The Next Fix

A gripping global investigation into the future of drugs—who profits, who suffers, and what comes after the War on Drugs

From America’s plantation-turned-prison at Angola to Silicon Valley’s psychedelic boom, The Next Fix tracks a seismic shift in global drug policy. Kojo Koram—legal scholar and acclaimed author of Uncommon Wealth—travels across five continents to uncover how criminalized substances are being rapidly rebranded as commodities in a new, billion-dollar industry. Cannabis dispensaries now trade in what once led to life sentences. Psychedelics are the darlings of biotech. But for many, the old world hasn’t ended: prisons still swell with the poor, and enforcement falls hardest along lines of race and class.

This is not a polemic for or against legalization. It is a powerful, clear-eyed reckoning with how we got here—and what kind of future we are building in a world hooked not only on drugs, but on economic “fixes” of every kind. Combining reportage, political analysis and vivid personal testimony, The Next Fix tells the untold story of drugs, capitalism and inequality in the 21st century.Dr Kojo Koram is a Reader in Law at Birkbeck School of Law, University of London. He is the author of Uncommon Wealth: Britain and the Aftermath of Empire (John Murray 2022) which was nominated for the 2022 Orwell Prize for Political Writing, and editor of The War on Drugs and the Global Color Line. Prior to academia, Kojo worked in social welfare law, youth work and teaching. Kojo has written for the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Nation, Dissent, and the New Statesman.