When I first meet Jack Gleeson, he’s pointing an umbrella at the throat of a girl, whilst her friend snaps a photo on her iPhone. Graciously, he smiles and announces that it was his ‘pleasure’.

Jack and I go back a long way; right back to Season One of Game of Thrones, the international hit TV show in which he portrays evil King Joffrey. When he’s not shooting prostitutes with his crossbow, he’s a philosophy student at Trinity College, Dublin.

Gleeson’s talk at the Union has become something of a viral hit with, at time of writing, almost a million views on YouTube. The reason for the wildfire is that Gleeson seized the opportunity to talk about retiring from acting at the end of Game of Thrones, and his general dislike of celebrity culture. The comments on the video range from ‘Man i feel so slow o.o most of the words and things hes talking about is making me confused it’s like inception all over again’ to ‘Too bad his celebrity draws mostly the worst possible audience to his insightful speech.’

‘I do feel uncomfortable in celebrity,’ he tells me, ‘It’s a weird, like, adoration and elevation. It’s uncomfortable to be on another echelon, it’s nicer to be on the same level as someone but when someone puts you there it’s hard to get out of it.’ 

We’ve just sat down in the corner, away from the braying masses and he seems somewhat relieved. It’s a pretty rare occurrence for an interviewee to consider talking to a journalist as an escape from celebrity culture, but, lager in hand, Gleeson seems more comfortable.

When I ask him how he manages to remain civil whilst being treated like a fairground attraction, he tells me, ‘There’s no other way to do it. I always just say yes. For you it’s just 30 seconds, but they really get a kick out of it. It might make you feel worse, but they really want the picture and they enjoy the picture. I’ve only had one or two experiences where I’ve been in a really cranky mood and the atmosphere’s been toxic and I’ve just said ‘no’, but that led to a lot of negativity at the time, so I’ve learned to get over myself and just be patient and say yes.’

What really sticks out is the idea that it might make him feel ‘worse’. This isn’t just an unwanted by-product, but something that can be actively negative.

‘Yeah I find it really hard. I don’t find it so hard when I’m on my own, but I find it hard when I’m with friends. Like I’m with my cousin there and he had to leave to get a pint. It makes me uncomfortable that friends might see me as arrogant or see that I enjoy it. And my friendships have to bear the burden of my celebrity, when they’re asked to take photos!’

At this point in our interview, we’re interrupted by some more fans – who have brought the collected works of George RR Martin to be signed, and clearly don’t respect the journalistic authority of Cherwell. Gleeson signs their books with a resigned smile on his face, and when another fan can’t produce a piece of paper (she seems to expect him to provide one) he ends up signing the back of a Tesco receipt.

When the autograph hunting hordes have finally receded, I ask him whether his theatre production company, the Collapsing Horse Theatre Company in Dublin, is something that gives him more satisfaction. 

‘I take more of a behind the stage role for that, helping out with the production and writing. That’s really fulfilling, especially as it’s with friends and you have some creative control.

With Game of Thrones I see it as just a job. You just do it and learn the lines and turn up for work and that’s that.’

With minimal interest in Game of Thrones (he drew a shocked silence from the Union’s audience when he revealed that he didn’t even watch the show), I can’t help but feel like we’re not in too different a situation. Sure, he’s a super-rich, super-famous actor, with a devoted following, and I’m just a student with a dictaphone, but we’re roughly the same age and at roughly the same juncture in life. So what does he want to do with himself, once he’s no longer acting?

‘I’ve no idea. I enjoy the comfort of third-level education. I’ll certainly do a Masters and flirt with the idea of doing a PhD. I like writing, but I’ve no idea what.

I’m a huge fan of social theory, even though I come from a philosophy background. I’m a big fan of Žižek, for example. That would be an ideal line of career, to be a philosopher and get paid to think, but it’s tough.’

I don’t disagree with him, especially when he turns the question back on to me. When I tell him I’ve been rejected from all management consultancies firms, he responds with a short laugh and says, ‘Thank god you did!’ So are we just the same then? 

‘For me, the stakes might be slightly higher in some ways. All my friends are thinking the same way as me, but the thing I’m withdrawing from just happens to be in the public eye. Loads of my friends have been doing stuff since they were young and they’ve realised they’re not interested anymore. It’s natural to do something for a while and then realise that it’s become stagnant, especially at the age we’re at. But it just happens that mine is alluring. It’s just not alluring to me.’

With that, we turn out discussion to the classic Oxford careers escape route: further education. I suggest that if he’s concerned about his celebrity, he might consider applying using a fake name.

‘I’d like that- I don’t know if you can do that. I am worried that there’s a bias there. Do you think universities would have a positive bias because I’m famous? [I mention Emma Watson] I’d hate that, to not be validated. What kind of academic research is Emma Watson fucking doing?!’

Unlike Emma Watson (although, perhaps that’s unfair, I have no idea what her interests are), Gleeson seems serious about withdrawing from the public eye. I raise the dreamlike prospect of not being recognised on the street to try and test his resolve.

‘It’s funny; at the moment I feel I’d appreciate that. But because I’m so ‘in it’ at the moment I find it quite hard to get an objective perception of it. Only in two or three years’ time will I be able to look back at it and realise how crazy it was. At the moment I can’t really say whether it’s been a good or bad experience. But I happily wait for the time that I become anonymous again. Perhaps I’ll look back and be like ‘that was amazing’.

At the end of the day, celebrity’s a cultural anaesthetic and I don’t deny that. People enjoy it as a respite – all those celebrity machine shows – but I certainly believe that it’s the public who create the celebrities. It’s interesting that they can be seen as ideals that are representative of the public because, if they’re created by the public, then it’s just inherent that they are representation of what they view as good or bad. So I think there’s a lot of power in the public in terms of celebrity, which isn’t perceived a lot.’

His candour is arresting and I find myself wondering how this will go down with the bosses at HBO. Nobody wants one of their lead actors smack talking the production process of the show they’re meant to be promoting. But still, I ask him what he really makes of the whole Game of Thrones culture.

‘I’ll try and be honest,’ he says, after I interrupt him by asking him not to be tactful,  ‘One part of me screams ‘no, I don’t give a shit!’, and then a part of me says ‘well, it’s a big part of my life and a lot of people care about it and I have a duty to care about it.’ I don’t care about the banal questions and the trite questions that I’ve answered a thousand times, but I think I do care about the duty I have as a result of Game of Thrones. And that’s not a tactful answer, it’s an honest answer.’

Whilst I’m tempted to take the ‘no, I don’t give a shit!’ sound bite and use it out of context, Gleeson appears to be speaking the truth when he talks about the show. Much as he is unable to reject the autograph hunters outright, he is unable to dismiss a show, which, he acknowledges, brings pleasure to a lot of people. 

But that experience is coming to an end, and, just like most students everywhere, he doesn’t know what’s going to come next. There’s an interesting conflict to observe, meeting someone who is heading towards gentlemanly retirement, whilst only being 21 years old.

‘It’s a bizarre tension. That’s why I’ve done a lot of publicity stuff with GOAL, the humanitarian organisation, and really putting myself out there, whereas, in the past three or four years, I haven’t at all. Perhaps it’s a desire to use this weird thing that’s been given to me: for good, or for selfish means, like tonight. I feel like I’ve resented it for so long that, in five years time, I’ll look back and think ‘that was pretty cool’.

You just have to make sure it meets your moral standards rather than whoring yourself out.’

Before he leaves (supposedly to Park End, although he vigorously shook his head when I asked him about it), I undermine everything he’s talked about over the last hour by requesting a photograph. It takes about 30 snaps for me to get the perfect shot; the perfect Facebook profile picture.

He doesn’t complain.

It is difficult to write about drug legalisation without sounding like a washed-up hippie pontificating to the wall alone in a bedsit. This is possibly not unconnected to the fact that campaigners often smoke quite a lot of weed. Yet regardless of whether your preferred vice is a crack rock or a nice cup of cup of tea, there are serious, objective motivations for legalisation which are often ignored by the media in favour of shock stories about kids getting twisted on mephedrone and severing intimate parts of their anatomy.

In September last year, the Institute for Economic and Social Research published a cost benefit analysis of marijuana legalisation. This will partially be derived from inevitably heavy taxation. Since weed was legalised in Colorado at the turn of the year, the cost for an eighth has risen from $25 to around $65. In comparison, the UK street price currently sits at £20 for the same amount. Voters in Colorado approved a 15% sales tax and 10% excise duty on marijuana, and the state subsequently forecasts $70m of tax profit in 2014 alone. ISER predict annual tax revenues between £0.4 and 0.9bn in England and Wales.

But the economic benefits are not solely thanks to the highly taxable nature of any legal stimulant. Legalisation would substantially decrease the enormous financial toll drug-related crime places on society by reducing policing and criminal justice costs, and bolster the economy through other factors such as a reduction in the “scarring effect” of criminal records in the labour market. Overall, the ISER study draws together 13 separate cost benefits of unilateral marijuana legalisation to conclude that “the contribution of cannabis licensing in England and Wales to reduction of the government deficit is expected to lie in the range £0.5- £1.25bn”. This is serious money.

Yet marijuana is only one drug amongst hundreds, and total decriminalisation would correspondingly have a far more significant economic and social impact. Drug reform charity Transform tentatively suggests that the UK could save around £14bn a year if all drug use were legalised: coincidentally almost exactly the same amount that drug-related crime costs us each year. Unfortunately, lobbyists from the tobacco and alcohol industries, who for obvious economic reasons are keen to avoid other stimulants being legalised, have the ear of the government in a way that reform charities do not. Furthermore, the worldwide illegal drugs trade is worth £300bn annually- 8% of the total global economy. Governmental regulation would go some way to withdrawing the UK from this black market and breaking the stranglehold of drug cartels in Afghanistan, South America and elsewhere.

Discourse around drug use and legalisation often unhelpfully lumps all these stimulants together into one issue, when in reality the social impact of heroin is entirely different from the impact of marijuana or MDMA or any other mood-altering chemical. To say someone “does drugs” is effectively meaningless, any more than saying someone “does a job” or “does socialising” or “does crimes” tells you anything about the individual in question. It covers such a broad spectrum of activities that there is no “typical drug user”. Drug use is unique amongst criminal activities as in itself it affects no-one but the person in question. You cannot be arrested for any other activity which involves nothing but sitting quietly alone in your room.

There is therefore also an important distinction to be drawn between recreational use and problematic, addictive use provoked by poverty and despair. Drug-related crime occurs almost invariably amongst PDUs (problematic drug users). If the government is serious about getting tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime, it needs to address the social factors which lead to problematic use, not rely on prohibition.

The way in which drug crimes are currently dealt with is also in urgent need of reform. It is telling that black people are over six times more likely to be arrested for drug-related crimes than white people, despite being only half as likely to be drug users. Once arrested, they are nearly twice as likely to be charged rather than cautioned. This institutional racism is mirrored in disproportionate arrest rates in poorer communities. Stop-and-search policies deliver only a 7% arrest rate. Not only do they interfere with our right to free movement but they are an arbitrary way of administrating justice which actively encourages racism on the behalf of the police.

This insufficient, brute force approach is mirrored across the criminal justice system. At the moment, people who develop addictions as a consequence of complex social and medical factors are forced through a system which is little more than a breeding ground for addiction and repeat offences. One in six inmates develop new drug addictions in prison.

At the moment, our drug policy is actively regressing. The innocuous stimulant khat, a mild drug of cultural significance to many people of East African origin and effectively no health risk, has just been banned. With this resistance to reform in mind, the model implemented in Portugal in July 2001 presents an attractive middle-ground to total legalisation. Possession of small amounts of any drug is still illegal, but carries an administrative rather than a prison sentence. A board made up of a social worker, a psychiatrist, and an attorney deals with each case. Fines and restrictions of movement are possible, but the board is also supported by a network of substitution treatment, rehabilitation centres and re-integration services. The focus is on encouraging addicts to seek the treatment they need, rather than filling prisons with people who pose no threat to society. Drug-related deaths, drug-related crimes and HIV diagnoses have fallen significantly as a result.

We have a right to put any substance we choose into our body, and the government’s responsibility is not to police this individual decision but rather to prevent the actions of drug users having a negative impact on society. At the moment, they are failing in this duty. The day when drug use is understood as an exploration of the human mind as necessary to our society as any other cultural experience is sadly still far off, but the economic and social reasons for reform are too significant to be ignored by the government. Addiction is both a social and a literal disease, yet it is treated like any other crime.