It's a pleasure for me today to conduct this conversation with Renee Zagarias, 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

look like San Francisco today. The Dutch government made many of the same mistakes that many of American cities are making today.

And there were 3,000 deaths, you know, 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 overdose 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. In fact, London Breed, who is the mayor of Miami, went to Amsterdam and

San Francisco.

Who is the, you said Miami is the best?

No, no, she says she's the mayor of San Francisco who came to

officials.

Okay, all right.

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

...