 Most of you know that the Drug Policy Alliance was the merger of two organizations, the Drug Policy Foundation created by Arnold Tree Back and Kevin Zeiss in 1987 and 88, who performed a truly historic role. And the Lindisfest Center, which I started as part of the Open Society Institute in 1994. And one of the brilliant ideas that Arnold and Kevin had was to start this awards program. And that's become a tradition to recognize people almost always who've been involved for many, many years of accomplishment, employing courage and decency and the values that we like to advance our agenda in all different walks of life, from scholarship and policing to journalism, to medicine, whatever it might be. And so that's what we're gonna do tonight. That's what we're gonna do tonight. So I'm gonna get it started right now. We added a few awards over the years, but I try to keep this thing moving very quickly so you're not gonna hear almost anybody sit off for more than a couple of minutes or you're gonna see me very rudely pushing them off the stage even though they're getting the award of their lifetime. Now, let me jump right in. The first award is named after Edward Brecker. Edward Brecker was a science journalist who wrote a classic book some 40 years ago called Lisset and Illicit Drugs, written by him and Consumer Reports. It was the model of sort of breakthrough journalistic book-length writing and it helped transform the way all sorts of people thought about this stuff, from Ira Glasser to zillions of people in academia and politics and what have you, when he died in 1989, the New York Times, on the editorial page had an obituary of this guy. I'm gonna ask my beloved colleague, Tony Newman, to come up here and present it to the remarkable Phil Smith. Hello, everybody. I just wanna say I love that we're giving this award to Phil Smith. Let's give him a round of applause. I've known Phil for a long, long time and he's been doing this every single day for the last 15 years. I don't know how many people here read it. Let's first also thank Dave Borden for the Drug War Chronicles. There's so many things flying across our screen every day that's related to drug policy, international issues, what's happening in Latin America, Afghanistan, here at home, marijuana, treatment, overdose. Phil Smith writes about every single one of these stories, every single week. He puts out 10 of these stories every week. We're all busy. If you only can read one email, if you read Phil Smith's email, you will know exactly what is going on in the war on drugs. He's been doing this. He's travels to Afghanistan. He's traveled to Mexico. One of the things about this conference is we're trying to pull together all of our issues, whether it's treatment, getting people out of jail, whether it's legalizing marijuana, whether it's reducing overdose deaths, and Phil Smith in his heart, he's been working on every one of these issues weekend and week out. I say this sincerely. Phil Smith, we found out he's written 6,500 columns on the war on drugs in the last 20 years. There is no one probably in the whole world. This is a true statement right here. No one in the world has written more than he has about the failures of the drug war and alternatives. Let's thank Phil Smith. Thank you, everybody. I'm much more comfortable being the guy sitting down there taking notes from what the guy up here is saying. So to paraphrase Ira Glazer, how long are my remarks gonna take? Not long. I want to say that I'm honored. Thank you, DPA. I mean, I really am honored. The Brecker Award has gone to a lot of very impressive people, and I'm glad to be added to that role. I also want to give a shout out to other people who are working in movement media. Guys like Dean Becker at Drug Truth Network, and there's Russ Belleville with whatever he's doing these days. I don't know what it's called. And guys like Steve Wischia who was at High Times, does Celeb Stoner. We're not mainstream media, but we've been covering the beat for a long time and with great enthusiasm. I also want to mention my boss Dave Borden. In 1993, he formed, he deserves it. He formed the Drug Reform Coordination Network in 1993, and was a real pioneer in the use of the internet for political activism. He deserves a big shout out for that. Dave, thank you very much. And look how far we've come in terms of social media in 20 years. I mean, it's really amazing. Our goal at DRCnet was to help coordinate Drug Reform efforts and to provide comprehensive coverage of drug policy reform issues. I got to tell you, you folks out here are making it much more difficult for me to do that. You, you, all your friends, all your allies, there is so much stuff happening now that it's a torrent. You know, 10 years ago, if someone introduced a bill to decriminalize marijuana somewhere, that was a feature of story for us. Now that bill's got to pass. So you guys are making my job harder, and that's great. There is so much momentum going on here. So many things happening. Having too much to write about is the kind of problem I like to have as a movement journalist. Now we're gonna have to change to adapt to the increasing pace of reform activities here. So keep an eye on the chronicle. You'll see some changes in the coming weeks. I also have to say, you know, I listened to Dorothy Gaines today, and that was heartbreaking. I had to like turn away and wipe my eyes. But we have to realize that Dorothy's story can be multiplied 100,000 times or 500,000 times. I mean, this is a human tragedy on a massive scale that we're committing in this country. So yeah, we've got legal weed in Colorado and Washington, but we have a whole lot more to do, and I encourage all of you to keep on giving me material to write about till we get our gun. Thank you. Yeah, when Phil said that, this award previously gone to the Economist Magazine, Rolling Stone Magazine, Kathy Cryer, You Downs, and Phil Smith. Just so you know.