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show from New York Times opinion this is

the Ezra Klein show

[Music]

during the pandemic there was a rise in

violent crime but by 2023 violent crime

was back near its lowest level in over

50

years but also in 2023 Gallup found 77%

of Americans believed that crime had

been

increasing can just some media but I

heard it a lot I still hear it actually

a lot in everyday life when I just talk

to people who aren't that political

about the things that are concerning

them politically people talk to me

constantly about the sense that the

place they live is less safe than it

used to be and they're mad about it this

was constant when I lived in San

Francisco the sense of San Francisco was

descending into chaos it was everywhere

I found it a lot here in New York I've

met people in New York City who are not

very political but they vote and they've

always voted for Democrats and now they

want to vote for Republicans because of

this issue alone because they feel less

safe the fundamental job of the people

we elect is to keep us safe to keep us

at least feeling safe and you can see

that nationally Democrats feel they have

a problem here in 2020 the party was

running on Criminal Justice Reform

people were talking about defunding the

police now KLA Harris talks about

herself as California's top law

enforcement official it's a very very

different appeal

and at the same time Democrats I know

and understandably are frustrated by

this I mean violent crime is down not up

why won't people look at the numbers

here why do they find themselves

politically fighting with this Phantom

it's begun to remind me of the economic

debates we had over much of the last

year on a lot of the most important data

the data we were used to using to track

the economy the economy looked really

good but people were pissed and you

could say that people were wrong or you

could try to ask ask what the data was

missing and in that case I think the

data was missing something it was

missing the affordability crisis you can

go back to that episode to hear about it

and I think there's something like that

here too I think something is missing in

the violent crime data and then Charles

feain Leman a fellow at the Manhattan

Institute who studies crime and drug

policy began publishing research and

then wrote this great piece on his

substack the substack is called the

causal fallacy which I get and I highly

recommend about exactly this question so

asked them on the show to talk about

crime about disorder about drug policy

about Vice politics and about how to put

it all together as always my email as

reclin show NY

[Music]

times.com Charles feain Leman welcome to

the show thanks for having me on so when

you look at statistics for violent

crimes right now crime is going down

Donald Trump among others on the right

say those statistics are wrong they're

flawed they're they're missing the real

story you're a right of Center crime

researcher what do you

think I think crime statistics are never

going to be perfect we have a decent

measure of the rates of Under reporting

we know that we miss something like half

of crimes or that half crimes don't get

reported to the police um that's based

on surveys of households so that itself

is an imperfect estimate but we can

reasonably say that the trends that are

showing up in the FBI's crime numbers

are real or at least they are correlated

with reality and what those numbers show

is that in 2020 there's a big spike in

homicide and a big spike in aggravated

assault and that makes sense in so far

as an aggravated assault is mostly a

proxy for shootings and shootings are

just homicides where you miss those row

sort of steadily 2020 2021 they Peak

they coming down a little bit in 2022

2023 and the early indicators is that

we're close to or at 2019 levels there's

another component which is auto theft

which is just exploded across the

country is still well elevated over 2019

and that's maybe starting to come down

but I find those numbers basically

plausible I find them plausible because

a there are something like 18,000 police

departments reporting in some capacity

to the FBI they can't all be making it

up B because it jives with what you see

in individual Municipal data and

trarily you can tell coherent stories

about what has happened in the cultural

and policy environment over the past

couple of years that makes it make sense

that you would see a spike in murders

and then they would recede so across

those three things it makes sense to me

that we're seeing a receding in crime

tell me the story that that you believe

I think it's hard to avoid noticing that

by some measures the spike in 2020 is

the biggest percentage wise on record

there are in my mind two obvious causes

cause one is the covid-19 pandemic and

in particular the restrictions imposed

associated with the covid-19 pandemic so

we shut down courts we close down

schools we reduce the number of people

out in public spaces so we reduced in

general the level of what I talk about

is social control of crime informal and

formal and so as a result you had less

certainty of consequence that's one part

of it and you do see an uptick starting

in March of 2020 in for example the

cdc's numbers for homicides but the

really big spike is in June of 2020 and

that is obviously consistent with the

protests following the murder of George

Floyd there's a great deal of

controversy around the role that defund

the police movement played in 2020 and

in the increase in violence in 2020 but

my view is that unlike when we had this

argument over the Ferguson protest what

my colleague Heather McDonald referred

to as the Ferguson effect in 2014 2015

today we have some pretty decent

research literature that says large

scale protests against the police seem

to a lead to reductions in police

officer activity B increases in serious

violent crime in particular homicide and

so in my mind a big part of the story is

the public sent the message to the cops

we want you to be doing less the police

responded a by being less proactive B by

at least in major cities leaving the

profession or departing for less crime

prone departments

altogether and as a result of that the

people who engage in the specific kinds

of crime I was was talking about which

is to say the cycle of violence that

leads to shootings and homicides were

less fettered in their behavior and so

they took it as an opportunity to take

shots at each other so that's the story

about why it went up and the story why

it went down is I think multi-art again

some part of it is just what you might

euphemistically call burnout every time

somebody gets shot there are fewer

opportunities to shoot at them so every

time somebody gets killed there are

fewer opportunities to kill them and

people who get shot are often also

themselves Shooters so there's some

degree of burnout there but it's also

the case that many cities and again

cities big cities in particular where

these problems are concentrated have

tried to reverse course on public

messaging to a limit extent policy

changes that they made in 2020 and

really try to emphasize the importance

of Public Safety here in DC where I'm

recording you can now get I think it's a

$255,000 bonus for signing on with MPD I

was just in Philadelphia where shelle

Parker was just elected mayor

essentially on a tough on crime we need

to get crime under control platform

there's been a real sea change and I

think that that sea change has begat a

substantive change in the practice of

policing the police are more active than

they were two years ago and that has had

benefits it's something you you see here

too that the Cathy hokel has has

functionally flooded the Subways in New

York with armed police officers with

with National Guard there's an almost

militarized presence there on behalf of

a Democratic governor after a former cop

now quite IM battled won the New York

mayorip I mean the veillance

ideologically of policing is really

changed I mean kamla Harris emphasizing

in interviews that she was the former

top law enforcement official is the way

she says it of California a pretty big

ideologic

shift yeah also if you look across the

country uh Karen bass in La who fed off

a tough on crime challenger but since

then has had to sort of turn towards a

more tough on crime image London breed

in San Francisco I mentioned cherl

Parker in Philadelphia you mentioned

Eric Adams there are these big City

municipal figures who

are

adopting both policy but also rhetorical

posture that says we will not put up

with crime you talk about kamla Harris

who obviously is also sort of trying to

counter an issue that is generally good

for Republicans is particularly good for

Donald Trump who say what you will has

been consistent about his views on crime

for decades but it really matters at the

local level because voters are attuned

to or highly sensitive to Crime as an

issue they do not like it when they feel

unsafe in their cities and so if you

want to do anything else as a big city

exact you have to deal with crime first

when things are good you think about

like a bill DeBlasio in New York you can

get away with sort of a reformist

tendency in so far as it doesn't impinge

on low crime but the second things get

bad people are done with that it turns

out at least that appears to be the

status quo I suspect at least since the

1990s I'm certainly today let me use a

politics of two places I I've lived in

recently to get it maybe some of the

complexity here so I lived in San

Francisco

until a year ago May and there you you

would have this bifurcated discussion

where people on on X and uh in the city

would sort of talk about San Francisco

as a kind of hellscape and then you

would have Ernest liberal leaning wonks

come in and say look like San Francisco

has a lower murder rate than than

Jacksonville Florida it is less violent

than many other big cities this idea

that San Francisco is uniquely violent

that you are unsafe here it just isn't

true like we can look at the data and

tell you that San Francisco does not

look like an an unsafe City compared to

many other cities that do not get this

kind of coverage on on Fox News I moved

to New York City and something I noticed

when I would be talking to people not

who work for the the New York Times but

people who just grew up here in in other

parts of the city and we were just

chatting and and they would find out I I

worked in journalism and and was a

political reporter and they say oh man

like I'm done voting for Democrats and

I'd say why and they're like the city is

crazy like the Subways are nuts like you

know like this whole place is out of

control and I would sort of you know

like look up the crime data and see the

same thing so there's been this strange

conversation where on the one hand there

in these blue cities where where

Democrats govern and where there's a lot

of media tension there is a genuine

feeling of unsafety a genuine feeling of

something is wrong and then you look at

the the crime data and you know it's

lower than it was in in in the ' 80s and

'90s and many cases it isn't that bad

historically it isn't that bad even

compared to other

places so you have a sort of theory

maybe for what is happening here that

that explains like the the Gap in

perception and and numbers what is it

yeah and you know I do want to emphasize

first that I think that many times those

perceptions are warranted um people are

pretty sensitive to changes in the risk

of even relatively rare events Vis crime

it shows up in lots of ways and the way

that I think about this is like people

will pay a big big premium in rent to

avoid living in a crime ridden area even

though if you go to those areas your

risk of victimization is quite low and

in many places in America people are

responding to the fact that crime is

still elevated over a baseline violent

crime Baseline that said the reality is

that when people feel unsafe in place it

is often not responsive to the kinds of

major crime that became more prevalent

in America over the past four years San

Francisco is interesting they do have a

they had a homicide spike a little bit

it is nowhere near the magnitude of

other cities what San Francisco has

though is this enormous problem with

what I would talk about as disorder

disorderly behavior and this is in fact

what San Francisco is like Infamous for

San Francisco is the city where the city

government has to issue I believe a

quarterly report on the frequency of

human feces found on the sidewalk San

Francisco has these very large open

drug markets uh San Francisco has an

uncontrolled public homelessness problem

public serious mental illness problem

San Francisco when I last looked at the

data a couple of years ago measurably

had a shoplifting problem all of these

are not what we were traditionally think

about as major offenses they're not

homicide rape robbery aggravated assault

Etc but they are much more prevalent

than those offenses you are much more

likely to be witness to them to be

victimized in association with them they

are much more therefore likely to affect

your perception what it is like to live

in the city and so I think often in the

case of San Francisco but as I have

argued increasingly in many other places

for example here in

DC where the violent crime level is

coming down there are signs that the

level of disorder is substantially

elevated I was looking yesterday at

shoplifting data reported by big cities

and there are many big cities where it's

up you know places that you'd expect

like you know New York but also places

that you wouldn't even think about like

Detroit saw a large spike in shoplifting

these sort of minor crimes that

nonetheless are pretty disorienting to

people around us um and I think that

those are part of what is driving this

perception that crime is a major issue

even as sort of more serious but less

prevalent therefore less likely to be

perceived crime comes down so this

tracks my experience it that when I

would talk to people about what they

were upset about what I would hear about

and also what I myself would experience

were mentally ill people yelling at you

and your children on the street was

public drug use was in San Francisco

feces and and and public uh your nation

were a big problem not an unknown

problem in New York either homeless

encampments are are big right everything

in the

drugstore in some areas in these cities

is behind plexiglass now right you have

to call at CVS to get you know deodorant

or razors or anything out that that

there was a a sense of of things being

out of control I think it's easy to to

think maybe this is just the the

Superstar big blue cities you've done a

bunch of work on on Chattanooga which

tell me a bit about the polling you did

there tell me a bit about the studies

you did there yeah we the Manhattan

Institute did a couple of different

pieces of work in Chattanooga one we did

a poll of Chattanooga residents I think

back in March about their perceptions of

crime and what you see in that polling

is that just like elsewhere they believe

that violent crime is a problem in their

city they're worried about it they don't

feel safe at night they don't feel safe

walking around downtown they are alarmed

by what they see around them and so what

I I took that polling and said okay

what's really happening and I spent a

lot of time with the data that the city

puts out and I talked to Cha PD other

leaders in the city and what I concluded

was that like many other cities

Chattanooga saw an increase in violence

over 2020 2021 and you know it is

important to go back to my point earlier

to acknowledge that Chattanooga did not

have a major defund the police movement

this is not a like a big Progressive

City that Fox News loves to hate on when

I I did a ride along there and I was

told you know yeah we can pull people

over yeah you know we have the capacity

to enforce against minor crimes I was

like wow you do not have the problems

that I'm used to talking to Cops about

but even there they saw an increase in

violent crime and the way that they

responded to this specific issue was to

deploy a set of strategies that are

effective for reducing violent crime

they used what we were talking about as

Focus deterrence um which is a set of

strategies that focuses on identifying

the small number of people in the

community who drive violence in that

community and either inducing them to

reduce their violence or incapacitating

them that appears to have been

successful they really did Drive

homicide NE violence levels back down to

where they were in 2019 in the most

recent data that they they got it it

worked they did what the evidence said

they should have done and they succeeded

they also though experienced like many

other cities a decline in their sworn

Staffing levels a cop that I talked to

when I was there said that they were

doing less proactive Patrol and so my

argument is that I suspect what happened

in the city is that faced with resource

constraints and dealing with a spike in

violence the police department responded

by prioritizing the most serious issues

and it worked but it came at the expense

of they were not doing traffic

enforcement they were less focused on

cleaning up the parks they also saw a

big surge in homelessness like many

other cities and so you end up in this

funny situation where they did deal with

the big problem and people still don't

feel safe and that's because they sort

of let the little problems fall to the

Wayside and the little problems got

bigger and bigger and bigger what was

your evidence that the little problems

were actually Rising yeah I look at a

couple of different indicators um I look

at minor crimes which some of them have

risen some of them have not things like

drug equipment violations I also look at

311 calls which are I think an

underutilized source of data on this

topic and they show that calls relating

to homelessness calls relating to litter

trash Etc both have risen pretty

substantially I looked at traffic

citations which is also another

underrated component of this because

when you think about you're behaving on

the road is a component of disorder how

you're treating that shared resources

related to disorder and I saw that there

had been a deine in traffic citations as

well and those are just sort of like

diffuse signals part of the problem with

thinking of disorder is like it is

doesn't get measured consistently in the

same way but I think the signals tended

to point in that direction where do you

draw the line here between thinking

about crime and thinking about

disorder many disorderly activities are

crimes not all disorderly activities are

crimes

sometimes they sort of nebulously they

could be Crim depending on how the

police officer feels at the time a city

like New York has moved away from

criminalizing disorder lead behaviors

for example I think in 2021 New York

State removed its um Ling in furtherance

of or pursuit of prostitution law uh you

can no longer be arrested for appearing

to be trying to engage in prostitution

in New York state but it's still

disorderly Behavior to stand on the

corner trying to flag down John's

there's a lot of conflict over what we

mean when we talk about disorder it gets

tied up in these sort of like thick

cultural baggage is this Behavior

disorderly is it just something that the

rich and the poor vary on or that

people's opinions vary on based on

ethnicity or race but I tend to think

that we can at least offer a cogent

definition of disorder the definition I

like to offer is that um disorder is the

domination of public space for private

purposes think about the different kinds

of dis that we talk about we might talk

about somebody defecating in public we

might talk about somebody sleeping in

public somebody playing his music too

loud on the subway somebody shooting up

somebody yelling at strangers uh

somebody engaging in prosecution or

attempting to solicit for prostitution

in

public what joins these behaviors in my

mind is that they

are private acts they are things that we

would conventionally sort of do at home

this idea that what makes disorder

alarming unique special worthy of our

attention is that there is a public

space at least in big cities there are

common spaces common resources that

everyone is expected to share equally

and often disorderly Behavior can be

identified by an individual making a

claim over that whether it is your use

of the sidewalk that is impeded by a

tent or your freedom from seeing

somebody else's private consumption

activity whether it is drugs or sex you

added uh AR wrinkled that definition

that I've not heard you you say before

which is that many of these not all are

acts we would normally do at home and

what that made me think of

immediately is that many of these acts

are done by people who don't have in the

traditional sense of the term homes

right that the unsheltered homeless

obviously huge problem in San Francisco

in in New York but but everywhere right

sort of most major cities not literally

everyone is having a a significant rise

in in unsheltered hom

lessness is the disorder problem simply

the absence of people with homes people

who don't have bathrooms right they are

now doing things in public because they

live in public you

know it is not uncommon to sort of make

exactly this argument and this is part

of the debates over disorder that

happened in the 1990s to what extent are

regulations of disorder just trying to

criminalize

statuses homelessness poverty Etc and my

response is twofold one is that we

should be able to agree that there are

lots of people who are disorderly in

public who are not homeless there are

people who are to use a podcast

appropriate term jerks who think that it

is perfectly Kosher for them to light up

on the subway or to play music in public

or to berate people that said it is

certainly the case that homeless people

are a subset a substantial subset of the

disorderly population

but there too I think that we have seen

not merely an increase in the population

of people that are homeless but also in

the degree to which people are willing

to engage feel comfortable engaging in

disorderly Behavior the sort of most

extreme examples are the frequencies of

public drug use there's a broad spectrum

of the intensity of flagrant public drug

use that you see in the United States in

certain jurisdictions in the United

States over the past four years the

intensity of public drug use has gotten

much more extreme there was a very big

difference between the homeless guy who

you know hangs out in front of your

local supermarket who is polite who is

engaging everyone knows somebody like

this who's not a problem for the

community versus the guy who is yelling

in public versus the guy who is shooting

up in public who is sleeping rough and

Unapologetic about it there is a big

space for that behavior variation even

among the population that is homeless

something I've thought about a lot is

the difference in the politics of crime

and disorder from when I lived in

Washington DC where I lived from 2005 to

2018 and then uh the Bay Area and then

New York and when I lived in DC it was

unambiguously more dangerous than

anywhere else I have ever lived the uh

homicide rate was simply much higher

someone very close to me was shot a

number of people I am also very close to

were beaten up on the streets

muggings in the pretty the early period

in which I lived there it was just like

something that would happen to your

friends when you went home from a party

right it would happen every couple of

weeks it felt like and yet the politics

of it were much less unstable deranging

for the at least the people in power

than what was happening in San Francisco

and and my explanation for that over

time was that there's something around

the politics here not just of disorder

but of Tolerance like my sense of the

the politics in DC was it people felt

like the government was trying to stop

the crime and failing because crime is a

hard problem that the government was

trying to stop the drug problem and

failing because drugs are a hard problem

and that what made the politics of this

in in San Francisco particularly very

toxic and continue to be very toxic is a

feeling the government wasn't trying to

stop it that you know clearly or people

at least thought it was in the

government's power to you know do

something like clearing out the Tender

Loin and not allowing it to be a giant

open air drug Market but they weren't

doing that and in fact they were

watching City officials walk by this on

the The Daily this has I think become a

big issue in New York where you know you

watch people jump the the Turn Style

right in front of a bunch of employees

of the subway how do you think about the

role of the government's attitude even

holding the problems

constant what I would say is that I

think that that response you are

describing in San Francisco is touching

on something real which is that it is

offensive to people's sense of Civic

fairness when they see the government

tolerating people's behaviors in certain

circumstances and particularly when

they're antisocial behaviors and not

otherwise you know the the great

objection I think people you may have

heard from people in San Francisco is

that the government of San Francisco

simultaneously was aggressive about

requiring people to wear masks in

furtherance of the public health

interest and also was actively trying to

in the name of harm reduction educate

people on how to use drugs as opposed to

explicitly condemning drug use and or

stopping people from using drugs on the

street I think that offends people's

basic sense that we all are equal

citizens of a city that part of how a

city lives and functions and breathes is

that Assumption of equality and I do

think that there is you know an

ideological component there when you

talk about how do governments think

about tolerance particularly over the

past five years but really waxing and

waning in American Civic life which says

these problems the problem of drug

addiction the problem of homelessness

the problem of dysfunctional Behavior s

mental illness are intractable and in

fact it is wrong to try to change them

that it infringes upon the rights of the

individual to try to do something about

this that the best we can possibly hope

to do for people who are living

profoundly dysfunctional lives is sort

of make them comfortable and hope that

they will choose to change on their own

I think about this in the serious mental

illness context through the work of

sociologist Neil gang who has compare

the treatment of in Los Angeles

seriously mentally ill rich people and

poor people he finds that when you on

the Public's responsibility and

seriously mentally ill in Los Angeles

you're treated with an attitude of

Toleration that they will do what they

need to stabilize you but they won't

ever try to compel you to do anything

even suggest that you do anything you

don't want to do was what the rich do is

that they uh they sign themselves up to

be coerced if your kid is seriously

mentally ill and you have the money for

it you will put him in a very

restrictive environment because that's

what's conduced to his health so I think

that you know that kind

of Tolerance which is in my mind a kind

of pessimism about the capacity of

government to address these problems

combined with a kind of civil

libertarianism had a moment over the

past 5 years and is a constant in

American life that is likely to come

back correct me if I'm wrong G gong he

he did the work on tolerated containment

or something like that yeah yeah I I

always thought this was interesting so

as I understand his theory and I've not

read that much of it directly but I

think I read a paper by him it's that

you have an approach in many of these

cities and you really saw this in in San

Francisco I mean the tenderloin is just

a a Zone where huge amounts of what are

by any measure crimes are allowed but

you can't do that in pack Heights you

can't do that in noi Valley people live

in the tenderloin it's actually the the

part of San Francisco with the I don't

remember if it's the highest or just an

unusually high number of children living

in it per capita and you see this in a

lot of places right skid in Los Angeles

but what you do in skidrow you cannot do

in Beverly Hills or at least in most

parts of Beverly Hills

and so there's this way in which one of

the things that emerged is that you

would sort of concentrate all this

disorder in places where the people had

less political power to do anything

about it and in doing you would sort of

move it out of the Richer areas where

they would complain and and vote you out

of

office yeah and you do see this in a lot

of places I think about a couple of

years ago New York city became the first

city in the United States to open what

is variously called a supervised

consumption site you're an overd

prevention site over prevention center

choose your acronym which is a place

where people can go and consume drugs

under the supervision of people with

Naran some of whom have medical training

and one of the interesting things that

has happened is the community responses

group called the greater Harlem

Coalition with whom I've worked some and

their response to the OPC to the

supervised consumption site was not

actually sort of shock and horror at the

fact that this thing exists

but rather to say if you come to our

neighborhood uh if you get off the train

at Harlem 125th Street you have to walk

a couple of blocks and you're there if

you come to a neighborhood this is

already the site of Super saturation of

these services and you know I think that

that creates a great deal of community

ranker these are usually poor

predominantly black or brown communities

if you go look at Kensington and

Philadelphia most people are on the

street in Kensington I found from my

recent trip are white people from the

surrounding area but most of people

actually live in Kensington are recent

immigrants who just need somewhere to

work until to live while they are

working to sort of build themselves up

you know I think these kind of

concentrated areas of dysfunction are

seen as Solutions like there's this

thing in the wire Hamsterdam that is the

pivotal example of this it's like the

police's strategy is that you'll be

allowed to sell drugs here and we'll

concentrate the problems they think that

this will be a solution to the problems

of the rest of the city but actually

what you end up doing in my experience

is you create concentrated dysfunction

and so you get economies of scale of

dysfunction that having a couple of guys

doing drugs in a place is not great but

having a hundred guys doing drugs in a

place is how you get a drug market and a

drug Market is way more efficient a drug

Market is providing a greater variety of

services a drug Market is a magnet and

the magnet draws more people in the

place that I've been that I've seen this

most acutely is the downtown east side

in in Vancouver in British Columbia

which is the sort of skidrow of

Vancouver and the downtown east side is

has the highest concentration I suspect

the highest concentration of harm

reduction drug treatment services

certainly in North America possibly on

Earth it is actually the worst place I

ever been in my entire life it is just

blocks and blocks and blocks of people

shooting up selling drugs buying drugs

when you talk to people who are

suffering the illness there many of them

are coming from the surrounding area it

is a place of profound dysfunction and

it is more dysfunctional because it is

concentrated so it's not just bad for

the people who live there it is also bad

for the people that is allegedly meant

to benefit because of the way in which

it concentrates and therefore reinforces

their problems

[Music]

[Music]

so this out gets us to maybe the

borderline between disorder and and

crime but we've been talking about both

things happening in blue cities and and

to some degree ideological Trends among

liberals but there's change here on the

right too in an interesting way so you

you've talked about Vice Politics the

policies around things like uh cannabis

around gambling I don't think other

people might put it here but for for

reasons I I think I would have some

trouble explaining but I'm pretty sure

is right I think the Embrace of quite

unregulated crypto markets has a

attending this it's I think it's quite

adjacent to gambling um and when you

look at Trump and the Republicans ran

out you see a lot of this Trump City

backed a weed legalization proposal in

in Florida you have Republican lawmakers

floating proposals to legalize gambling

the sort of crypto deregulation is quite

big on on the right how do you see the

the changing relationship ship between

the right and not disorder because they

talk like they don't like disorder but I

think what you what you define is vice

which seems to be quite adjacent to

disorder there is in the very long run

waxing and waning in the degree to which

we are tolerant of addictive harmful

substances or behaviors we gambling is a

behavior that is plausibly described as

addictive that we go through periods of

familiarity and then rejection and then

hostility and then curiosity and then

familiarity and this is really the Arc

of the history of drug use in American

society over the past 150

years that today there are a host

of different vices that we are shifting

towards Embrace of in part coming out of

a period of hostility I think we are

experimenting a lot more you've talked

about psychedelics I think psychedelics

fit oddly into this we can get into them

if you'd like porn graphy which is

almost the one that we don't talk about

at all even though everybody's high

schooler is exposed to it all the time

there's been some great reporting on

that something like 17 million Americans

are now daily or new daily marijuana

smokers a substantial fraction of young

adults are gambling on a regular basis I

and the ones who gamble most

compulsively are young men you can

almost tell a story about a type here of

people who are consuming a wide variety

of legal or dubiously legal vicious

substances who are unattached who are

socially dysfunctional those people it

turns out might actually be swing voters

to get back to your question those are

people who see something that they like

in Donald Trump who also see something

that they like in the Democratic party

which has at least in recent years been

the more Vice tolerant party and so I

think that a move like Trump's to sort

of publicly Embrace marijuana

legalization in certain form reflects a

recognition that there is a large part

of the electorate who are iner to these

substances and who are in play you can

talk about sort of why Trump has gone

for that I think that reflects broader

changes in sort of the Republican

ideology under him versus 30 years ago

but but I do think at root what it is is

this change at the social level that

Vice is much more common much more

widely available I think you're also

looking at voters who are not just maybe

swing voters but voters in transition so

something that is happening

compositionally to the parties that I

think is important here is Suburban

women are becoming very very very

important to have Democrats win

elections and in a way I think kamla

Harris really represents that block

right she is on the one hand quite

concerned about crime and Order and

safety a former prosecutor and also very

concerned about equity and that things

aren't being done unfairly right so

there's a tension there between how do

you make a community feel safe and how

do you make a community uh and the

policing of it actually

non-racist and then on the other hand

you have young men moving quite sharply

into the Republican Coalition uh young

men of all Races particularly non-

College young men and those are the

people who as you were saying a second

ago in their lives cannabis is

significant Sports gambling and maybe

crypto are significant uh pornography is

significant now they don't like crime

and they like a a sort of tougher

presentation but they want the things

they do to be legal and they do not want

to be hassled by the police or anybody

else about

them yeah I think that that is right I

do want to emphasize that the social

change that we are talking about the

emergence of this population is itself

Downstream of if not Democratic per se

priorities than liberalizing priorities

um Joe Biden is like a pretty old school

Democrat on this stuff he's

conspicuously the only 2020 primary

Democrat who refused to say he would

legalize marijuana but he is a dying

breed in the party it is not an accident

that the drug policy Alliance went to

deep blue Oregon to try to decriminalize

drugs so I think it is right that there

is this sort of

emerging predictably emerging population

who are personally politically pretty

apathetic and so happen to be a up for

grabs and who the Republican Coalition

are less worried about getting the votes

of but their existence and their growth

is Downstream of again if not purely

Democratic politics than liberalizing

policies that have been Advanced by

groups that are very much of a kind with

those groups that have argued that the

criminalization of public drug use is

unfair unjust and racist so you know I

think that that aspect is really very

important as well let's talk about the

decriminalization and criminalization of

drug use and and this I think does move

us into the Zone where sometimes we're

talking about disorder and sometimes

we're talking about something much much

worse you know as somebody who was

pretty optimistic about that and about

drug decriminalization generally and I

did an episode with Keith humph about

this I think it is working out very very

poorly but I am less worried about that

than I am about something else which

you've written about which is the the

changing shape of the drug problem at

its most lethal and you did this piece

uh some time ago for National Affairs

which is a a journal and you you wrote

then that the sort of problem we're

really facing in drugs has changed that

for most of um the the Arc of how we've

thought about drugs we've worried about

addiction and now at a rate we've never

before really had to apprehend we

worried about death can you talk through

that change you're describing yeah

absolutely and I will argue in a second

that this is in fact also a dynamic that

is relevant in the legal or semi-legal

Marketplace but there have been a lot of

headlines about the decline in the

overdose death rate in the past year

that's something to be celebrated I'm

happy about that we can talk about why

that happened I think it's less great

than people think but the reality is

still that something like 100,000 people

are dying every single year from drug

over their death in the United States

that is a remarkable SE change the

statistic that I like to use is that in

the mid to late 1980s at the peak of the

crack cocaine crisis about three in

every 100,000 Americans died from drug

overdose in I think it's 2021 2022 the

figure was 33 per 100,000 so that's a

more than 10-fold increase um in the

1980s 1990s 1970s even going back to the

Heron crisis 1960s the primary problem

was the health effects of drugs drugs

were simply not that likely to kill you

today drugs can kill you and that is

because the drug supply has become much

more potent that represents in my view a

technological change people have heard a

lot about the synthetic opioid fentanyl

fentanyl is like not a new substance um

if anyone who has listening to this

podcast has had an epidural they have

probably been administered fenal

we've known how to make it since the

early 1960s fentanyl though is a

synthetic drug which is means that it is

made from simple ingredients in a lab

you don't have to go in a field you have

to Holden to the growing season you

don't have to worry about spy planes the

precursor chemicals are incredibly cheap

you can Source them online no questions

asked and so it was a superior product

on many dimensions that at some point in

the past 10 years drug trafficking

organizations in the America figured out

how to synthesize um in large quantities

and how to move in large quantities and

so the exponential increase in deaths is

down of a the spread of fentanyl into

the drug Supply and B another synthetic

drug that is under discussed here which

is methamphetamine also spreading into

the drug Supply the common factor being

a

transition from organic methods of drug

production to much more efficient much

more effective synthetic methods of drug

production what we are up against in the

current drug crisis Isis is a

technological change and I think that's

true across the spectrum of Isis that

you can understand Sports gambling on

the phone as a technological improvement

over Sports gambling in the casino that

the high potency marijuana that is

causing so many of the problems with

legalization is something that has been

made possible by increasing efficiency

in the legal marijuana Market

facilitated by legalization that let big

marijuana growers can just grow better

pot more potent more high THC pot and so

I think across the spectrum of vices of

drugs that we use but also non-drug

viices we are seeing much more potent

forms facilitated by modern technology

and that's the problem that we're

dealing with I'm interested in this I

think this is a really fascinating way

of framing it because I've I've heard

this and thought about this with things

like fentanyl I mean you said a second

ago that these gangs and traffickers

have figured out how to use it in how to

move it in large quantities in the

Americas

but the thing about it is it compared to

other things that came before it you

don't need to move it in large

quantities that the amount of heroin you

needed to addict a city and the amount

of fentanyl you need to addict a city at

the same

level is what it's like a hundredth of

the amount yeah there are estimates that

say the total fentanyl consumption in

the United States is sub 10 tons right

you can move it in a couple of trucks so

so that is terrifying and and it's part

of I think in a way that people don't

always recognize why it's quite hard to

crack down on the trafficking it's just

easier to traffic baggies trafficking

marijuana is not that easy it's a lot of

garbage bags of marijuana to keep a lot

of people um supplied but I'm interested

in in the way you draw that out right I

I take your point that Sports gambling

on the phone is more efficient than

Sports gambling in the casino porography

obviously has gotten a lot better and

more accessible from when you had to

like rent a VHS tape or or go to a

theater and and sit in a little booth

you know and there are things that we

don't I think think of as viic at this

level but actually do concern me the

immersive quality of massive online

video games and the amount of time

people could spend on them has just made

them a very different kind of product

than when I was jamming on Mario

Brothers 3 on a Super

Nintendo there is these categories of

things ranging from illegal to

semi-legal to totally legal that as they

get better and better and better and

better and more concentrated and more

portable and more always

available that I don't think we know

what to do about them and also they

develop constituencies that that can

defend them under perfectly reasonable

arguments like I like playing video

games or you know ketamine is good for

my anxiety and I'm not wildly addicted

to it and so why should I not be able to

get it I mean I I actually find these

issues very very hard because for a lot

of people these things are part of a

good life not a negative life and then

there are people for whom they're

somewhere between life impairing and all

the way up to life

destroying yeah I think that that is

correct and that's the central challenge

of drugs and of viic more generally that

the best argument for drugs being widely

available are twofold one is that people

like doing drugs they're fun and the

other one is that we should leave people

the heck alone and I think those are

both like fairly strong arguments in the

American liberal tradition I think like

it is not an unreasonable position to

take and the best way to respond to them

in mind is to say look even though your

eye can plausibly use alcohol or

marijuana or Methamphetamine or heroin

or Sports gambling safely there are

people who cannot in any given

population of users the risks of harm

are not evenly distributed and that's

true for marijuana that's true for

alcohol that true for as terms of heroin

the sort of best estimates are only

about 30% of first-time heroin users are

going to proceed to addiction I would

not encourage any of your listeners to

try heroin on this basis but that's sort

of the estimate the point being that

it's a probabilistic thing and there are

real benefits to the consumption of

these substances and the little benefit

that I get out of use of those

substances and we can talk about what

the regulation should look like the

little benefit that I get out of the use

of substance is not necessarily worth

the enormous cost to my fellow citizen I

can frame that argument in other ways

you know I can say that the state has a

legitimate interest in a certain degree

of if not abstinence then sobriety that

addiction impairs our ability to be

functioning citizens in a way that the

state is legitimate interest in for

stalling but I do think at at root

you're right that there is a tradeoff

and the only real way in my mind to get

around that tradeoff to say yeah it has

to be worth it at least for some

substances at least some of the time I

find myself more and more confused in

this discussion than I feel I've been in

the past but but let me sort of try to

press on points of it that I'm

struggling with so let's cut off for a

minute the most lethal segment of the

market right the opioids

methamphetamine when you talk about many

of these other things some of them are

fun and some of them are more meaningful

to people than that on the one hand the

the point you're making that both the

profits of lot of this and the

harms concentrate on a subfraction of

the population I've had a lot of people

I love have very serious alcohol use

disorder and whatever is happening in

their brain when they drink is not

happening in mine this is not virtue

there's something not happening in my

brain that is happening in their brain

and so the costs are falling on them and

and I've watched those costs fall with

Incredible

force and then some of these other

things right you you mentioned

psychedelics earlier

they can be fun and they can also be

incredibly profound and mystical and

people have experiences on them that

that are some of the most you know we

know from survey data meaningful of

their life or you know I both know

people for whom ketamine is fun and I

know people for whom ketamine is a

stabilizing

force or as much as I'm sort of down on

crypto I understand that a lot of people

in there are in there for an ideological

and hopeful View that they're building

something that can become a very

important technological layer of the

future and so sure right now what you're

looking at is functionally a currency

gambling market and a volatile asset

Market but a lot of things begin you

know as the famous the line goes as toys

and later become utilities and these

people see themselves as building the

the future alcohol helps people dance

and enjoy each other parties right it's

not just fun it does build

community and I don't really know how to

weigh all this I I think just kind of

saying well it's fun puts it in in a box

for yeah I mean if it's just fun who

cares but these things become

significant parts of people's life um

some things we're talking about strike

me as much better for people than

alcohol frankly i''d be much more uh

comfortable with there being widespread

access to products with psilocybin in it

that than alcohol one of my hopes with

cannabis legalization was that you would

see a substitution away from alcohol

we've not seen that at all we've just

seen a huge rise in in Daily cannabis

use I don't know how to balance all all

that but what does strike me is we are

very inconsistent about it right and I

think that is the core of the issue and

there's something very American about

that that we are very All or Nothing in

part because we are

a

Libertarian culture and I don't mean

that as sort of a political thing I mean

that in America we are much more

concerned with individual liberty have

been for 200 years it's part of what

makes America my view the greatest

nation on Earth but it also has produces

challenges particularly in this space

and when you talk about sort of that

moderation that sort of space between I

think that is the thing that we struggle

with

conceptually I'll talk about for example

you talked about psychedelics in my mind

I am persuaded by the research evidence

the clinical evidence that psychedelics

are efficacious for variety of

indications I think they're good for

that I would like to see more people

have access to cocy in in a medically

appropriate environment I'm also

persuaded by the evidence from the same

studies that says cybin and other

psychic drugs are quite dangerous that

they can do real and Lasting harmed

people particularly people who have

prior serious mental illness but I think

that from a policy perspective what you

always want to be aiming for is

somewhere the middle um Mark kimman the

public policy scholar has this concept

of what he talks about is grudging

Toleration he observes this for drugs

like cigarettes and alcohol drugs that

were not going to prohibit and he

extends this back in the 1990s to

marijuana I think it still makes sense

today to say look the fact that these

drugs are legal does not mean that we

should not regulate them and does not

mean that we should not

be keep a certain degree of social

approbation upon them when you think

about cigarettes as I think a great

example where we have come to a Point as

a country where cigarette smoking is

actually deeply stigmatized and I tend

to think that's good because cigarettes

were quite bad um they are aggressively

taxed they are far more regulated that

took a really long time to get to

because in large part of the sort of

core libertarian arguments so I think

that it is telling to go back to this

American Paradigm that we cannot talk

about psychedelics in this sort of

medical middle of the road instead we

are in Colorado Oregon potentially in

Mass Metts this November simply going to

create low regulation gray markets or

white markets in these substances that's

not the middle of the road that's a very

libertarian attitude you know I

recognize that there are real benefits

to consumption of these substances I

think that the harms tend to fall

disproportionately

on the least of us on the most

disadvantaged of us on those who are

already suffering from serious mental

illness and so what you want to do is

try to find that middle ground

regulatory morally not always but I

think that we really struggle to find

that middle ground As Americans this is

not a problem that many European nations

have they're actually many European

nations are quite good at navigating

this middle ground but we culturally

struggle with it we don't know how to go

for anything but pure prohibition versus

pure legalization yeah and I guess I

would add some other things that have

made me more pessimistic here than I

used to be so you're saying that we're

quite libertarian Nation I I would say

in a way we the thing that worries me

more is that we're quite capitalistic

nation and what worries me about

cannabis the way it has gone and I was

close with Mark kimman we were friends

he was a fellow blogger I was at UCLA

when he was there right he's like a

revered um policy mind to me and and his

loss continues to Echo everything he

feared basically came to pass we I used

to talk to him about marijuana

legalization back when when that hadn't

quite happened yet and he would tell me

like the thing you have to be afraid of

is commercialization the thing you have

to try to figure out how to do is not

let this get commercialized because once

the uh Genius of American capitalism

gets to it it's going to become so much

more potent it's going to be marketed in

in all these crazy ways and you sees

with everything um you know Vapes emerge

and the the sort of early round of

thinking about them is hey maybe this is

a great harm reduction strategy for

people addicted to cigarettes and now

you get them in caught in candy flavors

you know it's like blue Sparkleberry and

they have little like you know stars

that light up when you smoke them

they've made them into a toy right they

you cannot invent a smoking device that

is more targeted towards children than a

cotton candy thing that lights up with

little stars when you smoke it it's

unbelievable to watch when I walk into

um a cannabis shop and and I love

getting a a package of Caminos and you

know I'm not a heavy cannabis user but

but I do sometimes um but you can walk

into that and and you see the pod of

what's being offered and we don't really

understand what products of of this kind

of THC potency do to people and so as

somebody who actually does not just want

to see psychedelics made available for

medical use is not just excited about

them as a major depression treatment but

but actually thinks they are a thing

that can be a really powerful part of

people's lives including well

people when I look at what has happened

with cannabis and I think about our

inability to regulate the things

effectively and what happens when these

companies that have been Venture funded

to the tunes of tens or hundreds of

millions of dollars and are trying to

file patents left and right and are

going to try to commercialize and market

and and alter the subsides in every way

they possibly can to get a market

advantage that terrifies me you have a

piece about how you changed your mind on

on cannabis legalization I thought it

makes an interesting point which is that

we thought and this was the argument

everybody was making we'd be able to

regulate it and we've not been able to

and part of the reason is that

particularly when there's already a

powerful elicit Market if you come into

something and you regulate it and so you

make the regulated price much higher and

you make the regulated thing harder to

get then the elicent market just takes

over but has a lot more Supply and has a

lot more access and there's going to be

less interest in cracking down on it um

you've seen that in in New York where

they are starting to do some crackdowns

but there's a huge number of illegal

shops that we just don't seem to have

the capability or at least have not yet

yet shown it of being in these in these

middle places where you can actually

regulate the thing and control the

market because controlling the market

would then require a huge amount of

enforcement on something you just tried

to make semi-legal and nobody really

wants to do that right and to remind

your listeners I work for a conservative

think tank I'm clearly conservative on a

number of issues and I would say I am in

many regards an unrepentant capitalist I

think capitalism is a fantastic system

it's the best system we've created it's

lift billions of people out of poverty

yeah yeah yeah man we know yeah yeah we

love those things but here comes the

butt the point about drugs I think is an

important one that you know the the way

that capitalism works is it aligns the

interest of the buyer and the seller and

that is good in so far as what is in the

interest of the buyer or the seller is

good for them in the case of addictive

harmful substances what is in the

interest of the buyer is not necessarily

to continue to consume the product even

if the seller is willing to sell it to

him but I think that you

are fighting Upstream against that basic

dynamic in legal markets that the

dynamic that you were talking about a

second ago that we have seen in the

marijuana Marketplace is one in which

where there are attempts however anemic

to regulate marijuana people substitute

into the illicit Marketplace quite

comfortably the thing that needs to be

done to reduce the scale of the elicit

Marketplace moreover is politically

deeply unpopular IE do enforcement

arguably more enforcement than is

necessary under prohibition because

prohibition simply issuing the statement

that such and such substance is legal

does a lot of work for you it for cluses

access to credit it makes it hard to

engage at the rest of the market Etc

that was a succinct version but I think

this Dynamic it's not just a cultural

thing there are also structural Dynamics

structural reasons that it is hard to

control markets and vice the argument

that I make in that piece that you

allude to is that part of the case for

prohibiting something like marijuana is

just that prohibition is dumb and dumb

stuff works that once you start

regulating stuff it's a real uphill

battle to avoid regulatory capture to

make the regulation exactly what you

need to work well it took us decades to

make cigarette regulation kind of work

and by the way cigarettes still kill

hundreds of thousands of people a year

so it's not like we've done that well

the same thing is true of alcohol where

there are more alcohol involved deaths

every year than there are all illicit

drugs combined and we regulate alcohol

and it took us a long time to do that

too and so when you talk about marijuana

you talk about psychedelics I think you

should be alarmed by scrolling on

Instagram and seeing an advertisement

for a camine clinic or at home camine

use uh I think this death of Matthew

Perry yeah I think the death of Matthew

Perry really has shaped that discourse

is working people up to the fact that

even in that space there's a difference

between people using their friends in

the backyard and set and setting and all

of that and what happens when somebody

is selling it to you on social media I

think that is an inescapable part well

the the Matthew Perry thing was not a

social media sales situation but I I I

take your point this is maybe a place to

bring in that other class I cut out

before which is the the drugs that cause

in very high numbers death so these

synthetic opioids um increasingly

methamphetamin means and here too I find

myself very confused on on what to do

because presumably people don't want to

die and so one argument for a long time

has been that you know if you give

people a safer Supply right they're not

getting things they don't understand

that they don't know how to dose because

the quantity of fentanyl is unknown in

it but on the other hand you know I

think our experiences if you make things

more accessible more people are going to

access them how do you think about about

this has become a big obviously Topic in

the presidential campaign but for all

the people talk in the campaign about

fentanyl I've not seen really frankly

either campaign release a policy that

seems to me to be appropriate to the

scale of the problem or represent any

new thinking in a real way about the

problem yes and I think that's been true

for a long time that everyone is willing

to see the drug crisis as proving their

assumptions and nobody's willing to see

it as the problem that it is because

that's much harder um that's a criticism

I have across the board you know I think

there is and you've alluded to a sort of

set of policy prescriptions that to

their credit try to take on this issue

of deaths headon these are what sort of

get broadly lumped under the category of

harm reduction I do not think those

interventions where tried have been

borne out the illustrative example is

that Canada has in fact implemented

safer Supply British Columbia has supp

programs in addition to a whole host of

harm reduction programs in addition to

supervised consumption sites needle

distribution Naran distribution you name

it they've got it and they also have

Skyhigh overdose death rates when you

talk about something like giving people

access to safer drugs it's that probably

works in what do you talk as a high

barrier context um if you put people on

what's called heroin assisted treatment

when you give people dial morphine in a

clinic they do somewhat better their

risk of ERS goes down somewhat if you

make that program too big though people

start moving product on the street they

start taking the dietal morphine from

the government and selling it to other

people and using the money to score

heroin that is cheaper it's a little bit

like dealing with a public option in

drugs and that has all of the effects of

a public option on the price and

availability of drugs but it doesn't

really do much to change the underlying

drug using Behavior because the problem

is in actually knowledge it's that

people are addicted to deadly substances

and they will keep using those deadly

substances so you've talked about the

the Oregon law and decriminalization

there and I think it's widely seen to be

a failure but there was a a study in

September that was published by the

American Medical association's online

journal and researchers tried to

disentangle the spike in in overdose

deaths and the the sort of coming of

fentanyl into Oregon I think you among

others have noted that fentanyl has this

weird thing where it's been moving east

to west in the country and they said

that drug liberalization was actually

better than people think but that that

was sort of wiped out at least in the

data by the rise of fentanyl did you see

that study and what did you think of it

yeah I'm going to give you the nerdy

answer and then I'm going to give you

the big picture answer and I I I know

the study that you were talking about

this is the study that says the the

result is confounded by the spread of

feny right yes yeah I know the study

that you're talking about I actually

know several the guys who wrote it and I

like them but I think they're missing

the Mark um the nerdy answer is that

by attempting to control for the spread

of fentanyl in Oregon you are

controlling away one of the channels by

which decriminalization could affect

overdose deaths that one model is that

the effect of decriminalization on over

deaths is confounded by the spop fenol

but another model is that part of what

decriminalization did was exacerbate or

induce the spread of Fentanyl and I

don't think you can differentiate

between the two so I'm skeptical that

that what that

study is actually showing but this gets

to sort of a bigger point which is that

what is really telling to me in the

literature on decrim Oregon and actually

my read of the literature on

decriminalization in Portugal and

generally is that specifically with

regard to Oregon there are at this point

I think three peer-reviewed studies and

one of them finds an increase in overo

deaths and to find there's no increase

in over stats there has not yet been a

study that concludes that there is a

reduction over to Deaths associated with

decriminalization the Portuguese

literature is a little more over the

board but I think you can read it in

such a way that the central tendency is

there is no effect of Portuguese

decriminalization under deaths and what

that says to me is that the core

argument made for decriminalization

across the board is that the problem is

not really the drugs the problem is the

criminal treatment of the drugs and I

just don't think that's borne out by the

evidence I think that if there is no

effect then what that tells us is that

it was never really about Prohibition

itself it was always about I think in my

mind obviously the fact that drugs kill

people in different ways Trump Vance

Harris and walls have all when I've

heard them publicly made an argument

focusing on the ability to stop Supply

from coming into the United States that

we can do more on the border we can have

these machines we can increase law

enforcement we can get mad at China we

can get mad at

Mexico do you buy in this world where we

synthetic drugs that can be made in labs

and moved in fairly small quantities do

you buy that there is a level of

anti-smuggling or anti-trafficking

policy that could be effective to

substantially change the

trajectory you can't do nothing and I

think that the steps that we have taken

to do better at interdicting at the

border the pressure that both

administrations Trump Administration B

Administration have tried to place on

China to reduce the export precursors

are sort of necessary but never ever

going to be sufficient to the problem

and that's

because you are dealing with such a

profound change in the drug Supply that

you have to get it right an unrealistic

fraction of the time if you're dealing

with such a small quantity of fentanyl

crossing the border you have to

interdict it successfully basically

every single time otherwise there's no

impact if you are dealing with such

widely available precursor chemicals you

have to shut it down not just in China

but also in India potentially Nigeria or

South Africa it is such a dramatically

challenging problem to try to put it

succinctly under this new paradigm we

have to take much more seriously the

problem of addiction as such that it is

more imperative than ever to get people

off of drugs um that that's sort of the

thing that we talked about for a long

time but it was less urgent when we were

dealing with People's Health it is much

more urgent today when 100,000 people

are dying every year it's different from

the harm reduction model it's also

different from the War on Drugs model

which I tend to think gets a bad rap but

was

ultimately not all that successful in

curbing a host of problems but focusing

on preventing people from getting on

drugs through prevention and focusing on

getting people off of drugs through

aggressive evidence-based medication

assisted often or at least sometimes

compulsory treatment is I think the best

strategy that we have available I've

talked about British Columbia next door

to British Columbia Alberta the province

in Canada has a similar drug problem and

they have responded by implementing many

of the policies that I would like to see

implemented the data is still unclear we

we don't fully know what it looks like

but the early indications are that drug

eror deaths are going down in Alberta

and I think that that is a sign that if

you focus on recovery you focus on

treatment and you make that a priority

and you say you are going to get clean

whether you want to or not and we are

going to be committed to keeping you

clean you could have a real impact on

this problem you've described the

structural problem here as technological

that that we've had a lot of

technological advance in drugs without a

sort of corresponding advance in like

human biology right or social

organization I am typically skeptical

across a lot of facets of of human life

that when technology gets better and

better and better and better that you

can really do all that much by just kind

of trying to change social mores right I

don't think telling people to grayscale

their phones is going to and smartphone

addiction I don't think telling them

pornography is bad is going to do much

for pornography

consumption and one thing that I've

heard people

say is that we do not put nearly enough

into trying to create counter

technological advances so the you know

I've heard people argue for operation

warp speeds but for anti- addiction

drugs we have some things that that I

know you're skeptical of their long-term

efficacy like Narcan which can reverse

an opioid overdose there's some early uh

interesting evidence on you know the OIC

class of of of drugs that it might help

a little bit for for things like alcohol

use do we need some kind of moonshot

program on this set of things and to

accept that

prohibition and social sanction and

yelling at people and even treatment is

just not going to be enough given that

the pace of technological innovation and

synthetic drugs is not going to go away

if somebody wants to write the10 billion

check I'm sure not going to say no but I

am skeptical that we will get there in

any appreciable time look we you know we

have medication assisted treatment we

have a variety of medication assisted

treatments for opioid use disorder they

have gotten better we now have long

acting injectable formulations which are

just huge and the spread of those to

treatment programs is I think

systematically underrated that we should

be willing to do much much more with

long acting injectables we still don't

have any medication assisted treatment

for stimulant use disorder for cocaine

and methamphetamine we've been trying to

get them for years and years and years

and years you know I think the gp1 drugs

have some potential there's certainly

lots of anecdotes about it I think what

little clinical science we have right

now says they might be particularly good

for alcohol use disorder which is great

potentially less useful for use disorder

although that could change I would be

really happy to be wrong like I I I

think it would be great if I were wrong

but I am by no means optimistic that

tomorrow we will discover a substance

that cures addiction if for no other

reason then you know addiction is a

profound and multi-dimensional

phenomenon it has biological correlates

social correlates I tend to think about

addiction as in some senses a rational

Behavior response to certain set of

incentives and so while we have tools

that can blunt that Dynamic it is always

going to be more than biological and so

I am skeptical that we will produce

purely biological solutions to it

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I want to come back to this issue of

disorder so cities right now are

struggling with these problems but but

what should the role of the police

actually be because cracking down on

these kinds of petty crimes or this

disorder it does create problems

racially discriminatory policing a lot

of contacts between police and and often

young black men sometimes tragic

contacts between them I think that's

part of what led to an ideological shift

here so how do you think about that this

idea that the disorder might be bad but

the cost of enforcing it is also High

there's a really interesting history

there and I don't want to get too in the

weeds but you know I think that struggle

is not new the struggle between the

benefits of petty crime enforcement and

the costs of petty crime enforcement or

disordering enforcement um roll the

clock back at this point 50 years the

way that people thought about policing

this is 1970s 1980s people thought about

policing predominantly as the job of the

police is to respond to Major Crimes uh

which they learn about through the

emergency call system they spend a lot

of the time in their cars they aren't

really out engaging with the community

and we have such a big major crime

problem at this point that why would we

even worry about the little stuff well

the clock forward 20 years to the 1990s

the emergence of the term that we have

not used but it's sort of gerine to this

conversation is broken windows policing

which is often understood to mean

although I will argue in a second

probably should not be understood as but

often understood to mean enforcing

against minor crimes is a way to control

Major Crimes the adoption of those

strategies in some shape or form I think

is a key component of at least in some

places the scale of the crime decline

that we saw in the 1990s the dramatic

reductions in violence that made

American cities livable once again um

Franklin zimmering the criminologist has

a book called the city that became safe

which is about New York's experience

specifically and he argues the reason

that new New York in particular

experienced such a large decline even

relative to the rest of the country is

because of its adoption of these tactics

under Rudy Giuliani and then

subsequently Mike Bloomberg but that of

course breeds its own backlash because

people start to notice that in some way

shape or form these are often very

aggressive tactics there are two

objections here one is that there is

something objectionable about the

policing of minor behavior per se

of going after people for something that

just doesn't seem like a big deal and

the other objection is that in many

cases this activity ends up looking

racially disproportionate if you're a

young black man in Chicago New York you

said a lot of your time getting stopped

and frisked so you know I think that

that criticism of that strategy

absolutely has driven changes in

policing behavior in some senses the

fight over stop and frisk in New York

and Chicago helped Drive the entire

police Reform movement the way in my

mind to out of that tension is to go

back to what broken windows policing is

about if you go back and read what James

Q Wilson George Kelling wrote about in

the 1980s uh what Kelling would

subsequently write about with Katherine

Kohl's in his book on buring wood is

policing and what other Advocates of

Community Based policing people like

Bill Bratton talk about they are often

quite skeptical of the most intensive

forms of the strategy the the

illustrative example I like to give is

that at the end of the Giuliani

Administration NYPD was doing 100,000

stop and frisks a year in the Bloomberg

Administration they were doing 700,000