Just one note, this is not a doctor's coat and it's not even mine, but tonight we're going to operate a little on the anti-drug policies in Romania.
The most interesting part, or one of the most interesting parts of the anti-drug policies is that we can see them failing.
We can learn why they fail, we can understand how they fail, and the more we see, learn, and understand, the more we will want and be able to change them for the better. But first I saw the failure around me in Romania, then I learned how they failed for most of the countries in the world, and how more and more countries simply changed their approach. But Romania remained the same.
Campaigns like 100 years ago, strategies like 100 years ago and results like 100 years ago. You see that image is from Cluj and the other is from a museum in the US. The first time I experienced this failure was when I was 10 years old when the police came to school with absolutely horrific leaflets and videos.
They scared us for a few hours, but I remember we were left with nothing but curiosity. What is cannabis, cocaine, heroin and other new words that the police used to say to fifth graders. The second time, at age 12, when a person who had heroically overcome addiction came with absolutely terrifying stories.
We were excited for a few hours, but we were left with nothing but the fact that he seemed like a star. All the attention and all the spotlight was on him. And I was curious again about drugs and how the people who suffered the most from them seemed to be famous.
Can we be famous like this, in seventh grade? The third time, at 14, the song by Dorian Popa, ”stop doing drugs, stop doing drugs, take care of your life”. With the first frost of critical thinking at the age of 14, I started to wonder, stop doing drugs with what? With weed, with cocaine, with alcohol, with tobacco, with coffee? Is it really a simple choice to say no, when millions of people in Romania are already doing it? Or is it like standing in front of a flood, with your hand outstretched, and trying to say stop? But nothing stops. The fourth time, at 16, the so called ”Shops of dreams” had been closed for about two years, but the ethnobotanists were more present than ever.
I would have thought, how interesting that they didn't disappear after the stores closed, on the contrary, there seem to be even more now. But I was concerned to see a colleague of mine who barely manage to pass the class, after he was one of the best.
The fifth time I saw failure at 18 years old. An acquaintance was caught at a festival with six pills. Luckyly he didn't swallow them due to fear, I thought, he could have died. They weren't his, he told the police.
Drug trafficking, the prosecutors concluded. It seemed incredible to me how years of prison were wasted on a few milligrams of a substance when there are tens of tons of drugs on the streets. Could this be the solution? In the following years I studied and then researched criminology at two universities, the University of Manchester and then at the famous Oxford, where I was mainly interested in substances and how we control them, policies, laws, measures that work and those that don't.
How should a country actually control drugs? And in the early years, I have learned from the World Health Organization that almost everything Romania does in terms of prevention is simply wrong. Our measures appear with a big X in international prevention reports and standards.
Scary stories, testimonials from people who have gone through independence, prison visits, moralizing plays, campaigns, like ”say no!”, not only have no effect in preventing consumption, but often either spark interest in all kinds of substances, or make people hide and not ask for help, or make consumption more dangerous, or simply all of them at once. In exactly what Romania is doing at this moment and in exactly the failures that I saw around me when I was 10, 12, 14 years old and which now, 15 years later, are exactly the same. Then I learned from 20 former presidents, prime ministers, and senior officials who make up the Global Commission on Drug Policy that although countries around the world have tried for 50 years to stop drug use through police, prosecutors, and judges, not only have they had no effect, but in some cases, the law and its enforcement have done more harm to the people, communities, and countries in question than the harm caused by the substances they were trying to stop.
And hearing this from people who have led their countries was like a revelation. New and more dangerous substances, failures and school dropouts, prison stigma for people who should not be there. The failures that I saw around me, at 16 and 18 years old, which today are the main weapon in Romania.
Over 30,000 criminal files at DIICOT, 400 convictions annually, while once every seven years, consumption doubles. We also learned from senior United Nations officials the conclusion and the alternatives: the war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world.
From how we do prevention, everything needs to be rethought, to no longer penalizing consumers, that is, keeping them in view of consumption, we need to decriminalize those who need it. We need to help them, from responsible consumption, to, ultimately, voluntary treatment. The reality is that the concentration of force resources must be strictly on the elite of organized crime. The real traffickers are those who invest their profits from substances, in human trafficking, in arms trafficking, elsewhere even in wars.
Anyway, the discussions and measures are many and it would take weeks to list them, but probably what marked me the most over the years that followed was a speech I attended by Ruth Dreifuss, the former president of Switzerland, who was asked by a young woman what criminologists can do more than work and research and her answer was very clear. Come out and tell all the people and politicians by any possible means that things must change radically. With the failures felt or seen personally from 10 to 18 years old, I had no choice but to watch and endure them, but the same types of failures happen every day for hundreds of people in Romania, and the problem, in fact, is that everything is getting worse.
After the speech, I chose that wherever I am, I will start fighting for change in Romania. And I started with video essays on YouTube, I also entered the mainstream press, I also got involved with TikTok and Instagram, I also worked with politicians and governments, I continued through meetings within... Thank you! You should know that it charges me with a lot of energy, so thank you very much!
In the meantime, I realized that it is impossible to change anything in Romania alone, so I looked for associations, foundations, NGOs, groups of professionals of all kinds, the entire civil society, from medicine to psychology, and at the moment we have managed together to build a community of tens of thousands of people. But the reality is that change comes very hard in Romania and sometimes, in order to do good, you have to fight first to stop the evil.
So the last efforts against the evil, direct or indirect, are the decision to abolish the National Anti-Drug Agency. Before that, there was persuading the Government to amend the famous ordinance that would have left tens of thousands of drivers in Romania without licenses for months or years, and before that, we managed to convince ministers that drug testing in schools would do more harm than good. At the moment, what is happening is that we are managing to block the bill that would punish innocent drivers because it would cut the term of influence from driving under the influence and replace it with the simple presence in the blood. What a horror!
But my mission is just beginning. To reform everything related to the way Romania prevents, manages, treats, combats and thinks about drugs. We remain in the reality that substance use can harm you, but we help you when and only if you need it, we do not punish you or force you, and we try to prevent the onset of use, but when it already exists, we try to reduce the negative effects of existing use without stigma or prejudice, taking into account the reality that most people will try all kinds during their lives.
We are fighting drug trafficking, but only the real trafficking of traffickers who transport tons, not grams. And we understand that every country fully deserves the problems it has with substances. A wrong approach, based on fear, punishment and repression, will only bring more suffering than there already is.
For those who read, I write and for those who listen or watch, I do videos. I invite you to join me in this mission and find the arguments, pass them on and change the world around us. It is time to give up these terrible failures and start having the right approach to the field of substances.
Thank you.
