 Thank you all for joining us. I'm Steve Morrison from CSIS. We're thrilled to be here today with Sir Richard Branson and Dr. Michele Kazakshin to talk about the major new report that was released this week, taking control pathways to drug policies that work. I'm going to offer a few opening remarks and introduce our two speakers, and then we will hear from each of them in sequence, and then we'll have a conversation and we'll invite you in the course of the program to offer your own comments and questions. We'll have folks here in the audience from our staff who can bring microphones to you. I want to offer special thanks to a number of folks here and with Virgin and with the Global Commission who have been very helpful in pulling all of this together, Sahil Angelo, Joe Jordan, Beverly Kirk, Carolyn Schroet from CSIS, Khalid Tanasti from the Commission, Helen Clark from Virgin Group. We're very honored to be able to pull this together. Today is, of course, the 13th anniversary of 9-11, and it's a special day here in America, obviously a day of remembrance and reflection, and there are many events happening here in town around that, reminding us of the cruel violence, the 3,000 innocent victims and their families, and reminding us that we operate in a very dangerous world, and we continue actively to debate what to do about that. Last night we had the President's address, what to do to combat the Islamic State, how to define, understand and rally the American people. At the end of August, I had the chance to visit the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where 44 Americans died. It was haunting, it was a beautiful sight. Today is the dedication of the Congressional Medal of Honor for the victims, to those passengers who died, and former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert will be presiding. I just want to offer our congratulations and thoughts and condolences on this poignant day. Why are we here today? We're here to talk about this newly released report. It was released just two days ago in New York City, and we'll hear from Michelle and from Richard what happened in New York and what they see going forward. At its core, this effort is a culmination of several reports. The commission was formed in 2011, put out a major initial report, which is a critique of the war on drugs, put out a second report talking about HIV, AIDS, and hepatitis C, and this is the third major report. It's looking towards the 2016 UN Special Session on drug policy. It's trying to shape that debate, and it takes things many steps forward, and we'll hear about that in terms of the debate. It's pushing for decriminalization, for regulation, for a strategic refocus of efforts to control, disrupt, interdict drug trade. It's a quite... One of the things that's very striking about this commission is the impressive array of statesmen and stateswomen that are assembled within the commission and standing by it and contributing to it. President Cardozo, former Brazilian president Cardozo, chairs the effort, and there are six other former heads of state, heads of state almost all Latin American. There's, of course, former president of Switzerland along with former heads of state of Mexico, Colombia. Portugal is included. Cofi Anan, former UN secretary general, former secretary of state George Schultz, federal reserve head Paul Volcker, Louise Arbor, former head of the UN Human Rights Commission. This is a very serious and impressive assembly of folks. It certainly forces us to sit up and listen and think hard about what's in there. The product itself will be distributing the report to all of you here. I apologize, we didn't have it ready for you as you walk through the door, but we have it ready for you now. And it drew very impressive press attention. 400 press stories, 10,000 people joined the launch in New York City on Tuesday remotely, and 50,000 tweets on this. So clearly there's a very strong market for hearing about these ideas and for debating what is the way forward. And my congratulations to Michelle, to Richard, and to the other commissioners for this very successful launch, which has occurred in the midst of a very crowded geopolitical field when you look at all of the other crises that are there. Let me just say a few words about the two commissioners we'll be hearing from. Sir Richard Branson, a member of the commission, and also through Virgin Unite, through his philanthropic organization, one of the supporters, one of the four or five key supporters of this effort. He is known, of course, for founding the multinational conglomerate Virgin Group and being a transformative entrepreneur in multiple sectors, music, aviation, mobile phones, banking, radio, and space flight. He's also, in this phase, he's upped his game in terms of philanthropy and social justice. He's quoted often as saying, with wealth comes enormous responsibility. He's given a high priority to the war on drugs and given a lot of time to this particular commission and to this particular effort. Sir Richard, thank you so much for being with us. I also want to mention that I was reading that you will be the grandfather of three children this year, and congratulations on that. It's a big year coming up in 2015. Dr. Michele Kazachin is a long-standing friend, personal friend, long-standing friend of CSIS, and an extremely distinguished global health leader. And he has been arguably the intellectual architect of what you have in this report. He is currently the special envoy for the UN Secretary General. On HIV AIDS in Central Asia and Eastern Europe, he's used his diplomatic savvy and experience and his unrivaled depth on HIV AIDS issues and his familiarity with these regions to, in a very patient and persistent way, continue to try and move things forward in arguably one of the most difficult and challenging regions of the world when it comes to HIV AIDS and treatment therapies and access. He led the Global Fund in 2007 to 2012. He was President of Shirox Envoy on Global Communical Diseases. He headed the French Agency on AIDS Research. Just a remarkable career. We'll hear from each in a moment about the Commission. I want to just say as a point of background in March, we brought together, Michele, we brought together Ruth Dreyfus, the former Swiss Head of State, former Swiss Minister of Social Affairs, one of the commissioners to hear about the commission's work. And we were joined at that time by Assistant Secretary William Brownfield from the Assistant Secretary Head of the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law, INL. We were joined also by Kevin Samet, formerly of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. There was a spirited debate then. But it was a very successful, a very successful session. It demonstrated that there is much underway right now in terms of ferment and debate around these issues. And it is important to have these kinds of debates. And we're very proud and very honored that we can play this role, play this convening role here at CSIS of having this type of debate. I was struck during that earlier session by a couple of things. There's a broad space that exists for pragmatic action in multiple countries. There's a considerable potential for bringing convergence and consensus around key areas, for addiction, treatment of addiction, for reduction of incarceration, flexibility in decriminalizing areas like marijuana, safe access to opiates, and intensifying and concentrating and refocusing the war on drugs. There is a tough debate that's going on around where do you draw the lines and what are the goals looking to 2016. And we'll say more about that as we get here, as we hear from our commissioners. So let me just say we're very proud again to be here. The debate is a very, very important historical and international global debate. We will stay active in this. We will welcome the commission back as its work evolves. So Michelle, why don't you start off with some opening remarks. Tell us the story. We'll turn to Richard and then we'll have a discussion and invite our audience. Thank you so much. Well, thank you. Thank you, Steve, for that introduction. Dear colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, good morning. It's a pleasure to be back at CSIS. And it's great to be here with Richard to speak on behalf of the Global Commission. As Steve just said, since our first report, the commission's first report in 2011, we have been consistently saying that the international drug control system has failed in its primary objectives. And please remember those objectives that were discussed with the negotiations around the treaty 60 years ago. The first objective was to reduce the negative effects and the health effects, particularly, of drugs. And the second was to make essential medicines and opiates for pain accessible to people. So we have been consistently saying that the system has failed to deliver on these objectives, to deliver on its own terms, and we have been calling for change and for reform. We've also been saying that not only has the system failed on its own terms, but it has actually generated harm. Prohibition has generated harms, health-related harms, the spread of HIV AIDS among people who inject drugs, the spread of hepatitis C, somewhere TB as well, deaths from overdoses. It has generated, it has undermined human rights and it has generated violations and abuse in terms of human rights all over the world. It has been fostering crime and allowed a huge criminal industry to grow a hundred billion business. It has undermined development in a number of settings and it has basically wasted billions of dollars that could have been spent in more intelligently. So three years ago we have called for an open and frank evidence-based debate on these issues. We called it Break the Taboo. Fortunately somehow, or if you just look back, a lot of things have been happening in the last three years. And I must say we were quite pleased to see not only that a genuine debate has started and is underway in many parts of the world, but also that in a number of settings and countries and in the US in at least two states now, we've been moving from theory and rhetoric to practice, to action and reforms. In this particular report, which we would like to be our sort of founding report as the debate broadens and takes us into the perspective of the 2016 UNGAS, we come with recommendations and we come with five sets of recommendations. We call them five pathways to reform for healthier drug policies. And please do look at these as you receive the report. I'll just summarize these recommendations now briefly for you. There are two recommendations on health. The first one is very straightforward. It is prioritize health and community safety when designing or implementing a drug policy. Now this is not in our view, so it means, yes, that drugs is about health, not about policing to make it clear. And this is not just a general statement. It has profound implications. Of course it means that policies should shift from the current emphasis on repression and prohibition law enforcement onto promoting health and safety of communities. But practically it means shifting resources, reallocating resources from where they're going now into ineffective law enforcement to actually health and social interventions that we know from evidence work. It also has another implication that I'd like to draw your attention to because I personally think we do not talk enough about it, which is change the indicators, stop measuring the success of a policy on the amount of crop eradicated, on the amount of this or that product seized, on the number of people arrested, prosecuted and incarcerated, and do measure the success of a policy on how much overdose deaths have been reduced, how much impact we had on the AIDS epidemic, on the hepatitis epidemic, how much have we been able to reduce crime, violence, corruption, human rights violations and improve the safety of communities. So change the indicators. And finally, of course, that recommendation on health also implies that we invest into health interventions and particularly into what we in our technical language, but I'm sure you're all aware of that terminology called harm reduction. And let's be clear to us in the Global Commission, and I don't want to be too technical here, but harm reduction is not only needle exchange. It's also opioid substance therapy. It is also assisted injection, safe injection rooms for people. It's heroin, medical heroin treatment for people in need and its prevention and treatment of overdoses. The second recommendation on health is about access to opiates for pain for all those in need. Again, people tend to forget that that was one of the core goals of the conventions in the first place. And when we talk about access to essential medicines, the Commission would include, of course, opiates for pain, but I would also say methadone for opioid substance therapy. And as you know, in fact, these drugs, these for medical use, are not accessible for basically unobtainable in 150 countries in the world. WHO estimates that somewhere around 5.5 billion people on earth do not have access to opiates for the treatment of pain, although these medicines and methadone are on the list of essential medicines of WHO. So a strong call of the Commission for that access. Now our third recommendation, and I'm sure Richard will elaborate on this. This is something that is dear to his heart and to our heart and the Commission is decriminalization. Stop criminalization and incarceration of people who use drugs. Stop criminalization of use and possession. We have been stating repeatedly in all our reports and hopefully strongly enough in this last report that criminalization for the possession of drugs is just wasteful and actually counterproductive. I'd like to say that it is also to us a prerequisite to a genuinely health-oriented drug policy and to harm reduction. I think there's undisputable evidence in the literature that criminalization actually drives people underground away from services, that it is a high-risk factor for people to inject unsafely and therefore for acquiring HIV and hepatitis. Criminalizations introduces and basically lobbies somehow for stigmatization. Criminalizations also brings political and societal and practical obstacles to implementing large-scale harm reduction interventions and it ruins people's life. I mean, with a criminal record, how will you go for a loan? How will you go for a job, for employment, for housing, whatever, if that is with you for the rest of your life? So, and in addition to that, it just brings nothing to society except, of course, spending huge amounts of money on incarceration which I think the people in this country where I think which represents 25% of all incarcerated people in the world but 5% of the world's population, I think people in this country are particularly sensitive to this aspect. So, that's a strong recommendation of this commission and we are seeing movement. I understand that Eric Holder has been calling for less incarcerations here in the U.S. in the region where I focus my efforts now. I have seen recently quite dramatic changes, for example, in Georgia which was also with the U.S. one of the highest incarcerating somehow countries in the world. We're also saying that's another recommendation that, of course, law enforcement should be more strategic. Currently, it is really predominantly focusing on the sort of lowest down of the drug supply chain, arresting small dealers, mules, but actually the big fishes somehow escape the system and there is a need to really focus enforcement resources on the most disruptive, the most violence, the most problematic elements of the trade and together with a much more stronger international effort against money laundering and corruption. And our last recommendation, I mean our last recommendation I'll come to, it's about UNGAS, but our last sort of conceptual recommendation and for those of you who have been following the work of the commission, this may be somehow new, is about introducing regulated markets for drugs and basically put back governments in control. And this is why the title of the report is Taking Control. It means taking control from organized crime and give it to governments. And the way to do it is responsible legal regulation. And I'm careful about the wording here. I wouldn't go for legalization because legalization may be understood or wrongly understood as, oh, these guys in the commission, they want every drug to be available free for everyone from one day to the next. No, we actually want a strictly regulated system. And I'll just build on what Louise Arbor was saying in New York two days ago. She was saying, I found it remarkable, that if we were to just forget the past 40 years, if we were today to meet and to design a system, an international drug control system, as we know we are handling potentially dangerous food, medicines, tobacco, would we think of prohibition as the way to go? No, we would think of a sophisticated regulated system for governments. Prohibition would be the last hypothesis somehow on the table. Just think of how we handle potentially dangerous substances and products generally, be it cars or anything. It is through regulation. And regulation could actually help governments control everything along the line from production to the product itself, its dosage, its quality, its potency, its price, its packaging. It could be about vendors through licensing. It could be about marketing, branding, advertising. It would be about the outlets. It could be about access, restricting age of access, restricting licensed buyers and so on, or medical prescription. All of these, there's a huge number of options there that can be used. And I think that's why we will follow with a lot of interest, of course, what's happening in Colorado, in Washington, in Uruguay, and also in New Zealand. Let me, I keep talking about New Zealand because I'm quite fascinated with what's happening there. You may know that in New Zealand, the parliament has voted a bill by which amphetamine stimulants, like stimulants, ATS, as they're called, can now be regulated. That if you're producing one of those drugs, you can basically submit a dossier to the authorities, just as you would do with a medicine. And with documented adverse events, with documented content of the drug. And if the dossier is somehow accepted, there's even discussion about animal experimentation, just as for a medicine, then it can be sold in adult shops to people above the age of 18 up to a certain amount. So this is to me the very sort of thing that we need to move to, because in New Zealand, apparently, people consuming will be more interested in using stuff that they know what it contains rather than whatever comes to them on the streets. We're conscious that talking about regulation is not an easy thing. There's no simple blueprint for regulation. That will be done at a different pace from one country to another. What substances will be regulated or not regulated will depend on governments and context. We're coming here with a principle. And by recalling the discussion we had here at CSIS with Ruth Stryfus in April or May, and that Steve mentioned, and he also mentioned in his remarks that the current system, the conventions have what we call flexibilities. So there's a lot that actually you can do within the conventions. So the position, let me be clear, the position of the commission is that we encourage countries to use those flexibilities to experiment new pathways. I talked about New Zealand, Uruguay, Colorado, Washington, experiment and then build an evidence base. But somewhere we're saying that ultimately responsible legal regulation is not compatible with the current international treaties and that they will have to be renegotiated and revisited. That will maybe happen in 15 years. In 2030, I don't know. But by any means, and I'll end on this, we wish 2016 to be the sort of turning point where the world comes together at the un-gas. And hopefully acknowledges the failure of the current system and really moves, and that will be through language in the final resolution, moves to change and to reform. Thank you. Thank you very much, Michelle. Sir Richard? Well, thanks Michelle. Thank you very much for inviting us today. I'll keep my remarks short because I always think it's better to get onto questions and answers. I think the war on drugs has been going on for 40, maybe 50 years. And I think it's quite easy to see the damage that that war has done to societies everywhere in some countries, really quite frightening what the damage has done to individuals. It's done damage to drug users. It's done damage to their families. It's done damage to their communities. And the Drug Commission believes it's time to support an alternative approach to the prohibitionist framework that has been in effect and been so ineffective for decades now. People who use drugs in the commission's view should be treated with compassion rather than being criminalized. And yet every day people around the world continue to suffer as a result of prohibitionist drug policies. In Russia, repressive drug laws fuel the HIV epidemic. And in Southeast Asia, people who use drugs can be forced into compulsory treatment, which often involves beatings and torture. Well, not so long ago, I was invited to speak at a TEDx event at Armwood State Prison in California, which houses more than 3,000 prisoners. Many of these for nonviolent drug use. And I spoke to prisoners and our prison guards about the war on drugs and how true reform of our prison system depends also on how we address the issue of drug prohibition. As you said, the U.S. has just 5% of the world's population, yet it has 25% of the global prison population. And that outstrips China and Iran. And much of this is driven by the imprisonment of low-level drug offenders, often from poor black and Hispanic communities. Like many issues, drug policy reform should not be seen in isolation. It has the potential to affect fundamental change in other areas like the penal system or in reducing the negative impact of policing on certain communities. If drug policy, which costs 100 billion annually, were my business, I would call it a failure and I would have shut it down long ago. We're wasting way too much money, way too many other precious resources on incarceration. When we could and we should be spending these resources on education, vocational training, re-entry, and in the case of drug users, on treatment and proper medical care. Let's also not forget the cost of the war on drugs. In the UK, for instance, the government's own figure estimated annually somewhere between 1.5 and 2.5 billion pounds is spent on the enforcement of both drug supply and possession offenses. What's more, the UK is one of the highest GDP spent in Europe on drug law enforcement, yet has among the highest rates of drug use in Western Europe. Looking at this as a businessman, I say there's been a pretty bad investment. It's time to try a new model. There are alternatives as a member of the Global Commission on Drug Policy have long advocated for use of non-criminal sanctions for drug possession and for countries to consider regulating drugs to take the market out of the hands of criminals. Countries such as Portugal, the Czech Republic, some states in Australia have all implemented diversionary schemes away from the criminal justice system for possession of drugs. In these countries and states, drug use has not increased and individuals who are not criminalized have better outcomes in terms of employment, accommodation, relationships, and so on. And perhaps most importantly, they are less likely to come in contact with a criminal justice system closing the revolving door of recidivism. In Uruguay and two US states, Colorado and Washington, cannabis has been regulated and is subject to varying quality, age, and access controls. These reforms should be applauded. Not only does it undermine organized crime, it reduces the number of people at risk of criminalization and therefore at risk of imprisonment. As I've said, drug policy reform is not just about drugs, it is about much wider societal issues that we should all be concerned about. In 2016, world leaders will meet for a global summit on drugs in the United Nations. We need our politicians to be brave. We need them to look at alternatives to the current repressive policies. Thank you. Thank you very much. I have a few questions I'd like to open with and turn to the audience. The first is really about how to market this commission's report to an American public and to an American electorate and to officials in the United States. When you look at what's happening in the United States, a couple of things jump out. One is we are in a period of experimentation. We have the decriminalization and shift to regulation in Colorado and Washington state. That is not without uncertainty and tensions surrounding that. It's not in compliance with federal law. It's not in compliance with treaties, international treaties. We're at an early point where people are looking at it critically around what are the health implications, what are the crime implications, what are the industrial implications, what kind of habits emerge out of this, how do you deal with children, how do you deal with driving and other such things. So it's a big debate. I don't think that that yet, I don't think that that shift that has begun and has deep roots translates necessarily into an openness around decriminalizing heroin and cocaine use, which was some topic that was at the center of the rollouts, discussions in New York. So the other point I want to make is there's a lot of discussion here in the United States across states and communities around the overuse of pain medications and we've had a situation where opiate access has been too much, not too little. And we've, as a matter of policy, begun to take action and we're seeing a sharp uptick in our own heroin epidemic here in the United States as a consequence of that and we're struggling with that. In terms of the drug war, of course we have long-standing programs, international agreements, serious investments in Latin America, Afghanistan, increasingly West Africa, these are negotiated with Congress, they're negotiated with the partner governments and they involve, as you've said, they've involved substitution crops, eradication, interdiction campaigns, destruction of product and the like and as Richard is arguing, they're very, very controversial. In Congress, of course, we have a key, if you're talking about moving towards a treaty in 2016, sentiment towards reopening the conventions in the treaty, that would require 67 votes in the Senate. We haven't had very many treaties passed in the last few decades in the Senate so that's a practical political barrier that we have to look at and the point that you are making, Richard, I mean Michelle, around what can we do now, what are the flexibilities within the new convention? So from a U.S. standpoint, there are lots happening on the ground, things are moving forward without waiting for a new convention or a change of law and the like and there's a lot of opportunity. How do you connect to that? But also you have the obvious barriers that I don't think there's, there's an openness to a critique of the war on drugs but I don't see it as being abandoned or shut down as you were suggesting. So I see it being reformed perhaps or modified looking forward and we have not had a debate in the United States around really legalizing cocaine and heroin as the next step looking forward at an early point on the marijuana. So how do you respond to that mix of factors when you think about trying to advance the commission's work and get it received and understood here in the United States because it's a complicated and difficult environment. Richard, would you like to open up? Well, first of all, I always find there's a danger that we always come back to America and obviously there's a big world out there where the gold commission are trying to stop people executing people for taking drugs in some parts of the world. And I think a country like America should be setting an example to some of these other countries like Russia and China and some of the much more oppressive countries. As a businessman, as I said in my talk, if I find I've got a business that's failing, I will immediately look at businesses around the world and see if anybody's doing it better. And in Portugal, I really do think it's worth just discussing it slightly more length. Portugal had a massive heroin problem 12 years ago and it was number two on the most talked about subject in the political arena. And a very smart Prime Minister of Portugal said, okay, we're going to try a completely different approach. We're going to say that anybody who takes drugs, any kind of drugs, they will be helped. They will not be put in prison in order to try to get people who had heroin to come forward. And what we'll do is the money that we would have spent sending them to prison will spend on setting up centers around Portugal where they can go to get their clean needles, to get their methadone, and to get their fix. But they have to see psychiatrists and when they're ready to be weaned off, we'll help wean them off, which costs about a third of what prison would have cost them. And over the last 12 years, the breaking and entering in Portugal have almost disappeared. Because people don't need to break and enter because the states supply the methadone. The spread of HIV and AIDS has gone away because they get clean needles. The amount of people taking heroin has dropped dramatically. So those people are now useful members of society again. And the problem has dropped from number two in the political arena to number 17 in the political arena. So it's almost non-existent. And the amount of money saved by the Portuguese government on prison costs has disappeared. So when you have an example like that, you've got to get out and let the public know about it. The commission launched a film called Breaking the Taboo. We very much focused on the Portuguese thing. We got out there. It had nearly a million people watching it on the internet. And we've got to try to get out there and educate people and get people to realize that there are alternative ways to the current way, which are much more effective. I think it's interesting that the commission enlisted two very prominent American personalities who are economists to get back to your business model that Paul Volcker and George Schultz, of course, former Secretary of State, former Secretary of Treasury, that they were lending their names to this effort and their intellects and their reputations to this. That's a very important thing. Michelle, how do you see, what is the strategy for bringing this commission, connecting this commission to Americans in American debates? I agree with Richard. This is a global issue in our outlook, but since we're a Washington-based think tank and we speak to an American audience as the first order of business, I felt like the first question needed to be about how do you sell this to Americans? This audience here is predominantly American. I wish that Paul Volcker, who actually joined us on Monday in the January meeting of the commission, could have been here today to... I think we Europeans feel a little unease to talk about the U.S., but let me say a few things. First, I fully support what Richard just said because our point is we need to build the evidence and we need to make the decisions and to present to the public opinion the evidence. That will be very difficult. It will take a lot of time. Let's not be unrealistic there, but let's stop having a debate that is exclusively built on preconceived ideas, on ideology, on evilization, if such a word exists, of drugs as evil. Let's have a reasonable debate. I personally think, again, thinking of how we deal with, I shouldn't say arms in this country, but let's say car safety, tobacco, medicines, alcohol, with the failures and the successes worldwide and in this country. Alcohol, of course, is a key example. I mean, this is the country recognized the failure of prohibition and law is going into prohibition on drugs instead of regulation. So I think that's a key angle. Build an evidence base and then draw the parallel with the way society, and the American society handles potentially dangerous substances. Second thing, of course, is learned from experience. So experience outside the US, Richard mentioned Portugal, which is a shining example to us, but also basically when it comes to harm reduction all Western European countries, where there's no more infection with HIV of any person who injects drugs, zero, problem solved. Look at the Czech Republic that has decriminalized. Look at Switzerland that has these safe injection rooms and medical heroin assisted programs. Look at the success of Australia that really has contained to a minimum the AIDS epidemic by large scale interventions from the beginning. And look at Uruguay now and, of course, Colorado states. In Washington, I understand that Colorado and Washington are taking slightly different approaches, so the two experiments will be interesting to follow. There's Colorado. We help us see the risks of over commercialization somehow. Washington goes a bit more regulated. And then take the best of the models and learn the lessons too. And, of course, you mentioned heroin. The commission is not coming with any, we're not entering specific products here. We're saying this is the principle. We believe responsible legal regulation is the way to go and it will be up to the people and to governments to decide on which are the substances and when that they want to move to a regulated market. For the US, learning the lessons from inside and outside means really accepting and acknowledging these flexibilities in the conventions. And, as you said, what's happening in Colorado in Washington is against federal law and against international conventions. Maybe it's not. Well, that's a discussion about the flexibilities. But somehow it can squeeze in. But, you know, safe injection rooms and medical heroin in Switzerland was also in that situation. So you have to discuss with the international community but what I meant is that the very fact that the US, the federal government, the administration here has accepted this to go on means that they acknowledge the flexibilities and I personally find this openness in mind remarkable. And that's the way to go. Learn, build the evidence base and move towards reform based on this. I mean, in our previous report, we said we wanted different states, different countries to experiment with different approaches. The current approach does not work. It does an enormous amount of harm. The more experimentation, the better. And then we can see which systems work and which are not working and then adopt the ones that work. And in a sense that's what's happening which is to be welcomed. I think it's important to mention here that the terminology and the way in which these problems are discussed has changed here in Washington. I was listening to an interview by the acting head of the White House Office on National Drug Control, Mr. Botticelli in NPR this week, emphasizing humane compassion, emphasizing, addressing addictive disorders in a new and different way. There's a consciousness, a change of consciousness. And this is a person who also himself is a freely admitting recovered alcoholic who personally has lived through this. So it's a very interesting period. Before we, I'm going to come to the audience in just a moment. I want to ask you both, what would success look like in spring of 2016 when the UN special session comes together? What are you looking for as the real milestones? Because these steps have all been built and engineered in order to get the best outcome you wish to see in 2016. Given what you know of the politics, Latin American, African, Central Asian, North American, European, given the complexity of the issues, given what you've heard this week in New York, what is likely to be, in your view, the best, what will success look like in 2016? I think I'll just have four words. More flexibility for experimentation is what's needed. And that's the key, I think. Michel? I would say get to an open debate and an acknowledgement of the failure and the need for change. Because 2016, this is what the United Nations General Assembly has failed to do so far. If you look at the outcome of the 1998 session, the last summit, it said, okay, let's try harder on prohibition. And that's the way we will get to a drug-free world. So acknowledge the fact that a drug-free world is an irrealistic goal, acknowledge the failure of the current system, and engage in a reform system that would prioritize health based on the flexibilities. Of course, we're not saying, Steve, no misunderstanding here that we would hope that the summit in 2016 will discuss renegotiation of the treaties. We're just saying that ultimately, again, legal regulation is not compatible with prohibition. I mean, that's... Yes. At the core, it would seem to me is Latin American leadership, right? The Latin American governments are very... The former heads are the dominant constituency within this. They are the countries that are most at the crossfire of all of these phenomenon that you're talking about. I would think that in 2016, if you see this commission give political cover to the leadership from Latin America to come and say things differently. When you were saying about greater flexibility, I would say if you see significant shifts happen in Latin America on liberalizing, regulating, and refocusing the war on drugs, the three things that you're arguing for in your report, that would be success, a shift. And using the commission to empower and cover and galvanize that sort of movement, it seemed to me that's your greatest win. The audience is probably familiar with the OAS report a year and a half ago. But, yes, I agree with you on moving Latin America somewhere at the forefront. Yet, good old Europe has a number of good examples. And when it comes to prioritizing health and decriminalizing, I see movement elsewhere. I see movement in some of the countries east of the EU and west of the Russian Federation. I see movement in Ukraine. I see movement in Moldova. I see movement in Georgia. I see movement in West Africa, where Kofi Annan launched this year the report of the West African Commission in Indonesia. And so, you know, prioritizing health and decriminalization can bring quite a broader consistency than what we're... Thank you. It's quite interesting that in the Caribbean, I've spoken with a lot of Caribbean leaders who want to make a move in the Caribbean, but are frightened that their citizens will be punished when they come to America by immigration or customs and so on. Obviously, what they're all looking at is what's happening in America. I don't know how many states have now got medical marijuana, but maybe 25. 22. I mean, it's quite a lot. And once the pendulum starts swinging in that way, then America's going to lose its authority to stop the other countries doing what they want to do. And I think the pendulum's getting to that stage where I think other countries will just say, if America can do it, we can do it too. Thank you. Thank you so much. Let's take three or four... We'll take four comments and questions. Please be very succinct. As long as you can remember them. I will play them back to you. Be very succinct to offer one major intervention, please. Down in front here, please introduce yourself and then right behind, and then we'll take a collection here in the front and then we'll move over. Yes, please. I'm Mitzi Worth. I'm with the Naval Postgraduate School. As I listened to you what I felt as a citizen, I wanted a consumer report. I wanted you to list all the countries and all the conditions they're all in and have it accessible for all of us to learn. If one has to go and figure out the details, it's too hard. And secondly, if things are changing, you want to keep your consumer report information up to date. And I would call it learning from others. Thank you. Just behind. Just a very good idea anyway. Thank you. Yes. Andrey Klepekov, International Achievements Alliance in Ukraine. My question is about opponents, countries like Russia, which are not only exercising their repressive policy in Russian Federation, but with aggressive annexation of Crimea. Actually, 800 of opioid substitution therapy patients were cut overnight from life-saving treatment and 20 of them have died already. So this is an example how important emergency reactions should be on the countries with the most dissonating policies. And my question is, does the Commission consider this task as its task? And is there any plan, say, action plan for 10 countries with the most dissonating policies? Thank you. Right on the front here, please. Take two more and then we'll come back. Dana Weckiser, Global Health Partnerships, consulting Baltimore, Maryland. This question is directed to Sir Richard Branson. Other than your leadership and your representative of the corporate sector, are there other corporations taking the lead, not in terms of just advocacy, but in terms of HR policy for drug control? And also, can you address... Ibogaine, I think it is called. It's a drug that's used to actually treat people who are addicts and successful, but yet it's illegal in the U.S. Okay. Right here in front. David Borden with stopthedrugwar.org and the Drug War Chronicle newsletter. My question for any of the panelists has to do with the ramifications of the treaties in their current form, assuming that it is going to take longer than the next two years to get them changed. What kind of constraining impact in practical terms is this likely to have on countries that might consider legalization or non-prohibitionist systems nationally, not just in individual states as we've had here? Can we expect to see any more countries do as Uruguay has done and just go for it? Should countries do that? Thank you. So we have a question around from Missy on how to stay up to date and try to access how to... This is such a complex, global, fast-moving picture. How do you track that? On the Ukraine question, how much does that figure within the commission to work? Can we do it one at a time? On the first point, I think it makes a lot of sense, and I think the commission... I mean, the reports... Yeah, to an extent touched on these issues, but we need to be more thorough. Right. Precisely. Thank you. And we promise you we'll do better. And commit our team to work on that. It's a very good idea. On Ukraine, I'm going to Kiev tonight, and we'll be meeting a lot of business people over the next couple of days, and we'll definitely follow up on that. And I don't know if there's anything more you can give us before I leave on that. So that would be great. Other corporations? Corporations. Corporations. I would say that pretty well every business... Sorry, every business person I talk to believe pragmatically this is a sensible approach and the current approach doesn't make sense. And I do believe in this day and age that business people have got to speak out more and they shouldn't just leave it to politicians and the social sector to do issues like this. They should actually confront issues like this and say what they think and not be afraid of saying what they think. We've just set up something called the B Team with a group of business leaders like Paul Pullman from Unilever, Mohammed Eunice, Ariana Huffington and so on to speak out on issues that business leaders feel strongly about. And I would do my best to try to get more to rally behind it. Michel, did you have anything to say? There's a question around how constraining is the current treaty going to be? Yeah, let me just comment quickly on Ukraine and Russia because, well, first, as I said, the three countries that have recently signed an association agreement with the EU, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia happened to now move towards progressive reforms of drug policies and they've actually started, even before the conflict in the region. Ukraine had passed in 2013 a very progressive framework for reform of drug policy. I'd like also to point out to the Baltic countries that together with Ukraine are experiencing an Eastern European, or let's quote it, Russian type of AIDS epidemic with injecting drug use being a predominant factor for HIV transmission and the Baltic countries have moved towards large-scale implementation of harm reduction and reforms. So I see a movement there, but Andrei's question was really about what do we do with those who strongly oppose the sort of thing we say? Well, the answer is, first, there is a lot of resistance from the Russian Federation but also from many others in the UN and at this time far more people who would oppose the sort of thing we're saying in the UN among the 193 countries of the UN than people who support this, but as even as we have been saying, progressively things change and in three years time there's been a huge progress and my answer is to your question is we just have to continue to try and establish a dialogue. I mean the more there is stated difference and opposition the more and harder we should try to establish a dialogue and at this time it's almost impossible with the Russian Federation but I'm not hopeless, let's continue and try and I think if Richard, you can have the community of businessmen, you know, the Russian community of businessmen or some of them engage. I would try and I keep trying engaging the scientific and the medical community and there are already networks of NGOs and there are blogs and there are various things so let's create the movement and open the dialogue. I mean in the same way that we've set up an African commission, I mean I'm just thinking as we're talking that we don't have Russian commissioners, we don't have Ukrainian commissioners and other people from that area on the commission whether we should set up another commission in that, it may well be we should. Yeah, I think that's a very good point because the very point about the African, West African commission is that it is composed of West Africans and that these people are the best place to actually look at all the complexities of the context. We've educated in the last three or four years that I've learned enormous about from being on the commissions and so sometimes it's just lack of facts and lack of knowledge that people have a particular viewpoint and we need to get more people to get that. On the trees, I think your point is well taken David. At this time, again at this time the talking about legal regulation of drugs is incompatible with the treaties so the way to go forward is to see how far the system will accept that experimentation including legalization by some countries will be accepted as a flexibility whether the treaties indeed have this as a flexibility or whether it is a sort of tolerance doesn't matter. The important thing is that the number of countries move. Uruguay has moved and Uruguay has not been excluded at this time of the concert of the nations so that's a good example to me. Switzerland had issues with INCB when it decided on safe injection rooms and medical heroin treatment. Switzerland has survived that and moved and remained firm on its decisions so that's obviously the way to go. And America hasn't been thrown out yet. And America hasn't been thrown out. Actually I think America of course with its weight is creating a fantastic precedent there so again our message is we encourage that to build the evidence but then at one point flexibility should move to changing the system. Let's take another round of questions. I want to ask Richard Baum from the White House Office on National Drug Control Policy to offer any thoughts or comments. Thank you Richard for joining us. My pleasure I have a question for Mr. Branson. I wanted to ask in the commission's debate and dialogue about what to focus your energy on whether the commissioners are grappled with the consequences of trying to in Mr. Cardoso's words to break the conventions and go for such a dramatic change because the bulk of the commission's report the types of things you propose alternatives to incarceration addressing sentences, access to medications addressing human rights violations these are all things that we're working on already in the US government with our partners internationally that are all allowable under the conventions and it seems like what we really all need to do governments need to do is look at our laws and look at our policies and make those changes for a lot of countries including us that's a lot of hard work that we need to really focus on and pay attention to and I wonder whether calling for renegotiating the conventions which is as you both have pointed out a kind of distant and difficult and challenging task really gets people's eye off the ball because there's so much work to be done and maybe we ought to focus on getting that work done and making all these changes that are allowable under the convention and not let countries and governments get distracted on such a distant and unlikely goal. Thank you. Can I quickly answer that? Please, let's go ahead. That's a very important question. We'll get to you sir in just one moment. Yes. I've been personally 100% agree with you which is why I slightly jumped in when you said because I think there are ways around the way it's currently drafted and I do think countries just need to get on and be brave and experiment as actually is happening here in America. So I think you're right. We do need to be careful not to get distracted but we can do our best to try to change it. It's going to be very tough so I think realistically we need to just try to deal with individual countries and you put it very well. Thank you very much. Michelle, did you have anything to add? No. Again, I don't want people here to misunderstand the commission or think that I think we're very consistent. We need to use these flexibilities. We need to push the flexibilities to their limit to move as much as possible because if we were to wait for a renegotiation of a treaty nothing would happen. What I'm just saying and what the commission is saying in this report is that ultimately if we want to move to legal regulation of drugs that's not compatible with the very basic prohibition paradigm so we'll have to think of revisiting the treaty. We have a few more minutes and then we're going to close. Martin, did you have this gentleman right here? I love the hat. Thank you. Howard Wildridge, co-founder of LEAP Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. It has been the experience of my membership of police officers, judges, prosecutors and others that the drug prohibition has been the most destructive, dysfunctional and immoral policy since slavery in Jim Crow. My question is what Steve said earlier about this is the anniversary of 9-11. On that day here in America we had more FBI agents chasing drugs than terrorists. Now they quickly switched many thousands over to anti-terrorism and the anniversary of 9-11 and just recently, of course, 7-7 in the UK I would like to just point out that every hour my profession spends chasing a drug user or drug dealer as an hour we don't have to chase terrorists who are trying to kill us. Moreover, we have been a mosquito on the butt of an elephant. We have never reduced availability in the history of the 43 years in a trillion dollars. So please, as you go forward with your discussions at the highest levels, please know that my profession has no role in this equation on drug use, drug availability. We simply make no difference. My question regarding that, when you talk to folks around the world, how much does my profession fight you and resist the idea of changing the dynamic from a prohibition model to a legal regulated model because hundreds of thousands of jobs are on the line here in America. When you close half the prisons because you won't have those prisoners in there for drug reasons, guards will be laid off, et cetera. So how much resistance do you see from my profession due to the money we're going to lose when we change our dynamic? Thank you. Let's take two or three other questions. Martin, and then over here. Well, first Steve, I want to thank you for this really terrific forum. Thank you so much for your concentration on these efforts. Michelle, it's wonderful to hear you again on this important topic, so thank you very much. I'd like to really focus a bit on the challenges, particularly of maintaining the appropriate resources for change and for helping the victims of drug use and particularly addiction. What ends up happening in so many of these countries or in our states that are going to progressive change, is that the money is being used for sort of global government purposes and debt reduction rather than really thinking about redirecting those funds and the savings to really building the infrastructure. I mean, for example, I'm doing some work right now with colleagues in Prague as well as in Georgia and Ukraine where we're trying to put together educational programming for those who actually are going to be doing the work in the trenches. And the difficulty, of course, is coming up with sufficient resources to keep building the infrastructure. You know, most of the training is going back to the sort of old approach to drug treatment, which is emphasizing the need for absolute prohibition, the need for sort of self-control rather than really thinking about more progressive approaches to drug treatment. So I just wanted to say that if we're going to be progressive, we need to be mindful of building that infrastructure. Thank you. Can we just do those two first? Sure. Why don't you do that? Yep. Thank you for your comment. You do the last one. So go for the first, and then I'll comment after you. Because that was a more difficult one. They... Anyway, you couldn't, obviously, you couldn't have put the drug commission's words more clearly and obviously having somebody who's from law enforcement saying it, it's all the more powerful, because you've been out in the front line, you've seen the damage. And I mean, I think that generally speaking, when you talk to law enforcement officers one to one, they all believe the law is an us and they disagree with it. But there's no question that there are organizations that lobby to keep the law in place, that maybe run big prisons in America and make a lot of money out of it. But I think what we just need to get across is that you don't have to be a prison warden for the rest of your life. There are other jobs out there. And if we can start closing down the prisons and maybe moving some of those jobs into drug rehabilitation, getting people well again, getting them back on the streets, there's plenty of alternative work now being created. And it's certainly not a good reason to keep an archaic law in place which does so much damage. And I was going to say, I've been hearing about remarkable examples of police officers and law enforcement officers actually moving into serving as health-promoting agents. I've heard a lot about the Seattle program. And at the World AIDS Conference last July in Melbourne, we had a session with police from Vietnam, from Nigeria, from Ghana, from the U.S. Seattle. And I understand there will be a conference in Amsterdam in November or October exclusively devoted about how actually the police, when it gets to a person on the street, that they would arrest for possession, consumption, carrying, depending on the context, how in fact they could serve as the agents to help bring that person to a health facility rather than arrest them and have them in jail. So we should also think about the police as helping our goal of promoting health and reducing harm, which is another way of looking at what you're saying. I would fully take your point. Huge efforts in investments in infrastructure and education and training are needed. And these will be almost impossible or still extremely difficult while in some regions of the world, the paradigm of prohibition, as you said, is so strongly embedded. But there are regions in Kyrgyzstan, for example. As you know, there is a police academy that again trains law enforcement people to help promote harm reduction. It's a long effort. Thank you for your question. Michelle, in the commission report, there's a number in there in terms of tallying up what the price tag would be for programmatically making a higher level of investment. I think it was 3.2 billion. But we're saying the money is there. We're saying we need to reallocate money from silly, ineffective interventions in law enforcement into useful. Let's take another question or two here. Yes, please. Hi, my name is Masaibi. I'm an internet features group. And these are kind of general questions. I know that Michelle, you mentioned that you wanted to give control back to the governments. But in countries that are known to have corrupt government systems, what measures will you take to kind of ensure or at least monitor transparency and accountability and also proper resource allocation? And also on a personal note with drug users, do you think that rehab services will be enough when there's other barriers such as structural, societal, and economic determinants that really affect individuals here in the U.S. and in developing countries? Thank you. Do we have any other questions? We'll come back. Yes? I'm Evan Ovao. I'm a World Health. And I just wanted to ask, what are some of the difficulties you've had reaching out to people or looking at public opinion? Is it certain types of drugs or is it the sort of difference between criminal behavior or seeing it as a health problem? Let's just start on this. Okay, so I'm sorry. I've forgotten the first part of your question. The second was about rehab. They're known to be corrupt. How can you ensure that they'll monitor their practices and they'll have good transparency and proper resource allocation towards the plans to reduce drugs and moving forward? Thank you for that question. Actually, someone asked a very similar question in New York in one of our meetings about, okay, you want to put control back in the governments, but then if the governments are infiltrated and corrupt themselves, then there's a vicious circle. I think the answer is what you said yourself is, well, first, I would say, of course, the risk is there. But second, the answer is transparency and accountability to two words that you have been using. And I personally believe whatever area of government you talk about, it is transparency and public accountability that will help. I do not believe in any reform action or whatever that the government would take and say it implements if it isn't transparent about it and if it doesn't allow for public accountability. So I think your point is well taken. Let's hope that the more transparency there is, the better the system will work. But we're not, you know, but the risk you're pointing out is real. On rehab, let me just quickly say that and here's more of a personal opinion. And more of a European message, of course, if people can quit drugs, fine. If people cannot quit drugs, we have substantive therapy that really reduces the harm. To me, the primary philosophy is not aiming necessarily at quitting drugs. At reducing the harms and having the people and the community be healthy and live the best life they can live. And actually, there is interesting evidence in the literature that if you're on the methadone program for years, you have more chances to one day quit drugs than if you're not on the substitution therapy. But let's not have the objective of quitting drugs through rehab as the number one objective of treatment. On the other point, so I would say that 90% of politicians I've spoken to individually agree with the commission. I would say maybe 90% of policemen agree, 90% of businessmen agree. The 10% that don't agree, if you actually say to them, if you have a child who has a drug problem, would you rather they went to prison or we sent to a drug rehabilitation center, they quite quickly start agreeing as well because they don't want their children sent off to prison or if it's their brothers or sisters if they have a problem, do you want them sent? So I think the overwhelming number of people individually agree with the commission. And then it's a political thing. Do they think they're going to get re-elected if they put their head above the parapet? And then the numbers drop off quite dramatically. And I think what we have the commission have to do is try to help them politically come up with wording that they can sell for the public. If you talk about legalization, that's a difficult one. If you talk about treating drugs as a health problem, it's a much easier one. So presentation is critical. Do you want your brothers and sisters to be sent to prison if they have a problem, an alcohol problem? No. It's just how it's presented. And that's one of the things we're trying to do is to help work with politicians to get them to be able to present it better. Thank you. We've gotten to the close here. I want to offer just a few remarks. First of all, I should have said at the outset I had watched the TEDx video from the Ironwood prison visit, and that was very touching, I felt. And innovative. The voices of those prisoners were very moving. And congratulations on that. I think we've heard a lot of very positive things today. We've heard about an appeal. There's a certain hope and optimism and momentum, a sense of momentum around making the case for flexibility and for pragmatism and for experimentation across decriminalization, regulation, deregulation and strategic focus to the drug war, and for a different kind of dialogue. And I just want to thank you and congratulate you on having really been so instrumental, both of you and the other commissioners in pushing this dialogue forward. And I wish you the best. Thank you and reconvene at the next correct inflection point to hear about the commission's work and to hear about the broader debate. So please join me in congratulating the thank you.