The Current Transcript for January 20^th, 2016

Host: ANNA MARIA TREMONTI

IN THIS EPISODE

Prologue:

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And there really isn't any other diagnosis where it would be okay to get in people's faces and scream at them and shame them and make them feel terrible about themselves. We reserve that one for people with substance abuse disorders.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: He's an alcoholic and after a period of being sober for five and a half years, Mike Pond relapsed and then braced himself for what he expected to be abuse and humiliation. Instead he began to explore the possibilities of medication and learned about drugs that could inhibit the brain's desire for alcohol. The drugs are widely available in Canada and yet it's estimated that only about one percent of those with an alcohol addiction have access to them. Mostly because of how society and even doctors still perceive addiction. In half an hour, using prescriptions to fight addictions. And then land grab.

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VOICE: I want to say President Xi Jinping, please give back her land that has been grabbed by the local government. That land was given to us by our ancestors.

AMT: Chinese citizens long intimidated by the authorities are increasingly taking to the streets and denouncing local officials who expropriate collective village properties and then sell them to developers for exorbitant rates and then refuse to share the profits. All at a time when the Chinese president is waging an ambitious campaign against what are called the tigers and flies of corruption. We’ll hear one man's story of his own relentless fight in an hour. But we begin with a five second replay of a Trudeau government promise.

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GOVERNOR GENERAL DAVID JOHNSTON: The government will introduce legislation that will legalize, regulate, restrict access to marijuana.

AMT: Anticipation over legalization coming up. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

How Canada can ensure legalized pot trumps the black market

Guests: George Smitherman, Kirk Tousaw, Jonathan Singer

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[marching band music]

VOICE: These preschool boys and girls are having a hop at the local soda fountain. Innocently they dance, innocent of a new and deadly menace lurking behind closed doors.

[Sound: cymbal clash]

Marijuana. The burning weed with its roots in hell.

AMT: Well, that was then, 1936 to be exact, when marijuana was synonymous with Reefer Madness. And if you told them then that in 2016, there be a new government in Canada that campaigned on a pledge to legalize it, they might have asked you what you've been smoking. That's the reality today. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has even asked MP Bill Blair, the former Toronto police chief to be his point man on the file. And of course, medical marijuana is already available to anyone with a prescription.

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[Sound: cash register keys clanging]

VOICE 1: I’ll have two and a half grams of the fava THC please.

VOICE 2: Okay, and that’s everything for you?

VOICE 3: Tell me what you just bought.

VOICE 1: [laughs] We just purchased the THC, it's an extract. It's just a much more quick an easier way for me to medicate than having to smoke a doobie. I have rheumatoid arthritis and problems with my thyroid. I am a mom with two children. I also work in the field so it helps make the days easier to function.

VOICE 2: What can I get for you today?

VOICE 4: Can I get the 28 gram—Sorry, the strawberry 14 grams? Do you have two [unintelligible]? I'll take two. I just bought myself an ounce of strawberry cheesecake and 90 tappets of canna caps. I have arthritis in my knee, sciatic nerve and I've been laboring for 25 years so my body does break down. It just relieves my knee and back pain. When I take those canna caps, I wake up and all my joints are, it feels like I got shot with lube in my joints.

VOICE 5: So it's expensive?

VOICE 4: Not too bad. It's better than going to the drug dealer I used to go to where you're not unfamiliar with the product.

AMT: Well those are some customers of Vancouver’s medical cannabis dispensary. But opening up the pot market to recreational users raises some very big practical questions like how and where pot should be sold and regulated and how to avoid, well, legalized Reefer Madness. With parliament reconvening next week we're having a look at the reality of legalized pot today we have two guests with their thoughts on that. George Smitherman is a former Deputy Premier and Health Minister of Ontario. Today he runs THC Meds Ontario Inc., a company working on getting its medical marijuana license. He's with me in our Toronto studio. Kirk Tousaw is a lawyer who works in the cannabis industry and he is in Duncan B.C. Hello Gentlemen.

GEORGE SMITHERMAN: Good morning.

KIRK TOUSAW: Good morning, Anna Maria.

AMT: Hi Kirk, let's start with you. Who should be allowed to grow marijuana for the purpose of selling it beyond prescriptions?

KIRK TOUSAW: Well for the purpose of selling it beyond prescriptions it ought to be people that are participants in the new to come legal regulated markets. The key for my perspective will be to ensure that we don't overregulate that market because of the very reefer madness type of fears that you share in your intro seem to portray. One of the real dangers of legalization is actually failing to eliminate the black market because we don't let enough people that are currently in the marijuana industry participate in the new legal industry. And so really, anyone that can do a quality job growing it and distributing it safely through whatever retail mechanism is put into place by the federal provincial governments ought to be allowed to participate.

AMT: Should people be able to sell marijuana out of their homes?

KIRK TOUSAW: Well, we don't let people sell really any products out of their homes. I think people should be able to grow cannabis for their own personal use or for non-commercial transfers with their friends much like you can if you grow food or if you brew beer or if you make wine at home you can trade it with your friends or give it away for nothing. But if you're going to run a commercial business then obviously I think you need to do the same kinds of things that people in other industries do.

AMT: George Smitherman, what concerns do you have about the public growing, selling pot?

GEORGE SMITHERMAN: Well, I think that the model that the government should, and I suspect, will move forward on is one where growing of marijuana takes place in Canada with the license producers of making it and with Health Canada strictly regulating it. Regulating it in so far as the rules for operators, and certainly ensuring that any product that goes to market has been adequately tested to ensure that we know its origins and it is safe.

AMT: And Kirk, what do you think of that?

KIRK TOUSAW: Well, I don't think anybody's credibly against labeling and potency standards and sort of the basic kind of requirements that we impose on most food or other type products. Again, though I'm wary of the existing license producer scheme administered by Health Canada under what are now the medical marijuana production regulations. I think that that's a system that hasn't really caught on because it's, frankly, over regulation. It does too much and the barriers to entry as a producer distributor, financial barriers are simply insurmountable for most small businesses.

AMT: Well, and let's go to someone who's going through this right now. Jonathan Singer is a Democratic Party member of the Colorado House of Representatives. He's also instrumental, he has been instrumental in shaping Colorado's marijuana laws. Pot sales there began in 2014 and Jonathan Singer is an Longmont Colorado. Hi.

JONATHAN SINGER: Thanks for having me. The sun may not be up in Colorado, but I am, so thanks for that.

AMT: Well, who has the right to grow pot in Colorado?

JONATHAN SINGER: Well, short answer is any Coloradans over the age of 21 has the right to grow it. Now, if you're talking about selling it, you have to be a licensed dispensary and some of our licensed growers are actually, we have a several tier system. So, some of our growers that are licensed actually have to sell this to dispensaries and the dispensaries will sell to consumers over 21.

AMT: So you have different licences for growing, selling, distributing?

JONATHAN SINGER: It's actually a little bit of all of the above. We have some that are vertically integrated but some have chosen to go the opposite route and just stick to their wholesale grows or product manufacturing or direct sales to the retail industry or to customers.

AMT: And where are most people getting their weed then? Where they buying it from?

JONATHAN SINGER: Well, most of them are purchasing it from legal dispensaries in in the state of Colorado. We, you know, have a number of cities that have decided to ban it but our big cities like our capital city, like Denver have decided that this is something that's worth doing and it's a good step to actually stamping out the black market that was mentioned earlier.

AMT: Okay, so a city can decide that it doesn't want to sell it but you can still use it in that city? You just can’t buy it there.

JONATHAN SINGER: That is correct. Actually my hometown here in Longmont, Colorado has decided that it's not going to participate in the legal sales market and so what you've actually seen is a number of stores pop up around the border where it is legal for sales. But once you're 21, it's in our state constitution, that's what are voters decided to do here in Colorado, and anyone over the age of 21 can grow up to six plants in their home and possess up to an ounce.

AMT: And you say to stamp out the black market. In other words, has that, are most people buying from the licensed sellers now? As far as you know?

JONATHAN SINGER: You know, it appears that way. It appears that way. One of the things that I always like to point out is the first legal sales of marijuana happened January 1, 2014 and so we've had about two years’ worth of data here. However, most cities did not hop on board with our legal regulated system until the end January, or excuse me, the end of 2014, so close to November of 2014. So, as more cities have hopped on board we just recently over the last couple days, I saw a report in our newspaper of record, The Denver Post that said that actually Mexican cartel activity has dropped off in the marijuana market. Significantly. And I think we can attribute a large component of that to what's happened here in Colorado, although I you know I will certainly give the state of Washington short shrift either.

AMT: So what advice would you give to Canadian lawmakers?

JONATHAN SINGER: You know, I think the most important thing is to take some time and look at what we've done not only in Colorado, but Washington State, what Alaska is doing, and see what works best for your country. In Colorado we’re very much of a local controlled mind in that we have a state license. Cities and counties can decide whether or not they want to participate. If they don't want to participate, it’s just like having a dry city or dry county that doesn't have legal alcohol sales. Also, cities can choose to actually have stronger regulations.

AMT: How much---

JONATHAN SINGER: Probably, okay, I’ll say, probably the biggest surprise I think of the state of Colorado in terms of the recreational marijuana market is that approximately 40 percent of the market is in edible marijuana. It's not where you smoke but what's eaten and so these things oftentime look like chocolate or candy or other things resembling something that people might consume whether adults or children. And so be ready for that and be ready for good labeling and packaging requirements that make sure that marijuana stays out of the hands of kids.

AMT: Okay, and just very briefly, what kind of money are you pulling in on taxes?

AMT: So, we're city, excuse me, a state of about 5,000,000 people and we’ve pulled in close to $70,000,000 in the recreational market.

AMT: Okay, we'll leave it there but Jonathan Singer, thanks for your perspective.

JONATHAN SINGER: Thanks for having me.

AMT: Jonathan Singer, Democratic Party member of the Colorado House of Representatives actively involved in shaping the state's new marijuana laws. He's in Longmont, Colorado. So, let's come back to my two guests, George Smitherman and Kurt Tousaw. George Smitherman, what do you think about what he's saying?

GEORGE SMITHERMAN: Well, I think that it is true that Canada has the opportunity to look at the implementation of this from other jurisdictions. It would only be wise and prudent to do so. It's important to recognize that in those states those were citizen backed initiatives which empowered the legislature to move forward. Here we have a political party which has a state, state that's very different in the political dynamic. I think his hesitation in being able to answer whether a majority of the recreational users were purchasing from the newly established market is I think, the problem. He equivocated on that point and I think that the government's intention here in Canada has been clearly struck around the desire to restrict access for kids. And in any circumstance where people are afforded the opportunity to grow plants in their own home creates I think, a real lack of clarity around what the source of a marijuana product is and the accountability to hold people to in terms of restricting its access to young people. So, I think the model does lend itself to some consideration, but I think that a model that allows people to grow their own is going to be confusing and I think runs counter to the core principle which is to restrict use for teenagers.

AMT: What do you think, Kirk?

KIRK TOUSAW: Well, I think that a model that still criminalizes and locks people in cages for growing this plant for their own personal consumption is not really legalization. It's just a different form of prohibition.

GEORGE SMITHERMAN: Well, you know, you raise this extreme vision of locking people up but I think even you—

KIRK TOUSAW: That’s what we do.

GEORGE SMITHERMAN: I think even you might agree that the old model which allowed people who were constitutionally exempt to use marijuana and to have nine plants and pass those nine plants along to some form of grow up has created real challenges in ensuring that product that's available actually is safely grown and is appropriately sourced. You want to, I think, entrench in this new legalized environment, a lot of players who have been acting illegally.

AMT: Kirk?

KIRK TOUSAW: Well, I'm not really sure what model he's referring to. There never was in Canada a model that capped people's production at nine plants and allowed you to designate that to anyone other than one producer. We had a model that allowed the unlimited production of plants depending on your prescription and that model has been continued by a court injunction because taking it away could violate the charter. Similarly, if you're going to continue to criminalize people for growing this plant when it is otherwise legal to possess and sell, I think you're going to have some charter problems with that. That's just not the way we do things. People are allowed to brew their own beer, people are allowed to make their own wine. There's absolutely no reason that people shouldn't be allowed to produce their own cannabis.

AMT: What about mom and pop? The mom and pop quote unquote shops that sell marijuana. Where operations, Kirk, is this what you're talking about, that they should be allowed to continue without heavy regulation or like going through a liquor store control system?

KIRK TOUSAW: Well, it's interesting in the introduction to this segment, you played clips of people purchasing cannabis for medical purposes from a dispensary and those people were engaged in unlawful conduct. It's not legal to purchase from dispensaries despite what appearances on the streets of Vancouver and Victoria and Toronto might lead Canadians to believe. But dispensary is doing a great bit, job, providing high quality medical cannabis to patients across Canada for the better part of the last 20 years and certainly what we need to do if we want legalization to succeed is bring people that were formerly into the shadows out of the shadows and into the light. That's part of the exercise of ending the black market is giving people who have been pioneers in producing and distributing cannabis in this country an opportunity to be participants in the legal scheme. If you don't do that, then the black market will continue to compete with the legal market. And unless the legal market can deliver a product that's of high quality and at a reasonable price, in the same way the black markets been doing for the better part of the last couple decades, it's not going to succeed. So we have to be very cognizant that part of the effort of having legalization succeed is the gradual attrition and moving away from the black market and you can only do that if you make the legal alternative one that is realistic for people who purchase.

AMT: George Smitherman.

GEORGE SMITHERMAN: Well, I think that you want to sap up the black market. I think that that's true. We want to a naturally reduce the number of people that are consuming marijuana where we're not clear of the source and we're not clear that the people that are involved in growing in distributing it are paying taxes or are concerned about safety. I believe that in a regulated legalized legitimised environment, a vast majority of recreational users will seek opportunities to purchase that in a legalized regime, thus sapping up much of the black market. And I really question whether it is right that we should have, as a foundation of this new legalization model in Canada, the entrenchment of a whole bunch of people that have been operating on the shadows, in the shadows of the law where stories are told about marijuana coming in in duffel bags and being paid for in paper bags full of cash on the way out. I think it's true that we want to eliminate the black market. That's a key part of the initiative to reduce access for young people, yes indeed, but I'm not I'm not one of those that believes that entrenching roles or creating roles for people that have been operating outside the law is the best way to move forward in Canada.

AMT: I’ve got a clip I want to play for you from the Center for Addictions and Mental Health because it had weighed in in 2014. It came down in favor of legalizing marijuana but it wanted a strictly regulated system this is Benedikt Fischer, Dr. Benedikt Fischer, Senior Scientist from CAMH explaining why.

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Dr. Benedikt Fischer: We want to very tightly regulate who produces the drug, where does it get distributed, in the interest of public health which primarily relates also to the health of the many adolescents and young people in Canadian society that are among the largest proportion of people actually to use cannabis so we're dealing with a very, very vulnerable main target audience here if you will.

AMT: Okay, so Kirk Tousaw, how do you address his concerns about youth access?

KIRK TOUSAW: Well, it's quite clear that any legalized system's going to have age limits in place much like we do for alcohol currently. I think that that's essentially an issue that may, can get overplayed. We require retailers to check ID and that seems to be what we do with other substances and shouldn't be any different for cannabis.

AMT: And so that would mean what, 18 and over, 19 and over in Canada, essentially.

KIRK TOUSAW: It could it be different in each province depending on the age of majority in that particular province. It's a matter of provincial jurisdiction. And certainly I don't see any particular reason to depart from that type of guideline.

AMT: So your concern, you seem to be concerned with the idea of a major companies though controlling it and putting it in very regulated systems and kind of leaving the other system that already is in place behind.

KIRK TOUSAW: Well, the difficulty is if you set up a scenario where only large companies can participate in the production and distribution. I think you're really taking away from what some of the benefits of legalization can provide to Canadians. If the legal system is more burdensome and less convenient than the current illegal system, then it's just not going to gain any traction and we've seen that with medical marijuana in this country where the legal regime is overregulated. It's too burdensome, it's difficult for people to participate in on economic level as a producer in distributor.

AMT: Okay.

KIRK TOUSAW: And therefore consumers lose out and it just hasn't been successful.

AMT: We have to leave it there. We’re out of time. Thank you both for this conversation. We’ll wait to see how the government moves forward. George Smitherman, former Deputy Premier and Health Minister of Ontario now in charge of THC Meds. Kirk Tousaw, a lawyer working in the cannabis industry joined us from Duncan B.C. And we contacted Bill Blair, the parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Justice for comment. He's not available.

Can a pill cure alcoholism? Film looks at how prescription drugs can fight addiction

Guests: Mike Pond, Maureen Palmer, Dr. Evan Wood

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: The search for a fix.

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MIKE POND: Now I know. It's, like, okay, now I know for sure. My brain is different. My brain isn't like the average person's brain when it comes to alcohol in particular.

AMT: Well, that's Mike Pond. He’s a Vancouver psychotherapist. He is also an alcoholic. We first met Mike Pond on The Current a couple years ago when he joined us to talk about his addiction and the fact that Alcoholics Anonymous had not been an effective treatment for him. Since that time, Mike Pond and his partner, journalist and filmmaker Maureen Palmer, set out to make a film exploring the latest science on addiction treatment. You heard a short bit from that film just a moment ago. The film is called Wasted and it's airing tomorrow night on The Nature of Things on CBC Television. One thing to note, although, Mike Pond had been five and a half years sober when they set out to make the documentary, he soon relapsed. He started drinking again making the search for treatment all that much more urgent. Mike Pond and Maureen Palmer are both with me from Vancouver. Hello.

MIKE POND: Hello.

MAUREEN PALMER: Good morning, Anna Maria.

AMT: Mike, last time we spoke to you, you had just written a book; you were doing well. What happened?

MIKE POND: Doing very well. And then we-- A publisher picked us up. Maureen got the contract to do the film. Things were going excellent, very busy, writing, writing, writing, researching. And then I had a motorcycle accident in February 9th and ended up in ER. And that night I opened the fridge in the kitchen and drank a bottle of wine.

AMT: Maureen, what was that like for you?

MAUREEN PALMER: Well. I was kind of stunned and shocked because I open the fridge to have a glass of wine- we were having company over- and the bottle was empty and sort of had this weird disconnect, like, what happened? Did I drink that? And then I realized he drank it. And we also realized afterwards, once we actually talked to some of the experts, Mike had been to the emergency room 31 times in his downfall, to his spiral to rock bottom. And he never got care there. In fact, he experienced a lot of humiliation. And the experts think it was the combination of the motorcycle accident and those trips to ER just triggered him.

MIKE POND: And the film.

MAUREEN PALMER: And the filming, yeah.

AMT: Because of the stress of actually filming your own story.

MIKE POND: Well, going back to some of the places that were very unpleasant and brought back a lot of horrible, miserable memories. Yeah, I was experiencing flashbacks and nightmares probably for about a month, month and a half, since Christmas, actually.

AMT: Just remind us without triggering anything- I don't want to ask anything-- And I'm not joking, of course. I don't want to take you to a place you shouldn't go. But remind us, Mike, you had gone through a lot. You'd lost your family, you’d lost your job.

MIKE POND: Mm hmm. I lost my family, my practice, everything, basically, and I ended up on the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver homeless and broke. And then went through some recovery homes in an almost two year battle to recover. So, yeah, being in the Downtown Eastside, being in some of these places again, going back to film at the recovery houses, you know, just a lot of visual triggers. And it was—I didn't realize the impact it was having on me.

AMT: Well, and, Maureen, so you're filming the story. You realize that all of these combination things triggered a relapse. Did it make you think twice about what you were doing?

MAUREEN PALMER: Oh, god, absolutely. Like, it was kind of funny, writing the book was a form of narrative therapy; physically taking Mike back to these places I realized what was happening and we kind of shut everything down the weekend of that night of drinking. And, you know, should we keep doing this? Because clearly it was taking a terrible toll. We then went and got one of the new medications and we talked about it a few days later and Mike wanted to keep going because he felt if we could finish the film, we would be able to make a difference in people's lives beyond his. So he wanted to keep going and I felt really conflicted.

AMT: And you say in the film, Maureen, that you had been feeling rather smug.

MAUREEN PALMER: Oh, yeah. [Mike and Maureen laugh] You know, I was with him everywhere we went. There was a lot of talks, especially in Western Canada, where he'd get that resoundingly applause for the five or five and a half years sober. He opened wine for me. He poured me a glass now and then. He went to the liquor store for me and I just took all this for granted as somebody with a problem seriously in the past and I learned- actually, from the experts in the film- this is a chronic relapsing disorder and I shouldn't have had that sense of, yeah, I call it smugness about what was his condition.

AMT: And, of course, Mike, you're not the only one who relapses. This is part of the struggle, right?

MIKE POND: That’s part of the struggle. The main piece, for me, out of this is that a relapse is not a fail, but it feels like it, right. The feeling that we experience is complete failure and shame and, you know, we’ve ruined everything again and I’m nothing but a useless drunk after all, they were all right, and I was getting too arrogant. You know, all that.

MAUREEN PALMER: He woke up the morning after the relapse and he fully expected that I was going to kick him out.

MIKE POND: I thought she was going to tell me to pack my bags and get out because, historically, that was what would happen, right.

AMT: Yeah. So you searched out treatment and we heard in the opening clip, you say your brain is different. What were you talking about there?

MIKE POND: Well, during the filming we went to the Medical University of South Carolina. And I was a subject in a test called Alcohol Cue Testing. So I was in a functional MRI and they were literally watching my brain and they were showing me random images of alcoholic drinks. And in my hand I had a pistol grip that had a scale on it in terms of my urges and cravings, none up to extreme, and I wasn't experiencing what I would call a craving. I mean, some of them looked appealing but, you know what I mean, it didn't feel like a physical craving.

MAUREEN PALMER: It was alcoholic drinks and non-alcohol drinks.

MIKE POND: Yeah. So it was neutral images, you know, of scenery, landscapes, and these drinks of, you know, showing a picture of a glass of milk or a Coke, glass of water and then all of a sudden a picture of a foamy, ice cold beer would come up.

AMT: And you thought, oh, I'm not having a craving.

MIKE POND: Well, yeah.

AMT: What did the fMRI show?

MIKE POND: Well, when I first saw that image, when the neuroscientist showed it to me, and he showed me- Here's the alcoholic brain that doesn't want treatment and this is how his looks when he does this test and here is the non-alcoholic person that doesn't have any problems and this is what theirs looked like. And the extreme difference, I couldn't believe it. And then he showed me mine and—Now, mine wasn't like the extreme one, but I was darn close.

MAUREEN PALMER: [laughs] Yes, pretty close.

MIKE POND: And I'm telling you, Anna Maria, it was like- the feelings that came over me- it was like shock, stunned, angry, sad. I mean, it was just unbelievable. That was a confirmation for me. Like I said in the first clip that you played that now I know my brain is different.

AMT: Maureen, what else did you find out about how the brain of an alcoholic is different?

MAUREEN PALMER: The thing that I found most interesting was this whole concept of a hijacked reward circuitry. You know, it is a choice always when you pick up the first, second, or maybe even the fifth or tenth drink, right, but for vulnerable, susceptible people- and addiction is 60 percent genetic the experts tell us- the more they drink or use drugs they actually change the structure of their brains so that there's, experts believe, there's some kind of impairment where the prefrontal cortex- where you make all of your decisions- and the nucleus accumbens, which is your reward circuitry. The way you lay down habit and memory once you become an addict that part of your brain doesn't work well anymore or not at all. So the idea that willpower alone can change it, it's really challenging. I think, to me that was the biggest takeaway. Mike and people like him after a while, it's not a matter of choice.

AMT: And you can't just talk yourself out of it and use willpower. So in the end what kind of treatment did you find, Mike?

MIKE POND: Well, we went across the line.

AMT: The border line?

MIKE POND: Yes. Into the United States. [crosstalk]

AMT: The US border? Okay.

MIKE POND: Yeah. We went across to Bellingham, which is close, and found a doctor that would give me the injection, a Vivitrol injection, I got it. This is unbelievable, but within a half an hour I could feel the difference. I could feel a settling in my brain, in terms of how I felt, my thought processes, any kind of agitation. It was quite remarkable, actually.

AMT: It's called Vivitrol?

MIKE POND: Vivitrol and it's the injectable form of Naltrexone, which is approved in Canada. The oral Neltrexone is approved in Canada.

MAUREEN PALMER: The thing about the Vivitrol shot is it's a 30-day injectable, so for up to 30 days Mike didn't experience any cravings whatsoever.

MIKE POND: Not until the last few days. I’d hit about day 26 and then I’d notice a difference. And then I knew, okay, it’s out of my system now.

AMT: What does it cost?

MIKE POND: $1,200 American.

AMT: For a shot?

MIKE POND: Yes.

AMT: How many shots did you get?

MIKE POND: Five.

AMT: Over how long?

MIKE POND: Over that five-month period.

AMT: Okay, and so what does it do? It takes away the craving?

MIKE POND: It's an opiate antagonist, but, for whatever reasons, for a lot of us it will also take away the cravings, the urges, the agitation that comes with this problem. It dampened it down. It's like a dimmer switch, right.

AMT: So, how is taking medication to help you stop drinking different from therapy and other help you’ve tried in the past?

MIKE POND: Well, that’s a very good question, because everywhere we went, everywhere where they were doing research these medications in the studies comes in conjunction with some form of therapy. It's usually cognitive behavioral therapy that’s evidence-based, using motivational interviewing and some of these other techniques. And this is where they're getting the best results. And Maureen and I in filming-- We actually filmed one of our sessions in New York City with psychologists there name Dr. Jeffrey Foote. We went through a craft session.

MAUREEN PALMER: Yeah, that community reinforcement and family training. I learned new skills: How to interact with Mike if he has been drinking. And one of the things that I'm really happy we did is we got this $ 400,000 grant from the Telus Health and Wellness Fund and we've created a version of that therapy online at addictionthenextstep.com. Starting on Thursday, people can use it and learn those skills themselves.

AMT: So, you're saying that therapy by itself didn't work for you, Mike, but therapy with the drugs?

MIKE POND: For me, it was-- I know that certain programs or treatment approaches, models didn't work, but some did. And it's kind of like everybody in my practice I see that some of the models or approaches I use you have to match it to the individual. And this is the thing. You don't try to squeeze the individual into the program model. You try to figure out-- You give them a list, a menu, basically, of a tool kit of all of these different approaches and models. And medication is one.

MAUREEN PALMER: AA is another. Like, you suggest to people that they try it.

MIKE POND: Yes, AA is another. You know, just do whatever is going to work for you and just keep looking and try to find a professional and a doctor that is up to speed with the new approaches, because it's a huge problem. We have a huge problem with our doctors just not trained in how to treat addictions. And Dr. Wood will talk about that more, I’m sure.

AMT: Well, you're mentioning Dr. Wood, so, Mike Pond and Maureen Palmer, stand by because Dr. Evan Wood is listening in. He is a professor of medicine and Canada research chair at UBC. He's also an addiction physician and medical director for Addiction Services for a Vancouver Coastal Health. Dr. Evan Wood is Vancouver. Hi.

DR. EVAN WOOD: Good morning.

AMT: Can you tell me about the various medications that are available to treat alcoholics?

DR. EVAN WOOD: Yeah. There's a number of medications that have been approved for this specific indication and a number of medications that are used, as we say, off label and that they're available to physicians, but they were originally approved for other reasons. So the medication that is probably most known to Canadians is a medication called Antabuse or Disulfiram that makes people use alcohol feel very sick when they use alcohol. And that's actually a medication that, in clinical trials, really wasn't much better than placebo. But there are circumstances if someone has a loved one who will work with them to ensure they take that medication every day, then there can be some benefit there. And then there's two medications that work on the receptors of the brain, as Mike was describing, Naltrexone and Acamprosate that essentially are proven, in clinical trials, to extend the duration of abstinence or to reduce craving and they work on the different pathways in the brain that Maureen was referring to, that refer to all mammals having a system in our brain that rewards us for doing things that increase the likelihood that we’ll survive as a species. When we do the things that increase the likelihood of passing on our genes and surviving as a species and it's that part of the brain where substances of abuse have their effect and can be extremely rewarding and create neuro circuitry in our brain that contributes to the pathological pursuit of a substance even when it's harming us. And that's essentially the definition of addiction.

AMT: Naltrexone and Acamprosate, these are oral drugs that you take for that effect.

DR. EVAN WOOD: Yes, they’re oral drugs and so what Mike was able to access by going to the United States, because it's not approved here yet, is a formulation of Naltrexone that's given by intramuscular injection and lasts for30 days. It's a fascinating medication and studies have shown that you can do those types of functional MRI studies that trigger a craving and actually you can show images of alcohol that are so quick that your conscious brain doesn't perceive them. And you actually don't notice it, but your unconscious brain does and you'll begin to crave and the reward centres of the brain will light up. And studies have actually shown that when you have the Vivitrol on board those images can be shown to your unconscious brain and your pleasure centre won't get excited and you won't begin to consciously crave for alcohol, so very interesting in terms of some of the scientific breakthroughs that were observing. And I think what really Mike and Maureen's film is about is the incredible gap in terms of implementation of the scientific evidence and what we know in terms of the treatment of addiction, and the real world experience for most Canadians who are out in the community struggling with addiction, where anything that looks like a health care response is, for the most part, really lacking.

AMT: Why are these drugs not known about and used more widely for addiction in Canada?

DR. EVAN WOOD: Yeah, it's an important point, because I think, we've talked a little bit about Vivotrol, but there's other medications that are available in Canada that are extremely effective and I'll put that into perspective for your listeners. We have medications that we use to prevent, for example, heart attack or stroke. And not everybody who uses medication to lower their blood pressure or lower their cholesterol will experience the benefit of not having a heart attack or not having a stroke. So we have a metric called the number-needed-to-treat. And most of those commonly prescribed medications by family doctors have a number-needed-to-treat on the order of about 50 patients. If you treat 50 people with high blood pressure, you'll prevent one stroke. These medications used to treat alcohol addiction have a number-needed-to-treat of about ten. So they're extremely beneficial, but they're not used. And that raises the question why. And one of the huge reasons is that addiction is a disease that hasn't had a health profession to care for it. So in the case of heart attack or stroke, you know, we have cardiologists, we have neurologists that, it's their day job to create a system of care in the health care system to prevent those diseases and to treat people who come into contact with the health care system suffering from one of those diseases. But because we haven't traditionally trained physicians in addiction medicine it's really a huge implementation gap and a number of settings in Canada, including Vancouver, are investing in the training of healthcare professionals and we anticipate a, sort of, revolution in the care of patients with addiction that can come forward through this.

AMT: And it because it's not solely the money and the focus, you had to overcome the view that addiction is the fault of the addicted.

DR. EVAN WOOD: Yeah, so there are structural reasons as well. You know, we're not talking about innovation for hip replacements or other things where it's not such a value laden and oftentimes stigma to individuals who are suffering the consequence. But in terms of the money, as a society, we are absolutely hemorrhaging money into the consequences of untreated addiction, so health policy makers ignore this problem at your peril because every organ system in the body is affected by, you know, smoking and lung disease, alcohol and liver disease, and heart disease and stroke that come from alcohol. We really need to start from a health care sustainability perspective moving upstream and taking an entirely new approach to addiction. That doesn't mean looking at some of the lessons that have been learned with things like Alcoholics Anonymous, but also really looking to innovate for those people that don't fully benefit from the traditional types of interventions.

AMT: Well, what about government policies around alcohol, about its accessibility, how it's sold? Do you think changes have to take place there to then?

DR. EVAN WOOD: Yeah, absolutely. It's funny because, from a consumer's perspective, how that alcohol industry and governments have worked to make alcohol accessible has been a good thing. But from a public health perspective, we know very clearly that how alcohol is made available, the density of alcohol outlets, which have in British Columbia has expanded exponentially. So that's been great for consumers, but alcohol mortality in British Columbia has gone up in a very predictable fashion given what we know with international research. So there's elements of prevention that need to be balanced with freedom of choice and things that consumers want and then, of course, we need a safety net for when people do become addicted and the genetic and environmental predispositions to that, we know a lot about. It's really a science that is way out in front of where the system is in terms of both prevention and treatment.

AMT: Well, you know we're talking about this against the backdrop of a Canadian government looking how to legalize marijuana. How closely does that affect everything in your view?

DR. EVAN WOOD: Well, it's interesting. As an addiction physician and someone who has a great interest in public health, certainly, we've been on the sidelines of witnessing one of the most catastrophic public policies in the war on drugs and the huge taxpayer investments in approaches that have really enriched organized crime and contributed to gang violence and stigma towards people with addiction. So certainly most people like myself in the addiction world and certainly virtually everybody in the public health world would support the taxation and regulation of the adult use of cannabis as opposed to a criminal justice model, which has clearly failed and only been to the benefit of organized crime. But the devil's in the details. So I think the sweet spot would be, for instance, some jurisdictions as tobacco has been regulated so aggressively that you almost see markets for contraband tobacco emerging. And I think that's what we want to see with cannabis is a strategy that wages economic war on organized crime but at the same time doesn't turn it into a commercial enterprise where we have it alongside the alcohol industry wreaking a lot of havoc.

AMT: Okay. Well, let's bring Mike Pond and Maureen Palmer back into this conversation. I'm talking to Dr. Evan Wood. Mike, what do you think needs to change in the way we treat addiction?

MIKE POND: Well, I agree with Dr. Wood completely that we've got to regulate these substances like we do alcohol and-- I have a patient, a young man, 26 years old and comes from an upper socio-economic family. He developed a heroin addiction. He's 26. He developed a heroin addiction at about age 18 and has been hiding it, of course, until the last year. And he went into his family doctor- and this family doctor delivered him- and as soon as he disclosed his addiction problem with heroin he said I can't treat you. I don't treat addicts.

MAUREEN PALMER: Mike has so many patients that he's told about these medications, take them to their doctors, the doctors say, I won’t prescribe that or I don’t know about that. So we're actually getting these one-pagers from the Centres for Addiction and Mental Health and handing them to patients so that they know that there's evidence base behind them.

AMT: Okay. Well, thank you, all of you for this conversation today.

Mike and Maureen: Thank you, Anna Maria.

DR. EVAN WOOD: Thanks so much.

AMT: Dr. Evan Wood, a professor of medicine in Canada research chair at UBC. He's also an addiction physician and medical director for addiction services for Vancouver Coastal Health. Mike Pond is a psychotherapist in private practice. If you missed our previous conversation about his earlier battle with alcoholism, you'll find that posted on our website, cbc.ca/thecurrent. I was also speaking with his partner journalist Maureen Palmer, a documentary filmmaker. Her film Wasted airs tomorrow night on The Nature of Things. As Maureen mentioned, they've compiled more information about addiction, the latest science and treatments, and you will find those links on our site as well. Again that’s cbc.ca/thecurrent. Now, if you or a loved one have struggled with alcoholism and getting treatment or if you have experience with medications for alcoholism, let us know how effective they have been or are for you. You can send us an e-mail by going to our website cbc.ca/thecurrent. Click on the Contact link. And a reminder we're on Facebook and on Twitter, @thecurrentcbc.

China's government land grabs fuel unrest with farmers, villagers

Guests: Jianping Lu, Daisy Xiong, David Bandurski

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Hello, I'm Anna Maria Tremonti, and this is The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

Non-english speaking:

[speaking over megaphone, asking crowd questions]

[crowd responds accordingly]

AMT: That's the sound of protests in a Chinese village. Now, for several months last spring, residents of Tianmu turned up every day at the village square to shout their complaints at local officials. They’re saying, give me back our land, give back our homes. For the past five or six years, protests such as those have been an increasingly regular sight and sound across the country, because China's breakneck pace of urbanization has come on the backs of people such as those villagers. Local officials are accused of seizing their land, then selling it to developers without compensating the people they've displaced. The more than 100,000 protests tracked by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 2013, Two-thirds of them were over land disputes. Jianping Lu lives in an Annan in Haimen City, that's in Eastern China, about two hours north of Shanghai. It's just off the coast of the East China Sea. He says local officials there have been seizing the villagers’ land without sharing the profits. Now, I spoke to him earlier, in translation.

JIANPING LU: Non-english speaking:Mandarin Translation
transcribed audio content Hello.

AMT: How long have you lived in Annan village?

JIANPING LU: Translation
transcribed audio content I have been living here since I was born. I was born in 1975. I've been here for forty one years.

AMT: Can you describe to me what it used to be like?

JIANPING LU: Translation
transcribed audio content In Annan village, we are used to farming as a way of life. Every family has farmland, and farming is the main source of income.

AMT: And how has that changed over the years?

JIANPING LU: Translation
transcribed audio content After China has reformed and opened up policy, the power plants and roads were built. Our village is now more industrialized, and the quality of life has been improved.

AMT: So, when you were growing up and your family was farming, who owned the land in the village that your family farmed on?

JIANPING LU: Translation
transcribed audio content Our land is owned collectively by a group of farmers. There are teams of farmers, and each team is called a unit. The land doesn't belong to the town government. For example, our team owns a piece of land, and the land is owned by everybody in the team.

AMT: And did that include, there was a factory, wasn't there, as well? Did that include any factories that were nearby?

JIANPING LU: Translation
transcribed audio content Yes. The Sanxing Brick Factory is on our collective land. There are numerous teams, but all contribute to the upkeep of the land. The land belongs to a few teams, as well as our village. For example, team five, team six, and team seven all lend some of their land to the brick factory.

AMT: And so, who owns the land now? what happened to all of that land?

JIANPING LU: Translation
transcribed audio content Without the proper legal procedure, our land has been expropriated by the town government. Usually, when the land is expropriated, villages receive compensation for it. But the town government didn't give us any.

AMT: And what did the town government do with it when they took it away?

JIANPING LU: Translation
transcribed audio content Firstly, they didn't provide any documents saying the government was allowed to take the land away from our village. They are the authorities, they have power. But we villagers don't have any power. After the town government took the land, they sold it to private businesses. They showed us a forged collective land ownership certificate, saying the land is owned by the town government now. However, according to the rules, this is collective land owned by us villagers. The government official showed a forged ownership certificate without stamps, and said The land is owned by the town government now. What they've done is illegal. Some officials occupy our village land, where the brick factory used to be, through illegal means.

AMT: And what kind of developers did they sell it to?

JIANPING LU: Translation
transcribed audio content They sold the land to bedding product factories, processing factories, machine factories, etcetera. They sold it at over $21,000 per acre. Villagers didn't get a penny. Some people bought the land and built houses on it, and now, they’re rented to others. For example, kindergartens.

AMT: And you're saying that the villagers who originally owned this land got none of it? None of that money?

JIANPING LU: Translation
transcribed audio content For sure. We didn't get any penny from it. I went to many departments of the government, and no one dealt with the case, because officials protect each other. Now, since Xi Jinping became the president, he said they are going to rule the country by law, and rule the party by law. We really support this. In the legal system, if the money belongs to the people, no one else should be able to bank it.

AMT: And how is your fight for some kind of compensation going? Is anyone listening to you at a higher government level?

JIANPING LU: Translation
transcribed audio content No. They were left unsettled, because so many local leaders were involved in this case. I have been to Beijing and Haimen City, to Nanjing city, but the government won't deal with it. Because if they do take it seriously, they need to find out who specifically is responsible for it. So now, they have just left it with our conclusion.

AMT: So if the town government took away the land that you were using to farm and the collective land, where do you live now?

JIANPING LU: Translation
transcribed audio content We still have houses to live in. They expropriated the farmland, but the houses we used to live in are still there. In my case, they did expropriate the land where I used to live. I went to the land and resource department in Beijing to get their response. They let me build my house in a commercial residential community.

AMT: And so, what do you do for a living now?

JIANPING LU: Translation
transcribed audio content My job now is to sell and repair motorbikes.

AMT: Okay, so you are able, you say the village, they let you have a home there and have a business there. Do you own that land, or did they own that land, that you live on now?

JIANPING LU: Translation
transcribed audio content I still don't have the ownership certificates of both the land and house for where I'm living now. The land was collective land before, then it was turned into commercial land, and developed by real estate companies. Thus, it’s very difficult for me to get my ownership certificate.

AMT: You mentioned President Xi has very publicly called for a crackdown on corruption, do you feel that you are a victim of corruption at the local level?

JIANPING LU: Translation
transcribed audio content Definitely. I am definitely a victim of corruption. Xi’s crackdown on corruption is still happening among higher government officials. It is said that they will fight against tigers and flies, but actually, flies haven't been beaten yet. For example, I could have got the ownership certificates with a little fee, but the county government tried to charge me 17,000 dollars. The city government has said to me, I shouldn't be charged that much, but the town government disagreed. If I don't pay 17,000 dollars, they won't issue me with the certificates.

AMT: It sounds very frustrating and costly, then, for you right now.

JIANPING LU: Translation
transcribed audio content Yes, definitely. That's why we support anti-corruption under Xi Jinping’s leadership. We also support what Xi Jinping said about ruling the country by law, and ruling the party by law. I want the town government and village government to obey the rules and regulations. Who is responsible for this? How can this be dealt with? On this, they should give a clear response. Unlike the officials in the town government, who are working for money instead of for the people.

AMT: Have you had any indication, either with your village or any other village that faces this. that the government of President Xi is, in fact, cracking down on corruption at the local level?

JIANPING LU: Translation
transcribed audio content Yes. There are some, but effect is not significant yet. For example, the government service is much better than before. But on anti-corruption issues, some local governments are quite lazy, because it involves many officials.

AMT: Do you at all worry that talking about this publicly puts you in any kind of danger?

JIANPING LU: Translation
transcribed audio content I have some concerns, for sure. But we support Xi on ruling the country by law, and ruling the party by law. Through our little effort, like speaking about this issue, we can let officials do their job by rules, and not by power.

AMT: Jianping Lu, thank you for speaking with me today.

JIANPING LU: Translation
transcribed audio content Thank you. May I add one sentence?

AMT: Yes.

JIANPING LU: Translation
transcribed audio content I support Xi Jinping’s leadership very much, and I love my country. I hope my country can become better and better, and improve the overall environment, creating a stable environment for us all to live in.

AMT: Okay, well, thank you for speaking with us today about this issue.

JIANPING LU: Translation
transcribed audio content Thank you.

AMT: Jianping Lu lives in Annan village, in Haimen City in Eastern China. If you want to hear the interview in Mandarin without translation, we have posted that on our website, cbc.ca/thecurrent. We've been working with freelance journalist Daisy Xiong on this story, she joins us from Vancouver for a bit more context about Mr. Lu’s story. Hi Daisy.

DAISY XIONG: Hi, Anna Maria.

AMT: It's pretty telling, isn't it, at the end there. He wanted to really underline his patriotism to President Xi, that he wasn't speaking out against the bigger government.

DAISY XIONG: Yes. And I think he means it, as well. I found many villagers online, who are using the profile of Xi Jinping as their profile on the Chinese Twitter.

AMT: Talk to me a little bit about what you've been seeing online, and who you've been talking to. Because it's difficult to verify Mr. Lu’s story independently. What have you been able to piece together, in terms of proof of what has happened to him?

DAISY XIONG: I have seen posted online about how corrupted the local government is, and different people's posts. And I've talked to over ten people online, and I spoke to people on the phone, and just the same story that happened again and again. That the local governments sold the land to developers without giving appropriate amount of money to the villagers.

AMT: And so you have been talking to other people, but did they want to go on the record?

DAISY XIONG: Most of them just turned me down, partly because they are afraid to talk about in public, since it’s a very sensitive topic. They don't want to get themselves into trouble by speaking against the government, especially the local government, who is in charge of their business.

AMT: Okay. So again, that underlines why Mr. Lu wants to make it clear that he's not being unpatriotic when he talks to us, then.

DAISY XIONG: Yes.

AMT: So, when you take a step back, what kind of picture emerges from these stories, when you put them all together?

DAISY XIONG: Two problems really popped out to me: One was that the local officials had so much power, and they could do so many things without being held accountable. They could decide where and when they wanted to sell the land, how much they wanted to pay the villagers, and they could even do something against the city government’s rules. And the second problem is, the villagers’ requests or complaints are getting ignored so often, and they feel helpless when they are being treated unfairly. Many of them haven't received much education, and they don't know what to do when they're in that bad situation.

AMT: These are issues we’ll raise with our next guest. Daisy, thank you.

DAISY XIONG: Thank you.

AMT: Daisy Xiong is a freelance journalist in Vancouver who worked with us on this story. David Bandurski has chronicled the efforts of many Chinese villagers facing battles similar to Jianping Lu’s. He's the editor of The China Media Project at Hong Kong University, and the author of Dragons in Diamond Village and Other Tales from the Back Alleys of Urbanizing China. And we have reached David Bandurski in Hong Kong, hello.

DAVID BANDURSKI: Hi.

AMT: How does Mr. Lu’s story fit with what you've been documenting in your own work?

DAVID BANDURSKI: I wish I could say it was an extraordinary story, it's unfortunately, very, very common. So as I was listening to his account, it's a big deja vu for me. In the book, I talk to a lot of villagers inside the city, which people don't tend to know about, a lot of these villagers are actually sort of trapped in growing cities in China, and villages on sort of the margins. And it's very common in these cases for local governments to take the land, to seize the land, and then change its land use rights. That's one thing we should be clear about, there is no actually no transfer of ownership from a collective. We have to, there's only one type of ownership in China, and that's state-owned land. But there are two types: there’s collective use or state use. So, what happens is it's transferred from collective use of the land, which is for rural communities and rural businesses, to state use land, which means it can be developed for urban use.

AMT: So, in other words, the state would argue it's within its legal rights.

DAVID BANDURSKI: Well, maybe, but actually, collective land is quite, in theory, it should be protected. So rural agricultural land, it's disappearing at a rapid rate in China, for a lot of wasteful urban development, in fact. And this has become, at least at the senior level, a concern. But this sort of steamrolling of rural communities outside the city, all across China, is happening still, at a feverish rate. And you can see it just about anywhere in China today, even with the economic downturn, and the downturn in the property market. And this is a big source of revenue for city governments across the country.

AMT: So it's widespread. Can you give us an idea of how many communities or areas we're talking about?

DAVID BANDURSKI: Well, in my book, I talk about roughly, well, there's 138 villages inside the city of Guangzhou, which is a major city not far from us here in Hong Kong, in the Pearl River Delta. And if you move a little further out in urban Guangzhou, you're probably talking about 300 villages. All of these are being immediately impacted by urbanization. Each village would probably have anywhere from 2,500 to 5,000 villagers living there, with long histories, in many cases, going back eight, nine hundred years. So think of those numbers, it's quite extraordinary, just when you're talking about the villagers who have the rights to the land. And then you also have a lot of migrant workers who live in these villages as well, which is a whole other side of the story of communities like this.

AMT: And so, how much power to local officials have in these matters?

DAVID BANDURSKI: Well, as I was listening to Mr. Lu’s story, there's an emphasis on the corruption by local governments. And this is definitely true. It's also true that the anti-corruption campaign so far has focused more or less on higher officials, the so-called tigers, and less on the flies, the small officials. And this has been a major problem, because corruption affects most people at the local level. However, we also have to recognize that this is not just a local phenomenon. The corruption is happening at every level. At the township level above the villages, at the city level, and the district level, and of course, the provincial, all the way up to the centre. So, part of the dynamic that you're hearing from Mr. Lu, from the online profiles of people including Xi Jinping’s picture, actually is an ancient sort of Chinese view of power. There's a belief in this authoritarian system, in the goodness of senior leaders. There's even, when they talk about petitioning for wrongs, you can go to a higher level official and submit a petition against your local officials. And this is an ancient system, but they have it under the Communist Party as well. And this is based in a kind of faith in the benevolent official. I think of it as a kind of Santa Claus of justice. And they actually use the term in Chinese, Bao Qingtian, which means to go and sort of make a petition to this benevolent one. So this is sort of the way, so many Chinese have this this cultural idea, and so it's kind of an assumption. They may believe it. They may have faith that if they go to the provincial level, If they're just listened to, their case will be resolved. The statistics tell a very different story. The vast majority of petitions are never addressed. Some estimates, maybe just four percent of all petitions.

AMT: So, in other words, there's no independent mechanism. There's no body that can look at this. They could just go to another official who might be corrupt.

DAVID BANDURSKI: That's right, and the mechanism would be the law. And I document a case in my book of a villager on the outskirts of Guangzhou. His village should not even be urbanising, but urbanization became, it's become sort of a slogan, a political slogan. His land was seized, much as Mr. Lu’s in your story. And afterward, he went and petitioned to the city government. The city government gave him a letter of introduction to the township. And the township, of course, is the one who took his land. So villagers like him, who try to go to higher levels and petition, will often find on the principle of jurisdiction, that they're sent back to the very officials that were the problem to begin with. And one problem, of course, is that they really have a backlog, an overlog of cases. There’s so many instances of this type of thing happening in China, that they really have no way of dealing with it. And the legal system is also, of course, controlled by local officials, as well as well as the police. So, it's very difficult for petitioners or villagers facing this kind of situation, to find a real avenue to deal with it.

AMT: Tell us about Xian village. Where is it, what does it look like?

DAVID BANDURSKI: Xian village is right in the middle of the central business district in Guangzhou. It’s now sort of half demolished, but it's still very much there. They have about 5,000 local villagers living there, and a history going back to around the 1300s. And one time, there were about 60,000 migrant workers, coming in to do manufacturing jobs, that lived in this village, right in the middle of the city. Surrounding this village are skyscrapers, and major developments, some of the most expensive real estate in China. In fact, anywhere in the world. Right next door. So you can imagine the immense value of their land. And this is not farmland, but their residential land. The kind of land that Mr. Lu was also talking about, that's left for the villagers to live on, their homesteading land.

AMT: And what are the people who live there doing to try to preserve that village?

DAVID BANDURSKI: Well they, since 2009, they have had a long, sustained, what we call rights defense movement. They were quite unified. For a number of years, they hadn't been allowed to do their dragon boat parades, which is one of their major cultural festivals, racing of the dragon boats. So in protest, they secretly made dragon boats, and they wrote a petition calling for the removal of their village leader. And they were not listened to for many years, petitioning, even holding marches, trying to bring legal cases. And it was only after Xi Jinping came to power, although I'm not sure that's a cause and effect issue, it may be coincidental more than anything, that they finally were listened to, and another higher city official was also implicated in this land deals, for the redevelopment of this village and other villages. But this is still happening. When I go back and I talk to villagers I spoke to for the book, things so far have not really gotten better for other villages around Guangzhou. So, it's still very, very difficult.

AMT: And so, and the developers who are coming in, the people who actually pay the money for this land, who are they?

DAVID BANDURSKI: In the case of Xien village, the main village in my book, one of the major developers is actually Poly Group, which is linked to senior officials in Beijing. Something to remember as we imagine that maybe their local officials, and that the central officials will maybe hold them to account. As I said, that’s sort of hopeful thinking on the part of many Chinese. So in this case and many other villages around Guangzhou, there are major state owned property development companies involved. They’re very lucrative projects. So, Poly Group is just one example.

AMT: And so, to what extent are the local governments dependent on the money they get by taking this land and selling it?

DAVID BANDURSKI: There aren’t a lot of hard numbers for reliance on land financing, but there was one study of 286 cities between 1999 and 2009, so a decade period. At the beginning of that period, their budgets relied about five percent on land sales. By the end of that period, in 2009, it was over 50 percent, closer to 60 percent. So, there's really reliance, an appetite, on the part of city governments, for land. And this is still the case.

AMT: And I'm just wondering what the implications are, if you have so many people who are affected by this. Who are actually protesting. What are the implications for that, that emboldened kind of view of things, down the road?

DAVID BANDURSKI: It's a tough view, which is why, I think, the leadership should be encouraged by Mr. Lu’s belief in the rule of law, and is his hope that the anti-corruption campaign is genuine. Because a real rule of law would really be, I think, the answer. If villagers could have their land use rights protected, if they could sell their land on their own terms, have decision-making power over urban development decisions. I think that would make a difference, but right now that's just not the case for all the reasons we've talked about.

AMT: Okay, well, David Bandurski, thanks for your insights.

DAVID BANDURSKI: Thank you.

AMT: David Bandurski, editor of The China Media Project at Hong Kong University, and the author of Dragons in Diamond Village and Other Tales from the Back Alleys of Urbanizing China. He joined us from Hong Kong. Now, this story touches on some of the same themes as the one we brought you earlier this season on what they call the ghost cities being built around China. They are building huge cities, complete with skyscrapers, homes, and roads. Many, or many areas of the cities, sit empty waiting for people to move in to bring them to life. You can listen to our podcast on our website, cbc.ca/thecurrent. And we have a photo gallery of the ghost cities there, as well. That's our program for today.

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The Current Transcript for January 20th, 2016

IN THIS EPISODE

Prologue:

How Canada can ensure legalized pot trumps the black market

Can a pill cure alcoholism? Film looks at how prescription drugs can fight addiction

China's government land grabs fuel unrest with farmers, villagers

The Current Transcript for January 20^th, 2016

January 20, 2016 Episode Transcript

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