"I Actively Dislike You" - Peter Hitchens Storms Out on Interviewer

What you're about to hear is the most bizarre experience that I've ever had in the production of this podcast. Two months ago, I emailed Peter Hitchens saying, "Quote: I'm writing to invite you to appear as a guest on the podcast to discuss your work and areas of interest, in particular issues pertaining to drug decriminalization, whether we are experiencing a moral decline in society and the influence of secularism on this question, and the state of monarchy in the United Kingdom."

Before the interview commenced, I reiterated that there are three subjects of interest: things that he's spoken about or written books about in the past, and that I've also covered on my YouTube channel. And these are: drug decriminalization, God and religion, and the monarchy. To which he said, "The monarchy's a bit boring." And I said, "You know what? I actually agree with you. Let's not do the monarchy." He didn't take the opportunity to make a similar comment on either of the other two subjects that I mentioned.

Then we sat down, and the camera started rolling, and I asked him if he had a hard out. That is, is there a time that he needs to be done by? He said, "What did you have in mind?" To which I respond, "Ideally, these things run for about an hour, but if the conversation is particularly lively, they can be an hour and a half. I've done podcasts that are three hours long." To which he said, "Well, we'll see how we do, but three hours might be a bit long." So, as far as I was aware, we were about to have an hour or an hour and a half long conversation about two topics: drug decriminalization and God and religion. I had also on my list the issue of the death penalty, uh, but that was only if we had time. That wasn't something that I'd actually mentioned to him. And then something went disastrously wrong.

I'm really in two minds about posting this because I don't like the idea of posting something that one of my guests isn't happy about. Generally speaking, if a guest tells me that they want to take something out or they're not happy with something for any reason, then I respect that. The problem is that Mr. Hitchens didn't just tell me that he wasn't happy with the interview, but that he wasn't happy with me personally. And he did that for 15 minutes. He then went on Twitter and made it quite public that he was recovering from an attempted interview with me, in which I bored him for almost an hour with unoriginal questions about drugs. Since then, he's been tweeting about me quite a lot, and I think I've earned something of a right of reply. I figured the best thing that I can do is simply present the full, uncut interview so that you can make your own mind up about what went wrong here. I may, in a future YouTube video, give you my own views about what I think happened and why I think it went wrong, but for now, I simply give you Peter Hitchens.

Peter Hitchens, thanks for being here. So far, so good. Suella Braveman last year, after the Conservative Party Conference, was reported to have been considering upgrading cannabis to being a Class A drug, and this was amid concerns that it had become a gateway to other harsher substances. Do you think that cannabis is a gateway drug?

No, I think it's quite bad enough itself. It doesn't need to be a gateway to be bad. It's the, the potential effects of it on users appear to be, by correlation, uh, to be so serious that it's silly to think of it as is a gateway drug to others. It's, it's quite bad as it is. The whole system of classification was designed, as far as I know, back in the early 1970s, uh, to actually make it seem less threatening than the then bogeyman drugs of heroin and LSD, which is why it had a different classification from them.

So, do you think that would have been a wise idea, upgrading the class?

No, none of these things have any real relevance at all. The current classification, I think, uh, means the maximum sentence for possession is, I think, five years in prison and an unlimited fine. That's quite a severe sentence. And the point about the law at the moment is that it's not enforced. Not that the law is not, is not stringent enough on paper, but that nobody enforces it. So upgrading it or making noises about it being a gateway drug won't change that. Until the police enforce the law, which is what they're paid to do, then nothing will happen.

Yes, I sometimes hear you mischaracterized as a person who wants harsher penalties for, for drugs. People will say things like this. It's actually the harshness of the penalty isn't really the point. The point is that there is a penalty, that it's a realistic penalty, and that it is imposed when people break the law. I, in general, I'm of the view that with enforcing law, that with first offenses, you're pretty lenient. You don't want to ruin someone's life for one offense. But once the second offense kicks in, I think you have to be serious. And the moment where unserious about first offenses and equally unserious about second ones. So there is no deterrence of possession of marijuana, which is the principal offense, and so it continues to grow, and people regard it as legal and, and as not really a drug.

Well, describe for me the, the scene in the UK as you see it. I think people listening to this, particularly American listeners, might not quite understand what it is you're talking about when you say that, at least I've heard you say in the past, that marijuana is effectively already decriminalized in this country.

It's not just me who says that. Many prominent police officers have said it. It is evidently the case.

But to, to what extent is this the case? I mean, for example, you know, if I were to just walk up to a police officer and smoke a joint in front of them, presumably they would do something about it.

I doubt it. Every, every year on the 20th of April, they, this, this 420, of course, demonstration in Hyde Park, where the law is openly mocked, and the police just stand around. Unless they're really seriously rubbed up the wrong way, they won't do anything. They'd rather not do anything. It's a nuisance to them. It's for them because the courts are not interested, uh, and the state is not interested. Police will only enforce laws when they get the strong impression that this, the government wants them enforced. And they have been getting the strong impression for years that the government doesn't want this one enforced. So you can't be surprised when they don't do it.

And in some places, even in the UK, there seems to be not just a, a sort of inability to enforce this law, apparently from the, from the police, but also, I, I mean, for, I'm thinking for example, recently of Scotland and the suggestion of drug-taking rooms or something of this sort.

Oh, this is all, all these things are like, like drug testing, uh, units at rock festivals and so forth. All these things are designed to mock and call into question the law itself. As a signatory to the, to, to the Universal Drugs Convention, and also as a member of the United Nations Security Council, Britain cannot legislate, not, not, not seriously, to abandon these laws because it signed international treaties saying it will have them. But what it can do instead, and this has been known to, to drug decriminalization campaigns for years, is it can just not enforce them. And that's what has been going on. First of all, informally, and then more and more formally, especially since the Rumsfeld report and the, the London police experiments of the early parts of the century. It's just become a de facto legalized drug, and anybody who wanders around London will smell it all the time.

And I, I guess I'm interested in, in why this might have become the case. I mean, there are a lot of people who want drugs to be officially decriminalized in this country. I've made, uh, videos in the past on my YouTube channel talking about the subject, and I'm broadly in favor of the decriminalization of drugs, although it's, it's a fairly malleable position to me. It's not something that I've thought about a whole lot. Um, I'm wondering, in other words, a lot of people will listen to, to what you're saying and and think to themselves, well, okay, but this is, this is kind of a good thing. Maybe it's a bad thing that police aren't enforcing. All people whose children have not, uh, started taking marijuana at an early age. Those who have will, in many cases, know very well the reason why they should worry about it. Because although, as I say, we have no causal link, we have a growing correlation between the use of marijuana, particularly at an early age, this isn't exclusive, but it's strongly so, between the use of marijuana and, and mental illness of an incurable and disastrous kind. And that once that's visited a home, then people understand that there might be reasons for worrying about it. But those who haven't experienced that are influenced by a wholly different set of values. They, particularly the, the use of marijuana in this country by the, what you might call the educated elite, became common in the 1960s. It's a very old thing. Also, the smoking of marijuana, the, the rolling of the joint, the passing round of it, the sharing of it, is a sort of, uh, sort of ceremonial holy communion, unholy communion, if you like, of the sixth generation. And it's also very much linked and referred to in a huge part of the music which people listen to. It's part of the culture. And many of people who were involved in that culture permitted their children to take drugs at home, and they know their children take drugs, and they're worried that their careers might be impaired if the law is enforced. So they're against it. That's the crude way of putting it. They, they themselves don't believe in the law and they think that their own children should not suffer from it.

But surely, I mean, it's conceivable to have a person who is broadly, as I am, in favor of the, the decriminalization of drugs, officially speaking, that is, uh, but at the same time, think that we shouldn't be giving drugs to children. I mean, just like with alcohol or smoking, these things are legal in this country, but it's not legal to sell these things to children. But they are, they get into the hands of children. And if they were commercially on sale, if, if the drug were legalized, to say, been in Canada, so it can be bought in a shop, uh, then it would be more available to children than it is now. I think, uh, certainly from Colorado, one of the American states where it has been legalized, there is a certain amount of evidence beginning to pile up of its use among school children, which has intensified following legalization. I don't think anyone can really claim that if a drug is legalized and put on general sale, and ultimately advertised as well, that that young people will not use it, even though it's technically illegal for them to do so. Anybody in their teens can obtain alcohol, and they can also obtain cigarettes, and these things are on wide sale in many cases, in, in smuggled and illicit forms, which are, they're not illegal in themselves, but they are, they are smuggled, and in the case of alcohol, illicitly made. So it's, it's absurd to imagine that if you made it easier to get hold of, that more children wouldn't get a hold of it, because they will.

I'm, I'm sort of imagining a situation in which, I guess, what I'm asking is, what is the ideal law here? I mean, is there something? When I asked you about the decriminalization of drugs a moment ago, you immediately talked about children. The fact that, well, I mentioned it because it is, it's the most obvious thing. I, I refer to anybody who tells me that marijuana is harmless to Patrick Cockburn's book, Henry's Demons, about the experience of his son Henry. I've known Patrick for many years, and I also know Henry, and I have witnessed what happened to him. And it's, it's deeply disturbing and saddening event in, in the lives of that whole family, in particular, above all, of of Henry. And it's very hard to resist the conclusion that it's the result of his, of his being introduced to marijuana at his secondary school in Canterbury. So I think this is one way in which it comes home to people. I'm not saying there are no other arguments against it. There are plenty of other arguments against it, which I can make if you want to make this whole interview about why marijuana should remain illegal, indeed, why the law against it should be enforced. Okay, I've written a book about it, uh, but I don't, um, I don't particularly want to go on and on about it. These arguments are well known. If and people can look up, uh, the book that I've written, particularly The War We Never Fought on this subject, if they want to know what my detailed arguments are. This isn't really the forum for going on and on about it. I do have the book somewhere in this room. I should have it here so I could wave it in front of the camera, but we'll make sure a link is in the description and show notes to that, to that book.

Well, I'd love it if you did, because it was so, um, it was, it was so badly treated by the review mafia and the publishing industry that it became known, in the publishing industry, as the book they never bought. I couldn't get anybody to review it except a couple of abusive reviews in two left-wing newspapers. Uh, the, it was, it was, it was almost impossible for people to find out it existed.

I remember well, in, in a lot of the interviews that I've heard you give on this subject, you often say, look, I've written a book about this. The, the kind of stuff you're talking about here, I've already written about this. I have the information, you can go and find it. So, you know, I, I've been reading this book, and I suppose what I wanted to do was was follow up on on some of those, those threads that I think potentially weren't, uh, fully addressed in the book. For example, uh, I mean, you talk about the comparison that's often made between cannabis and alcohol and and cigarettes. But specifically in relation to what we've just been talking about, children, for example. Smoking tobacco is still legal in this country, and many adults still do it. But there's been such a successful, almost propagandist re-education campaign about the dangers of smoking that young people, it's, it's, it's, it's falling off the map. You, young people just don't smoke anymore like they used to.

Now, no, they vape instead. But I don't think that's that really tells us very much. It's not, it hasn't just been a propaganda campaign. It's been the use of the law. People, particularly employers, anybody who runs any large building, and particularly anybody who runs a pub or a restaurant, is very much afraid of the law, uh, and of the strong civil law consequences, in this case, of allowing the smoking of cigarettes on their premises. And that's been the real driver of the, of the diminishing of smoking.

So, I suppose what I'm asking is, can't a similar approach be taken to cannabis?

Well, I just said, if you, if you use the law, then, then, then indeed it can. If there were the fundamental law which enables you to act against the smoking of marijuana, it's the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act. Even in it, which is a very, very flawed, uh, piece of legislation, but it's perfectly applicable and could be applied. In Japan, they have a similar law against possession of marijuana, which they apply, and as a result, the, well, certainly let's not say as a result, because no causation is the hardest thing in the world to prove, but there is no doubt that both Japan and South Korea, where it's possession is still severely prosecuted and punished, uh, are both societies in which it's much less used.

That's true. Although the, the Abare group, um, which is, uh, an organization dedicated to helping people struggling with addiction, cite South Korea as the fourth most alcoholic country by, in terms of males. That is, males with alcoholism. It's the fourth most popular.

That's maybe I can't, I can't address that. Japan has has a a problem with alcoholism. So what? If, and if you want to go and argue with the South Koreans about their alcohol laws, that's fine by me. I myself would very much favor much more stringent alcohol laws than we have in this country. Yes, the ones that we had before the mid-1980s, before the Thatcher government began to destroy them, and the Blair government then totally destroyed them, were quite effective, and there was much less drunkenness, I think, much less drinking when those laws existed than there is now. I'm all in favor of bringing that back and, and would do so if, if I had the power to do so.

What I'm asking about, or I guess what I was implying there, was that we sort of trade one problem for another. Yes, there, there are effective cannabis. You can repress them both in Japan. But this might just be trading one problem for no. You can repress them both. Until, until the 1970s, this country had neither a marijuana problem nor a major drink problem. It repressed both in different ways.

What I was trying to pull together a moment ago was that when I asked you about, uh, cannabis and children in particular, you said that the decriminalization of cannabis will, uh, will, will cause more children to have access to cannabis. It will. I mean, it's just a truism, basically. Sure, we can, we can, we can grant that. We can grant that. No point arguing about it. But then when we're talking about tobacco, asking about why young people aren't smoking as much, say it's, it's effective enforcement of the law. And what I'm saying is, can't there be partly effective enforcement of the law? It's partly because they switched to vaping, perhaps. I mean, no, vaping is, vaping is epidemic now. I, I agree that's the case. I don't know if that's the bar. And things like that, they're incredibly prevalent. I mean, people were already smoking less before, before vapes were on the scene.

I don't know about that. Who, who was measuring it? I certainly, there was still a lot of smoking going on visibly, if you, particularly among the less, how should I say, the less advantaged in society, where smoking tends to be concentrated these days. What I'm, what I'm imagining is a situation in which cannabis is decriminalized for adults, maybe over 21s or something like this, and there is an effective law in place that that really clamps down on any attempt to, uh, sell, provide, or, or allow for the provision of cannabis to children.

Yeah, well, okay. In that case, the problems of, of, of marijuana for people over 21 will still be a problem, which are considerable. And those problems, primarily for you, seem to be about the effect on one's mental health.

Well, I think there is absolutely no doubt at all that there is a strong correlation between the use of marijuana and, and decline in mental health. Even if it's, if it's just the clinical point of view where the person becomes incapable of holding a steady job or making a conversation or, or, or reading a serious book, and just becomes, uh, impaired in ways which don't actually mean that that he's or she is technically classified mentally ill. Or the growing, uh, number of people who are detected, uh, in, in, in the fascinating website attack of smoke cannabis, who, uh, who undertake really seriously violent criminal acts, who are long-term marijuana users, in a dangerous, not just themselves, but to others. It's a, it's a drug with many, many disadvantages. Listen, if you want to join the Third World, then make marijuana legal would be a simple piece of advice. If you really want to have full, we have sort of country membership of the Third World in this country now. If you want to have full out membership of the Third World, then, then Mar. Just imagine, for instance, the implications for almost anybody with a job of any, with any safety implications, whether it be an airline pilot, a surgeon, or a school bus driver. We'd simply have to have enormous amounts of testing to make sure people didn't have it in their systems. We allow them to work. The same as the illegal to to drink and drive. It's illegal again to drink and a. I mean, again, so what? I mean, I'm not advocating. And I've just said to you, and why do I waste my time? Do you not listen to what I say? I just said quite clearly, I'm in favor of strong restrictions on alcohol. Have we got that now? I, I agree with you. Good. So stop saying to me, well, one about alcohol. Every time I mention that we should do something about marijuana, marijuana is is a drug you could not tolerate in someone who is performing surgery or in a school bus driver or an airline pilot or in many other jobs requiring requiring the, the, the, uh, strong discipline and a strong consciousness of what's going on, a lack of intoxication. So to say, well, if you then had a society in which it was legal, it would require an enormous amount of testing. Is my point? The answer to that is not to say, what about alcohol? The answer is they say, either I don't believe that, so, or yes, I do believe that. So I understand that point. And it's a good point against marijuana that we would have to have much more testing of formerly free individuals because the danger would be great. But now you can't see that. Instead of taking the point and listening to what I say, you can only come up with, but what about alcohol? It's banal. It's time-wasting. And frankly, I can't be bothered with it. If all you've got to say whenever I say, introducing a third legal poison into our society would be terrible, is we've already got two disastrous legal poisons in our society, and that I begin to doubt your intellectual capacity. This is not an argument. What I'm asking is, you bring up the subject of marijuana, you ask me why I think it would be a bad idea to make it legal, and when I explain why, you say, but what about alcohol? And what about tobacco? It's, it's apart from anything else, it's incredibly tedious. That's, I, I don't think that's exactly what I was trying to do. It's what you repeatedly do. Every time I, every time I offer you a reason why we should not legalize marijuana, you come up with a, with a, with a counterpoint which involves saying, what about tobacco or what about alcohol? It's noticeable. Anybody who looks at what we've just been saying will see this. I'm not, I have no, I would, I would cheerfully stamp out the smoking of, of, of, of tobacco. I think it's probably possible now. And I, as, as I've said, and I'll say it again, I'm in favor of the tightest restrictions on the sale of alcohol. So what, what are you saying to me that I can't, that the, that somehow or other, because these things exist and other people have made foolish decisions about them, I cannot argue that it's stupid to legalize marijuana? No. Well, then, in that case, when I say that here is a big disadvantage of marijuana, namely that if you made it legal, you'd have to be constantly testing people in many jobs who were not necessarily users of it, thus reducing the freedom of everyone in society, the answer is not, but what about alcohol? Then agree. The answer is either, yeah, okay, um, I, I've got that point, or you could say, actually, I don't believe in testing people. People, I wouldn't mind having my brain operated on by someone who'd been smoking marijuana in the previous two days. Well, I, one or the other. But you have to say something intelligent response rather than, what about alcohol, hoping to off something more like the second, and not quite in those terms, but to say, is this not a problem that can be addressed with something like regular random drug testing for?

It couldn't be random. No, it couldn't be random. It would have to be, have to be mandatory and regular. Every time anybody of any undertaking, any job where, for instance, full control of, of their muscles in mind was required, would be, would be obliged to be tested for marijuana. You wouldn't, you wouldn't want to be told, oh, this the school bus carrying your children ran off a bridge, uh, and the, the driver, that, that bus had been high on marijuana, because that wasn't his day for testing. If we're talking about how to minimize this, I'm imagining that that could be, that would be how you'd have to minimize it. You only take one school bus crash. Quite a strong for the, for the regulations to become incredibly, uh, incredibly tight. Quite a can't be. No, if you're not thinking about it. If somebody, if we had serious and and severe punishments in place that were actually enforced for the serious crime of driving under the influence, for example, certainly when it comes to, I agree that driving is going to be more tricky. But in the, in the case of airline pilots, if it were the case that somebody were caught on a random drug test, they knew that their life was going to go completely down the drain. Don't think that would be enough of a deterrent to stop from smoking. What I'm saying is, uh, is a completely different point. What I'm saying is that if you had legalized marijuana in society, there would have to be a lot more testing, that of everybody, not just of marijuana users, but of everybody engaged in that kind of job. People will have to be tested all the time. It would be more infringements of freedom of everybody because of this change.

I wanted to ask you about freedom because this is something that you talk about in the book, and you, you imply that people have gotten sort of the wrong reading of this Millian general principle that people should be able to be free to do whatever they like, as long as they do whatever they like. This is something you disagree with.

No, I don't think people should be free to do whatever they like. No, obviously there have to be limits. Not whatever they like. Whatever they like, so long as they're not harming the freedom of other people. Well, that is one, that, that, that is one principle on which you can limit freedom, but that's not the only one. For you, well, that's a utilitarian one. I have, I have a different moral position. There's something people shouldn't do, whether it harms anybody else or not.

So the question I wanted to ask is, do you think people have a right to to essentially self-harm, to self-stupefy, to do things that might be at least a risk and possibly an obvious detriment to their own health, absolutely nobody loves or cares about them? Then I suppose if they ruin their own lives, the only, the only on the harm principle, the only reason why they they could be restrained would be because of the the cost to society that would then lead to, which, which in the case of people who who abuse drugs and become mentally ill or otherwise incapacitated, is considerable. They basically, they can't, in many cases, maintain themselves anymore, so the taxpayer has to be mugged to pay for their lives. But it seems to me that that isn't the only reason that you have for wanting these drugs.

Isn't the only reason? I have no, I have, I have, I have strong moral objections to to self-stupefaction. I think it's, uh, it's throwing a great gift in the face of, of, of the, the God who gave it to you, and it's also, uh, throwing an insult in the face of your parents who brought you up to live a a decent and healthy life, to deliberately damage yourself and, and make, and make yourself less likely to be a happy or a successful person. Why would anybody do that? These are moral objections. But if you want, as, as my book makes it clear, as a whole, as a whole section of the book, uh, saying, if, uh, if the Holy Ghost doesn't bother you, then maybe John Stuart Mill will sort it out for you. I, if I don't care whether you're a utilitarian or a puritanical Christian moralist, the arguments against the abuse of drugs are very powerful.

I wanted to draw a distinction between moral arguments and legal arguments here. That is, I, I can understand why you might have a moral objection to taking drugs generally, uh, putting aside the societal. But you're treating me as if I'm some kind of actor in society who can have any influence on events. You're saying, oh, if Peter Hitchens says we should, we should have a law, we should, we should enforce the law, uh, punishing the possession of marijuana, then, then the country will enforce the law punishing the possession of marijuana. Nothing of the kind will happen. I have less influence on the actions of this government in that chair over there. I have no influence. Whatever I say, these things because I basically, I'm writing the history of a country which has destroyed itself. I don't, I don't have. I, I did at one point think that I might influence these events. I don't influence any events. So I don't, I'm, I'm writing the obituary of the country which died, largely by its own, largely at its own hands. That's all I do. I'm not, I'm not here making legislative proposals, uh, which you can say are a bad idea. I gave that up long ago. But the, the reason why I think this is important is because if we're talking about decriminalization, then we're talking, you can talk about it. We're talking, I, I say decriminalization happened about the law, right? And it happened. It's, it has taken place. It was a stupid thing to do. It's demonstrably stupid. I can say that it's demonstrably stupid. I've written about how stupid it is, uh, many, many times, and spoken about it. But the idea that somehow or other my continued existence and saying these things is a threat to those who long for the country to be a drugs-free for-all, and therefore my arguments about the details of law enforcement are important, is absurd. It doesn't matter what I say. My, it doesn't matter in the slightest. I can, I can say, I can say it till the cows come home. Nobody will pay any attention. Our society has already decided on this suicidal course.

I agree that legislatively, that may be the case. But a lot of people are interested. May it is the case. A lot of people are interested. I, and some friends, when the, the Home Affairs Committee of the House of Commons looked into drug decriminalization a few months ago, put ourselves forward as, said, maybe you want to hear some evidence from us. We went ahead and and gave them some evidence, and they listened politely. But when the report came out, we might as well have stayed at home. Nobody's interested in this stuff.

Well, people are interested in what you have to say. On no, I mean, I, and I, I think our listeners only to annoy themselves. They have no, nobody who knows anything about this country could have any belief for one second that I have any influence on the, on the making of policy by, by government or the Civil Service. I have none. I don't think people need to see you as somebody who's going to have an influence on policy. It matters. My only, my only interest in this, my only reason for discussing it, is historical. I, I can tell you, this is what happened. This is how it happened.

You don't think it would be a good thing, for example, if, if the listeners of this podcast, there could be, you know, hundreds of thousands of people, could hear this conversation that maybe haven't listened to you before. This could be their first introduction to these ideas, and if presented in a way that clicks with them, they could think, you know what, he's right.

There are lots of people who have come to this conclusion. It makes no difference. The political parties are immune to thought. But that's what I'm saying. I keep telling you, the political, I'll, I'll go, I'll go more deeply. The major political parties in this country are immune to thought. They're not interested. Even, even if everybody who, who watched this podcast instantly agreed with me and went out and turned to their friends and said, that Hitchens, he's got a point, it wouldn't make any difference.

You don't think that would be a worthwhile endeavor to have thousands of people suddenly agree with you? That there will be many more people in the country who realized they had no power at all over events. That maybe, maybe that's good in itself. It, it may be good in itself. But that's all the reason that I was asking about this was to, was to get to the question of whether we are in favor of the criminalization of something because of a moralistic objection to it. That is, can't there be things that are immoral? I don't care what I'm telling you. What I think, I have moral objections to it. But I don't care if you don't have moral objections to it, because I can also provide you with perfectly good utilitarian, non-moral objections to it. I, I think, I think becoming mentally ill is a bad thing. Taking a risk which, which has, which appears to have that likelihood, is therefore a bad thing. It doesn't take much argument to get through that. You don't need to have puritanical personal morals to think that. I, I don't. If you want to discuss the basis of my morality, we've got time. I don't think, I don't think you do. I don't think most people will be interested. I have moral objections to it. Like most moral objections, I find they have good practical reasons beneath them.

Maybe my question isn't clear here. Uh, the question is, granting that it's an immoral practice, granting that it's an immoral thing to take. I don't want you to grant that, because you obviously don't think so. So it doesn't. I, I don't care whether you think it's moral or not, because I'm not trying. I have never in my life tried to persuade anybody to adopt my moral position. Supposing we weren't even talking about drugs. The question more broadly that I'm using this as a springboard to to get out, because I'm interested in your view here, is do you think that something being immoral is sufficient justification for making it illegal? Is that enough alone?

No. Some things were immoral which shouldn't be made legal. The construction of, of, of a legal code is to, is an independent of morality. So, so what is it that would provide that additional justification? We have a practice which is immoral. That's not enough to make it illegal. What is the sufficient condition to make something justifiably criminalized?

That's harmful. Sure. And so, so a moment ago, now bringing up the context of drugs, but we're not arguing about whether to make something illegal. This is something for which is illegal under statute law passed by Parliament. But of course, lots of people are talking, 52 years ago, lots of people are talking about officially decriminalizing. I'm against the very least keeping the laws on the books. I'm not arguing about, I'm not arguing about making something illegal. I'm arguing about about keeping something illegal which already is. Yes. And, and there are many people. Should be kept illegal. You'll be sorry when you, when you abolish the law against it. That's all I can tell you. And there are people who don't want to do that. And so the question that I was asking is, what the reason is for these laws on the books, and why we should be keeping them, and why we should be enforcing them. And it seemed like you were, you were referring to more than just the societal harms when talking about specifically criminalization. But what I'm seeing is drugs being immoral, or it being a bad idea to drug. I, I think drug is immoral. I think self-stupefaction is immoral. That's not a reason for it to be illegal. Explained to you why it's probably not a reason for it to be criminal at all, because I couldn't persuade anybody else. The criminal law is made by an elected Parliament, and with a, with a population in this country which is probably about 65% totally irreligious, and the rest of it not very, to advanced moral arguments for the making of laws would be futile. I wouldn't bother doing it.

Recently, The Washington Post did something of an expose on what might have been the most popular argument for the drug decriminalization lobby for decades now, talking about the rise in the taking of drugs in Portugal. And they did, and you wrote about it in the On Sunday, the failure of this Portuguese experiment of drug decriminalization. In 2001, they decided to adopt a policy of, uh, decriminalizing drugs such that people who were caught with drugs, depenalization is the technical term for what they did, but yeah, they would be treated rather than. But what they also did was they, what they actually did was they formalized the policy which they'd been informally following for several years beforehand. There were hardly, hardly anybody in Portugal in prison for possession of drugs at at the time of the change of the law. They didn't, there was no fundamental change in Portugal. They simply formalized what they'd already been doing. It wasn't the fact that Washington Post finally caught up with the fact that it hadn't had the miraculous effects claimed for it. It was not the first time anybody had ever criticized it. So in 2001, Portugal made official something that was essentially de facto already the case.

Oh, yeah. They'd been doing it for years. If that's the case, then why is it that after 2001, drug taking and drug-related harm in Portugal did decline?

I don't believe drug taking declined. I don't know how, how you would know. There were there were certain things, I think, connected particularly with with heroin abuse, which, which may have declined. But I think they've, and I haven't got the stuff here. I've written a long, long essay, which is on my blog, Drug Use Itself, which is on my blog. Certainly lifetime use of marijuana has increased since the change. But the, the, I read a very long blog posting called The Portuguese Drug Paradise, several years ago, which deals in immense detail with the whole thing. So, after, if we're talking about drug use, after 2001, use did rise slightly, and then it declined, such that in 2012, it was below 2001 levels. And then recently, it has increased. A new national survey suggested adults who used illicit drugs increased to 12.8% in 2022 from just 7.8 in 2001. But it's still below European averages.

As the EU average, it was before, wasn't it? I, Portugal's different. From 2001, different in many ways from other, other European countries. But in 2001, Portugal's, uh, drug deaths and drug use was about the, the EU average. Since then, the EU average has has has risen, and Portugal has declined, and it's still below European averages.

I was wondering if, if nothing had really changed in that country, well, it would be unlikely for, for, for, for a change in the, in the, in the paper law, which merely confirmed the existing position, to have had much of a change. This is people who look, so for instance, when Colorado formerly decriminalized marijuana, legalized marijuana, people said, well, you, so what do you now going to get a great crime wave for people becoming more violent? Of course not. Any law of that kind is always changed after a long period of non-enforcement. So the changes will already have happened before you started measuring. So you will find nothing.

So, so what accounts then for the, the massive drop in drug-related deaths?

I don't, was it a massive drop? I don't know. I could, I wouldn't like to say. What it can't have been was the fact that was, was that the Portuguese police suddenly stopped, uh, acting against drug abuse? Because they hadn't been doing it in the first place. So it doesn't, it, it really can't have been that.

Well, well, this went that much. I do that much. I do know the, the, you know, the police, it's not like the police suddenly aren't enforcing this, as you say. But this goes hand in hand with a new policy, a new governmental policy of the treatment of drug addicts differently, you know, officially seen as as a medical problem rather than a legal problem, which is kind of the, the, yeah, it's amazing the buzz topic that comes up all the time. But it, maybe that could explain why it could. And if it's the case that maybe maybe global warming explains it, I don't know. I make no claim to know. You're the one who claims to to know or to think that it's it's caused by a change in the law which didn't change circumstances. That's up to you. What I'm interested in is, is, you know, if we look at the 2001 usage of drugs and drug deaths and HIV from, uh, from needle injections, and then we look after 2001, that it, that it declines. And I think maybe this is just unrelated in the way that maybe, you know, people smoking weed and then developing psychiatric problems is is disconnected. But we, we look at the correlation of these two things and we think, is there not a possibility that the legalization of drug, or the decriminalization of drugs, the depenalization of drugs in Portugal, did have something to do with the fact that less people were dying? And if that's the case, is this not a policy that's worth assessing?

Possibility, but I, I think you'd struggle to find a causative relationship between the two. The Washington Post talked about, uh, a recent increase in drug users and how the local police were talking about increased crime and blaming it on increasing drug use. But the drug use, despite increasing and having having a spike recently, is still below the European averages. And I wonder if that might have something to do with the fact that this is the policy that that is in place in Portugal at the moment. I don't know. I wouldn't know. But it seems to me that that, uh, the reports in the Washington Post of the misery which is, uh, which has followed this change in the law would put most people off embarking on it.

No, it's neither is it the case that there is any country on the European continent which makes any serious effort to enforce its drug laws. So I think it wouldn't, it wouldn't be anything particularly distinctive there either. You can see how it would seem mysterious to somebody that a policy which supposedly has no difference in in the way that drugs are handled in the country does lead to a statistically measurable decline, or does proceed, has been followed, it precedes a measurable decline in drug-related harms in across multiple areas, drug-related deaths, also HIV infections. And as I say, drug use has sort of gone up and down, but is now below the European average. Other possible, other possible explanations for these. If I had known you wanted to talk about the Portuguese drug paradise, I would have come here briefed.

Well, we, I haven't, I haven't. It's, it's, I will just say to you that anybody reading the Washington Post account of this supposed success, uh, would hesitate in believing it was success. H, the, the head of Portugal's National Institute on Drug Use, uh, described by The Washington Post here as the architect of decriminalization, did admit in December, quote, what we have today no longer serves as an example to anyone. But the Washington Post did point out that rather than folding the policy, he faulted a recent change in funding.

Essentia, yes. Well, they always do that, didn't they? It's because they haven't got enough funds. But if you're doing the wrong thing, it doesn't matter how much you spend on doing it, it'll still be the wrong thing.

I, I guess I, I was picking up when when reading your book, and especially the the subject of of mental health problems, uh, you, you were very careful, admirably so, I think, to say, well, look, clearly there's this this link between cannabis and things like schizophrenia, especially cannabis. Well, I don't use the term schizophrenia. Cannabis in, in young people, a variety of of health problems. And there's also a link between, I mean, you have an entire chapter which is just a list of newspaper article, excerpt where somebody has run over an innocent child whilst under the influence of cannabis, much worse than that. And you say very carefully, look, I'm not going to say that I know that it's because they were smoking cannabis that that these things occur.

Because I don't, all I can say is that there's this, there's this correlation. And I'm, I'm saying, look, what's the most reasonable deduction that we can? Well, the correlation that we have is the one that the Washington Post has discovered, which is that, that Portugal is a crime-ridden slum, uh, in many areas where, where drug use is high. Uh, which I wouldn't recommend to anybody. But then, when talking about the fact that Portugal decriminalizes drugs, and although there is still a big drug problem in Portugal, the drug deaths decrease, and the number is, is still below. How many times are we going to go around this? But because I, I know you, you formulate the question you want to ask me, I'll, I'll try. When I said a moment ago that this might be to do with drugs decriminalization policy, you said, I said it might be. You said, you said it might be. But, you know, it's just a COR. Might, might be to do with global warming. Might be. Is that not the same attitude we should take towards cannabis and mental health problems? If similarly, all we have is a correlation? No, I think the correlation is stronger. I think, I think, I think the, the claims that were made for the Portuguese drug policy were, uh, were, were unlikely to be causative. I think the, the suggestion that just possibly somebody who takes a powerful psychotropic drug over a long period of time, over and over again, uh, then becomes mentally ill, and that the two might be connected. It's, it's a bit like saying somebody daily, um, takes a tube full of, uh, of vegetable matter and lights it and holds it to his lips and sucks smoke down to his lungs repeatedly, and develops problems with his, uh, with his lungs and his cardiovascular system. There might conceivably be a connection between the two. These are, these are relations where it's sort of not much of a surprise. But to say to encourage people to, to take drugs which make them less capable of being active and, and, uh, and civil members of society, and which make them more prone to commit crime, and you then go to a society in which there is more crime and more, what you might call social decay, as described in the Washington Post, and that these things are linked is different. Yeah. You don't, I mean, you don't need to encourage drug use here to decriminalize it. In fact, most decriminalization campaigns go hand in hand with something like a re-education. I, I've had this actually. I think, I think if this is going to be about drug decriminalization, I'm bored. If you want drug decriminalization, good luck, um, and enjoy the society you've got as a result. But frankly, I'm sick of the subject, and I'm also sick to death of the people who promote it. So, yeah, will you be all right? You're entitled to use that, by the way. Feel free to do so if you want to. But I think you've had me here on false pretenses, and if you run this interview, I shall say you had me here on false. I'm sorry. Which, which false pretenses? Well, that this is just, this is going to be an interview about several subjects. Been on nothing but drugs. Yeah. I mean, nothing. You're obsessed with drugs. This is the, this is the F, this is the first topic of many. You're obsessed with drugs. This, I, I had, sorry. I think I had planned to thing. I, I have, I, I've written about it. You've not read what I've written about it. I have. You, you haven't read my book. I have read your book. Well, you, well, you reading it with your, with, with the lights off. You're not aware of anything what I've said. I have a numb. You haven't read, you haven't read what I've written about Portugal, which is easily found. I've read that too. Well, again, you show no signs. Don't say I, I, you haven't put to me any of the things that I said in, when I've written about Portugal. It's now, I've been here for an hour, and we've discussed nothing but drugs. Well, I had planned to move on to other subjects. I'm sorry. I, I don't think you're entitled to run this. I, I was, if you do run it, I shall say I didn't, that that you got me here FES. I was just, I was just interested in. I, frankly, think it's extremely bad manners. I, I, extremely bad M and very bad bre. We spoke beforehand. I said I wanted to talk about drugs. And God, you didn't say I want to spend an hour discussing drugs, including half an hour in Portugal. I'm sorry if that was too long. I really, I really. Too long. This, this interview was supposed to be an hour. We've practically finished that hour, and we have not moved from the site of drugs. I really had planned to move on. Not moved from drugs. The thing that I'm disputing is that there were any false pretenses here. I, I asked if, okay, so where is, where is it saying your communications with me? I want to interview you for an hour about drugs. Just before the interview, I said, I want to talk about drugs. I want to talk about God. Inter. I want to talk about the Mony. That's I came here. You said, that's fine. But the mon boross London. You didn't say we, we're going to have an hour discussion drugs, including half the thing on Portugal. Because if you had done so, then, then A, I would have said no, and B, I, I would have been better brief. The specific questions. I thought it was a general interview on a number of subjects. I think you have acted on false pretenses. I think you have been dishonest with me, and I think you behaved extremely badly. I had planned to talk to you about drugs and God. You run. And if you run this, I shall not hesitate to say so as widely as I possibly can. I think you behave disgracefully. What's in this for me? Why should I bother to come here? I've come across. I've bicycle across London in the heat to, to spend to spend time being interviewed by you, and you've abused my, you've abused my good, my good will, and you've abused my hospitality. I thought we talk about. Want to see you again from you again. I thought we talk about drugs, and we talk about. I'm sorry. You not, you've talked about nothing but drugs. It was the first. Talked about nothing but drugs. We've been here for, for almost the full hour, which we said we were going to have. You talked about nothing but drugs. It was the first subject that came up, and we were just going back and forth. It came up. I had following. Yeah, I brought it up. I, I, I had followup question to ask. Didn't come drifting eyes out of the scene. You chose it. I had follow-up questions to ask you. I'm sorry. I'm sorry if that went on too long. It was your chosen subject for an hour. I don't believe this. I don't believe this was nothing else. Not a syllable about anything else. I can't accept that this was under false pre. Also round in circles too. You don't listen to my answers. Look, I'm tell such an incompetent interview. You don't, you don't listen to my answer. So you, you have to ask everything over and over again. Rude, incompetent, and extremely, uh, dishonest. If you, I suppose there's nothing more I can say here. Run it. Run it if I like. Well, you sure run if you like. I'm working. I can't stop you. I think people would be interested to see your views. Morally, I don't think you're entitled to run word. I think people would be interested. You're not entitled to run a word of it. You just aren't. You brought me here on false pretenses, treated me with extreme bad manners, and, and you, and you, you've done nothing but, but ask me about drugs. You didn't tell me you want an interview about drugs. You just did. [Music] This. I don't. This isn't because you've got the better of me. The I agree, you know, almost nothing about the, almost nothing about the S of drugs, and you understand less. But I do think that you brought me. I do think you brought me here on false pretenses and have been extremely ill-mannered. Look, I would be happy. Want to be sh. Got stop. I want to sh. I would be, I would be interested to see if people share your opinion that that's how I behave. People know my opinions. No, if people share your opinion that that's how I behave today. I think if I run this, I think if I run this interview, people, people will not. It is my opinion, and it's the opinion on which I'm basing my decision to get up and leave. I think if this goes out, people, people will, will, will not think that that's how I've treated you. Well, because you have the power to edit it. No, I, I, I don't edit these things. I don't edit anything out. Nothing goes out. Every single word gets included. Everything. I don't care. I still think, still think illed, dishonest, false pretenses. So I can post this interview word for word. You're here on false pretenses, and I think you should be ashamed. So I can post this interview word for word, and you think I've been lured here on false pretenses? I think you should be ashamed of yourself, ashamed enough not to run it. I'm sorry. I just, I just don't agree. I, I just don't agree that there were any false pretenses. I know you don't. I, I just. Does that make it better that you're not even aware of what you've done? I'm, I'm amused by this, honestly. I, I, I, I don't doubt it. So many episodes, we just, we just doubt it. We talk, we go back and forth. If there are follow-up questions, there are follow-up questions. Don't doubt that you'll Beed. How, how long would have been too long to talk about drugs? Like, if we'd have moved on half an hour earlier to talk about. One minute was too long to talk about drugs. So why, I don't, don't you raised it? So I, I, I, I, I had man went on and on and on and round and round and round, and you didn't have any idea what I think. You hadn't read what I'd written, or if you had, you hadn't taken it in or understood it before this interview. I asked you if we could talk about drugs. You said yes. You didn't. You, of course I can talk about drugs. I didn't, I didn't agree to an entire interview about drugs. I think it's very good example of my, of my powerful self-restraint that I haven't sworn in you anyway. Don't, if you've got any sense or manners, don't run that M. I want to run this. Just you have. You're not entitled to run it. You have no moral entitlement to run it. You, you brought me here on false pretentions and you behave very badly. Just, just if you do, I should say so. Just in order that that I can, that if that's the case, that if I have mistreated you, that I can, that I can hear that from someone other than just yourself. Because I just, no, no, it's my, it's my, it's my opinion that matters on that. I, I, I don't know what you assisted with asking me to come. I never made any trouble about coming. I, I changed my day to come today. I agreed to come. I came on time. I was here when requested, and then I, and then, then I was abused. My, my, my good nature was abused. I don't like that. I suppose there nothing advise you not to. I suppose it's more I can say, but I, I, I must say that this, this like, I, I, I have to run this. I have to. What I have to run this because, because like people know that I've spoken to you, they'll want the interview. And I know. Okay, well, I'll start tweeting now that I out. You're running it. No, no, I, I don't. You carry on tweeting it, and I'll go to. There an outrage ill of ill manners and bad faith that you're running it at all, if you choose to do so. I was tricked by this way, some tricked by somebody else. Yeah. I've had someone else try to trick me into into interv about drugs by pretending they were interested in general matters. I, I really, I really genuinely very to that they at least didn't have the neres to running indeed. I would happily talk to you now about any other subject and not run the drugs part, just the rest of it, just to prove to you that I'm really not here to trick you into a conversation about drugs. Has so much content about everything else. It's just I can talk to you about. Always go like this. If you get on a topic and you get rolling, genuinely, I was just interested in in following it up. I really didn't mean to make this some, some sudden. Suddenly we're just going to talk about drugs. The whole. Do you know what it is? Do you know what it is? I am so freaking bored about arguing about drugs with Mor arms who want to legalize them. Well, I'm sorry if it's boring, but that doesn't Bor. Doan. So boring. I've wasted years of my life on it. That doesn't mean I'm acting out of malice here. No, but it's, if you knew anything about me, you know how sick I was. I'm talking about it. Look, I'm couldn't even be bothered to read properly what I've written about it. You claim to read it. I have. I have to. I have to. I have to take it as truth. I only wish you, you weren't paying attention. You didn't understand it. I only wish you'd have mentioned this before the interview. When I asked if we could talk about drugs, I talk about drugs to people, and I say, I didn't say I, I was, I would come across un interview entire about drugs. It wasn't supposed to be. It, it just. Look, I have other topics that we were about to move on to, but we weren't. I mean, that genuinely. You barely be Portugal. I, I, I can prove. But you didn't get there. Didn't you chose? You chose to work with with this, and then you finished with that. So what are you offering me? What I'm, what I'm offering you is firstly an explanation as to. I don't want an explanation. Secondly, what I'm offering you is, for example, if, if you want me to prove to you that I'm, I'm not interested in tricking you into a conversation about drugs, if you wanted to sit down and talk about the other subject, for instance, God, that was the next one on our list, and we talked about that instead, just to prove to you that I'm, I'm not interested in just talking about drugs to you. That's not what I'm trying to do here. I, and I mean that. But what happens to this, this Dil that we've questioned? Look, like people, people know that I'm talking to you, they'll want to see a conversation with you, and I can. They'll, they'll expect me to have talked to you about drugs. I can explain to them that we did, and that you, that you, that you didn't. I can talk about it, but I can't talk about it for an hour with you going round around in circles, not listening to my answers. Look, I, I, you seem the, the reason that you seem angry at me. I don't like you. Is okay. The reason I really don't like you. That's fine. I really have decided in the past hour that I really do not like you at all. I had no opinions on you before now. I actively dislike you. That seemed to be based on, on the fact that you're a, you're a propagandist for drug legalization. Yes. The fact that I'm somehow tricking you into. No, you're a propagandist for drug legalization, and I regard such persons. I, I will sometimes and occasions I will be in the same room with them because it's necessary for debate, but I do not choose their company. I, I, I'm genuinely. I won't tell you that the, the other occupations with which I, with which I equate them, with whom I also don't wish to spend time, but I don't like you. Look, this isn't. I've spoken about drugs publicly twice. I don't care what you done publicly. On this, on this occasion, you've made it clear to me that you are a very strong per legalization, and that was been the purpose of your interview. My, my job as an interviewer is to challenge my guests, regardless of. I don't care. I don't mind being challenged. If I were talking to, if I were talking to a, to a, if I had David Nutt on the podcast, who I was supposed to for a long time, my, my questions would have been in the exact opposite direction. So you say I would have put his points to you. You can see it on any of my previous. What did you say? Any of my. I don't care. And that's why, that's why I reject. I, I think, I think you're in favor of drug legalization. Yes. Well, I am. Yes. Are you not? Yeah. Well, I, I am. And I told you exactly. I think that's what you're in favor of. So I, then, then have to ask myself, why that's different from being a propagandist? No, it's not being in favor of something. It's not different from being a prop. It depends on what you do with what you do as a result, isn't it? Asking questions. Asking questions, and they're not to the answers. Asking most obsessively and not listening to the answers, not doing your, not doing your homework before the interview. The whole purpose of having you here is to, is to, is to counteract that kind of propagandic element of only just talking about drug legalization and having instead one of the most well-known. I don't want to be the me in your sandwich. Look, I, I, the reason why I, I'm, what, what I'm trying to say here is, you're saying that I have no moral right to, to run this because you think that I've invited you under false. That I've invited you under false pretenses. You owe me a longal apology. I, I, I just don't think that's the case. I, I just don't think that's. I'm not sure you believe in or has you. So that would, so I, I think I think I do have to run this interview. You'd have to. I'm sorry to say. I like, I, I feel on principle. What principle? In the way that you feel I've mistreated you by, by somehow tricking you, even though I've done no such thing. I feel like you're now mistreating me. Have you tricked me? You asked me here for an interview on, on a number of subjects, and it turns into an hour, an hour-long interview about drug legalization. That I, I, I told you we'd talk about drugs. Well, yes, but it's one of many subjects, and the interview hadn't concluded. Well, it has not. Oh, sure, but we were going to move on. Like, of course we haven't talk. How much time was left in an hour for, for the other things? You would have just got. Well, do you remember before we started, and I have it on camera, in fact, that that I said this goes for an hour, but if the conversation flows, if the conversation goes on, it might go go on for an hour and a half or two hours. It absolutely didn't. And you said that that was fine. And so the plan was. Absolutely didn't flow. The plan was an hour. Flow. The plan was an hour on drugs. I've never, I've s in life had a conversation that's been more of an endurance test. It did not flow. Was constantly halting while I, I, I want, I lost my temple with you at one point over your repeating, uh, what about alcohol questions. The plan was an hour. The plan was an hour on drugs, and then an hour on God. That, that was the idea. And, and we just didn't make it that far because, because you're now leing. Okay. I honestly, I say I have no power over you. All you, you, I can't stop you running it. I think it would be completely wrong for you to run it, but if you know, I, I can't stop you. I think he behaved ping you, and I never ever want to see you again. Well, we'll have to see what everyone else thinks about that. Well, we'll see what everyone else thinks about that. We see. I don't. I'm sure all, all your, all your druggy friends will think it's great, but I, I, I, I don't. I, I think even your followers have struggled to think that I've mistreated you here. I really think that. I really think that. I don't, I don't have much in the way of followers in the sense that you mean, but I don't care. I just think you behave really badly, and I don't see why you put up with it. Seemed a moment ago when you said that if I run this, you'll, you'll be tweeting about. I will. I will absolutely. I'll tell people that I, you, you were all nice by saying please come for this interview, please come for this interview. What? And I, I changed my plans accordingly, and I offered you times, and they wouldn't work, and then we finally got to do it. In tell them to be an hour about drugs, in which you didn't listen to any. Anyway, El your question as if you think these people, as if you think these people are going to agree with you. I don't think they will. I'm sorry to say. People don't agree with about drugs. No, not about drugs. About the fact that I've mistreated you somehow here. Well, the way you say, are you going to Tweet about this? They agree with me or not. I know that you. Well, I, I suppose that will be all then. It is. Okay. I don't want to see you again. Okay. I, I, I'm astonished of your behavior. I'm genuinely astonished. I, I wish you the best, and I wish you the best. Well, I can't do that because, um, because I, the only thing put me on evil K with you against you is if you apologize for what you've done. I can't apologize to something that I don't think I've done. I don't think, I don't think anybody can do that. I, it would be an ingenuine apology. What? It would be an ingenuine apology. Exactly. So me any. So I don't think I can apologize, and I think I have to run this interview, and I'm, I'm, I just think you've behaved extremely. I'm sorry to say that I think that you are, you are completely mistaken about me. Well, and I'm, I'm sorry it's gone this way. It's, it's a shame, but, uh, I don't think there's anything I can say here to change your mind on that front. No, I know. CU you know, you've led me over here for an hour's conversation after I. What was for me luring is what wasn't it for me? Why did I come? I, I don't know. I mean, some, you know, you offer me an interesting conversation. People come for all kinds of reasons. You bore me about your Des anyway. Well, you have a good day.