Legal regulation: Justice, profit and The Next Fix

As drug policy enters a new era, with cannabis regulation expanding, psychedelics attracting growing interest, and ideas once considered marginal becoming mainstream, a key question comes into sharp relief: who will benefit from what comes after?

In this fascinating conversation, IDPC Executive Director Ann Fordham speaks with author and legal scholar Kojo Koram about his new book, The Next Fix: The Winners and Losers in the Future of Drugs. The discussion addresses the colonial and racial histories underpinning global drug control, the tensions between developing commercialisation and enduring criminalisation, and the danger that emerging legal markets reproduce and indeed entrench the inequalities fostered by prohibition.

This dialogue also looks to alternatives: community and non-commercial models of regulation, reparative justice, a global truth and reconciliation process, and the growing importance of intellectual property and open access.

At the heart of the discussion is a challenge for the drug policy reform movement: moving beyond ending prohibition to ensure that the systems replacing it are grounded in justice, human rights and meaningful redistribution of power and resources.