# Ground Level: Cannabis and the State w/ Adam Lloyd, Gulzat Botoeva and Matt Bishop

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/speri-presents-7048864/ground-level-cannabis-and-the-state-w-adam-lloyd-gulzat-botoeva-and-matt-bishop
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/speri-presents-7048864/ground-level-cannabis-and-the-state-w-adam-lloyd-gulzat-botoeva-and-matt-bishop.md
Podcast: [SPERI Presents...](https://stenobird.com/podcast/speri-presents-7048864)
Published: 2026-03-19T07:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://shows.acast.com/speri-presents/episodes/ground-level-cannabis-and-the-state
Audio file: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/6683f98604b201dd34f20976/e/69ba89e2b64f8985feac1d05/media.mp3
Processing state: not_requested
JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/speri-presents-7048864/episodes/ground-level-cannabis-and-the-state-w-adam-lloyd-gulzat-botoeva-and-matt-bishop
Duration seconds: 3086

## Resource

Drugs, alcohol, and other recreational substances are central to everyday social life and form a significant, contested and repressed sector of the global economy. Importantly, it is a market that states seek to disband or regulate through domestic and international political institutions.  Through their encounter with state institutions, substances become a central political issue at all levels of policymaking: from youth policy to the fight against organised crime, from local neighbourhood councils to international security forums, from small artisanal production to global agricultural supply chains.  In this episode, we focus specifically on the political economy of grassroots cannabis production and its interaction with the state to understand how morality, values, and (il)legality shape the political economy of recreational substances.  Concepts discussed: state, legality, illegality, regulation, moral political economy, racial capitalism. Host: Dr Frank Maracchione , SOAS University of London.  Guests:  Adam Lloyd is a postgraduate researcher in Politics at University of Sheffield, focusing on the political economy of cannabis legalisation in North America, exploring the broader socio-economic and policy implications of cannabis reform.  Dr Gulzat Botoeva is Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Swansea University. She investigates illegal economic activities ranging from drug trafficking in Central Asia to illegal gold mining and small-scale hashish harvesting in Kyrgyzstan. Dr Matthew Bishop is Senior Lecturer in International Politics at University of Sheffield. His research focuses on the political economy of development, with particular attention to small states and peripheral economies, and the political economy of drug policy in t…

## Actions

- request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/speri-presents-7048864/episodes/ground-level-cannabis-and-the-state-w-adam-lloyd-gulzat-botoeva-and-matt-bishop/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.
- read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/speri-presents-7048864/ground-level-cannabis-and-the-state-w-adam-lloyd-gulzat-botoeva-and-matt-bishop.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.

A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed.

## Transcript

Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.