the appalling scale of violence in iraq. we want you to know. hello and welcome to worlds apart there's been a notable warming up in polls today via of cannabis legalization in recent decades even though governments in the world are not really a rational to follow through on that will our land become the next to decriminalize

mary j. well to discuss that i'm now joined by loop. a member of the irish parliament and a longtime supporter of such move mr flanagan thank you very much for your time i know that you've been complaining for cannabis legalization pretty much throughout your political career but most recently it seems that there is a real momentum towards that not just in our land but also but in much of around the western world why do you think that is why i think at this stage the vast majority of people in the western world have worked out. the criminalization of cannabis users is not working i mean are you is estimated that there are up to two hundred fifty thousand people who use cannabis every year there are one hundred thousand people who've ended up with a criminal record for position as a result of this and at this stage i think people have worked out that the current strategy is not working it's leaving money in the hands of the criminals and it's actually making cannabis

a far more dangerous substance now i know that you recently introduced the bill on the cannabis legalization to the dole the irish parliament and some of your fellow m.p.'s have been pretty skeptical some are even openly critical of such a proposal with all the aware and those that you mentioned earlier why do you think there is still such a strong opposition to this move. well i suppose the reality is that the vast majority of the members of our dollar the members of our parliament appear to be opposed to this legislation and i would suggest that the reason why they would be opposed is that they are afraid as being seen as soft on drugs somehow and they're not being as hard line as maybe they expect. for them to be and b. at this stage it's becoming clear to me that the general public i've actually moved on on this issue you look at what they call our paper of record here in this country the irish times you read the articles that have been written about this

proposed legislation and it's just quite clear from the comments that should be made hundreds of them that it seems that the irish public of walking up to the fact that the war on cannabis has failed and that there needs to be an older strategy i know that people who oppose the criminalization of cannabis sometimes happen to be smokers sometime happen to be consumers are partly qur'an i think by now it's not even debated that the how often. using both tobacco and alcohol are much more detrimental both on personal level and for national health care systems but at the same time you can't really claim that kind of this is good for your health so i wonder can your really justified you know be decriminalised one unhealthy substance by claiming that you know the rest as well i think the first thing we have to do is actually near the lie that has been put out there by some people that actually cannabis is more harmful than tobacco and alcohol and we had it on our

national media over the last couple of weeks but it is quite clear according to the world health organization that it is less harmful but then. but of course everything is harmful in the wrong hands. is harmful in the wrong hands and in the right hands it means you can name a jumper which you wouldn't ban needles. on the basis that some people might misuse them now there are many myths out there about cannabis and one of them is this incorrect link to schizophrenia and i think the best way to knock that myth is to look at great britain and its cannabis use each rates between one nine hundred seventy two and two thousand and two during that period the amount of people use cannabis in great britain increased four fold in the general population indoors under eighteen years of age is actually increased ford if the studies that have been pushed out there attempting to link schizophrenia with cannabis were correct then we would have seen

a twenty seven percent increase in schizophrenia in great britain over that period when in fact studies have quite clearly shown that it has stayed the same and actually at best there has been a reduction in the number of people with schizophrenia supporters of cannabis legalization have long insisted that such a move would reduce the cost of maintaining law enforcement and criminal justice but i think most recently they have been shifting to a different sort of argument and that is that it would allow not only to save money but also make money and in ireland these days i guess any money making opportunity would be very appealing cannabis offer a way out of us that aren't seen we'll look at obviously in itself it's not going to be a whale of a star issue for an economy like ours and worth about two hundred billion euros it's not really going to change the position massively borscht there are obvious financial gain it's a story recently that came out of israel suggested that it would actually save that

country and make that country up to four hundred fifty million american dollars and if you compare that to ireland we actually have twice the usage rates that they have in israel we have about half their population so i don't think it would be unreasonable to suggest that would be worth about three hundred million euros to the economy irish. every year there are savings to the criminal justice system to the fact that there are eight thousand people every year in ireland dragged before the courts and this cost an awful lot of money there is also the fact that those one hundred thousand people who have a criminal record currently are actually inhibits fish from getting involved in gratian economic activity and the reason behind that is because once you have a criminal record for possession of cannabis you are no longer allowed to walk in a really decent job and even if legalization was to free those one hundred thousand people up to produce an extra one thousand euros a year for the economy that is worth one hundred million euros and so my figure of

three hundred million actually i think it is very conservative bush it's better to be careful on this rather than being accused of exaggerating down the line but if you look at the bill that proposed so far most of the matters that you suggested primarily deal with personal or communal years of cannabis you are not at this stage promoting large scale commercial cultivation and i wonder why restrain yourself with partial decriminalization because we fear all the time that ireland needs growth why not facilitate that through the growth of cannabis well i actually think you're incorrect and i think you've misinterpreted my bill because my calls for total legalization also allow for the fact that many people would like to grow their own or also people would like to buy it from a not for profit organization such as a kind of a social club like they have set up and barcelona which we have also allowed for their commercial sector we have commercial licenses we have

a retail licenses and let's say just from a practical point of view if my bill was passed it would mean in the morning that a person who wants to use cannabis could go into a shop to purchase it they could go into a coffee shop to purchase it they can possess up to one ounce of cannabis them says if they don't have a license to girlish bottle eternal. they would have the option of going at them says now many people probably think that if it's legalized they would grow at themselves but i think all we need to do is look at the alcohol market if she's not rocket science to make alcohol with the fast majority of people don't even in a country like ours and which i believe has a problem and the reason why they're daunted is because of convenience and i think you would see something very similar in the cannabis markers but the biggest saving belief would occur is as a result of wash professor david milch from the drugs advisory commission in great britain said he estimates that alcohol use each would reduce by twenty five percent

if cannabis was legalized in ireland the stats are us follow us out of college costs this economy of to three point four billion euros every year if we reduce alcohol in this country by a quarter it wouldn't be unrealistic to say there's another seven to eight hundred million euros that we can actually use for youth unemployment to help the edge early who can't get a decent health service at the moment and it could be spent in the taxed economy as opposed to leaving us with criminals and people who are very dangerous you just mentioned alcoholic beverages that are and has quite a few brands that how people relax and i know that the sales of. creasing all over the world especially in the american market the same is happening with the sales of irish beer would you like arlen to be a no no haven famous for your brand of cannabis while they i wouldn't particularly

want to contribute to be known for that bush has sadly at the moment is very well known for a far more harmful drug so i can't see how we should make it any worse than the current situation my ambition on this isn't that we end up with a large scale export all. i would like to see from an environmental perspective anyway if we apply the proximity principle we grow and we use it as close as possible in the same place because the idea that it ends up like out of college where you have massive advertising etc that would really turn me off and in my they're serious impositions when it comes to advertising and cannabis and in particular we have made the decision not to allow it to be advertised with support even though the government will probably force against a spin or actually balking at the idea of taking the advertisement of a far more harmful drug out for sports at the moment because they say

a sport can't afford this ironic and you touch upon a very interesting phenomenon that is taking place in ireland these days you mention the start see it before and i know that people because they're so constrained for money a saving on clothing communication transport but as you pointed out the consumption of alcohol is increasing in ireland and isn't that a reason ultimately to shelf your proposal for a little while and wait until social conditions have been better you know the rate of unemployment the rates of depression go down because you know that people turn to these substances to escape the harsh realities if we've seen that with alcohol why don't you think that's going to happen with cannabis well as i've already said on many occasions out is a far more harmful drug than cannabis and if a it was a case that cannabis didn't exist that people currently didn't use this or that it wasn't here then your argument would be stronger but the reality is here and he's

here to stay is he's not going to disappear off this planet and we have a choice we either allow the criminals to be the vendors or we allow the. economy to be the vendors bashes the decision that we have to make at the moment i knew all i would prefer for this morning to go to war health service. than the type of people who would shoot you over this issue but i think the problem both with alcohol and other sorts of substances is moderation you know even alcohol in itself is not a problem we all know about drinking a glass of wine a day and being good for your heart but the problem is of course that in the time of social upheaval at the time of economic hardship people have difficulty south regulating and south moderating so. why don't you think that something like this could happen because you're adding one more substance to dive live substances that well i actually i actually don't believe you are adding any new substance as i've

already said is already out there and as professor david north has said he believes would reduce by twenty five percent so i believe we would see a societal gain but the results of the other important part and point at the moment when people buy cannabis in this country and in most countries around the world they do not know how strong it is they don't know what the percentage of t.h.c. to c.b.d. is which is very important because one is a psychotic and the older is an anti-psychotic and currently in the republic of ireland people are actually mixing cannabis with other substances to increase its weight which is turning this into a very very carcinogenic substance and in some cases they're mixing it with psychiatric drugs so if it was legalized national would it take take away from the black economy it would also make it infinitely safer because people wouldn't know what they were using exactly what they were using mr flanagan to have to take a short break now but when we come back the proponents of cannabis legalisation

claim that it may provide a much needed boost economic boost but it is a stereotype of really the best of possibly the worst time to time such a move that's coming up in a few moments on worlds apart. from . technology innovation all the developments from around russia we're going to the future covered. here's. the whole i want to. make up something that is quite simply. was no way oh. clearly they were just at the wrong place at the wrong time. and sold to us and turned over to the us for about the soul that could be buried alive

. was saved with great ever. going to they wanted to turn me into a terrorist so it was with them they wanted me to admit that i was a member of al qaeda or taliban or that i fought with them. not a bad time i didn't even know what al-qaeda is nevertheless there are people all. raving of the start of fighting age. something is going to be done that's going to be done by me and it's been a short amount of time to do it but it's going to impact me i'll be prosecuted but it's going to impact. the wife my daughter. the one time a trap. monarchy. choose your language. make you know if they sell some of. the concerns you could. get to three opinions that in the great book i. choose the

stories that in the light choose to access to often. welcome back to worlds apart of a disgusting the consul kind of this nation of with look mean flanagan an irish member of parliament mr flanagan just before the break we touched upon the. rising alcohol consumption in this country. i know that there is a broader discussion here in ireland on possibly introducing a minimum pricing war for alcohol as one of the ways of producing have a drinking especially among younger people if such a proposal if such a bell was introduced before they would you support something like that yeah i

actually would. have been a champion of the whole idea of trying to reduce or drink usage for the past fifteen or sixteen years i've always said she believes there. are ties in with sports is the biggest contradiction of all time i actually do not think the government will take this seriously because when i started talking about this topic i didn't realize how unpopular is was the amount of people who told me i was wrong that sports needs out and you can't push up the price about call was phenomenal and i would imagine that our government are hearing the same opinions and really what they're doing at the moment is to pay commission to look for another year bush in reality you've heard the phrase kicking the can down the road this is a case of irish started kicking the guinness can down the route and not dealing with the issue because i think they were afraid to tell offend people and i'm of the opinion that a politician should be a signpost to not a weathervane now i know that there have been

a number of studies especially in canada showing that introducing floor on minimum pricing making the booze more expensive proved really effective and curbing having drinking in relation to cannabis how. how accessible how bailable do you think it should be you would you support making it as expansive as possible to discourage people from using there would be a major problem with making us as expensive as possible because then the criminal markers would enter and where that tipping point combs they would enter so one thing that you have to be very careful about when legalizing cannabis is that the price is set at such a level that people use the product that's been sold in the taxed economy and that is very very important although the legislation would be pretty much pointless now but at the same time i know that your bill also mentions that some of their tax revenues that could be generated by cannabis could be used to fund drug addiction

services medical research juvenile education courses and drugs so i assume the more revenues you get from cannabis the better it is the more service it is of such so it's you can provide yeah but i mean those possibilities are infinite and back again to this old seesaw effect there combs a point where people were not buying taxed economy so you have to set the price accordingly and that is really really important and that's something that will need to be done and all you have to do is look at what is now being proposed in your required where they have legalized cannabis they are talking about say the price of cannabis ash one dollar a program which would wipe out the criminal america or not is there a hole so you think that it should be the government or some sort of. body governmental body that would be in charge of regulating and setting the prices for cannabis not necessarily on the prices that's what their suggestion to do when you

are within my cannabis regulation been a there is a proposal there to set up a cannabis regulation authority which would regulate the sale would regulate packaging and would regulate the giving out of licenses currently no. and ask any permission to sell it and they don't care washy age the people that they're selling it to and in addition to your creating this cannabis regulation authority you also want to involve the ministry of justice in regulating and controlling the use of cannabis but i think all of that with require up for on funding by the taxpayers and this is one of the areas where our land is very much constrained at the moment so before cannabis can generate any resources any revenues the implementation of your proposal would require additional burden on the taxpayers they think they can handle do you think they will give that it and off of a priority at this point of time well i always think it's a priority no matter how bad the finances are to put money into something that gets

you more money back to ever come along and say i cannot afford to make money is the most ridiculous thing bush for the vast majority of people is in their number one priority is their priority are the finances of this state and it is inevitable that this will make his money within a very very short time and it is inevitable that we would be able to spend that money in order places whether that be providing medical care it's for the elderly or whether that be providing wark opportunities for the younger people in this country it would make eminent sense unwashed for the startup costs would be they would be insignificant in comparison with the gains that would inevitably be made now in the first part of the program it touched upon some of the social and behavioral manifestations of the economic crisis having trained king as one example of that there is also and not their manifestation of that and in our land that i recently read about and this is a significant increase in prostitution and people are turning to prostitution and

supposedly somebody is also making money out of it now i know that you believe that decriminalization of cannabis will undermine their power of dealers but could. that also produce an opposite effect because as we see in the market for for the booze for prostitution is growing and we can assume i think that the same is happening with all sorts of drugs both. having drugs and recreational drugs so if you make. even that recreational drug more accessible. more socially acceptable don't you think that it could how to drive the momentum for hard drugs as well while i actually would say should do quite the opposite because it would actually break any link that there will be there between cannabis and harder drugs because the only link currently is the fact that they're being sold a by the same people and actually instinctively one would see that usage would

increase of cannabis once you legalized it well all you have to do is look at the netherlands in the midst one nine hundred seventy s. when they went down the road of tolerance which is a form of decriminalization the amount of people using the substance actually reduced now in the early eighty's it didn't increase bush in line with international trains is actually different and you look at lifetime usage rates of cannabis for holland there in the region of twenty percent a place where you can openly buy if you look at the lifetime usage rates for cannabis in the united states of america and they're actually over forty percent we're back again to the issue of heritage or drug use if the link was there you would expect that there was some sort of an epidemic in higher drug use in the netherlands because you can openly buy cannabis when in fact lifetime usage rates for cocaine for the netherlands are about one point eight percent they are sixteen point eight percent in the united states of america so if there is

a link i think it's fairly obvious what the link is the link is criminality they have broken that link in the netherlands and they haven't broken it in the vast majority of the united states of america mr flanagan one distinction one difference that. said aren't that part is that none of those countries that you just mentioned faces such a dramatic economic crisis and such a major social upheaval their rates of unemployment in this country are very high their rates of depression also very high a lot of people emigrating many families are breaking up well no more than no whether we should legalize cannabis or not the whole issue of us territory is the choosing of a particular government an oracle from and has chosen austerity oracle from and has chosen to hit the poor instead of the rich and today i don't think it would make any sense to punish these people even further by criminalizing them for using cannabis i call him from a political background where i would actually support helping the poor people in

this country rather than helping the multimillionaires is which is what they have actually been doing and writing down the debts of one of our richest people in this country to the tune of tens of millions of euros while at the same time refusing to write down the debts of people who can't afford to pay their mortgage on their house we to this us tertiary i don't agree with this and i believe there's another way you just said that you don't want to penalize people but do you really think that something like this would really how to deal with that they live well there if you got a criminal record for possession of cannabis and it was legalized it would obviously help you and if you use cannabis at the moment and you're in danger of getting a criminal record how does that help your mental health in fact all that cannabis prohibition is persecute those who have norton negative impacts from misuse and it does nothing to help the people who need is actually just pushes them further into

the management of society now you mentioned earlier international trans and the united states and i think the united states is very influential in terms of setting or influencing social trends all around the world and if you take these particular country in the united states i mean back in. sixty nine only sixteen percent of voters they're supportive legalization this year that is about fifty percent fifty eight percent in the last gallup poll so as you can paint for decriminalisation of cannabis and ireland do you see that as that the mass to cause or is part of. i don't know broader international movement was that we live in a very small world now because of communications and methods of travel so it is a worry to shew and the fact that the united states of america probably one of the biggest opponents of repeating prohibition and legalization has actually in two states gone down the road of full legalization in washington and colorado is a phenomenal change we also see

a situation where they have legalized it for medical use in over twenty states we're looking at a situation next year where in california and several other states there will be a plebiscite to legalize it and it is predicted the shit will happen this is a massive sea change and i actually believe what they did to the united states of america also influenced the decision in your reply because we know that the united states whether we like it or not it's one of the masters on this planet and if they have a problem with this then it doesn't happen but the fact that it has happened within their own borders means stash older states and being given the green light to go ahead on this now it isn't just in the americas it's also in europe you see it in barcelona you see a situation in a station australia where she is legal so really i think we are ready for legalization we're ready for regulation and for the first time i think art and could take the lead rather than being the puppy dog that follows the master but i

wonder how far are you really. willing to take that because there are still countries where you can be executed for possession or our trade of cannabis china thailand singapore united arab emirates that executed for a lot of other things too though as well so do you see that as part of the human rights campaign i mean are you willing to engage yourself in a debate when you would be pressing not only of war legalisation of cannabis in our land but can painting for they have meant of those punishments and say united arab emirates well look we've seen what their own situation here first and we've seen with the countries special easiest to solve what they can trace that you mentioned there and it's an even bigger problem and i would be opinion and of the opinion that she's actually a human right to consume watch you want so long as it isn't harming alter so this is actually a bigger issue and then kind of this is about the sulfur in chief that i have over

my own body well mr flanagan our time is up thank you very much for your thoughts and if you like additional week join us again same place same time here in the world the park. zoo actually what happened that day i don't know but if you're killed. piers leaders are going to rest a tour. for a crime or did not do. since we're police officers. lie about

polygraph results. people to control the police officers don't beat people anymore i mean it just doesn't happen really. in the course of interrogation why because there's been this is like no because the psychological techniques are more effective in obtaining confessions than physical abuse and they were they could do what they wanted they can say what they wanted and there was no evidence of what they did or what they said. the. words outside to an active camp at guantanamo where patients are forced that this comes after a massive hunger strike never turned the world's attention to the place that some.

of our. britains turn to explain the country's intelligence chiefs advice public questioning on just how close they were to america's spy agency and its notorious intrusions worldwide. plus is not only the u.k. under scrutiny it's three other allies joining the spy team aimed at keeping tabs on all corners of the world. also report from guantanamo bay on. compliance i'm prisoners a former detainee tells us. it was practically custom made. the torch takes off the olympic icon goes into head of a unique space for.