The Impact of Cannabis Decriminalization in Thailand

Hetal Baman (00:00:02) - Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode. Now this one is going to be a little bit different. We're traveling to Thailand and we'll be speaking about a topic that might be a little controversial based on where your views lie. We're talking about cannabis, maybe you call it marijuana or weed or pot. Just until last summer, the summer of 2022, Thailand was a country that had some of the world's harshest drug laws. If you were found in possession of cannabis, you could be punished with up to 15 years in prison. And just on June 9th, essentially overnight, the Thai government decided to legalize and decriminalize cannabis. And what does this mean? It means that just in one night, the possession of cannabis is no longer a crime. In just the first few months of legalization, the use of marijuana has exploded all around Thailand, with numerous dispensaries popping up all across the Southeast Asian nation of 70 million people.

Hetal Baman (00:01:03) - You can now buy it wherever you want. In Thailand, in the town center's night, markets in purpose-built salons and cafes even in seven-eleven stores. The question is, can this rapid legalization cause harm to the people of Thailand? Can this be linked to a potential global health crisis within substance use disorders and the onset of addictive pattern behaviors? To speak all about this, I'm bringing on Lee Hawker Lecesne lead therapist and addiction counselor at the Cabin, Asia's most respected rehab center located in Shanghai, Thailand, and with a clinical team that has more than 50 years experience, the cabin has successfully treated over 5,000 inpatients. Lee heads up the clinical program and works individually with clients creating bespoke treatment plans. His areas of expertise include mental health, addiction and trauma. Originally from South London and having lived many years in Essex, Lee has in-depth training and experience of a broad range of clinical psychological interventions in the treatment of addiction, dual diagnosis and trauma.

Hetal Baman (00:02:16) - He's worked in a broad range of national and international therapeutic settings, both public and private, and has delivered high quality substance misuse, treatment and trauma therapy for both charitable organizations and private facilities, including the priority UK and the cabin. My name is Hethel Laman and this is the Global Health Pursuit. Okay, welcome to the Global Health Pursuit Podcast. Lee, I'm very excited to talk about our conversation today. It almost seems a little bit controversial. Yeah, , when Natalie reached out to me from Love PR London to have you on the podcast. Yeah, I read the title was a Decriminalization of Cannabis as a global public health crisis. Yes. I was like, whoa, okay. This is something that's really, really interesting. Yeah. So I want you to first talk a little bit about what your background is in your story. You are currently based in Shanghai, Thailand, correct? Correct,

Lee Hawker-Lecesne (00:03:22) - Yes.

Hetal Baman (00:03:22) - Tell me a little bit about your story.

Lee Hawker-Lecesne (00:03:24) - Okay, so I've thought carefully about this and I thought, how do I censor this so that I don't take up all of the conversation with me? There's a significant stepping off point that occurred around about the year 2000, and I should say that prior to that, I'd grown up in England in a working class family, nothing really unusual other than there was significant amounts, significant amounts I would say, of developmental trauma. And when I say trauma, I think it's best to define what we mean by that cuz I think trauma is a very ambiguous word that gets banded around. But what I've come to understand through, you know, my own education and the therapy that we deliver is that trauma for young people is pretty much anything. Anything that's less than nurturing. So for young children, you know, developing through adolescence and even into early adulthood, I think when we are confronted by adversity that exceeds our capacity to manage, that constitutes trauma.

Lee Hawker-Lecesne (00:04:28) - And I think growing up I experienced, even though it was a developed country and came from a fairly, you know, respectable background, good people that I grew up amongst, there was a lot of adversity. And I think that shaped the first part of my life. And I reached, I guess I reached a crossroads in my life around 2000 where everything that I tried to, to do to cope with, you know, a lot of the things that had gone on during childhood and growing up and, and you know, some of these things are, are experienced by great many people. You know, domestic violence, you know, bullying, displacement, those kind of things. Things that sometimes we take for granted. But I think the accumulative effect is that they leave an emotional footprint. And I think by the time I got to about 2000, year 2000, every strategy that I deployed to maybe cope with life had pretty much failed and had let me down.

Lee Hawker-Lecesne (00:05:25) - And I ended up seeking some therapy myself. And it really brought about a sea change in my attitudes and the way that I viewed my relationship with myself, which was something that I wasn't very good at. One of the things that you come to see with people that have experienced trauma is one that they can be socially awkward, but a far deeper level. They've have great difficulties sitting with themselves or acknowledging self care that they deserve. So anyway, I went into treatment and had some, you know, some, some significant counseling that really helped. And, and when I came out of that, it had brought about a change in me that, that made me realize that all my life had been on the run. And, and one of the things that we specialize in at the cabin is looking at how people mask themselves, how they put on an external mask really to the social world, to the external, a cost to their own internal sense of being.

Lee Hawker-Lecesne (00:06:17) - And that really fascinated me, really. And, and you know, it wasn't that I was caught up in naval gazing or wanting to understand myself better because at the time I was actually, I was doing some work with a, a pretty marginalized group in the uk and I was working, I remember at the time I was working with injecting drug users who were high risk for HIV transmission. And the remit of the job that I had was to try and curb HIV transmission in, in the county in England where I was living. I was pretty much captivated by what drove this group of people to act in such self-destructive ways in the face of adversity and social stigma. But beyond that, there was something, there was something so frank and honest about the people that I was working with, even though they were compelled to use drugs to numb whatever pain they were experiencing, they were very broken and wounded people, but at some level they had a huge amount of resilience and tenacity to just live the life that they were living and survive.

Lee Hawker-Lecesne (00:07:14) - And I think that struck a chord with me. And so I was pretty much fascinated by how do you affect change in someone who is compelled to use drugs, um, problematically and as I say in the face of hospital incarceration, stigma, social disapprove, all of that. And I think my only experience of living with, you know, significant amounts of trauma, listening to some of these people's stories made me think how do we reach them? It's one thing to curb transmission rates of HIV by changing behavior, but how do you change the person to learn to have a relationship with themselves so that they don't have to act in such self-destructive ways? And I think, as I say, when I came out of therapy, I actually went back to university and I thought, what are the three core elements that you would need to understand in terms of interpreting these people's narratives and helping to, to reach the person rather than just changing the behavior.

Lee Hawker-Lecesne (00:08:05) - And so I went away and did a combined degree in behavioral sciences, which is, at the time it was a major in psychology and sociology and a bit of anthropology. But it had a bit of a forensic psychology leaning to it. So it was couched in the, the field of the discipline of psychology. But it lent towards forensic psychology, which is normally studying why people are deviant. Yeah. I didn't like the idea that people that are wounded or in some way broken by life and are just trying to cope and get by, were labeled as deviant. And I, I think that's one of the things that I've returned to in the work today that we do at the cabin, is trying to break through some of the stigma of substance use and the footprint of that leaves.

Hetal Baman (00:08:44) - You know, there's one thing that you mentioned. You said that trauma is anything that is less than nurturing. And I thought that was very powerful because oftentimes I think people think of trauma as rape or traumatic accidents and you know, domestic abuse and things of that nature, but it could also be so subdued, like so underlying that people might just forget about it. And it's very interesting that you said that, and I think that really hits home. I'm sure a lot of our listeners could relate to that.

Lee Hawker-Lecesne (00:09:22) - Yeah, and I think subdued is the right word because I think when you think about how humans communicate and tell their stories, and human beings have evolved to be storytellers when you think about it, you know, from, from hundreds of thousands of years ago, from the first paintings placed on the walls of caves, humans communicate through telling stories. And I think the way that we communicate is not always about the spoken word. It's as much about casual glance or you know, the turning away or subtle rebuke. And I think for young children that don't come into the world equipped with a broad understanding of, of human dynamics or human relationships, I think when their developmental needs aren't met or are in some way thwarted by hostility or, or maybe a coldness from the parent from whatever reason, I think that leaves a footprint. I think children make meaning they like sponges, you know, during that early developmental phase.

Lee Hawker-Lecesne (00:10:13) - I think, you know, the way that the children communicate is through eye contact, you know, smiling, facial recognition, all of those, you know, nonverbal cues. And I think if there's anything going on in the background, and I'm not talking about deliberate neglect, I'm, you know, maybe there's a mental health problem in the family, maybe postnatal depression, maybe a father that's stressed or maybe financial insecurities that lead to arguments. I think children are exposed to all these very subtle cues and, and whilst in the context of what you said, trauma being defined as conflict and bonds or rape and interpersonal violence and all of that, I think to small people that are highly adaptive and and attuned to their environment and what's going on, anything less than nurturing really is, or can be quite traumatizing. So I think if you increase that by an order of magnitude and you get children that are born into houses, whether it is familial discord or arguments or substance use or even profound mental health, that level of confusion to a small child can be deeply disturbing and have long lasting ramification. Yeah,

Hetal Baman (00:11:22) - Totally agreed. So you, you're based in Thailand, what brought you to Thailand?

Lee Hawker-Lecesne (00:11:28) - , there's a story attached to that as well. I, I mean, I could just be mundane and say I saw a job advert and I was intrigued as to what Thailand would she like to work in . It's actually a little bit more convoluted than that. But yeah, the relationship I was in at the time, my wife and I had agreed to separate, but we had a small child, but we stayed together to parent my son at one point, his mom decided she wanted to go abroad and have an adventure, which was quite inconvenient for me cuz I wasn't really set up to just drop everything and travel. We agreed to maybe look at somewhere where we could both work and it wouldn't be so, so implausible that we could just transport our lives. A job offer did come up in Thailand. There was a job advert.

Lee Hawker-Lecesne (00:12:06) - Okay. So I, I did respond to a job advert, but I, here's what happened. It was really funny. I arrived for this job on a Thursday and they responded on a Friday the next day and said, when can you start? And I said, well what's the, you know, what's the process? You know, is it interviews and all that stuff?  Yeah, it, it was literally, it was literally like, when's the next fly out of London? He throw. And I was like, oh Christ, you know, . So, so it really was a case of booking a flight. And then I pitched up on the island of Ko Samui, which is absolutely beautiful. You know, it was absolutely stunning. It was a, it was a beautiful 10 bed villa on top of a hillside overlooking an archipelago. I mean, you couldn't have airbrushed this scene to be anymore.

Lee Hawker-Lecesne (00:12:42) - Perfect. So anyway, I joined this rehab within 48 hours, not so experienced. So I was knit fairly newly qualified, didn't have too many hours in the chair, but I started and uh, and did my best. And um, that was how I arrived in Thailand. But, um, prior to leaving, one of the other people that I'd looked at when I was kind of looking at what was available in Southeast Asia, the cabin had just launched. They were very, very new, but they didn't have space for a psychologist at that time. So I took the job on Costa Mui, but within a very short period, the cabin contacted me and said, oh, you know, that job that you were asking about, it's now become available, would you want to transfer? And, and I had this thing about the cabin, I dunno what it was, it just, I'd seen some images of it and I'd read the program and done a bit of research and it was just so, I dunno, it looked very intoxicating, you know, the images of it was very mysterious and very secretive. So I went up there to meet with them and when I first walked through the doors I was like, oh my God, the place in Koosa me was beautiful. But there was something about the cabin. It was just had an atmosphere about it. There was just so, it was so peaceful and tranquil. But the actual treatment program, it had an energy to it. There was illness and an electricity and, and I think I was just caught by it. And I, I've been with them ever since. So

Hetal Baman (00:13:54) - At the cabin, what type of therapy, uh, treatment do you usually focus on? The

Lee Hawker-Lecesne (00:13:59) - Cabin's been through a number of phases. There was a phase it was going through when I joined. And, and back then the treatment of choice for addictions was pretty much limited to either 12 step treatment, which is the 12 steps of AA or Narcotics Anonymous. It's fairly, um, well embedded in the US as a, as a treatment modality in, in Europe they were leaning more towards cognitive behavioral therapy, which is really about looking at schema and cognitive modeling and, and changing the way people think about problems and deal with problems. That was how the cabin first started out with quite a, a European flavor in terms of the C B T delivery. But there were elements of 12 step in there, but it was purely addiction treatment. And then I, I guess in its first decade there was a move towards more trauma informed care around 20 15, 20 16.

Lee Hawker-Lecesne (00:14:47) - And, and this pretty much came out of the US really where people had started to make a correlation between trauma and addiction. Before that it was pretty much a 12 step model that said, no addicts are addicts or addicts and trauma is Trauma is trauma. And never the two shall mix. But around 20 14, 20 15 it, it started to become quite popular to, to weave trauma therapy into addiction treatment. And it did make a lot of sense. There was some resistance within the field of applied psychology and counseling, um, around addictions. But um, the cabin were one of the first rehabs in Southeast Asia to move towards making their addiction program trauma informed. And so what that meant was that there were additional treatments added to deal with, you know, a lot of the precursors to addiction because whilst addiction does have an organic caseology in terms of being a brain disorder and dopamine reward systems and what have you, mm-hmm  one one can't deny a lot of the environmental factors that people have, uh, experienced and maybe lead them to using substances or, you know, process behavior driven addictions as a way of avoiding difficult feelings.

Lee Hawker-Lecesne (00:15:52) - So we, we still, we still have C B T, we use a lot more trauma focused, um, therapies. We use emdr, which is eye movement reprocessing therapy for reprocessing of problematic memories from short term into long term memory so that they can degrade. Cuz while something's in short term it just keeps recurring, which is what defines flashbacks and intrusive thoughts. But we've also pioneered a new combination of therapies in terms of using something called neurofeedback with emdr. And it gets a little bit technical, but there's good evidence to support that out of the US. But as far as I'm aware, no one in Southeast Asia is doing that. So we've gone quite heavy on the trauma at the moment. It seems to have good outcomes and it has good feedback from the clients. And I think that's the most important thing, that if clients feel that they're getting their needs met, then they tend to do better in treatment.

Hetal Baman (00:16:39) - Now since you've been in Thailand, you have noticed that there has been kind of an increase of marijuana use around Thailand. And I think this is one of the main things that you're focusing on is how this could be a global health crisis. And when did you first start noticing that this might be a problem? Last

Lee Hawker-Lecesne (00:17:00) - Year, probably 2022, around about April or May there started to be some rumors percolating in some of the Thai communities that the government were gonna announce some changes to the legislation around cannabis. Because prior to June of last year, cannabis was, I think it was a class five drug, which is the equivalent of, you know, an illicit drug under legal schedules that's punishable by incarceration if you're caught to be in possession or intoxicated by. So these rumors start to percolate and then very quickly there was an announcement that cannabis was gonna be decriminalized but in stages. So it started off with, okay, we are not gonna punish people if they're caught with it. Then there was an amendment that said, actually we're not gonna punish people if they're caught with it and you can grow some plants in your garden, but they'll be subsidized cuz the government will buy that for medical pharmaceutical use.

Lee Hawker-Lecesne (00:17:53) - So it was introduced in a very haphazard sort of way. But I guess the key takeaway away from this was we went from part of the world where punishment for, for possession of drugs is often very severe and quite impartial. Um, there's not much conversation to be had and sometimes the, the punishments are quite draconian, Southeast Asian, you know, forensic system, custodial system not known for being the most, you know, comfortable. So I think, you know, people that that fall foul of the law for drug offenses report some very difficult experiences. And so when that change happened it was quite concerning because obviously Southeast Asia, Thailand, you know, that whole golden triangle area has a long history with the production of drugs, especially the the MEKON delta. And I think for me it was, it wasn't so much about the legalization, it was about the speed at which the marketing kicked into overdrive and the impact that that was gonna have on young people. Because I noticed was no sooner this thing been, you know, decriminalized than it was being sold openly on the streets. And I think there's a difference between legal and decriminalized. Yeah. So decriminalized just means if you've got it, you probably won't be, you know, arrested,

Hetal Baman (00:19:13) - Incarcerated or any of that. Right.

Lee Hawker-Lecesne (00:19:15) - Whereas if it's legal, it's just, hey, it's legal. Okay. But soon it was decriminalized. I mean I don't often go down into Ang Mai town cause we are based just a little bit out of Ang Mai. People started saying to me, have you been down on the, in the old city recently? You know, there's cannabis stores and seven 11 and people kind of buying cannabis products. And I was like, really? And and the next time I went through the town I was, I was shocked at just how many places there were. But what grabbed me was the, the way that it was being marketed, the language around it. And then I think there's been a lot of confusion about the, the medical or medicinal properties of cannabis. And I think that's quite deliberate because at the same time that the decriminalization took place, there seemed to have been an explosion of C B D products.

Lee Hawker-Lecesne (00:20:05) - You know, the talk about C B D and the medical benefits of CBD B d which is, you know, a product of, of cannabis that doesn't have the THC component in it, the stuff that gets you high. So there seemed to be a conflating on, on the one hand of something that's regulated pharmaceutically the C B D product and then the introduction of cannabis into, you know, the consumer market. But these two things seem to suddenly become very symbiotic. And I thought actually this is gonna be a problem cuz people aren't largely aware of the problems of that cannabis compose.

Hetal Baman (00:20:40) - Can you talk a little bit about the marketing? Like what kind of wording have they been

Lee Hawker-Lecesne (00:20:45) - Using? So I, I'll give you an example. So the word dispensary was one that I saw that I drove past recently. Okay. Cannabis dispensary. And I think when you, when you think of the word dispensary, it's normally used in terms of pharmaceuticals for, you know, the local chemist shop, you know, somewhere where you would go and buy a remedy. But this one particular place, all it had was jars of cannabis, you know, where you could sit and you know, smoke it, buy it, whatever. And I thought that's quite clever the way that they've kind of taken the C B D component, which is, you know, a pharmaceutical based product that is heavily regulated, um, to some degree, but they've actually borrowed that term and stuck it onto the THC based cannabis. And I think the other thing that I noticed as well was that a lot of the stores and shops that have opened up have got menu boards outside.

Lee Hawker-Lecesne (00:21:38) - And the menu boards, the names of the products that they're selling are very much aimed at young people and are, they're almost facsimiles of confectionary sweets, candy, things like that. So the names that they're using to describe the cannabis that they're selling is lending itself from the marketing of other products like sugar-based confectionary products, you know, things that are associated with fun, with pleasure. And I think at nowhere is there any warning or is there any prohibition or education, you know, in the way that you would find on a, on a bottle of alcohol cigarettes even for nicotine. You know, these sectors are compelled to issue health warnings on their products. And I think what I've noticed is actually in line with the availability, the actual marketing of these products is very, very ambiguous in terms of the way that they, there's crossover between the pharmaceutical value of CBD and, and cannabis related medications and the actual cannabis product that smoked, uh, achieve um, a high,

Hetal Baman (00:22:44) - It kind of reminds me back in the day when cigarette companies had commercials, it would almost make it look super cool. Right, right. Yeah. And it's aimed towards those younger people and it seems like this is just kind of another wave of that.

Lee Hawker-Lecesne (00:22:58) - I mean there there is that, and I think, you know, it may be in developed countries in the west, you know, it may be countries where they're more litigious. I, I think we've been through that process with the tobacco industries where we've seen how underhand they were, how they conflated the truth, you know, obfuscated all the kind of light issues around nicotine e even with alcohol today, I think if alcohol was invented today, it would be banned immediately. When you look at the health impacts, you know, it, it just, it just would, but you know, we've learned to kind of accept alcohol even though in terms of the ramification of its abuse. You know, it's, it's, it's one of the, you know, the top five killers. So the problem that I have is, one, the availability of it and two, that this is playing out in real time.

Lee Hawker-Lecesne (00:23:40) - I think there's a lot of symbolism between cannabis and a lot of the other products are being used to entice children. At the moment in the UK there's a significant push to identify problems associated with young people vaping. Okay. And I was talking to someone about this today, that if you look at the way vaping is promoted, it's promoted very much in the same way that cannabis is being promoted now. You know, with the different flavors, the juices, the marketing, the colors deliberately aimed at young people cause they'll recognize a lot of the brands and what have you. But if you look at the paraphernalia of what's involved in vaping, where you've got, you know, you've got the vape machine, which is similar to, you know, the pipes used with cannabis. You know, you've got the filters, you actually got the products, you've got the permissive behavior of the subcultures that use and engage in these products.

Lee Hawker-Lecesne (00:24:32) - So I, I think there's a lot of crossover and, and the fact that young people are being targeted is really worrying. Cuz I think cannabis is, has been evidence to have quite significant impacts on young people's brains in terms of their development. You know, if you look at the statistics or fine, I think it's, it's, it's something like a 7% increase in the chances of developing schizophrenaform disorders like psychosis. Okay. If you're using cannabis on a daily basis. And that number jumps significantly in younger people because obviously their brains are still developing. So if you've got someone who's smoking cannabis every day with no, there's no health warnings, you know, this stuff's openly available and is targeted, I think then people's, the chances then are developing a significant mental health problem is very real. You know, and the evidence suggests that the sevenfold increase and that's before you take in any kind of genetic predisposition for maybe addictions or what have you. So I think you have got a problem that's played out before with nicotine and alcoholism that that's playing out at the moment, but it's deliberately been targeted at young people.

Hetal Baman (00:25:39) - And this is specific to cannabis, right? Not cbd, B d

Lee Hawker-Lecesne (00:25:44) - I mean CBD is marketed as not containing thc. And, and I think, you know, if, if you took a urine test or any form of urinalysis or drug test, a slim chance that it would show up for thc, there's always gonna be a sub decimal amount, a small amount, but not sufficient for you to abuse or, or get high. I mean it's a different, it's a different animal in that sense. Like the thing with CBD is it tends to be more heavily regulated as a pharmaceutical product along with the medicines that contain, you know, cannabis, like the antiseizure medicines that contain thc. They're quite heavily reg regulated. But at the consumer level there's no regulation. And I think that's, that's the concern, especially with the number of countries and states in the US now that are moving to decriminalization and then subsequently legalization. I think what you've got here is these huge populations that are gonna be exposed to something that marketing has got his teeth into and is ready to exploit. And I think that's the real concern is the marketing of it.

Hetal Baman (00:26:42) - So have you seen patients at the cabin who have experienced adverse effects from cannabis?

Lee Hawker-Lecesne (00:26:51) - The thing with cannabis is, let's take a standard case that you, you've got someone that's using cannabis and, and, and we have to use the term gateway drug. And now a lot of people don't like it because, you know, any drug can be a gateway drug once you start taking it. The thing with cannabis is it's often seen as a, uh, as an entry level drug. But the problem with entry level drugs is where there's access to one drug, there can be access to another drug. And where you've got permissive behavior that you form a group of people that have shared values in taking a drug, it's easy for them to take the next drug up and what have you. And so what we tend to see at the cabin is that correlation that actually cannabis is part of a bigger story that most of the cases that come to inpatient treatment, let's be frank, by the time somebody needs intensive inpatient treatment, things have got pretty seriously out of hand.

Lee Hawker-Lecesne (00:27:37) - Yeah. Cuz if you can deal with this in the community, you just go and see a counselor or local community drug and alcohol team and what have you. But, but what we tend to see is that at some point in the clinical landscape, cannabis has been the thing that everything's pivoted on. And so whilst we tend not to see too many young people with cannabis, the ones that do come in, they haven't always had the full effects. They've normally at the age that they're sent to us, they're sent by their parents or by their family who can see things may be getting out of hand. But because of the association with cannabis and other drugs, things maybe haven't got to the point of like significant health problems or or justice involvement or relationship breakdown. Cause these are young people. So typically the people that we'd see the most of with cannabis use disorder are people that are presenting with symptoms of psychosis. But by that time you really do need to be kind of like accessing some, some intensive treatment. Cause psychosis is, you know, it's unpredictable in the, in the way that it presents and it can be quite frightening for the people observing it because, you know, nothing makes sense really in terms of the presentation of the the disorder.

Hetal Baman (00:28:45) - Yeah, that's so interesting that cannabis can actually lead to like schizophrenic or psychosis behavior. It's crazy. Yeah.

Lee Hawker-Lecesne (00:28:53) - I think the thing with cannabis induced psychosis and we, I guess we need to put this in the context of young people's brains because you know, human brains, when you look at the maturation time of humans, you know, it's, it's, it's a very long period, you know, human brain doesn't really finish developing until the age of early twenties around 23, 24. So up until that time you've still got the, the, the chance of significant impacts. And I think for young people, when you look at, you know, drug-induced psychosis or any of the schizophrenic form disorders, what you tend to see is, is the brain architecture is actually changed by the drug. You know, brains are, are what they call quite plastic. They have a plasticity, they're able to to change obviously during that pruning, synaptic pruning or rewiring stage. But the actual brain architecture of people with schizophrenic form disorders looks different when you scan them compared to a normal brain.

Lee Hawker-Lecesne (00:29:45) - But it's not just the architecture. What you've also got is a dysfunction in the, the neurotransmitters that occur. And that's, I think that's where a lot of the problem is for young people is because the, a lot of the emotional regulation and cognitive functioning in young people is contingent on the reward system and two critical pathways that run through the reward system when the homeostasis of that gets thrown off kilter. I think for a lot of young people that can be hugely problematic cuz adolescence is typically a time of storm and stress anyway. And I think when, when people, when when young people are dealing with storm and stress and then they've got the extra additional burden of peer pressure, subcultural norms around the use of the drug and then the impacts of the drug, you know, it's not, it's not uncommon to see people taking more of the drug thinking, oh well this makes me feel better. Even though the long-term prognosis is not something that they have the foresight to see. So

Hetal Baman (00:30:40) - It's like the easy win, you know, you're the reward system of like, when I take this drug and I feel good and yeah it makes me, it helps me like get through the day, you know? Well

Lee Hawker-Lecesne (00:30:50) - I think that combined by the fact that, you know, we live in an age now that's completely different from maybe when you and I were growing up, you know, times have changed so fast in terms of technological advancements and the age of the internet. I mean, since the launch of the internet there was really an epoch in the way that, I don't wanna get too political, but the way that capitalism and as and social media has learned that actually the way to make success is to play off people's limbic systems. You know, and you've almost, you know, I think there's a term for it, isn't there limbic capitalism, there are algorithms and whole teams of Yeah. You know, researchers to

Hetal Baman (00:31:24) - Keep you on the platform,

Lee Hawker-Lecesne (00:31:25) - To keep you on the platform, to keep you on the social media, you know, to, to keep you in the casino. You know, in some ways we live in an age of addiction. You know, I was talking to someone today, you know, that we evolved our limbic systems and us as humans evolved to deal with scarcity basically, you know, as, as human beings, you know, that's what we were confronted with over tens of thousands of years. Whereas now we live in an age of abundance. And I think for a lot of young people, the root of pleasure as a means of avoiding pain is to like the next thing on Facebook or to click on the next next button or scroller.

Hetal Baman (00:32:00) - You can't not look at your phone for five minutes .

Lee Hawker-Lecesne (00:32:04) - I know. And it's difficult, you know, so you don't wanna sound like some old kind of like, you know, fuddy saying don't use drugs, but put

Hetal Baman (00:32:11) - Your phone away .

Lee Hawker-Lecesne (00:32:13) - But I think, you know, life is terribly complicated for young people now. And I think adding in this problem of a drug that can do significant damage to developing brains in a way that's, you know, unregulated carries no health warnings and deliberately targets young people, is quite worrying. And it seems to be a political trend now that more and more countries are going over towards moving their legislation towards legalization. Decriminalization.

Hetal Baman (00:32:40) - Yeah. And I mean we could talk about that for like hours because I think that, you know, what you said about capitalism and a lot of things just kind of come down to the money, the baseline.

Lee Hawker-Lecesne (00:32:51) - Well life is full of addictive hooks, isn't it? You know, we're hooked into everything. Hooks are everywhere. I dunno that there's any real education. I think this, this information comes to people later on in life. It's always after the fact. When you look back and you maybe were somewhat cynical lies the truth becomes apparent. And you start to see what the pure motives are. I think for young people, you know, the sparkling lights and the social media approval and all of the sort of subcultural cues that say do this but don't do that. I think the allure is hugely intoxicated for them. So why wouldn't they do some of these things if that's what gets 'em approval? Because that's what young people look for a lot of the time is to fit in.

Hetal Baman (00:33:29) - Yeah. For validation. For sure. So what can our listeners do to learn more about this issue? Where can they go to just like, educate themselves?

Lee Hawker-Lecesne (00:33:39) - I, I was thinking about this today actually. I was, I was thinking actually I'm somewhat cynical of the, the way the internet has become the place to go for research. You know, the way that, you know, Facebook is the, the place to go for news and YouTube has kind of like become the oracle of all of all truth and, and what have you. But actually I googled, you know, some anti-cannabis legislation groups and I was amazed at what came up because I thought there would be nothing. But I think, you know, it depends, it depends where people are at. I mean, in terms of, you know, at at the front end, uh, at the coalface, you know, I think parents spending time with their children, finding out, you know, a bit more about what the real risks are, taking the time to actually explore this and actually sit down with children.

Lee Hawker-Lecesne (00:34:20) - Because I think all too often children are given, you know, technology at very early ages now to occupy themselves because mom and dad are so busy. And I, and I think they ingest information that way. So for parents to, to do a little bit of research on what the costs and consequences of substance use is, is invaluable really. But actually sitting down with their children and talking to them. And then I think, you know, in terms of public campaigns, there's a plethora of groups out there that are trying to hold back the tide of chain with regard to cannabis decriminalization because it would be unfair to say that there are no benefits from nature. Nature has given us some of the most amazing cures in terms of medical progress. But, uh, but I think the way it's exploited by corporations and people that are able to turn it into something a bit more sinister, I think it's always useful to maybe campaign at the public level on the political level.

Lee Hawker-Lecesne (00:35:10) - So I think, you know, there are places that people can get involved politically. There are groups, there are anti legalization campaigns that, that people can join. And I think, you know, just, just by learning more, I mean the, the conversation that we've had today was possibly deviated from, you know, a lot of the stuff that people will be able to find around the benefits of cannabis misrepresented as CBD or conflated as something that it's not. So I think due diligence and just, you know, take an interest cuz I think, you know, young people, people are the future really in that sense. And what we don't wanna do is damage the fragile and kind of vulnerable brains that are developing at this age. So they end up becoming broken tomorrow in need of repair. Yeah,

Hetal Baman (00:35:51) - I think something that I'm learning as well is to read the ingredient lists on packages and things like that. ,

Lee Hawker-Lecesne (00:35:59) - They're designed to confuse you, aren't they?  the ingredient. Yes. I

Hetal Baman (00:36:03) - Think, I think we often just kind of trust, we blindly trust that things are gonna be okay. Yeah.

Lee Hawker-Lecesne (00:36:09) - Yeah. I think we do stand on the cusp of repeating the mistakes of yesterday and I would be keen to see someone with some integrity stand up and say, hold on, let's just slow this down. Cuz we, we haven't really explored the ramifications, but all too often it's money and lobbying that moves these things forward and unfortunately the cost isn't arrived at till some years later.

Hetal Baman (00:36:32) - Cash is king.

Lee Hawker-Lecesne (00:36:33) - There you go. You said it. Yeah. ,

Hetal Baman (00:36:36) - Thank you so much Lee for this conversation. It's been a pleasure to have you on the podcast.

Lee Hawker-Lecesne (00:36:41) - You're very welcome. It's been lovely meeting you.

Hetal Baman (00:36:45) - Thank you for listening to this episode. If you'd like to learn more about today's topic and guest head over to the show notes linked in the description of this episode. There you can get access to resources, links, and ways you can get involved in the pursuit for global health. And if you love this episode, don't forget to write me a review on Apple Podcasts and rate the podcast on Spotify. It helps me get in front of more people just like you and continues to elevate the causes we are so passionate about. I'll see you in the next one.