 I'm Beverly Kirk with the Global Health Policy Center here at CSIS with Sir Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group and member of the UN Commission on Global Drug Policy. Thank you for being here. Thank you. There's a new report out calling for massive changes to the global drug policy and this is something that you've been an activist about. You've said that we can't pretend that the war on drugs is actually working. You've said that it's damaged societies. How so? It's been in existence for something like 50 years. In those 50 years millions of people have been incarcerated. The success on getting weaning people off drugs has not been a great success and the Global Commission is begging governments to change tact. If as a businessman I'd had a failed business for 50 years, I would have closed it down. What we're saying is please treat drugs as a health problem, not a criminal problem. Please help people who have drug problems do not incarcerate them and society will benefit if you can actually get somebody off drugs and get them to become useful members of society again. Society benefits and so that's basically the message of the Commission. You've been a very successful businessman and you've talked about this basically in terms of dollars and cents. One of the recommendations is decriminalization and a legal market for drugs. How would that save money and has it worked anywhere else? Let me just give you one example of one country, Portugal. 12 years ago they had an enormous drug problem and they decided to change to change tact and try a different approach and the government of Portugal said we will not lock anybody up ever again for taking drugs but if you have a drug problem you're going to have to come along and see a psychiatrist, see a social worker. If you have a serious drug problem like heroin we will supply the methadone, we'll supply the clean needles and when you're ready to come off heroin we will pay for your help which costs about a third of what it costs to send someone to prison. As a result the numbers of people taking heroin has dropped dramatically. The breaking is an entering in order for people to get their heroin fixes have almost disappeared in Portugal. The amount of interest in drugs went from number two in the political arena to number 18 in the political arena so almost disappeared because Portugal has got on top of the problem and I think learning from countries like Portugal, other countries we would urge to follow suit if it works in some countries. There's no reason at all why it shouldn't work in other countries. And there's been some experimenting with the legalization issue here in the United States, in Washington State in Colorado with marijuana. How tough a cell is this going to be in a country like the United States where drug policy is debated not only as a policy issue but as a moral issue? Well people who think of things as a moral issue often sort of change their tack when it comes to their family or people in their church. If somebody who says they should be put in prison you know if you say to somebody who goes to church regularly should Joe blogs who you sit next to every Sunday in church go to prison they've got a drug problem they'll say no they'll say no they should be helped they should be forgiven they should be you know I mean that's the way we in this church deal with things so it's a great difference or often the very big difference when they actually you know if it's a brother or sister or their children the last thing they want is to send them to prison they want them to be helped you know when it's you know when it's somebody they don't even know and they have a drug problem they're often quite happy to let them go to prison so so what we're just trying to do is get is ask people who think of things in a moral way to to think you know think in a compassionate way as well if they think compassionately they will realize that treating people who have a an alcohol problem or you know smoke too many cigarettes or take too many drugs they should be helped. You actually visited a prison and talked to people who've been incarcerated because of their involvement in drugs what did they tell you what insights were you able to gain and how did that impact your view of this issue. Well what's terrifying here in America is 1.8 million people languishing in prison they're mainly black people they take they don't take any more drugs than white people and yet they get penalized far more than white people I mean it is it is almost a racial issue here in America the amount the amount of black people who have thrown in prison for taking drugs and the length and the length of their sentences are terrifying and these you know when you talk to them individually they're you know they're just ordinary delightful people I mean you know people who take drugs you know there are millions of people who take drugs but the vast majority they don't actually have a drug problem there's something a bit like alcohol maybe five percent of them you know do do get a problem and you know and yet so many so many of them get locked up and become ostracized by society they can't vote they can't get jobs when they come out you know so much better that you know that they were helped if they have a problem help them and you know get them back as useful members of society again and finally why are you so passionate about this issue you could be doing anything in the world but you choose to be an advocate why I'm passionate about life I love people and I hate it when I see injustice and and and and therefore you know if I see something in injustice I will speak out and see whether there's if there's any way that you know the fact that I've got a profile and got resources whether whether I can try to make a wee bit of difference