Latest / Cutting Through with Natasha Plowman / Cutting Through with Harry Shapiro

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Cutting Through with Harry Shapiro · Cutting Through with Natasha Plowman

0:15
Welcome to Cutting Through with me Natasha Ploughman.
0:18
Today I have Harry Shapiro on cutting through.
0:22
Now Harry and I work together, oh 23 years ago when I first
0:26
came to the UK, again in 2003 and in the charity called Drug
0:31
Scope. Now Drug Scope is no longer, but
0:34
there have been many iterations beforehand and since.
0:37
But fundamentally, what Drug Scope has always done and what
0:40
Harry has done in particular is be that balancing act on the
0:45
policies we have around illegal drugs, but also tobacco and
0:49
alcohol and how they match with the reality of how people use
0:53
it. So I'm really excited to have
0:55
Harry come on Cutting Through because I think this is one
0:58
topic that people get really emotive about, around how people
1:02
use drugs and why they do. And sometimes you need to have
1:04
that real rational voice that cuts through some of the the
1:08
emotion to kind of look at policy frameworks in the right
1:11
way. So, Harry, welcome to Cutting
1:15
Through. Well, thank you very much for
1:18
having me and it's nice to reconnect after all these years.
1:21
It is, it is. So before we get stuck in, just
1:24
give us a bit of a whistle stop to of you know who you are, what
1:28
you're doing now and what makes you tick.
1:31
OK, so I started working in the drugs field in 1979 for an
1:37
outfit called the Institute for the Study of Drug Dependence,
1:40
which went through another iteration in 2000 as Drug Scope,
1:44
which you've mentioned, and finally fell over in 2015, as so
1:50
many charities often do for financial reasons.
1:55
All of that, both of those organisations were information,
1:59
policy and communications. So people often think that I
2:03
worked in rehabs or, or, you know, worked in drug clinics or
2:08
anything else. I mean, the best way of
2:10
describing all of that lot was that we supported the people who
2:15
did work in rehabs and, and, and, and clinics and made
2:20
representations to government about drug treatment and a whole
2:23
range of, of different issues. So that went down in 2015.
2:28
And I started with an ex colleague from Drugscope, just
2:32
an online drug information service called Drug Wise, which
2:38
still carries on the, the ethos of drug scope and ISTD, which
2:43
was that any drug information should be, should be current, it
2:48
should be evidence based and it should be non judge mental.
2:52
All of which is quite well, certainly the non judge mental
2:55
bit. It is quite hard within this,
2:59
within this space. And, and from 2015 also, I mean,
3:04
through all that time, you know, harm, drug harm reduction has
3:07
been kind of front and centre of a lot of the policy work that we
3:10
did. And I carried that on by getting
3:14
involved with tobacco harm reduction as well, which
3:18
operates on exactly the same principle as drug harm
3:21
reduction. You know, you have people who
3:24
can't stop using drugs for whatever reason.
3:26
You have people who smoke and can't stop for whatever reason.
3:32
And in the smoking world anyway, nicotine replacement therapies
3:36
and hasn't got a great track record.
3:39
And from about that time there was a whole new range of new
3:43
products that came around. People will be familiar with
3:46
vapes in particular, but there are other similar products as
3:50
well. And it's really to give people
3:52
the the idea of promoting this through tobacco harm reduction.
3:57
It's just to give people an off ramp, really an off ramp from
4:00
smoking, some way of actually still using nicotine, but not in
4:06
the most harmful way. And the most harmful way that
4:10
you can use nicotine is by smoking because you inhale all
4:14
those are toxic and chemicals, which just doesn't happen with
4:19
with nicotine. But the nicotine space, the
4:22
tobacco harm reduction space, has become, as I say, even more
4:28
toxic in some respects than the world of of drugs and drug harm
4:34
reduction. For the simple reason that an
4:38
organisation like The Who, which now recognises methadone, for
4:42
instance, as an essential medicine for helping people move
4:48
away from injecting heroin. They steadfastly refuse to
4:54
accept or acknowledge all the evidence that suggests that
4:58
vaping, E cigarettes, heated tobacco products, nicotine
5:02
pouches, and so on are demonstrably safer than smoking.
5:08
And the science is so I mean, I'm not an ologist.
5:12
I'm not an ologist in any way. I'm not a psychologist, A
5:16
biologist or anything. So the science for me has got to
5:20
be dead simple, otherwise I'm not going to understand it.
5:23
And the science is dead simple. If you light a cigarette, it
5:28
burns at something like 750°C. The tip of that cigarette sounds
5:34
a huge temperature, but it's true.
5:38
And then you draw on it to take in the the the smoke, and that
5:42
goes up to something like 900°C. So you're burning tobacco.
5:47
And when you burn tobacco, you release literally thousands of
5:53
chemicals, many of which are toxic, some of which are
5:57
carcinogenic. And you then go and you draw all
6:02
that lot into your lungs. But what the evidence shows is
6:09
that if you simply heat nicotine and don't actually set fires or
6:16
anything, all of those you, you just don't inhale those, that
6:21
you don't inhale the vapour that people people see people walking
6:25
down the street vaping and they see what looks like smoke, but
6:30
it's not, it's, it's nicotine vapour and it does not contain
6:36
all of these thousands of cancer inducing toxic chemicals, I
6:41
suppose. We look back at some of the
6:43
policy that we've had and it's particularly around second hand
6:46
smoke is where we got the, the bans on smoking indoors.
6:50
Is there evidence saying anything about particularly the
6:53
second hand vapours and the that that might be affecting people
6:57
in a harmful way that we we know that cigarette smoking does?
7:01
Simply no, that just isn't. I mean, that's not to say that,
7:05
you know, people might find nicotine vapour, that it, it may
7:10
find it a bit irritating if you were standing next to someone
7:13
and just going and take it, yeah, it might irritate the same
7:17
way that if you stood next to a bonfire or something, the smoke
7:20
might be irritating. But in terms of actual chemical
7:23
damage, biological damage, there's absolutely no evidence
7:28
and no evidence whatsoever. The the nub of the problem is
7:33
another. The problem is that, that what
7:37
policy makers and public health and the medical profession
7:42
globally don't seem to be able to get their heads round is
7:47
that, I mean, cigarettes have been around for over 100 years,
7:51
probably more than 100 years, late 19th century.
7:54
And through all of that period that all the damage of the, of
8:02
the, of tobacco has all been contained in one little piece of
8:07
paper wrapped around a load of leaves, right?
8:11
That's your cigarette and it contains everything and it also
8:14
contains A nicotine. But what happened from about
8:18
2005 or something, give or take, this Chinese engineer managed
8:24
to, in a sense, detach the nicotine from the cigarette.
8:30
So you get left with nicotine, which is relatively harmless,
8:36
and you got the cigarette, which is absolutely lethal.
8:39
I mean, 15% of people who smoke are likely to die, plus all the,
8:44
you know, COPD and the emphysema and all the rest of it.
8:47
So if you detach the nicotine from the cigarette in devices
8:53
like rapes, you get a significantly less dangerous
8:59
product. Totally harmless, no.
9:02
And the people who the people who attack the opposition to the
9:06
back of harm reduction says, oh, people who vape say, say it's
9:09
harmless. Well, no, Public Health England
9:12
came up with this formula good few years, about a decade ago
9:15
now or slightly less, but nearly a decade that vaping was 95%
9:21
safer than smoking. So in other words, you've got
9:25
instead of 100% of all this horrible stuff, you've whittled
9:29
that down to maybe about 5%. So if you turn that on its head,
9:34
it's about 95% safer. And some of the other products
9:39
like heated tobacco products, also much safer.
9:43
If you're looking at nicotine pouches, which are oral nicotine
9:48
with no burning of anything, then they're probably, you know,
9:54
even safer. So, but because policy people
9:58
can't detach this, they just bundle it all together and say.
10:04
So why do you, what do you think where you're seeing now with the
10:08
the kind of because there is on the one hand, there is quite a
10:11
debate still on nicotine, the broad range of nicotine products
10:15
that are available. Can you liken in history to any
10:19
other drugs or substances that people have taken where you've
10:23
seen such differences of interpretations or views of the
10:28
policy and the harm related to the products?
10:32
Or is it something that's something uniquely around
10:34
tobacco based products and nicotine that see a blind spot
10:38
in a way? I think it's, I think it's
10:42
pretty unique because a lot of the arguments around cannabis
10:47
and heroin and ecstasy and ketamine and all the rest of it.
10:51
So alcohol, I think it's slightly different that's we can
10:55
come back to that. But all those other substances
10:59
were particularly heroin, cocaine and that lot, cannabis
11:04
have been banned internationally for decades.
11:08
So you can argue that, you know, they're not as dangerous as
11:11
people say and people should be able to smoke what they want.
11:15
Nor, you know, all the arguments that you get around around drug
11:19
law reform. What you're dealing with here is
11:23
a substance that's already legal, and it's never been
11:28
banned. The only country that ever tried
11:29
to ban tobacco was Nepal. OK.
11:33
Yeah, for a very brief period of time.
11:36
And of course, it failed in the same way that alcohol
11:38
prohibition failed. Because if you've got something
11:41
like that that's been legal, and then you try and ban it and
11:45
still millions of people want it, what's going to happen?
11:49
You know they'll find other ways, and they certainly did in
11:52
the 1920s, caused the rise of organised crime in the 1920s,
11:57
prohibition and. It's also, we've got these two
12:00
schools of thought, you've got this 0 tolerance approach to
12:03
everything. And this is where everything's
12:04
becomes much more around legal and policing and you know, and
12:09
making things so much more problematic for society.
12:12
And the other spectrum, I suppose is harm reduction.
12:14
So I mean, this is a world you've been in your entire
12:17
career. So can you briefly give me an
12:20
overview of what we mean by by harm reduction or reducing harm
12:24
across all the different areas and what and how you've seen 0
12:27
tolerance play out? Because it seems to be this is
12:30
what we're going to, we're always having this one debate
12:32
around we've got to be tough on crime, tough on drugs, tough on
12:36
everything. And it doesn't seem to actually
12:39
get the outcomes that you know, which is about human safety,
12:43
which is what we're all meant to be striving towards.
12:46
I mean, the basic principle of harm reduction is that people
12:51
will indulge in certain behaviours that are generally
12:55
disapproved of. And that might be taking drugs,
13:00
it might be smoking, or it might be, you know, men having sex
13:07
with men. I mean, there's various
13:08
behaviours that that that are in some way frowned upon to a
13:13
greater or lesser extent. And throughout time, those
13:16
perceptions of those behaviours have changed as well of.
13:18
Course they have. Yeah, absolutely.
13:20
Although I think when you see all these people huddled outside
13:24
a building smoking, you realise that they became they became the
13:29
new social pariahs when people started banning smoking inside
13:34
public offices. But but the basic principle is
13:39
that it's a public health ethic really, if these people really
13:45
cannot give up or don't want to give up, because I think the
13:50
pleasure aspect of some of this is quite conveniently forgotten
13:55
about. That particularly applies to
13:57
nicotine. But if they, what do you do?
14:01
What do you do about this from a public health point of view?
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And it becomes quite dramatic when, you know, people are
14:09
overdosing on heroin because of the sticking needles in their
14:12
arm, getting HIV and AIDS and all the rest of it.
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What what, what's the public health approach to this?
14:21
And at one top level, everyone thinks we have to do something
14:26
about this. We can't just ignore it.
14:29
So you've got one school of thought that says, well,
14:33
abstinence is the only way. You've just got to stop and
14:38
we'll provide you with as much help as we can in order to do
14:41
that, whether that's talking therapist or whatever it is.
14:44
It's abstinence and people can do this.
14:50
You know, people have given up these drugs by themselves.
14:53
People have given up smoking by themselves, they've given up
14:56
drinking by themselves. Don't necessarily doesn't,
14:59
everyone doesn't need an intervention.
15:02
But if you've got and it numbers millions and we've got a billion
15:07
people smoking on this planet, there's a public health
15:13
imperative to help these people in some way, at the very least
15:20
to stop them from dying. Because if you want people to
15:24
recover, this is something I've been saying for years, you can't
15:26
recover if you're dead. OK, so you help.
15:29
You try and help people through a process, so harm reduction
15:34
within the drugs world is not the end of the world.
15:38
In the end of the world Rd, it's the start of a journey.
15:42
So if you can get people to switch from injecting heroin to
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smoking heroin or using clean needles, going to a facility
15:53
where they can inject more safely, where there's medical
15:57
supervision, where there are people there who might actually
16:00
sit down and talk to people who wouldn't be seen dead, going to
16:03
a, to a drug treatment agency because they don't think it's
16:06
for them. OK, so you, you've, you've got
16:09
a, you're giving people a pathway that that people can
16:15
take if they want to engage with a treatment service.
16:21
As far as smoking is concerned, it is different because people
16:24
who smoke don't think they're I'll, but I don't think they've
16:28
got, you know, the problem comes from smoking, not smoking per
16:33
SE. And for those people, and this
16:36
is, you know, you have, you have a debate even within the tobacco
16:39
harm reduction world of, of where you have those who think
16:48
that, you know, buying these vapes is simply an issue of
16:51
consumer choice that, you know, and then the public health
16:55
people said, well, no, it's not a question of consumer choice.
16:58
We need to find ways of stopping young people from from getting
17:02
them and, and, and all the rest of it.
17:05
So as I say, I still think because smoking is ubiquitous
17:10
across the world, like I say, a billion people still, still,
17:13
still smoking, 8 / 8 million people dying every year from the
17:17
effects of, of, of, of smoking. That when it comes to tobacco
17:24
harm reduction, you've got, there's more than just a public
17:30
health problem going on there. A bigger part of the, OR an
17:34
equal part of the problem is who is supplying these dip messes
17:43
and that what people think it's all big tobacco.
17:47
It's not. I mean, in fact, the, the
17:49
Chinese have got about 70% of the market and they're all
17:53
independent companies have got nothing to do with the big
17:56
tobacco companies. But nevertheless, the narrative,
17:59
the trope is that this is just, you know, and the big tobacco
18:04
companies have been doing themselves no favours over this.
18:07
I mean, everybody knows all the dodgy adverts and claims and and
18:12
denials about the problems of smoking.
18:15
Yeah, It doesn't cause cancer, it's not addictive, don't worry
18:18
about it. Doctors smoke.
18:19
So how bad can this be? OK.
18:23
There is a real problem with a lot of big Tobacco, and we kind
18:27
of sometimes have been coined, like the elephant in the room of
18:29
just having to acknowledge the past, the history and what's
18:32
been said. Yeah, but it hasn't.
18:34
But, you know, it's that whole. And this is.
18:35
And this is the essence of the role communications can play.
18:39
How do they start building more trust and visibility when you
18:43
know there is so much in evidence around how they've
18:47
played in the past? Well, in in a sense they're
18:51
almost not being allowed to play for the future because you've
18:55
only got to read any missive that comes out of The Who or
19:00
from anti smoking agencies and ministries of health around the
19:05
world. They will all claim that this is
19:08
we couldn't trust them before, so how can we trust them now
19:12
that this is yet another big tobacco plot to hook the next
19:16
generation on on on nicotine? Most of what people said about
19:21
these products like it will lead to smoking.
19:24
You know, it's it's a gateway. Well, that hasn't happened.
19:28
If you look in the states, interestingly, at the same time
19:31
that vaping was going up amongst young people, smoking was coming
19:35
down. If you look at this is
19:37
government stance and even vaping has begun to drop
19:40
dramatically in America. And I feel a part of that is
19:45
it's a novelty, you know, young people, it's the cool thing to
19:49
do. And it may be coming less cool.
19:54
But I think I think the tobacco industry has got a continuing
20:00
problem. I mean, there are one or two
20:02
companies that, you know, are forging ahead with a portfolio
20:09
of non combustible nicotine products of one sort or another.
20:15
And some countries have really taken this.
20:18
Up So Japan has seen a dramatic fall in the amount of numbers of
20:24
smokers in the last five years because of the availability of a
20:27
heated tobacco product, which the government has done.
20:31
Basically, the government has got out of the way in Japan.
20:35
They've, they've allowed advertising, they've allowed the
20:38
setting up of, of, of shops and stuff like that to sell these
20:41
things. And a younger generation of
20:44
course up, you know, up to about 30 older, older people are
20:47
harder to convince, as you might imagine.
20:51
Sweden has got because of another nicotine product called
20:55
snooze, which is an oral product.
20:58
They've got the lowest rates of cancer amongst adult males in
21:02
the EU. Norway smokers amongst women has
21:06
come down to about 1%, whereas 15% of them still use snooze.
21:11
So there are what I would call poster countries around the
21:15
world where the government has either.
21:20
Generally it means governments getting out of the way rather
21:24
than rather than necessarily doing much to promote the
21:30
tobacco harm reduction idea. New Zealand will be an
21:33
exception. Here they are.
21:35
They are also in on the front foot when it comes to, yeah,
21:39
pragmatic and proportional regulation because.
21:45
And look, pragmatic and proportional, and as you said,
21:47
pragmatic, proportional, not judgmental.
21:50
Policy regulations don't seem to capture headlines and an ability
21:56
to cut through people's imaginations of what could be
22:00
done differently. So what do you think needs to,
22:06
So what do you think needs to happen so we can get a debate
22:09
that's a bit more rational and a bit more scientific on some of
22:14
these issues to to beam? Or do you think it's something
22:17
that's that people aren't that interested in in having a
22:19
dialogue about anymore because it doesn't seem to be the big
22:23
topic of conversation and a lot of kind of news and media
22:25
outlets so much anymore if you're not part of it?
22:28
No, I mean, I think, you know, to be honest, the media has got
22:30
rather a lot to cope with at the moment that I doubt whether
22:35
smoking and vaping is never the top of anyone's list.
22:38
But I think it's really down. The only way I can see this
22:41
happening in the short term anyway, because the numbers and
22:46
the numbers of people who are using safer nicotine products,
22:52
which is the expression I tend to go with safer nicotine
22:57
products has been going up and up and up in recent years.
23:01
We're not far off of 200 million people using these products in
23:06
spite of all the misinformation, disinformation, propaganda,
23:13
whatever you want to call it, being fed from public health and
23:18
medical agencies to the media, who obviously function on the
23:22
basis of, you know, we only want bad news.
23:25
Yeah. So, you know, you get the story
23:27
of the fluffy panda at the end of the news bulletin, but all
23:30
the rest of it is pretty pretty grim.
23:33
Until. But there is a concern though,
23:35
that, you know, they're initially created and a lot of
23:38
the talk around, particularly all of these products is, is it
23:41
is a, an, an aid to tell to, to get people to stop smoking
23:46
cigarettes? Yes.
23:47
And you're also getting just as many people who may have never
23:50
smoked cigarettes or haven't smoked cigarettes for a very
23:53
long time and now going back into using nicotine products.
23:57
And I suppose the argument is, you know, that does that defeat
24:00
the purpose or be, are there, is it public health problems that
24:05
we don't know about that we're going to know about in the
24:07
future that are kind of being hidden?
24:08
And I think this goes back to the trust side of of of other
24:12
companies. The thing about nicotine as as
24:15
a, as a, as a chemical is unless you've got a serious heart
24:25
condition or anything to do with your circulatory, you know,
24:29
heart blood, high blood pressure, anything like that,
24:32
you shouldn't be using nicotine and you shouldn't be drinking
24:35
strong coffee either. Beyond that, there is very
24:41
little evidence that nicotine per SE is dangerous.
24:45
It's certainly a habit, no question, which is why people
24:50
want to switch from cigarette, which is why they've been
24:52
smoking for years and years and years.
24:54
It's not, you know, they're, they're not desperately wanting
24:58
to get emphysema or COPD. It's the nicotine.
25:02
And if it wasn't for the nicotine, people wouldn't
25:04
switch. You know, there's no point in
25:05
switching to a vape if it doesn't fulfil that purpose.
25:11
But we get hung up on this idea of addiction.
25:15
OK. Yeah.
25:16
And I think, and this is kind of a useful to bring it.
25:18
I mean we've talked a lot about nicotine and smoking products.
25:22
Now that's kind of front of mind with a lot of the work that
25:24
you're doing at the moment. But it'll be really interesting
25:26
to talk about some of the other kind of more illegal drugs, but
25:30
also cannabis being legalised in particularly various countries
25:34
in various States of America and the use of cannabis.
25:38
Because I remember when we were working together, that was the
25:40
time that cannabis got reclassified to a Class C drug.
25:43
And it was, you know, the uproar about that at the time.
25:46
But now we're seeing it even more mainstream and accepted in
25:51
its use. What do you think's happened
25:53
there to make that happen? Not much.
25:59
I mean, in terms, in terms of it's the same, it's the same
26:03
thing with with with these nicotine products.
26:06
You know, people who want them will find them.
26:09
Yeah. And, and legal or illegal.
26:13
And the numbers are going up and up and up.
26:15
I think people have got a lot more relaxed about cannabis.
26:21
There was a time when if, you know, a a pop star was caught
26:25
with a joint in a club, you know, it'd be spread all over
26:28
the tabloids. You know, there'd be cause for
26:30
this person to be kicked off their record label and all the
26:33
rest of it. Nobody actually really cares
26:36
about this anymore. The only people who care about
26:39
it are politicians because although I don't know, God knows
26:44
what would happen if we had a referendum on this in the UK.
26:48
But but you know, whether we should legalise, not legalise,
26:51
decriminalise. People would have to understand
26:53
what all the different levels of reform would mean.
26:56
And that's a bit difficult to deliver in a referendum where
26:59
it's got to be black or white, yes or no, But but drugs per SE
27:04
and cannabis is no different is still, you know, what they call
27:08
a third rail hot topic button that governments do not want to
27:14
engage with. And, you know, the same for,
27:17
for, for any government. And, and I've always feel that
27:20
if people have asked me, you know, when, when's cannabis
27:24
going to be legalised in Britain.
27:26
And I'm saying maybe never, you know, because because for three,
27:31
well, I've kind of got this sort of what you want.
27:34
It's called the devil's triangle of, of what needs to happen in
27:39
order for something like that to happen.
27:41
There has to be political will. The government has to want to do
27:45
it. And you know, in Canada, for
27:48
instance, it was simply because Justin Trudeau wanted to do it,
27:52
which which kick started the legalisation of cannabis in, in,
27:56
in Canada. There has to be political will.
27:59
So the government's got to do it and it's got to get enough all
28:02
party support for it to happen. It's got to be backed by science
28:07
and clinical evidence and all the rest of it.
28:09
So you've got to have the evidence of what the relative
28:12
risks are going to be about doing it.
28:15
And then you've got to have public opinion on your side.
28:18
And in this country, still, that comes down to the media, the
28:24
press and not and not all the kind of white noise of social
28:28
media particularly, but governments still care about
28:33
what the Times and the Mail and the Sun and the Mirror and all
28:36
of those newspapers and editorials have to say about
28:40
this issue. And there's no sign that that
28:45
any politician is, is, is going to risk being called soft on
28:51
drugs. However, you know, whatever the
28:55
situation, whatever the drug might be, that the, like you
29:01
said, the, the impetus is always we're going to crack down on
29:04
this and crack down on that and crack down on something else.
29:08
Yeah, it's it's already it's. And what I find that this topic
29:12
is, it's sometimes better to say less than try and say more.
29:17
And is that the essence of how policy change and societal
29:22
change happens? Not by big campaigns or broad
29:26
brush approaches. It's just about tinkering around
29:29
the edges, providing information where it needs to go and, and,
29:34
and gradually changing people's perceptions and opinions around,
29:38
you know, tobacco harm reduction or drug policy.
29:41
And it just doesn't become a big issue.
29:43
And is that the is that the approach that a lot of people
29:46
need to be taking is to allow things to almost work themselves
29:52
out rather than really need to be publicly lobbying for?
29:57
Well, this is interesting. You should say that because you
30:00
specifically mentioned the reclassification of cannabis
30:03
from B to C, which is about the the most tinkery bit of drug law
30:09
reform that you could possibly do.
30:12
Not least because they also increased the penalties for
30:16
cannabis possession at the same time to make them the same as
30:20
big. And, and there was, you know,
30:22
there was there, you know, everyone was running around
30:25
thinking cannabis was legal. I.
30:27
Know but there was a whole I mean God, that was when I was a
30:29
drug scope and I was I think I was did most of my television
30:32
appearances on that particular topic and that was and it was
30:36
always around you know trying to ignite more fear campaigns
30:41
around cannabis. You have lots of conversations
30:43
around strong strands and why they're doing this, and it was
30:46
fundamentally around police resourcing.
30:49
It wasn't about necessarily the drug.
30:53
Up to a point, but then you got some pretty vocal mental health
30:57
agencies that would weigh in. And I think that's another issue
31:00
that might weigh in even heavier now because mental health, if
31:05
there's one health issue which seems to be at the top of the
31:09
general agenda at the moment for the media, it's it's mental
31:13
health problems amongst young people, mental health problems
31:16
amongst sports people and all the rest of it.
31:18
We're gonna see this is the, you know, they, they wanna divert
31:20
tech companies wanna divert it from being tech and social
31:23
media. So they'll start creating
31:25
another area to to say the problems of mental health.
31:28
Or is that being me being completely cynical about those
31:31
industries as well? Well, as I say, I think that
31:34
the, the, the difference between say cannabis and, and, and, and
31:37
cigarettes is that despite, because nicotine is still a
31:43
legal product, it means that people can, there's an
31:48
inexorable rise in the number of people using these products
31:53
across the world. I mean, people have, you know,
31:56
there are some about 38 countries that have banned
31:58
vaping and all the rest of it banned these products.
32:01
What happens? You've now got a flourishing
32:03
illegal market. I mean, the same, the same
32:06
scenario for drugs is playing out in, in the world of, of
32:12
safer nicotine products. I mean, Australia's a very good
32:16
example of what's going on at the moment.
32:18
If you have got turf wars where tobacconists are being
32:21
firebombed, you know, because they won't sell these products,
32:25
so they call it earn or burn. So you either earn the money
32:29
from buying these, selling these illegal products, or we'll come
32:32
and burn your place down, which is.
32:34
Which is just reminiscence of where you've tried to ban
32:36
anything, then it becomes an illegal marketing.
32:39
Of course, in South America, it's called, it's called silver
32:42
or lead. You know, you, you take the
32:45
money and you get shot. And I think, you know, and look,
32:48
it's been really, it's been fascinating reminiscing and on
32:53
some of the areas that we've spoken about with drug policy.
32:56
And it does seem though we granted some drug policy,
32:59
tobacco policy and increasingly alcohol policy is going to be
33:02
brought into the fray on this. Is that the ability to cut
33:07
through with nuanced conversation, an evidence based
33:12
that is broad enough and can can start seeing through some of the
33:16
vested interests is one that I think communicators are going to
33:20
need to do a lot more of and work out their ways of of
33:25
cutting through that noise and and to reach the audience they
33:27
need to reach. But I'm going to have to end end
33:31
our conversation there, Harry, because I think it's been a
33:33
really interesting. I think a lot of people will be
33:35
good to hear the kind of sort of the nuance that happens in this
33:38
conversation that very rarely actually becomes to the fore.
33:42
That's all. So thank you for coming on
33:43
Cutting Through. Well, thank you very much.