What actually happens when we legalise drugs?

Over the last decade, the status quo around drugs has collapsed. Drugs once sold as safe cures have been revealed as ineffective or dangerous, while substances criminalised for generations are being reborn as breakthrough mental health treatments, wellness supplements, Silicon Valley productivity tools and billion-dollar investment opportunities. How did this reversal happen – and who stands to benefit?
Kojo Koram travels from Scotland to Colombia, Ghana to the United States, to uncover the forces reshaping the global drug landscape. Moving between glossy corporate cannabis expos to grassroots activist campaigns and the question of reparations, he traces the growing tension between movements fighting for justice after decades of prohibition and the finance-world race to profit from a newly legal frontier.

Will drug reform finally undo the racial violence, environmental destruction and public health failures of the War on Drugs? Or will it simply open a new chapter in global capitalism, creating a smooth transition from cartel barons to Wall Street oligopolies?
The Next Fix asks whether the War on Drugs is really over – or merely changing its chemical formula.

Kojo Koram is a Professor of Law, author and investigative journalist. This year he co-founded a new global research centre at Loughborough University which will examine how drug markets are changing. The Transnational Research Centre on Emerging Drug Markets will bring together researchers, community organisations and policymakers from
across the Global North and South. regularly contributes to the Guardian and has also written for the New Statesman and New York Times. Koram is the author of Uncommon Wealth: Britain and the Aftermath of Empire (John Murray) which  was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Writing and the Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing.

Refreshments included