Alex Berenson: Societal Consensus is Key to Combating Drugs

„We're not going to put millions of people in jail in the U.S. for smoking pot, or even for harder crimes. We don't have a big enough penal system and we don't want to do that. The question is how do you discourage drug use as a society? this isn't a question of putting everyone in jail. It's a question of reaching a societal consensus where we're discouraging drug use!” – said Alex Berenson, the renowned author and former investigative journalist, who gave an interview to our newspaper at the MCC conference on the global drug epidemic.

Alex Berenson, author and former investigative reporter for The New York Times, gives an interview to Magyar Nemzet at the MCC conference in Budapest on November 19, 2025. Source: MCC

Alex Berenson, the noted journalist and author, graduated from Yale University with a degree in history and economics. He began his journalism career in 1994, and between 1999 and 2010 — while working as an investigative reporter for The New York Times — he served twice as a correspondent covering the Iraq War. Since 2006, he has published more than a dozen books on various fictional themes, while also writing regularly about the Covid pandemic, the damaging effects of Wall Street’s financial machinery, and the challenges posed by drug use. With over half a million followers on X, Mr. Berenson plays a significant role in shaping public opinion. On November 19, at the MCC’s conference in Budapest, he delivered a lecture on drug policy, the shaping of public attitudes, and the media’s responsibility, as well as the societal consequences of drug legalization. He then responded to questions from our newspaper.

Alex Berenson, author and former investigative reporter for The New York Times, gives an interview to Magyar Nemzet at the MCC conference in Budapest on November 19, 2025. Source: MCC

– In your book Tell Your Children you are generally critical of drug legalization, but your position is more nuanced. Can you please explain? 

– Sure. We're not going to put millions of people in jail in the U.S. for smoking pot, or even for harder crimes. We don't have a big enough penal system and we don't want to do that. And I think that's true in most countries. So the question is not just focusing on the outcome. The question is how do you discourage drug use as a society? And obviously, incarceration needs to be part of that. It needs to be a potential punishment for somebody who's been caught using drugs multiple times, or maybe has committed petty crime along with their use. But really, this isn't a question of putting everyone in jail. It's a question of getting to a society, a societal consensus where we're discouraging drug use!

And I would say in the U.S., certainly with cannabis, we're actually actively encouraging use. We have a legalized industry that advertises it. 

Every time I drive up Route 9 in New York State, where I live, about 10 kilometers from my house, there's a billboard advertising cannabis for sale. That is not a good thing. That's not where we should be.
 

– Hungary has a hardline, zero tolerance drug policy. If you’re caught smoking a blunt on the sidewalk, that’s a criminal offence. In light of what you just said, would you say that the Hungarian way is an example to follow?

I think the U.S. is very far from this, culturally. I think the U.S. is so far from it culturally, legally and politically, that if we could get to a point where we had zero tolerance as the goal, even though we know that there's always going to be somebody who's using, that would be good to have that as the goal.

– And then one can argue that this is such a tiny number of people and they're so outside the norm, so we are gonna punish them with incarceration. Again, I don't think we would need to punish everyone, as that would be a much more aggressive policy, but right now, we're in the opposite place. We're actively promoting drug use…  

Even in the case of „harder” drugs, such as methamphetamine or fentanyl, the state of Oregon actually briefly decriminalized the use of those drugs, even though it was such a big failure that they pulled back. So, is zero tolerance serving a potentially good outcome? Yes! Is it where the U.S. is? Absolutely not!

– Many simply remember you as a vaccine denier. A few years ago, in a Joe Rogan podcast that’s produced over 20 million views, you explained your stance of this issue. So, what is your position on the vaccines, and why do you think it’s become so controversial?

– Initially, I was certainly anti-lockdown and anti-school-closure. I think those positions – the views I held in 2020 - have certainly been vindicated, even though they were controversial at the time. And then in 2021, when the vaccines came out, I thought: this looks great! But the more I learned about mRNA technology, my concerns were really more about the mRNA vaccines than COVID vaccines in general.  

That's a brand-new bio-technology that was rushed to market, and then the United States and most of Europe – and most advanced countries, I believe Hungary, too – encouraged the use of these vaccines for everybody, including people at very low risk from COVID, including children. I just think this was a massive mistake! That’s not to say that the vaccines didn’t necessarily have a place for people at very high risk. I think that’s a much more complicated question, but mandating them as well for people at low risk was a mistake, in my opinion.

– You grew more critical of big media, and also of big social media platforms during the pandemic, when Twitter suspended your account over your COVID vaccine tweets, and you ended up suing them to get back on the platform. Do the big social media platforms do enough to uphold free speech, and what can we - the citizens - or the governments do?

– So, in my case, I was deplatformed actually after officials from the White House and Pfizer pushed for me to be deplatformed, which I think is completely wrong, and a violation of my free speech rights - particularly as an American, where the 1st Amendment offers very strong protection.

Ultimately I sued Twitter, and when my lawsuit proceeded, Twitter had to back off and settle with me, and put me back on the platform.

Now, this was before Elon Musk took over. Since Elon took over, he's renamed Twitter as X, and he's also opened up its rules… Quite frankly, there's a lot of speech on Twitter that I don't particularly like right now, but I'd rather have more speech than less! I think telling people that they can't speak will likely just push them to be even more radical… so I'm in favor of transparency even if people say terrible things about me on Twitter – or X, and I deal with it. I think that's the way we have to go! 

Alex Berenson, author and former investigative reporter, gives an interview to Magyar Nemzet at the MCC conference in Budapest on November 19, 2025. Source: MCC

– You regularly comment about the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, a case still shrouded in mystery. But Congress voted yesterday to release the Epstein files, which will now land on President Trump’s desk, who apparently reversed his position. How do you interpret this shift?

– I think President Trump was under overwhelming pressure to do so. I think there's a lot of people on the Republican side, the MAGA supporters, who are angry that Trump hasn't done more to disclose. It's the number one issue where he's sideways with his base- Vaccines – or the mRNAs – might be number 2, because he can't seem to decide whether he's pro-Operation Warp Speed (OWS was a U.S. government program launched in 2020 under President Donald Trump to accelerate the development, manufacturing, and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines and treatments – ed.), or against it, but number 1 is certainly the Epstein case. It's good that he saw the light and came around, but I think we all have reason to wonder whether the president is going to follow through, considering how he dragged his feet. 

I hope he’ll do the right thing, because – as Americans – we have the right to know, or we should know where the Epstein scandal leads, and who in our elite – on the Republican side, or the Democratic side – was involved.

– You joined The New York Times in 1999, and you covered many interesting stories. In 2003, you were dispatched to cover the occupation of Iraq, and in 2008 you reported on the Bernard Madoff’s $50 billion Ponzi scheme scandal. What’s your most memorable moment, as a journalist?

– It was when I was tased! 2004 was a big year for me as a reporter. I wrote some negative stories about Taser, for the New York Times. Taser is the company behind the electric stun guns, and they claimed that these had never killed people, which was not true. They didn't like the stories that I'd written, but later I ran into Taser«s executives at a conference and they asked: hey, why don't you see our product for yourself? Like an idiot, I said yes, and normally when they stun you for a demonstration, they put the prongs very close together, about two centimeters apart. In my case they put one prong on one leg, and one prong on the other, so the electricity had to go all the way! Well, that was an experience that I will never forget! 

I did not pass out, but I was going to collapse, and somebody who was watching this – because they were double shocking me, one shock is five seconds, but they were shocking me for ten seconds – so, he said that if they hadn't let go at that point, he was going to punch the guys running the dmonstration in the face. But, I walked into this voluntarily...

Cover photo: Alex Berenson, author and former investigative reporter for The New York Times, gives an interview to Magyar Nemzet at the MCC conference in Budapest on November 19, 2025. Source: MCC