>> welcome to al jazeera america i'm john siegenthaler. here are the top stories. tonight it's looking more like the government is going to shut down. no siren of a deal to avert a shut down right now. at the united nations, syria's prime minister said, the conflict is not a war but a war on terror. u.n. inspectors start the process of verifying and eliminating chemical weapons tomorrow. two popes will be joining the list of saints.

john paul ii and john pall xxiii will be canonized next year. five hikers were killed by a rock slides in colorado, this morning. a 13-year-old girl survived and flown to a nearby hospital. the names of the victims have not been released. that's the latest news at this hour. al jazeera will have the latest on the government shut down coming up and you can get more news on aljazeera.com.

>> israel isn't buying iran's charm offensive. president obama is listening to israeli concerns but still moving ahead. consider this, shake up the balance of power in the middle east? also bombshell elaboration impact u.s. intelligence gathering on al qaeda. we'll tell you what the reveal was and why everyone is so worried. and is the decade of research on hard drugs including cocaine and heroin heroin wrong? i'm antonio mora, on consider this. still spinning from iranian president rouhani, as al jazeera's courtney ceel keely reports, netanyahu warned the u.s. not to be fooled by

rouhani. >> iran is committed to israel's destruction. >> israeli president benjamin netanyahu said the only diplomatic solution is for iran to dismantle its nuclear program. >> in fact it is israel's firm belief that if iran continues to advance its nuclear program during negotiations the sanctions should be strengthened. >> days after the historic phone call between obama and iranian president h5n1. hassan rouhani. he said he would speak out against the iranian charm offensive and the sweet talk of smiles. the last time rouhani was at the negotiating table was in 2005 as iran's chief negotiate poor. he worked with the governments to suspend the iranian nuclear

enrichment program. prawn completed the isphaan nuclear factory. short amount of time. but the reception upon his return to teheran was marred by protestors hurling eggs and shoes, a sheer sign of disrespect. president obama said he would arrive at talks clear eyed and with inspection. >> in order for us to provide the sort of sanctions relief that i think they are looking for. >> president rouhani can only act with the blessing of the grand ayatollah .

>> joining me, the author of the new middle east, which comes out tomorrow, thank you both for being with us tonight. paul, i want to start with you. on twitter you said, netanyahu at the white house discussing his worst nightmare, an iranian president the u.s. thinks it can deal with. why is this such a nightmare? >> because netanyahu doesn't believe the iranians, he really thinks they're lying. he bleeft that the iranians are trying to pull the wool over obama's eyes and obama may just fall for it. this is big stuff for him. this is not the palestinian issue, which he is not really bothered about it, he does not see himself as a plan who is going to pledge peace with the palestinians,. >> where this could work out and the nuclear program in iran

could be dialed down? >> he weant convinced about the sanctions. some of the most senior military intelligence people, sanctions would work, he's not going to beat the iranians either. >> not after rouhani was elected already back then he was expressing serious concerns about rouhani. >> very serious concerns and yes was very focused on his concerns and the fact -- and i think american experts say the same thing that while the talks are going on the iranians are modifyinmovingtowards highly enm which is what you make a bomb for. >> he quoted his days as nuclear negotiator for iran, saying they had negotiated with the europeans and while did he that they went ahead with their

plans. >> he quoted rouhani directly saying while they called things down through negotiations with the europeans as you mentioned that they were able to go ahead and finish actually the plant isfahan which is one of the plants they are building. and i think right now most of the experts not just the is israelis believe that iran is not far away from benjamin netanyahu's red line, enough highly enriched yeurm t uraniume one bomb. >> obama and netanyahu have had their ups and downs, certainly more downs, but he has told to dial it down and not attack the president. but a document describing prowfn

smile bus rich, and a wolf in sheep's clothing. it's clear netanyahu is not buying it. let's listen to his own words. >> like north korea before it, iran will try to remove sanctions while offering cosmetic sanctions, and rapidly building a nuclear weapon at the time of its choosing. >> they don't want to fight anymore. when obama came to israel, they went out of their way to be nice. it was bb this and bb that. once they got reelected they had to work together, because there were big issues that had to be dealt with. i think realistically netanyahu knows that obama is going to try

odiplomattic route. he said it in his first and second inaugural speech. in the meantime the iranians will carry on making a bomb and it will be too late. >> it is not playing that well, he is saying to dial it down, there was an israeli lawmaker that said he hopes obama is not an appeaser nor become the next neviil chamberlain. >> a carefully picked bunch of students, obama is not loved, liked more than he was because he went to israel and made and effort. but he's not loved and not trusted by the politicians. they're going to badger netanyahu to put pressure on obama to make sure he doesn't waver. there was a red line and obama

kept pulling back from it. >> he backed out of it. >> he backed out of it and when push came to shove he didn't want to carry out military action and that made the israelis nervous. >> it played a lot of foreign states nervous, in that obama says if they use chemical weapons, i will use force against them, then of course the deadline came, and it was an international red line and went to congress, and when all was said and done, prussians bailed him out and salvaged the situation for obama and the russians were really the victors in syria. >> how this is perceived by other countries in the middle east, we have got saudi arabia, and the new york times described one of the rare occasions when l

israel and saudi arabia were on the same side, your best friend flirting with your main rival. how does this play out in the middle east, when you've got israel and saudi arabia on the same page for once? >> israel and saudi arabia although they wouldn't say it in public, on the same page, i think egypt they are very much on the same side, they're very happy that the military stepped in, very happy that the muslim brothers are gone. as this gentleman said so cleverly, i do agree with him that it is israel's real nightmare? a nubltio nuclear rawn and irani arabia's worst nightmare, a nuclear iran.

>> my neighbor is also my friend? >> it's a big sectarian conflict centered around syria. hezbollah and syrian regime and the saudis who have been pumping money into their proxies. this all got turned upside down by the 2003 invasion of iraq, when he went and the taliban had gone it changed the whole game. >> and how about the reception in iran to all this? we saw what happened this weekend, seeing this again, he went home, waving at a crowd, some people are happy but others are throwing shoes and all kinds of things at him. >> i think the thing about iran is all that's changed there is a new guy who's called president. really, ahmadinejad was everybody's crazy, so crazy, rouhani smiles and talks and is

a completely different kettle of fish and that means that israel has got to completely rethink how i.t -- >> the hard liners in iran are having issue with what he has done before. >> he is a cleric rouhani don't forget and he was a nuclear negotiator. and ahmadinejad candidate was ruled out of the last presidential election by khoumeni. the supreme leader. i actually went to teheran and interviewed ahmadinejad which is fantastically interesting. but i wonder about these demonstrations, there wasn't a lot of free movement in the street, so to speak, there weren't any demonstrations, all the demonstrators were locked up. >> we saw a fairly colorful speech, here he is with the bomb

and showing the different stages of enrichment and what the red line would be. >> i think netanyahu is a tremendously effective speaker, he speaks perfect english and studied in this issue. he really cares, he believes his job is to protect israel from the second holocaust. he believes he was put on ertd to do that, something he cares passionately about. he will try to impart to the world his view, that they should tighten sanctions, which president obama says, he doesn't want to do. whether he uses new evidence, he told me in the interview that iran was making icbms which could reach america. perhaps he'll talk something about the icbms which will try the american and european readers, that this is not just a threat at israel but aimed at

the world and other parts of the world. >> what do you think, the sanctions do seem to be having an effect on iran, will he be able to sway president obama in the negotiations to not loosen anything up until they've got some really clear concessions? >> well, he's not believed in the sanctions netanyahu, his military did, i've spoken to very senior people in the israeli military, and they do believe the saption he would work, all this is when the unga, congress is busy doing other things, the congress isn't good for him. coming after howfn, the party's over -- rouhani, the party's over, it's going to be adult six to 12 months coming up for netanyahu. >> we will watch carefully and hope you will be back with us. thank you for being with us tonight. coming up next, u.s. intelligence agencies say a

major leak, is anything being done about it? what do you think? our social media producer hermella aregawi is fielding your questions. she'll bring them to us. please contact us by going to facebook or twitter, we'll be right back. [[voiceover]] from lucrative defense contracts to behind-the-scene lobbyists. >>did egyptians ever think that aid would actually be cut? >>never. [[voiceover]] fault lines explores the enduring relationship between the american and the egyptian militaries. >>i don't think we will suffer now. we already have airplanes, tanks ... >>they haven't changed the nature of what they provide us. why would we want to change what we provide them? that's all i have an real money.

victoria azarenko

>> could a leak of an al qaeda communication, be freighter than dwarnd snowden's nsa secrets, not as much immediate damage as a story that appeared last month in the times and mcclatchy

newspapers. between al qaeda chief ayman al zwahiri, mcclatchy reported the names first, since that leak according to one intelligence official, there has been a real decrease in quality in al qaeda intercepts from a major communications channel the united states had been monitoring. for more i'm joined by robert grenier, director of counterterrorism from 2005 to 2006, now chairman of the advisory board at errg partners. and with me is karen greenberg, director of the security at national security, at fordham law school. the original new york times

item, credited, leaking the story, that broke a few days after the state department had put down a global alert, because of fears of an al qaeda attack. does that tell us something about who released the story and why? could the story have been put out justify the moves they did in closing all those diplomatic posts? >> there was somebody in the administration specifically at the state department who were under pressure for coming up with some sort of explanation. the problem with situations like this, i've seen this before is that when you just tell part of the story, that just sets the hounds in the press baying and they will leave no stone unturned to find out the rest of the story and apparently they have found out at least a substantial part of it. >> what was going on there karen, we had had new snowden

revelations every single day, bopping between hong kong and russia and all these place he, could this have been part of the administration leaking something to make them look good that mayor florida surveillance efforts were something positive and helpful to american security? >> i mean someone could put that spin on it but it has such a cynical undertone i think it's best to stay away from that. yes, it's possible but it is possible there was such a threat and they used the media to help let the american public know about that threat. i don't think we know about that question and we may never know. >> does it have to be so specific to disclose who was involved, especially two al qaeda leaders? >> probably not. when you have a government that's obsessed with leaks just how this one came about if that in fact was the origination of

it. we'll find going forward i think. >> the mcclatchy was the first that mentioned zawahri, it's difficult to believe that letting anyone know that we could intercept contacts between al qaeda's two top guys could be a good thing. so why, the question now is, one was it leaked and two, why have we not heard about any kind of substantial efforts to find who leaked? >> well, clearly the information was leaked. the question is, was this an authorized leak? and i would agree with karen, she's maybe been a little bit measured but i think very strongly that this watt not an authorized leak. now god knows this administration has been fairly liberal with authorized leaks when they thought it would work to their benefit. but something like this is so sensitive and could have such a serious impact on our ability to

intercept terrorist communications that i can't believe something of this detail would have been authorized to have been leaked. so i think this was very damaging and the mere fact that we haven't heard anything about a follow-up investigation doesn't to my mind indicate that such an investigation might not be in fact happening. >> well bob makes the point that this administration has been somewhat loose in allowing leaks that benefited it. it has also been quite aggressive in pursuing leakers than any other administration in the past. again there may be an active justice department investigation for all we know karen but are you surprised we haven't heard any outrage out of the administration about this? >> i am surprised. what i tell myself is they are probably investigating this more than they are telling already. this administration aggressively go after leakers particularly to the press. this is an administration that has made the statement time and

time again, there aren't going to be any leaks in the national security really. realm, this one that goes back to the government itself, i assume there is something to be done. >> bob what would -- >> could i say here, before this leak came out through mcclatchy, a couple of days before the new york times was ready to go to press and was dissuaded to go to press until mcclatchy did it anyway. >> what is would your reaction have been if this had happened? >> i would have considered this as an unmitigated disaster. i remember a slightly analogous case, in 1975, there was an intercepted communication between dr. ayman al zawahri,

and the courier was arrested, and therefore they had to assume that anything on his person was going to be di die didivulged. by leaking this information, they become aware that they have been exromgzed and therefore are able to shut it down. >> but what would you say, i mean they could close 19 embassies, so somebody was going to know something was going on. the american people were going to know. so couldn't you see a leak, a minor leak perhaps a more minor leak being instrumental in educating the public about what they were going to know about anyway? and could you imagine the kind of guessing that was going on if something didn't appear in the press? >> there needed to be some explanation no question about

that. we have seen it in other cases as well, an administration spokesman tries to come out with a limited explanation of what is taking place and it's recognized in the press that there must be more to the story than that. unfortunately, some might disagree but i would say unfortunately they have enough inroads into the u.s. government that sooner or later they have someone who is willing to talk. >> the statement on the daily beast, he had a conference call around middle east, central africa and asia, and it was like a meeting of the lee legion of . this was clearly not a conference call, that was the report of the daily beast. does it make any sense that these people who have been very careful about their security,

especially al zawahri, could have been on a conference call that was intercepted? >> in bin laden's world, who knows what goes on in the zawahri world. it's surprising that they would do something that was potentially that transparent but that doesn't mean it didn't happen. >> because in the bin laden world he had virtually no electronic communication at all in his compound at abadabad. why captain we find him and get rid of him? >> first of all, this story screams fabrication to me. this simply isn't the way the different so-called franchises of al qaeda work. they somehow derive their authority from it. these are loosely affiliated organizations, have little or no

communication or affiliation with al qaeda central the organization that was responsible for 9/11 and is still based in the tribal areas between afghanistan and pcts. spack pakistan. i don't believe that's the way these relationships work. then if you extrapolate from that, the story of some sort of a conference call simply makes no sense to me. on its security merits, if you will, i would agree that ayman al zawahri wouldn't have survived as long as he has -- >> if he were getting conference calls. make no sense to me. the dropoff has been mainly from al qaeda and yemen'which has been the most active of all the al qaeda branches recently. what does that tell you? >> it tells you that first of all you don't know what to tie that to. whether you could tie it to the

leak story or to the snowden story, the fact is after the snowden elaboration everybody is a little -- leaks everybody is a little concerned. that follows the pattern of behavior but perhaps now there is more heightened concern and particularly after whatever happened, whatever plot there was. so general caution, yes. >> according to a senior administration foacialg, the snowden thing was layered and layered. a lot of these guys think they are not impacted by it and it is difficult stuff for them to understand. but the times also quoted national terrorism center matthew owen saying, al qaeda groups seeking to change their tactics and how they avoid detection. bob, what response do you think

best describes al qaeda's reaction to the snowden revelations? >> well, i guess i would be more inclined to lean towards the former. but i think that both probably have elements of truth. i think that the snowden revelations were so general and while they mayor have been very interesting to some people in terms of their specificity, i think the only thing they said to al qaeda is nsa has tremendous capabilities and they are out there listening. something they knew or strongly suspected already. in many cases this confirmed their suspicions, i think it was sort of a reminder that they need to be careful both the way they use communications and the types of information they quayed when using those communications. so i would see this leak involving specific communication between rouhashi and zawahri as being probably much more

damaging potentially and i would not be at all surprised then that we would see the major implications of that resounding in the asian peninsula. >> bob and karen i appreciate you being with us tonight and thanks for sharing your expertise on this. coming up as enrollment continues on obamacare, what the plan it's based on. and breaking bad series finale gets rave reviews. we'll be right back. hard-hitting debate and desenting views and always explore issues relevant to you. >> obama administration officials said they need to enrol 2.7 u.s. redents between the ages of 18 and 35 in

exchange plans to balance risks and hold down costs. will they enrol come 1 october - should they pay the face. >> joining me now is jen mishory, deputy director of young invincibles, she's in washington d.c. and yevgeniy feyman, a research assistant at the manhattan institute. thank you for being with us. i want to start with you yevgeniy feyman. the young people are crucial to the success of obamacare. >> absolutely. they'll balance out the risk pool, they'll keep premiums that need the insurance, and the administration is reaching out to them. >> jen, the young invincibles are in the 18-34 group. hi, my name is jonathan betz, and i'm from dallas, texas, and i'm an anchor for al jazeera america. i started in a small television station in rural arkansas. it's a part of the country that often gets overlooked. but there are a lot of fascinating people there, a lot of fascinating stories there.

i like that al jazeera will pay attention to those kinds of places. what drew me to journalism is i like the idea that we are documenting history. al jazeera documents it like none other. and to be a journalist, and to be part of a team like that? that's an incredible blessing. while mitt romney was governor. does it offer a good indicator of what we can expect nationally? dr. john kingsdale, these days he is the director of the wakeley consulting group, knows the sides of the debate in

massachusetts and nationally. really appreciate can you being with us. we want to talk about the positives and negatives in massachusetts. shortage in primary care physicians and specialists and even hospital beds. do you think that's the case? and do we have growing pains on a federal level that could lead to that? >> certainly not nurses and hospital beds. there are some shortages in the capan islands and the areas of massachusetts, access to care what we newly ensured about 400,000 residents put a little bit more strain there. but you know massachusetts frankly has a very high and healthy ratio of clinicians to

populations, and most of the uninsured frankly get their care at community health centers and those have been staffed up and doing a really tremendous job of taking care of the newly insured and certainly the four years i was running the exchange here, we did not see any complaints in core areas of massachusetts for access to primary care. >> but one of the main objectives of obamacare is to control costs and last year health care in massachusetts maids up approximately 43% of the state budget. if that were to happen at a federal level that would be catastrophic. are opponents wrong when they point to that number as a concern? >> if they draw the comparison to the federal budget they are certainly wrong. yes it is substantial in massachusetts as it is in many state budgets. neck and neck with education in many state budgets. it is really the relevant

comparison for the federal cost, and the cost of the affordable care act is borne almost entirely by the federal government as opposed to states, is really before and after. and here in massachusetts the cost to the state budget went up about $350 million, net net, with the ability to ensure another eight or so percent of our population, get our uninsurance rate down to about 2%. that $350 million is significant but in the context of a $30 billion state budget that's a little over 1%. so was it a significant commitment on the part of the taxpayers in massachusetts, yes, was it a budget buster, absolutely not. >> still individual health care cost has grown more than the national average, premiums rose by 9.7% and benefits decreased by 5% while at the same time

deductibles rose by 40%. if romney care is not controlling costs in massachusetts do we have an expectation that obamacare will do it nationally? >> wow, there are about four different questions rolled into that one. so let me give you a brief answer to each one of those. romney care as you call it was really not developed to control cost. it was developed primarily to ensure the uninsured at a reasonable cost. and i just went over some of the increased cost with you. in fact the increased cost in health care in massachusetts have come down in the five or six years of the last decade and since health care was enacted have been coming down and down and down. in fact in the last couple of years they have been to the 2 to 3% range and one of the largest

health insurers announced a rate decrease for the parts affected by the affordable care act, small group and felon group rates. i would say compared to the past, it hasn't made much of a difference, if anything a little bit downward pressure. and then there's the question you asked about, so what's the implication for affordable care act in cost containment? and there the affordable care act has a lot of elements frankly that was left out of massachusetts health reform in 2006-2011. but -- 2011. 2007. what we are seeing is a significant uptick in the level of competition among the health insurers, some new insurance companies and very much focused on price competition as opposed to sort of consumer add-ons that

only confuse folks so i'm optimistic. >> another concern is the number of people covered by employer health plans has decreased in massachusetts. estimates are that under obamacare there will be decreases of about 7 million over the first decade that will fall off of employer covered plans because of employers not wanting to pay health insurance under obamacare. concerns there? >> well, the numbers i know, from having led health reform here for several years, were that we actually saw an increase of about 100,000 covered lives through employers through group insurance in the first two years of reform. 2006 to 2008. then of course whole country got hit by the big recession. and we lost some jobs and we lost some coverage then. so we went down to about the

2006 level by 2010. >> right. >> i actually have -- >> in talking about jobs, that was one of the concerns about romneycare and that seems not so have come through, only job related losses, it seems that massachusetts has really not lost any jobs because of romney care and in fact 90% of doctors there are happy with the system. >> well, that's true about physician support and i think it's also true that it was not a job killer by any -- in any sense of the word. in fact i think a lot of the criticisms and some of the claims of success, frankly for what massachusetts did, and what the aca is going odo are completely overblown. the impact frankly on employment here was noddest one way or the other. -- modest one way or the other. i don't think the impact of the affordable care act is going to be significant one way or the

other frankly. >> of course the biggest positive is massachusetts has the highest rate of insured residents, 98%, that is a tremendous jump. what do you think will happen, you don't think obamacare will quite get to those numbers but it will make a big difference. >> i was going to say 98% is almost civilized. that would be considered poor performance by most of the other industrialized world but the 16 or so% across the country which is 50 million people across this country without insurance. the goal that the backers have said is to get to 95%, that will take three or four years. 95% insured and that still leaves about 5% of the country uninsured. some of those are illegal residents and others just won't be reached by this reform. >> there have been some kinks that they were working out in massachusetts. there were issues about access

to doctors and time of access. but a lot of those complaints have certainly gone down over the years. is that what you see happening with obamacare, it will take a few years before things settle down? >> i think i have to tell you that my experience was most much those complaints were articulated by right wing editorialists, there was very, very little complaining here. i'm glad you think it settled down, i'm not sure it was ever there. i think the national -- >> to be fair, the massachusetts medical society said about one in five residents said they waited longer than usual to see a doctor. it's now one in five down from one in four in 2008. so that's not a right wing commentator but certainly things are getting better. >> yeah, if you went back to their 23s in 2003 you would find something similar. i'll just leave it at that. but i do want tç]sachusetts

situation with us. >> breaking bad, how does it stack up? next.

>> in light of sunday night's breaking bad finale, don't worry no spoilers here. 10.3 million viewers tuned in to see walter white's conclusion. the sought after 18 to 49 age bracket. it's clear cable networks can compete with the best of broadcast channels. ratings have drastically changed thanks to dvrs and to streaming sites, including netflix and amazon prime. hard to predict when viewers will watch their shows or what to watch them on. audiences have splintered, mash,

my favorite show ever said good-bye in 1983, as 105.9 million viewers watched. but ten years later another huge hit cheers had a massive audience but 25 million fewer than mash. seinfeld dropped in 1998 and friends got a send off but half of mash's audience two decades before. and these cable fares did as well as their cable brethren, sopranos did better than breaking bad and sex and the city took in 10.6 million in 2004. the broadcast networks, lost was the big event in 2010, desperate housewives, only had 11.2 million watching it say going. the emmys proved how, breaking

bad's finale is not far behind in audience acclaim. coming up, we'll move about a show of crystal meth to the real thing. they think it's addictive but a doctor says in his new book, not so fast. he journeys me next. -- he joinsme next.

[[voiceover]] gripping films from the world the world's top documentary directors. >>banging your head over and over again can be a bad thing. >>every time i would do heading i would see stars. [[voiceover]] it's all fun and games until tragedy strikes. >>a former player kills himself. >>we have to stop playing the game, or we have to

find a solution. >> you've all heard how powerfully addictive drugs are. you've probably learned how using crystal meth or heroin even once creates a habit that is hard to break. but arguing a scapegoat of deeper problems of poverty and race, that neuroscientist is the author of high price, a neuroscientist's journey of self discovery that challenges everything you know about drugs and society. carl thank you for being here. >> thank you for having me.

>> you say 80% of people who use drugs like crack and heroin are not really addicted to them. you hear so many stories you use crystal meth once, heroin once and you are addicted forever. why is that not the case? >> we have learned that the majority of people, 80, 90% of people that use drugs that you name do not become addicted. we think about why we believe that people become addicted to these drugs after one hit, it's mainly based on anecdotal hysteria. but when we critically think of it we think about the last three guys who occupied the white house, for example, president clinton, president bush, president obama, they used illegal drugs but didn't become addicted. >> didn't immediately become

addicted. >> i'm saying 10% of these folks will become addicted, who use drugs, that's a fact. but we have overblown the extent to which these drugs are addicted. >> you did experiments, why don't you explain those for us. >> we did a number of experiments but those -- >> where you offered a little bit of money. >> one of the things i believed when i started doing this research was that one hit of cocaine perhaps for a crack cocaine addict, had them going off on a binge, you can't avoid that behavior. when you have a sexually receptive mate, sweet treats and whatever, you can provide alternative behavior. if you provide something like $5 versus a hit of crack cocaine, you can get people to choose $5 about half of the time.

but when you up that to about $20 you can get -- they won't take drug anymore, they'll take the money on all occasions. >> so people who might have thought they were addicted you actually proved they were not? >> it's not that they weren't addicted. it's that even people who are addicted -- >> you can break it? >> we can disrupt this behavior when you provide the appropriate alternatives. >> one of the ves interesting is rat park -- >> there were a number of studies but rat park is one of the places that people talk about. canadian bruce alexander provided rats with a choice to take morphine or some animals had a choice between morphine and playing with other rats, or in cages that were not isolated, but when the animals were isolated they took the morphine. but when they weren't isolated they chose to play with their other rat colleagues. >> now if they are not as addictive as we thought then why do so many people get addicted

to drugs and have as many approximate as they do have? >> i don't know that i would say so many people. >> about 20%. >> any behavior, any type of behavior that concerns society, people who drive their cars too fast, who drive reckless and so forth? there are a no. number of people who do that. we do that safely. but most of the focuses on drugs, you have shows like breaking bad, shows that highlight aberrant behavior, it is not representative, it is without thinking the fact that that relative or that person life was already screwed up before they were using crack cocaine. >> their society, their environment makes a big difference on whether they get addicted or not.

we have a viewer question, let's go to our social media producer hermella aregawi for that. >> i've read stories about addiction thinking that addicts are actually ill not suffering from a lack of moral come pats. how does that play into your research that only a small portion of drug users become addicts. >> the fact is people become addicted for a variety of reasons. the fact remains that ten to 20% of these people will become addicted, they will become addicted for other reasons, because they have co-occurring other diseases like skits frain schizophrenia. i'm not saying it's a simple sort of explanation for addiction because that's not true. >> one thing you do talk about is when teenagers bet caught or

thrown into jail or thrown into juvenile detention and there's also a vancouver injection study where teens who do drugs and not get caught, seem to do better than those are, you agree? >> the last three guys who occupied the white house those guys did drugs. and we did not get caught, we wert put in the lockup, we weren't incarcerated. but those who were likely to be reincarcerated, incarceration, you have lack of supervision all of these things. >> your experience in a poor neighborhood, you used some drugs even sold some drugs. >> that's right. >> you were not at any point detained and that made a big difference in your life where others who were --

>> i try to describe i have friends many of whom were smarter than me, they were caught and incarcerated, and as a result whereas i didn't, i did better in life than they did. that's not to glorify what i did but just to point out. >> you are not in any way advocating drugs we should make that clear. but you do call for decrilzation. not legalization, you are basically saying if somebody buys drugs uses drugs that that should not be a problem. >> when we think about the united states for example, each year we arrest 1.5 million people for drugs and 80% of those people are arrested for simple position. that means they have a blemish on their record, they can't get jobs, are not going to be paying taxes. one way to deal with this, particularly since the assumptions on which our drug policies are baysed are applaud.

it's not legal, it's just when people get caught they get the equivalent of a traffic violation. they get a fine. >> what about the argument that by buying drugs, that anybody who buys drugs is basically fueling the drug industry which is an incredibly violent industry that's responsible for thousands of deaths worldwide and for terror in some places, the areas around the mexican border, terrible situation, that by buying drugs you are contributing to that? >> that is hyperbole, we sell cars to people who drive recklessly, the automobile industries are being careless. that's -- that argument for me holds no weight. >> but you -- are you against legalization? you wouldn't want to go as far as legalizing drugs and having that under the government's

control? >> in the book i argue against legalization. i argue more for decriminalization. i do that because the american public is so ignorant about drugs. not that the drugs themselves might have a problem but we would attribute some of the problems to drugs when in fact it is not drugs. it is because we have more available iavailability it is ae drugs and we are ignorant as to what drugs do and do not do. >> unfortunately we are out of time. you are worried about the consequence rather than the control by the government. >> i'm worried lack of education. >> i understand but we got to leave it there. read the book. the show may be over but the conversation continues, aljazeera.com/consider this, on facebook and twitter.

we'll see you next time. >> good evening, everyone. welcome to al jazeera america. i'm john siegenthaler.