11.02.2027
The Future of Drugs
With Kojo Koram
Across the world, drug policy is shifting: cannabis is being legalised, psychedelics are being developed into medicines, and once-banned substances are becoming commodities in a new billion-dollar industry. But who profits from this transformation? And who continues to pay the price? While investors pour money into these emerging markets, prisons remain filled with people criminalised for their involvement with the same substances, and enforcement still falls hardest along lines of race and class. As prohibition gives way to commercialisation, what will follow the war on drugs?
On 11 February, Kojo Koram, professor of law and political economy and acclaimed author of Uncommon Wealth, joins us to discuss his new book, The Next Fix: The Winners and Losers in the Future of Drugs. Travelling across five continents, Koram investigates how drugs, capitalism, and inequality intersect, combining reportage, political analysis and personal testimony.
From Louisiana’s plantation-turned-prison Angola to the psychedelic boom of Silicon Valley, he explores both the damage wrought by prohibition and the possibilities—and pitfalls—of the emerging legal markets. Can the new drug economy deliver better healthcare and greater social justice? Or will corporate monopolies and economic exploitation define the future of drugs?
Participants
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Kojo Koram
Kojo Koram is an author and professor of law and political economy at Loughborough University. Born in Accra, Ghana, and raised on Merseyside, he is now based in London. He has written for the New Statesman, the Guardian, and the New York Times. His book Uncommon Wealth: Britain and the Aftermath of Empire won the English PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize, was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Writing, and was named a Guardian book of the year. His latest book is The Next Fix: The Winners and Losers in the Future of Drugs.
