High Society: Winners and Losers in the New Drug Economy with Kojo Koram

​High Society: Winners and Losers in the New Drug Economy

​Britain is in the grip of a drug crisis. We have one of the highest drug death rates in Europe. More people are being prescribed antidepressants than ever before. Drugs, whether legal or illegal, medical or recreational, are big business. And only getting bigger, as cannabis and psychedelics move rapidly toward commercialisation. But who actually owns this drug economy? What would really happen if we legalised drugs? What would happen to our economy, to public health, to our highstreets and our nightlife? Drawing on his new book The Next Fix, Kojo Koram joins Dr Sarah Stein Lubrano to ask who wins and who loses as Britain's relationship with drugs is remade and whether this country's seemingly insatiable appeciate for psychoactive substances could ever be shaped to have the interests of society, rather than rather than shareholders, at its heart.

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​Speakers:

​Kojo Koram is an author and Professor, teaching at the School of Law at Loughborough University. Born in Accra, Ghana and raised on Merseyside, he is now based in London. In addition to his academic writing, he has written for the New Statesman, the Guardian and the New York Times. He is the author of Uncommon Wealth: Britain and the Aftermath of Empire (John Murray 2022), which won the English PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize, was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Writing and the Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing and was chosen as a Guardian book of the year. His latest book is called The Next Fix: The Winners and Losers in the Future of Drugs (John Murray 2026)

​Dr Sarah Stein Lubrano has a background in feminist, mutual aid, and other local organising as well as teaching in prisons. She holds a PhD from the University of Oxford and a Master's degree from the University of Cambridge. Her thinking often reaches the public through the Sense and Solidarity Initiative and the Future Narratives Lab. She was previously the Head of Content at The School of Life. She regularly appears on public radio and a variety of podcasts. Her first book, Don't Talk About Politics: Changing 21st Century Minds, is out now with Bloomsbury.