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 be at this stage it's becoming clear to me that the general public i've actually moved on on this issue you will cash 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 is quite clear from the comments that should be made hundreds of them that it seems that the irish public have 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 her and i think by now it's not even debated that be how think locations of 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 cannabis is good for your health so i wonder can you're really justified you know the decriminalization of one unhealthy substance by claiming that you know the rest is what 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 facal 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 but you wouldn't ban nation needed. 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 a 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 jury periods 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 forward 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 or for 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 can 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 gains a story recently that commotion but 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 face costs 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 it calls for total legalization to 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've set up in 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 bid was passed it would mean in the morning that a person who wants to use cannabis can 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. there 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 out called markers easy is not rocket science to make alcohol but 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 joint 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 stat cyrus follows 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 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 the to be known for that sadly at the moment it is a very well known for a far more harmful drug so i can't see how it should make it any worse than the

current situation but my ambition on this isn't special. and large scale export i. i would like to see from an environmental perspective anywhere that 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 beer there are serious in positions when it comes to advertising 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 for sports at the moment because they say a sport can't afford it is 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 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 at 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 to 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 that is the decision that we have to make at the moment i knew i would prefer for this money to go to war health service. then 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. substances that. i actually don't believe were 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 society gain but the results of the other important part the point at the moment when people buy cannabis in this country and in most countries around the world they do not know how strong she 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 older substances to increase its weight which is turning it into a very very. dense and in some cases they're mixing it with psychiatric drugs so if it was legalized not only would it take take away from the black economy it would also make it infinitely safer because people would know what they were using exactly what they were using mr flamm going to have to take a short break now but when we come back the proponents of cannabis legalization 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 attempt such

a move that's coming up in a few moments on the wall to part. what's happened is law enforcement and the national security agency has gone behind our collective backs and tried to accomplish this using the courts in secret and that's truly what the issue is a broken whatever trust and violated whatever trust we may have had and that's the real issue and they're going to have to earn that back the hard way. deliberate george is on a big journey to such a. one hundred twenty three days. through two thousand nine hundred top two cities

of russia. really by forging those people who are sixty plus those who come in. in a record setting trip by land air sea and others face. olympic torch relay. on r t r two dot com. but. did you know the price is the only industry specifically mentioned in the constitution and. that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy. in fact the single biggest threat facing our nation today is the corporate takeover of our government and i was crushed several we've been hijacked why handful of transnational corporations will profit by destroying what our founding fathers once i'm tom are in on this show we reveal the big picture of what's actually going on

in the world we go beyond identifying the problem to try to rational debate and a real discussion critical issues facing them not to find them. ready to join the movement and walk the earth. welcome back to worlds apart or really discussing the pros and cons of kind of nation of with monica and 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 of such

a bell was introduced before the doll who would you support something like that yeah i actually would i have been a champion of the whole idea of trying to reduce or drink usage for the last fifteen or sixteen years i've always actually believed that. ties in with sport is the biggest contradiction of all time bush 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 oliver ties 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 pay commission to look at it for another year or so in reality you've heard the phrase kicking the can down the road this is a case of irish style and kicking the guinness can down the road and not dealing with the issue because i think they were afraid to fail offend people and i am of

the opinion that a politician should be a signpost another whether being now i know that there have been a number of studies especially in canada showing that into the. the scene floor or minimum pricing making the booze more expensive proved really effective and curbing having drinking in relation to cannabis how accessible how bailable do you think it should be 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 legitimate text economy and daschle is very very important to all the ways the legislation would be pretty much pointless now but at the same time i know that your bill also mentions that

some of the 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 canada is the better it is the more service is of such so with you you can provide yeah but i mean those possibilities aren't in finnish and back again to this old seesaw effect there combs a point where people were not buying text economy so you have to set the price accordingly and that is really really important and that's something that we need to be done and all you have to do is look at what is now being proposed in europe why were they have legalized cannabis they are talking about the price of cannabis ash one dollar a program which would wipe out the criminal america overnight stash is there hope 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 they're suggesting to do when you are within my cannabis regulation bill if 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 one asked 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 the require wrong 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 revenue is the implementation of your proposal would require additional burden on the taxpayers do you think they can handle do you think they will give that it an offer 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 for the vast majority of people in their number one priority washes their priority are the finances of this state and it is inevitable that this will make us money within a very very short time and it is inevitable that we will 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 would make eminent sense unwashed for the startup costs would be it 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 haven't drinking as one example of that there is also another manifestation of that and in our land that i recently read about

and this is a significant increase in prostitution turning to prostitution and supposed to somebody is also making money out of it. now i know that you believe that decriminalization of cannabis will undermine the 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 in our having drugs and recreational drugs so if you make. even their recreational drug more accessible. more socially acceptable don't you think that it could help to drive the momentum for hard drugs as well 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 did increase push in line with international trains is actually didn't and you look at life time 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 carriger 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. 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 flamm i'm going to 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 and a grating many families are breaking up well no more than knowing whether we should legalize cannabis or not the whole issue of us territory is the choosing of a particular government an article from and has chosen austerity or call 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 week choose this 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 for how to stash 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 ted is actually just pushes

them further into the management of society now you mentioned earlier international trance and the united states and i think. united states is very influential in terms of setting or influencing social trends all around the world and if you take this particular country in the united states i'm in bekka nine hundred sixty nine only sixteen percent of voters there supported 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 in ireland do you see that as a mass to cause or as part of. i don't know broader international movement that we live in a very small world now because of communications and methods of travel so it is a worry tissue 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 in 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 it then it doesn't happen but the fact that it has happened within their own borders means stache 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 execute your for a lot of other things to that 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 a 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 country especially easiest to solve what their countries that you mentioned there 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 suffering that's all you have over my own body well mr flanagan our time is up thank you very much for your thoughts and if you like additional please join us again same place same time here in the world the party. the old. technology innovation all the developments from around russia. the future covered. all i want to. pick up something that is quite simply

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a lot of sneering and negative press for your engagements here in russia especially for your public appearances with putin even though they weren't explicitly political you were just supporting sports. news that certain people's regime has become very adept at is controlling the media for example right here on c.n.n. do i think seeing the news you know completely telling it like it is no i see have an agenda i think through jim is is bought and paid for.

coming up on our t.v. in geneva negotiators discuss iran's nuclear program right as u.s. iranian relations seem to be following but what does israel have to say about all of this a look at the nuclear implications of these negotiations a hat and b. where be away are eighteen t customers a new report shows that the company is voluntarily handing over phone records to the cia plus we'll take a closer look at how mainstream encrypted is really becoming in the wake of all of these n.s.a. revelations that's all new in today's tech report last prison inmates cheating the system for millions of taxpayer dollars we'll tell you how unemployment money meant to help those in need is actually going to people who are locked up.