It's a pleasure for me today to conduct this conversation with Renee Zagiarius, who is the leader

of drug policy in Amsterdam and has had an opportunity to look at what policies work, what don't

work. Amsterdam in the mid-1980s looked like San Francisco today. They made, the Dutch government made many of the same mistakes that many of American cities are making today.

And there were 3,000 deaths a year, overdoses in Amsterdam alone annually very very similar to what

we're seeing in San Francisco today there were open drug markets in the street

there were people drug addicts shooting up in doorways the tourism was

affected the businesses were affected there were homeless problems that were amplified

by the addiction. And Amsterdam today, in all of Holland today, there's only 300 overdoses

a year. And Amsterdam is now really a model for how to solve these problems.

And the methodologies and protocols that they've developed there would be useful for other cities.

Renee has had the opportunity to look at a lot of American cities, has a very clear idea of

what, of course, the pathway out of the current crisis that we have. And it all begins with

first acknowledging that there's a crisis and not papering it over. And Renee, after that long

introduction, welcome to this conversation.

Yeah. Thank you very much. You have a very good impression of what we did. And you know how we make a lot of

mistakes in Amsterdam. And it would be silly if you made the same mistakes.

And that's why I'm very,

I'm honored to have this conversation with you,

just to help you that you are able to make other mistakes than we did.

Because the situation is very similar.

And you have some different laws,

but at this moment, we have 40 deaths a year,

...