.740 People flee violence in Africa

00:39:40.060 and, you know, come to Europe.

00:39:42.000 Different sources, different reasons there.

00:39:43.600 But one of the reasons they're driving this...

00:39:45.940 So people arrive,

00:39:47.160 a lot of them have got asylum claims

00:39:48.480 that are very strong,

00:39:49.540 saying, you know,

00:39:50.580 they threatened to kill my entire family,

00:39:52.080 they're working with the police.

00:39:53.020 If I go back, they're going to murder me.

00:39:54.380 that's driving people.

00:39:58.100 And so, you know, you have to care because if, you know,

00:40:00.600 countries are in chaos, it affects you.

00:40:03.640 But then you get like, you know,

00:40:06.040 so Alejandro Ocasio-Cortez tweet,

00:40:09.040 I know America was involved in supporting governments

00:40:14.140 in Latin America, in Central America in the 80s.

00:40:17.420 But how about right now?

00:40:19.360 How about what's happening right now

00:40:20.800 and how you can solve these practical things?

00:40:24.020 But I think a lot of politics is more about like posturing

00:40:26.780 than actually saying any kind of pragmatic solution

00:40:30.260 to these kind of problems.

00:40:31.660 That's what I find really odd about this whole thing,

00:40:34.400 because it's like many of the issues that we talk about,

00:40:38.180 you know us, you watch the show,

00:40:40.000 we speak to people on the right and the left,

00:40:41.760 we try and have that balanced discussion.

00:40:44.440 And the things that you just mentioned,

00:40:46.380 the stuff that people in America, let's say,

00:40:47.940 on the right care about, the border,

00:40:49.860 the border security, what they call.

00:40:51.620 if you've got a continent of people who are being murdered and raped and disappeared and whatever

00:40:57.640 a lot of them are going to want to leave that and come to the united states so if you

00:41:01.580 fix this issue you're going to solve that problem to to a very significant extent

00:41:07.040 uh likewise in the uk i mean one of the things we've been talking about a lot recently is

00:41:12.180 racial disparities over policing of certain communities etc and a lot of that is in my

00:41:18.760 opinion down to the fact that there's there's there's a lot of people being criminalized for

00:41:23.080 something that they didn't they oughtn't be criminalized for but if you create an opportunity

00:41:28.900 to make as much money as you're saying for people who don't have many other options that's what's

00:41:33.660 going to happen then the police have to come in because of the violence and then you know the

00:41:37.620 17 year old with a bag of weed in his pocket is being treated in a very different way to somebody

00:41:42.700 who's got the same bag of weed at Oxford University right so there's so there's so many things that

00:41:48.560 can be fixed by addressing this issue why do you think that first of all politics you've alluded

00:41:54.560 to somewhere but also just you know public sentiment isn't necessarily on the side of

00:41:58.920 what we're talking about here i mean i see a massive switch on the drug issue over the last

00:42:04.200 few years i remember in 2010 i was on charlie rose show before his demise but i was on the

00:42:12.840 charlie rose show and we're having discussion then and charlie rose asked about uh drug legalization

00:42:19.280 legalization and oh sorry 2012 he asked about drug legalization and one of the other guests

00:42:25.560 in our journey said oh it's a non-starter um and this was a sentiment i heard a lot in older

00:42:31.440 journalists you know drug drug legalization is a non-starter you mentioned it's just not going

00:42:35.600 happen that year in 2012 they legalized cannabis first of all in washington state and colorado

00:42:44.420 and then it's you know it's been spreading across legalized recreational marijuana so that's

00:42:48.540 obviously on the table now um so you have seen and you've seen like you know just you know this

00:42:53.440 last election there was a whole bunch of these um other votes in the united states and mississippi

00:42:59.300 you know by a big percentage approved legalizing medical marijuana so you've seen a big change in

00:43:06.520 this i mean you go back to 30 year you know 30 years or 20 years that wouldn't have happened

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00:44:15.640 So there has been a big swing in public opinion on this issue.

00:44:19.700 I'm not sure exactly what the surveys are now in the UK,

00:44:23.200 how many people would be in favour of legalising marijuana here, for a start.

00:44:27.620 But I think there is a certain move with politicians,

00:44:32.760 but I do think that politics has become very, very broken.

00:44:37.920 And they're not looking at solving practical issues.

00:44:42.800 It's not like sitting down and saying, I think the spirit that's lasted for a long time in the US, in Europe, of we can solve things, we can solve problems.

00:44:52.140 We've lost a lot of that.

00:44:54.220 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.

00:45:07.260 Do you not get frustrated about this?

00:45:08.800 I mean, you must be, surely you're covering this stuff,

00:45:11.560 just absolute horror for, what, two decades now

00:45:15.280 or as long as you've been?

00:45:16.660 Yeah.

00:45:16.960 And you're seeing that you're giving people information

00:45:19.820 about what's going on.

00:45:21.180 You talk about two million people being murdered

00:45:23.160 in Latin America and no one seems to care.

00:45:28.480 Yeah, absolutely.

00:45:29.480 I mean, like, it's, I mean, it's been a crazy journey.

00:45:36.220 Yeah.

00:45:36.660 And as well as, you know, some of the things that really strike with me,

00:45:41.940 I spend a lot of time interviewing cartel members and gangsters, criminals.

00:45:46.360 So it's spending a lot of time with people who are like serial murderers.

00:45:51.360 Now, I, as a journalist, feel I've got, you know, it's important to talk to these people

00:45:55.360 to try and understand who they are, you know, what they're going through.

00:45:59.220 Some of them are evil or commit evil acts.

00:46:02.100 Some of them you can, you know, I can get on or, you know, one can get on OK with them.

00:46:06.320 You can find they've got nice sides to them.

00:46:09.300 This one guy, I went out drinking in a nightclub with him.

00:46:12.180 I didn't really know quite how deep he was in beforehand.

00:46:14.720 We did a big bucket of beer, kind of nice, seemed like a nice guy.

00:46:18.140 When we sat down and did an interview with him later,

00:46:21.500 and he was describing butchering an entire family,

00:46:24.520 he was describing decapitating people while they're still alive,

00:46:27.240 which would be in the contracts, how they have that there,

00:46:30.540 they decapitate them and how their bodies are reacting to that.

00:46:34.200 Later on, he was murdered.

00:46:36.920 So you see this stuff and it's repeating, repeating, repeating.

00:46:41.700 It just keeps on going.

00:46:43.940 And, yeah, I mean, I kind of think I had a certain naivety

00:46:47.780 when I went into this.

00:46:49.320 And now I look back and read my first book that I wrote 10 years ago.

00:46:53.100 I had this kind of optimism.

00:46:54.820 Oh, we can solve this because this can be changed.

00:46:56.960 When I talk to a lot of people living in these areas,

00:46:59.060 they don't have that optimism.

00:47:01.020 Their idea is this is the way it is.

00:47:03.360 there's violence, and I'm going to try and make the best of this for myself.

00:47:07.960 They're not thinking, oh, how can we change and move this situation?

00:47:12.660 It is frustrating, and I think we're losing,

00:47:16.080 I think, a lot of the gains we've made.

00:47:19.320 I mean, you think there's got to be a way to stop this.

00:47:21.040 You know, if humans can put man on the moon,

00:47:24.640 all of the things that we can do, we can create nuclear bombs,

00:47:28.460 how can we have, you know, in Latin America right now,

00:47:32.200 And in some US cities, murder rates which are like 50 times London.

00:47:42.840 So if you think London's bad at stabbing, imagine that times 50.

00:47:46.420 What that means when everybody knows several people who have been murdered.

00:47:52.360 What that means in terms of you don't want your kid out by themselves ever

00:47:57.340 because you're just scared that something could happen.

00:48:00.340 that you've constantly got that edge on it

00:48:04.180 and we can't stop that stuff.

00:48:06.160 And even you compare it to like medieval London,

00:48:09.460 it's the murder rates right now in Latin America

00:48:11.400 are five times, six times the rates

00:48:14.440 that were in medieval London.

00:48:16.000 So it's not like it's this natural state of things

00:48:18.060 that there should be this level of violence.

00:48:20.080 Don't you think that part of the problem as well

00:48:21.500 is that we conflate drug-taking with morality?

00:48:24.340 So if you take drugs, you ultimately become immoral

00:48:27.840 and if you're immoral, then you should be punished.

00:48:30.340 when it's been proven time and time again that, you know,

00:48:33.440 as long as there's going to be human beings, they're going to be taking drugs.

00:48:35.880 We've taken drugs since time immemorial.

00:48:38.520 Yeah, we have taken drugs since time immemorial.

00:48:41.320 I think there's differences in the drug taking now

00:48:45.600 compared to some of, like, you know, drug taking before.

00:48:48.360 I mean, things like the fact, you know, there was, we drink alcohol now,

00:48:53.620 much stronger alcohol than people used to drink, you know,

00:48:56.120 it'd be like a weaker beer or whatever, or a weaker wine,

00:48:59.360 and now it's like now we're doing mezcal and vodka and that kind of thing um you know we've

00:49:05.180 taken people took um say magic mushrooms um in you know like druids took them or people took

00:49:12.280 them in like ceremonies before but now people are just doing like lines of coke and and just

00:49:18.380 taking drugs at kind of parties and people are kind of so i think i think there's issues i think

00:49:22.460 there's quite big issues about the nature of modern society i think the nature of mental health

00:49:28.320 in Montessati and the way that

00:49:30.340 most people who become

00:49:32.520 bad drug addicts have got

00:49:34.500 problems, other problems. It's not just

00:49:36.260 someone's super happy, everything's going great

00:49:38.400 in their lives and they become a bad drug addict.

00:49:40.760 Some people take drugs recreationally.

00:49:42.620 They go out, they get drunk, they take a few

00:49:44.500 lines and that's it. They can leave it

00:49:46.620 and they can carry on. Some of them are in

00:49:48.440 parliament or selling

00:49:50.560 stocks or whatever.

00:49:52.320 Other people, they

00:49:54.020 start taking them and then they've got a real big

00:49:56.360 problem with this and then they become

00:49:58.060 like a bad addict and then people die of overdose and stuff so we've i think we've got to look at

00:50:02.280 these i think this gets into bigger issues and it's kind of hard to solve but about i think about

00:50:07.120 about people about separation about um loneliness and about all of these things we have to kind of

00:50:11.980 address as well yeah it's a really good point i i wouldn't want this into me to come off as like

00:50:16.500 us going oh yeah everyone should be taking drugs and there's nothing wrong with it at all because

00:50:20.320 we know that there's a lot of problems that come with that uh but i guess there's been a lot of

00:50:25.500 written about now that we know that the reason people take drugs often is to do with trauma it's

00:50:31.500 to do with suffering some kind of pain is to deal with difficulty and yeah we've said okay you can

00:50:37.120 take alcohol and drink yourself to death and that's okay but you can't take this other stuff

00:50:41.540 that to me is really the issue but you mentioned the AOC and the conversation around America's

00:50:50.340 past behavior in Latin America. Yeah. What has been the West's role in in the war on drugs and

00:50:58.700 the violence you talk about in Latin America? Has the West helped? Has the West made it worse? Like

00:51:04.420 what has been the impact of of the attempts to intervene in one way or another? Yeah, sure. So

00:51:09.880 historically, when you go back to Richard Nixon before, then the US really pushed this. So at

00:51:17.420 beginning like the U.S. pushed crop spraying in Mexico is going back to the 1970s and started

00:51:25.520 saying you've got you've got to like use you know we'll give you and they said we'll give you military

00:51:28.320 helicopters and you spray crops and so the military then empowered and getting money to be cracking

00:51:34.160 down on drug production which then just shifted so they actually began in Sinaloa they ran them

00:51:39.000 out of Sinaloa they went to the second city Guadalajara just grew in grew in size crop

00:51:44.380 spraying in Colombia, which they never, you know, never wiped out the cocaine trade.

00:51:48.380 You know, you just spray, crop, spray, spray, spray.

00:51:50.320 It's whack-a-mole.

00:51:51.380 You know, you're going bang, bang, bang, and it's just all springing up all the time.

00:51:54.580 So the US, I mean, the US was pressuring as a policy.

00:51:57.000 So they used to have a thing called certification, where they'd certify countries for how much

00:52:00.720 they were cracking down on drugs, supposedly.

00:52:03.220 They had this idea this would work, and this would stop drug trafficking, and it failed.

00:52:07.600 So the US, you know, did this and pushed this for a long time.

00:52:10.260 um now it i say now it's kind of a zombie war on drugs now it doesn't you know now this thing's

00:52:15.680 just like carrying on moving the drug trade is there there's billions and billions of dollars

00:52:20.080 in it people just carry on doing it you've also got um which my third book looks at the the traffic

00:52:26.480 of firearms so now the united states has the biggest firearms market in the world by far the

00:52:32.720 last count or estimate was 393 million guns in civilian hands which is more than the next 25

00:52:38.660 countries combined from that you have a like a legal firearms market you have a parallel black

00:52:44.260 market from this parallel black market you have guns flowing down well moving around to the gangs

00:52:49.700 in the united states you know all around the us but also flowing down to mexico um the last 12

00:52:55.460 years you've seen more than 160 000 firearms taken from cartels in mexico and definitively traced

00:53:01.620 to us gun shops and gun stores the real numbers were believed to be more than 200 000 guns every

00:53:08.020 year going down there so this is trafficking historic case of trafficking to a heavy armed

00:53:13.040 conflict which again is why i think i mean are americans and some of these politicians they

00:53:17.660 not know about that um some of these politicians who are talking in you know in congress they not

00:53:23.420 know about these things or they're not interested in in in real solutions to this stuff right now

00:53:30.260 well there was a scandal wasn't there it was operation fast and furious yeah exactly tell

00:53:34.600 Tell everybody a little bit about what happened there.

00:53:35.980 Yeah, so Fast and Furious was an operation by the American gun police

00:53:39.660 called the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

00:53:43.300 In 2009, 2010, it blew open.

00:53:49.260 In 2011, it really came out to the public.

00:53:52.980 And what it was was that the ATF agents were watching people,

00:53:58.520 cartel affiliates, buy guns and trafficking them to the cartels.

00:54:03.360 The plan was, we're going to watch them.

00:54:05.320 They tried to also get some chips in the guns

00:54:07.440 so they could trace them.

00:54:09.440 And we can build up a big conspiracy case

00:54:11.420 and kind of bring down the whole racket.

00:54:13.640 They ended up watching 2,000 guns be trafficked

00:54:16.980 to Mexico.

00:54:19.560 One of them was found in the last safe house of El Chapo.

00:54:23.400 Some of them got, then bounced down to Colombia.

00:54:25.860 And then one of them was later used to murder

00:54:27.540 an American Border Patrol agent in the United States,

00:54:30.980 which then it really blew up.

00:54:34.680 And they just, you know,

00:54:35.460 so they were like basically complicit in this.

00:54:37.980 There was one guy who walked in the shop,

00:54:39.500 spent half a million dollars on guns

00:54:41.140 and they were just watching him do it.

00:54:44.180 There was, you know,

00:54:45.700 it was a kind of crazy, crazy scheme.

00:54:48.880 Now this cut, you know,

00:54:50.640 the politics of this cuts different ways

00:54:52.560 and I'm trying to like, you know,

00:54:53.520 bring this, you know,

00:54:54.220 left wing, right wing, whatever.

00:54:55.580 I think on the drugs issue,

00:54:56.980 a lot of left and right

00:54:58.280 can really come together on this issue.

00:55:00.980 I think on the actual issue of guns themselves,

00:55:04.720 it's more divisive in the United States.

00:55:06.460 But this issue actually was owned by conservatives

00:55:09.360 because it happened under Obama,

00:55:11.980 under Attorney General Eric Holder.

00:55:14.480 And so it became like,

00:55:15.400 this is what the Obama administration has done

00:55:17.140 and a kind of conspiracy.

00:55:18.640 They want to do this to kind of take away our guns.

00:55:21.160 In Mexico, it was more of a conspiracy of saying,

00:55:23.960 well, look, the US wants us to be violent.

00:55:26.200 They're involved in trafficking the guns to us.

00:55:28.920 They're watching this happen.

00:55:30.760 So, yeah, it cuts, you know, all kinds of ways.

00:55:33.140 Well, the thing is you don't have to be anti-gun

00:55:34.960 to be anti-trafficking guns to Mexican drug lords.

00:55:38.380 You can be pro-gun as well,

00:55:40.040 but also want them to be legally controlled

00:55:42.840 and none of this to happen, right?

00:55:44.600 Yeah, exactly.

00:55:45.380 And I interviewed one confidential informant

00:55:47.800 who was a gun seller, and he was that.

00:55:49.640 He was a gun seller, and he was saying,

00:55:53.080 I don't want these guns going to cartels.

00:55:55.220 And he actually ended up, you know,

00:55:56.700 being, you know, with a hidden recorder,

00:55:59.160 taping conversations with cartel affiliates.

00:56:02.460 And then at the end, he was like,

00:56:04.380 none of this came to anything.

00:56:05.660 I was just doing this and none of this came to anything.

00:56:08.480 And then he was making money.

00:56:09.620 I mean, he was making money,

00:56:10.480 both being paid by the government

00:56:11.740 to be a confidential informant

00:56:12.860 and making money from the gun sales.

00:56:15.300 Just sounds like a broken system, man.

00:56:16.840 Yeah, yeah.

00:56:17.900 And you say we've got a zombie war on drugs.

00:56:20.400 You know, it's a broken system.

00:56:21.800 Isn't it because we've kind of admitted

00:56:23.300 that there is no solution to this problem, really?

00:56:26.540 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.

00:56:34.120 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 a guess.

00:56:43.040 When you get to cocaine, some people get like, you know, or someone's suffering or people like seeing like, like in the US now, you know, they've got loads of homeless people on the streets who are taking drugs.

00:56:54.520 So you think, well, decriminalisation isn't working there

00:56:56.440 because we're just allowing them to be doing, you know,

00:56:59.080 like just sitting there taking drugs on the streets.

00:57:01.900 What are we going to do about them?

00:57:03.160 These people need help, a lot of them.

00:57:05.800 But also I think, you know, you've got another discussion

00:57:08.080 about law enforcement.

00:57:10.120 So I think on the one side, I think we need drug policy reform.

00:57:13.100 On the other side, we do need to take law enforcement very seriously

00:57:15.440 in terms of stopping antisocial crime.

00:57:19.040 And antisocial crime, I mean, in Latin America,

00:57:21.460 I mean, violently antisocial disappearances, I mean, rapes.

00:57:28.040 And I mean, there, I mean, there's a very aggressive feminist movement in Mexico, in Latin America.

00:57:37.400 But there they've got these grievances of like, you know, horrific, you know, every day you see a woman's been raped and murdered and their body left.

00:57:45.680 I interviewed one woman who was going down to Central America

00:57:49.180 and she was gang raped by the members of the MS-13 gang

00:57:56.940 and it was kind of used as a weapon of conflict, of violence against people.

00:58:02.740 So these kind of anti-social crimes and violence in poor communities

00:58:07.080 are the ones that suffer most from this everywhere.

00:58:09.920 And we need to take this stuff very, very seriously

00:58:12.560 and say how do we have law enforcement for that?

00:58:14.420 at the same time as saying actually on drug issue itself

00:58:18.520 we need to rethink this and just locking everyone up for this

00:58:21.000 or just allowing an illegal black market in drugs

00:58:24.340 which generates money, which gives an incentive

00:58:26.580 for people to have guns and fight over this.

00:58:29.900 You know, this is not working.

00:58:31.580 Do you think part of the solution could be, though, Yohan,

00:58:33.900 is that, look, all our governments have spent

00:58:38.000 a phenomenal amount of money on COVID

00:58:39.880 and they're looking around and they think,

00:58:41.660 right, we need to regenerate it, you know,

00:58:43.820 look, we need to regenerate, we need to think of ways to make more money.

00:58:47.760 Let's be fair, if you want to monetise something,

00:58:50.140 marijuana is the best way to do it, isn't it?

00:58:52.640 Yeah, absolutely.

00:58:53.660 And you've seen big incomes being generated

00:58:58.280 in cities that have legalised marijuana

00:59:00.100 and a lot of people in that business.

00:59:02.840 And if it did happen in the UK, I'm sure you get some of the same old networks

00:59:08.780 soon jumping into that.

00:59:10.700 Weatherspoons.

00:59:11.060 Yeah, weatherspoons or the Friends of Boris Johnson or whatever.

00:59:13.820 in business, you know, who are, like, jumping into another.

00:59:16.060 You know, it'd be a big thing to invest in

00:59:17.720 if it's only started, like, opening, like, you know,

00:59:19.800 marijuana dispensaries around the UK.

00:59:23.140 Sure, I mean, there's a lot of money in this, absolutely.

00:59:25.900 I mean, if you've got an industry that's...

00:59:29.420 I mean, again, these numbers are pure estimates or guesstimates,

00:59:33.000 but, you know, there was a UN thing talking about $300 billion globally,

00:59:37.200 and that's $300 billion, you know, governments can tax or whatever.

00:59:40.660 No, no, not all of it.

00:59:41.820 You know, there's some drugs maybe we can.

00:59:44.820 I mean, I don't know if heroin,

00:59:46.200 you can ever allow people to go to the shop and buy heroin.

00:59:50.380 But the thing is, this conversation doesn't need to be had in this way, does it?

00:59:53.860 Because when we talk about decriminalising things, let's say,

00:59:56.520 we're not saying you can go into a pharmacy and buy a kilo of heroin.

01:00:00.700 What we're saying is if you are a user of heroin,

01:00:04.200 instead of putting you in prison,

01:00:06.160 we make sure you get the treatment that you need,

01:00:09.720 which is rehab, which is psychological help

01:00:12.000 to deal with your underlying issues.

01:00:13.680 I don't think anyone's advocating

01:00:14.900 that these really, really damaging drugs

01:00:17.760 like cocaine, heroin, et cetera,

01:00:19.600 should just be freely available

01:00:21.080 just to whoever wants them.

01:00:24.180 I think there's got to be some nuance in the conversation.

01:00:26.560 I think marijuana is something you could probably legalize,

01:00:29.120 but other drugs maybe just decriminalize.

01:00:30.860 They've done that in Portugal,

01:00:32.280 I think in Switzerland to some extent with heroin as well.

01:00:34.900 There's places in the world

01:00:35.940 that have found a way of doing this.

01:00:37.940 It doesn't have to be, like, free-for-all, you know.

01:00:41.520 Well, yeah, but that still leaves a problem, though,

01:00:43.640 because when you, if you decriminalise heroin,

01:00:47.440 say we decriminalise heroin in the UK,

01:00:49.600 and let's say people spend, and this is just out, you know,

01:00:52.520 like, whatever, a billion pounds on heroin.

01:00:54.840 So they're no longer going to arrest people who are, like,

01:00:57.660 who are just having this, being caught with a bit

01:01:01.180 because they're heroin users,

01:01:02.740 but it's still going to be a black market,

01:01:04.700 illegal trade providing them.

01:01:06.560 Yeah. So you still then got the gangs, you know, moving the heroin and making money from it and having the violence.

01:01:12.580 And you've still got the cartels or whatever. I mean, heroin comes from, say, Turkey.

01:01:16.780 But I think in Switzerland, what they do, though, is they give them the heroin.

01:01:21.060 So, yeah, 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.

01:01:28.040 There's other other like substitutes. Yeah. So we like expanding those kind of programs.

01:01:33.080 Now, again, it's still difficult when you get into this

01:01:35.240 because you might have somebody who gets some scripts from the government

01:01:40.040 and then sells those.

01:01:42.180 And I used to remember back when I was in the 80s, early 90s,

01:01:45.780 I remember people doing that, like get scripts for pills,

01:01:48.840 call them like jellies or something, something like pills,

01:01:50.660 and then they're reselling them on the street and stuff.

01:01:53.020 So it's difficult as well.

01:01:54.960 But I think some of these, we have to look at this stuff.

01:01:57.240 We have to try and find ways.

01:01:58.780 I think one way to see this, and a lot of problems,

01:02:01.000 is rather than, you know, these absolutist things of saying,

01:02:04.520 like, you know, Richard Nixon, when he began the war on drugs,

01:02:07.640 said we will banish heroin from American life.

01:02:11.300 We're not going to get rid of it completely,

01:02:12.820 but we've got to reduce the harm, reduce the damage.

01:02:16.700 So if the illegal drug money right now is, you know,

01:02:20.280 we have $150 billion in the United States,

01:02:22.900 if you can reduce that by half,

01:02:25.500 then that's $75 billion less going to organised crime.

01:02:31.000 if you can reduce it by two-thirds.

01:02:33.360 So if you can try and see a reduction in this

01:02:36.100 and reduce the number of people dying of overdoses

01:02:39.940 rather than saying we're going to get rid of this problem completely.

01:02:44.040 We've got a few minutes left.

01:02:46.000 So obviously whenever you talk about this issue,

01:02:48.660 it's not a positive conversation,

01:02:50.580 just given the nature of what we're talking about here, right?

01:02:53.600 But do you think there's any reason to be positive?

01:02:57.480 Any reason for optimism around this issue?

01:02:59.860 Do you think there's any light at the end of the tunnel here

01:03:03.260 or do you think this is just an issue that's not going to get better

01:03:05.700 in the foreseeable?

01:03:08.760 Yeah, I try and be optimistic and not really pessimistic about stuff.

01:03:12.180 I don't like the idea of pessimistic views on the world and stuff.

01:03:18.040 And, I mean, there are a lot of things driving a particular violence in Mexico.

01:03:21.120 So it's not...

01:03:22.240 The drugs are, in a way, you know, you could talk about Mexico as being,

01:03:27.000 rather than the Mexican war on drugs, the Mexican drug war.

01:03:29.860 which is a war being partly financed by drugs.

01:03:32.440 They're financing an armed conflict.

01:03:35.040 And maybe it's going to last a few years more

01:03:37.620 and finally kind of calm down.

01:03:39.820 And it's also about finding governability,

01:03:42.160 finding police forces that can work in that,

01:03:44.320 which I think is a bigger issue as well across the world

01:03:47.760 is how you create law enforcement that works.

01:03:51.740 A lot of countries don't have functional law enforcement.

01:03:55.040 It's something else we can easily take for granted.

01:03:57.460 And there's a lot of problems with law enforcement in the UK.

01:03:59.860 But it's a hell of a lot better than many, many countries.

01:04:03.320 And the levels of violence here are better.

01:04:06.180 But if you look at a positive solution or positive take on this,

01:04:13.500 I mean, yeah, public opinion has changed massively on this issue.

01:04:16.860 Generation-wise, things have changed.

01:04:19.460 So people started taking drugs in a really big way, I think, in the West

01:04:23.960 from the 60s onwards.

01:04:25.720 That was when it kind of really blew up.

01:04:26.960 when I was growing up in the 80s

01:04:28.900 there was all just drugs

01:04:30.740 were already everywhere

01:04:31.460 so we're growing up around drugs then

01:04:34.200 and probably the same

01:04:36.040 for the new generation now

01:04:38.020 I think maybe even less drug taking

01:04:40.040 now than there was in the 80s, 90s

01:04:42.420 I don't know exactly

01:04:43.620 it's hard to know

01:04:44.660 so you get more used to it

01:04:47.360 and then you get less

01:04:48.600 often people who are the most scared about drugs

01:04:51.840 and the kind of old idea

01:04:52.820 of the old war on drugs stuff

01:04:55.660 or the real fear

01:04:56.580 there was a film

01:04:58.220 from the 1930s

01:04:59.540 in the States

01:05:00.000 or 1940s

01:05:01.080 called Reef of Madness

01:05:01.920 yeah I've seen it

01:05:02.760 it's a classic

01:05:03.220 I watched it

01:05:03.900 when I was high

01:05:04.520 yeah

01:05:05.060 it is a classic

01:05:06.520 and they're like

01:05:06.880 yeah these people

01:05:07.420 like this guy

01:05:08.240 in a suit and tie

01:05:09.000 and he smokes marijuana

01:05:09.820 and smokes some weed

01:05:10.920 and he's just

01:05:11.520 losing it

01:05:12.800 but now

01:05:14.680 those have changed

01:05:15.500 so I think

01:05:15.880 we've got

01:05:16.580 the change

01:05:17.520 a big change

01:05:18.540 in public opinion

01:05:19.180 it's about

01:05:19.860 I think now

01:05:20.240 it's about

01:05:20.640 taking that

01:05:21.600 and making that

01:05:22.080 to actual change

01:05:22.700 in policies

01:05:23.240 Yoan

01:05:24.840 it's been

01:05:25.400 a wonderful

01:05:26.160 wonderful interview

01:05:27.060 before we do

01:05:28.060 our questions for locals

01:05:29.280 the last question

01:05:30.260 we always ask is

01:05:31.160 what's the one thing

01:05:32.080 we're not talking about

01:05:32.960 but we really should be

01:05:33.960 yeah yeah

01:05:35.060 I tried to think of this

01:05:37.100 before

01:05:37.420 it was hard work

01:05:38.620 don't give away

01:05:39.400 the secrets of the game

01:05:40.520 it's meant to be off the cuff

01:05:41.600 yeah no off the cuff

01:05:42.440 okay I was trying to think

01:05:43.120 about this

01:05:43.420 but anyway

01:05:43.780 it's almost like

01:05:45.460 everything's being talked about

01:05:46.320 but I think one issue

01:05:47.420 which is

01:05:48.140 talked about

01:05:50.720 but I think could come more

01:05:51.740 and I see this

01:05:52.400 coming back to England

01:05:53.420 is the kind of

01:05:54.980 over digitalization of everything i think the way particularly england has become such

01:06:01.320 a digital society and it's in some parts of life where we don't need it um you know like going to

01:06:08.600 a pub and having to go on an app to order a drink instead of being able to go to a bar and i understand

01:06:13.300 the health stuff there but like this idea that everything's online that every bank has to like

01:06:18.400 close down its branches that you can't you know talk to a doctor anymore you have to go like and

01:06:23.780 send emails i think this is fracturing society more um i think one of the big challenges now

01:06:30.040 is i mean it's also for all of us you know how we try and get a balance between digital life

01:06:35.420 and you know real life and really seeing people and stuff and i think that's one of the things

01:06:40.040 we need to talk about more that's a really good point you know uh and for those of you watching

01:06:44.000 we're going to ask some questions in fact your questions from locals so join locals check out

01:06:48.120 our page there and you'll be able to submit questions for our future guests and read the

01:06:51.900 answers uh but in the meantime thank you for coming on blood gun money is your latest book

01:06:56.340 everyone should get it of course i look forward to reading your back catalog as well because it

01:07:00.360 just it's this is an issue i really find very interesting um and thank you for coming on the

01:07:04.700 show where should people go to check out your work and follow the latest in what you're doing

01:07:08.660 yeah sure so i've got a weird name it's easy to find uh i-o-a-n first name and grillo g-r-i-double

01:07:14.540 l-o so it's just just you can just search for that but you can see i've got a website

01:07:18.400 youngriller.com

01:07:19.800 I'm on Twitter

01:07:20.620 some of the time

01:07:22.480 not too much

01:07:24.260 to make the digital thing

01:07:25.100 but you can see that

01:07:26.340 a bit of stuff

01:07:26.760 on YouTube as well

01:07:27.640 you can check out

01:07:29.180 and you can see

01:07:30.720 in a bunch of

01:07:31.840 media outlets

01:07:33.220 that have my stories as well

01:07:34.100 Fantastic

01:07:34.640 thanks for coming on man

01:07:35.760 and thank you all

01:07:36.620 for watching

01:07:37.060 we will see you

01:07:37.860 very soon

01:07:38.440 with another

01:07:39.140 brilliant episode

01:07:39.820 and they always go out

01:07:41.840 episodes

01:07:42.640 and Raw shows

01:07:43.940 7pm

01:07:44.800 UK time

01:07:45.860 Tuesday to Sunday

01:07:47.260 or 2 p.m eastern standard time take care and see you soon guys we hope you've enjoyed this

01:07:54.580 incredible interview remember to subscribe and hit the bell button so that you never miss

01:08:00.220 another fantastic episode and if you believe that the work we do here at trigonometry is

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TRIGGERnometry - August 08, 2021

The True Cost of the War On Drugs - Ioan Grillo

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