A World to Win: Roots of a 50-Year Drug War w/ Kojo Koram

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🗓️ 19 May 2022

⏱️ 38 minutes

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Summary

As the London mayor plans to conduct a review on cannabis legalization, Grace speaks with Kojo Koram, lecturer in law at Birkbeck and author of several books, including The War on Drugs and the Global Colour Line, about drug policy and history. They discuss the roots of drugs criminalization, the neoliberal roots of the war on drugs in the UK and US, and prospects for reform.

A World to Win is a podcast from Grace Blakeley and Tribune bringing you a weekly dose of socialist news, theory, and action with guests from around the world. Thanks to our producer Conor Gillies and to the Lipman-Miliband Trust for making this episode possible.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to another episode of A Well to Win. This week we are talking about
0:17.4	Drugs. I am talking to Kojo Koram, lecturer in law at Birkbeck and author of several books,
0:23.6	including The War on Drugs and The Global Colourline. We discuss Cedique Khan's plans
0:29.4	to conduct a review into the legalisation of weed, the roots of drug criminalisation, the
0:35.8	near-liberal origins of The War on Drugs and why decriminalisation will save lives. Thank you,
0:42.9	as always, for being a valuable listener to our show and thank you so much to all of our
0:48.4	patrons who make the show possible. If you want to sign up to become a patron, you can
0:53.4	find us at patreon.com slash a world to win pod. There will be a link in the description. If you
0:59.4	want to support the show in another way, then please do consider sharing these episodes on social
1:04.2	media. We are at a world to win pod on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Now a quick word from our
1:10.1	sponsors. This episode of A Well to Win is brought to you by Haymarket Books, which has loads of
1:16.1	great left-wing titles perfect for listeners like you. One that you might like and one that I
1:21.2	really liked is A People's Guide to Capitalism, an introduction to Marxist economics by Hadastiae.
1:28.3	Economists regularly promote capitalism as the greatest system ever to grace the planet. Within
1:33.5	the same breath, they implore us to leave the job of understanding the magical powers of the
1:37.6	markets to the experts. Despite their efforts to convince us otherwise, many of us have begun to
1:42.9	question why this system has produced such fast inequalities and want to disregard for its
1:48.2	own environmental destruction. In this book Hadastiae provides us with a compelling and accessible
1:53.5	explanation. As Baskar Senkara puts it, economists have every incentive to mystify their craft and
2:00.1	dress up their political judgments as scientific fact. A People's Guide to Capitalism is a thorough
2:05.0	and accessible corrective and sure to be an important primer for generations of activists.
2:10.2	Find a People's Guide to Capitalism at haymarketbooks.org where readers in the UK and US receive
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