 Okay, welcome, welcome to the one major substantive non-opening, non-closing international plenary at this conference. So, I'm going to ask all of the panelists to come and enter the stage right now. I will say that we have never in the history of this conference had such a distinguished group of people together for a DPA plenary session, you know, and I will introduce them in a moment. Yes, everybody, Diego, Fernando, please, you know. And I will also open by giving my apologies because some of the names I struggle with in terms of pronunciation. But let me just begin here and saying, you know, since the origins of Drug Policy Alliance, a major mission of the organization has been educating Americans about the innovations that are going on around the world. And for many years, for decades in fact, we've looked to Europe, to Switzerland, to the Netherlands, many of you have heard the presentations, now, and others as well. At the same time, as many of you are also aware, the developments in Latin America, on the one hand in Uruguay, with the president proposing the legal regulation of marijuana, and we have a remarkable delegation from Uruguay at this conference now, but also with the former presidents of the Global Commission on Drug Policy and now with current presidents in Guatemala and Colombia saying it's time for a change. So we have the good fortune to have here today representatives we have from on the right hand over here, Jiao, and I will not mangle his last name, ask him to introduce himself from Portugal, who has been the pioneer of Portuguese drug policy, which we've heard so much for many years. And then we have Diego Canepa, the president, Mujica and Uruguay, his chief of staff, the key point person in Uruguay on these policies. We have Fernando Carrera, who was the planning minister and is now the foreign minister of Guatemala, and also the key person basically advising and helping the president with their drug policies, not just domestically, but even more importantly internationally. So please welcome Fernando. And then we have, I will mangle his name, he will explain his name, the pronunciation of his name, but who has been the coordinator, effectively the drugs are of the Czech Republic for many years under different governments and in all sorts of ways moving this country forward and playing a provocative role within Europe as well. So please welcome him from the Czech Republic. And in the case of New Zealand, we don't have somebody from the government, but even better, we have somebody who could explain the New Zealand policy probably better than anybody in the New Zealand government, and that's Ross Bell from New Zealand Drug Policy Foundation. So I want to open this up first by speaking first to the first two of the Europeans. And the thing I always ask them is that sometimes the Europeans come here and you ask them to talk about drug policy and what they focus on is, you know, it's not as good as you think and in fact there's problems and we got our right wing government or this government that's in the way and preventing reform and what they forget sometimes is how significant what's happening in Europe actually is relative to what we're dealing with in the United States, right? So I want to turn first to our representative of the Czech Republic, ask him to pronounce his name for me again and then just describe the Czech approach and also a little bit of an overview about where you see the most interesting developments in Europe and then I'll turn to Joao. All right, hello everybody. So you can try to repeat my name in those who can speak Spanish, I'm sure you can say R. So if you say R with closed teeth, R. That's in R. And you have to say R at the end. So anyway, so that's my name. Thank you. Well, that's my first name and then you have the other. So anyway, so Czech Republic. I think the main point about Czech Republic. I was born under heavy totalitarian regime, Stalinist communism, which was there for more than 40 years and it was after the two big wars in Europe. So I think Europeans are very average and very skeptical about everything. So they are skeptical about those big ideas such as war on drugs. So I think that's the main point about whole Europe, not only Czech Republic. But 1989 the communist systems collapsed and the Berlin Wall fall and then we ended up being with open borders because we had metal fencing literally around the whole country. So our drug scene at that time was kitchen labs producing methamphetamine, home-based homemade. No money involved for two decades, just people were demanding pleasure so they were looking for drugs because the conventional drugs were not there. So they produced their own drugs. People planted marijuana in their gardens and that's how it went. At that time during communist time, sorry I don't want to be too long, just short history. At that time during communist time, communists would say, well we are in this paradise world country without capitalism and drugs and those things are implanted here by western secret services. So when the wall fall and we realize we do have drug problem just hidden, what do we do? Nobody thought of let's make war on drugs. So let's make something sensible, something that is not too expensive because you know the time in 90s when America was building double of prison cells to incarcerate people for drug offenses were trying to cut the prison cells down because it's too expensive. So very quickly the practice was actually decriminalization without having it formulated legally and then in 1998 we formulated and passed this bill which actually said I don't want to go too technical which actually said that position, personal position of drugs it's not criminal offense. I think at this time most of European countries have it, I think European Union countries apart from two I think, but the practice is common everywhere. So the prison cells are not full of people with drug offenses and if there are people with drug offenses the sentences are two years, three years, four smuggling drugs or producing big amount, things like that. 2010 we formulated another bit of legislation where we said okay so how do we deal with it within the framework of international treaties and conventions which is really a blockage for moving forward for us and no Europeans want to kind of fight against it mainly because we know that we would get in trouble with US for example and all those big countries. So we formulated a possibility for government to decide the amount for personal use which for example in Czech Republic it's 15 grams for marijuana, I don't know two grams for heroin, two grams for or 1.5 grams for heroin, two grams for methamphetamine which is for personal use and you cannot be prosecuted for that if you found with the possession of those drugs. We also recently passed a bill on medical marijuana, I should tell you I'm a member of conservative party, all my predecessors were a member of conservative party but conservative party in our country is something probably totally different from what I see in other parts of the world because for us it's personal freedom. This government should have little say in what you're doing in your home that's what we believe. So that's why for example we have elections today and tomorrow and the leader lady who is running for the prime minister on behalf of the conservative party she was my MP I was working with on the bill for medical marijuana for example so this is how it's done in Czech Republic. I think we talked about it before this session we asked as I said Europeans we are very skeptical and we don't fall for big ideas much so if you ask Europeans you would say well there is many problems and we would like to go forward but it's too much hassle we are quite comfortable for example in Czech Republic among injecting drug users there is 0% it's 0.1% of HIV positivity among injecting drug users because we introduce harm reduction across the whole country in every single corner you find accessibility to harm reduction services maybe final idea about Czech policy and this is how we believe it should go internationally. Our main preamble in national drug strategy is that reducing harms is the overall policy and overall philosophy so harm reduction is not a type of service for us but it's an idea how to look at legislation law enforcement and whole drug policies so I think that's very much Czech way of looking at things. Indridge thank you let me now turn to Jael from Portugal because you know for many years we first we looked at the Dutch right with the the Dutch coffee shop system emerging late 70s in the 80s harm reduction emerging especially the Netherlands even in the early 80s then it was the Swiss providing really international leadership on safe injection sites and on heroin maintenance which have now spread you now have heroin maintenance in Germany the Netherlands and Switzerland and Denmark and the UK a little experiment in Spain a little something going on in Canada in fact I think there's a special session on that on Canada later you know and then Portugal no heroin maintenance no coffee shops changed the policy in I think 2001 and almost nobody's really Portugal you know and then two three years ago these reports come out 10 years of Portuguese drug policy of decriminalization and public health and my god things have worked well so Jael tell us a little something about how that came about and how you feel I mean you've been the pioneer and he actually will be receiving the Norman Zinberg award together with his institute on Saturday night so you know but I'm honored to have you here but tell us a little bit about that yeah okay thank you Ethan hello everybody well the story of the drug use or the drug problems in Portugal has some similarities with what happened in Czech Republic as you as you know we lived during 50 years under fascist regime attended with our carnation revolution as you can remember it happened in 74 before the revolution we had no problems with drugs we had a very tough regime and only some elites had access to to some substances suddenly everything changed with the end of our colonial war and the return of people soldiers and settlers from Angola, Mozambique and all that people we had some habits of using at least marijuana and they brought literally tones of it into the into Portugal and it was a sudden spread of experimentation and differently from what happened in other countries and I think this is a key element to explain how things evolved later it spread over all social classes it was not a problem of only of disorganized people but it the problem because it was easy to shift along with marijuana suddenly we had an invasion of heroin and cocaine everything and as we were completely naive about about drugs I can tell it with my personal experience I was 20 at the time and I remember that people sitting together and experimenting a joint of marijuana and someone said oh I have something new do you want to try it and it was heroin okay and we were completely naive about that we knew nothing about drugs it was easy to shift from one to the other and this led us in one decade to an enormous spread of problems caused by heroin okay in 10 years time we had the 1% of our population hooked on heroin we are around 10 million quite stable and we had 100,000 problematic drug users of heroin mainly injecting drug users this along with the beginning of the epidemic led to a dramatic situation but as I told you before it was it spread among all social classes not only the most disorganized, marginalized people but also medium class even high classes and the movement of considering this is not a crime this is something this is an issue started from the beginning because people and it was almost impossible to find one single family in Portugal that had no problems with drugs and people used to say well my my my son is not a criminal is someone who needs help so this led us to a position even if you accordingly with the with the conventions we criminalized drug use and drug possession it was never really prosecuted by by by the system and it was quite quite easy quite easy by the end of the 90s to including in a global strategy for drug use with the development of all kind of responses in terms of prevention arm reduction treatment facilities rinsers and so on it was quite easy to to present the proposal of decriminalizing drug use and drug possession for use so it was passed in the in the late well the strategy was approved in 99 and the bill on decriminalization was approved in 2000 what it's important to say that in the discussion of that issue we had a very important personality that was George Sampai who our former president of the republic who recently joined the global commission and he is helping us very much to to stand on what what we got in my view this was important to this decriminalization because it it is that the recognition that is this is mainly a health issue and provided us that the possibility of spreading a set of responses mainly in terms of arm reduction and treatment all over the country and allowed us to to decline all the all the figures of the bad impacts of the drug use in the country just the two words to tell you that we put using drugs is no more criminal offense but is still prohibited to use drugs in Portugal so we have a kind of administrative bodies that evaluate drug users if police get seizes picks someone using drugs he presents in these are what you these are what you call the dissuasion committee a wonderful name the dissuasion equations yes and the they can apply some penalties but the main idea is to evaluate the needs of that that person is the the the person I have in front of me a drug addict in need of any kind of help and I help him finding the the the the help he needs it's just a occasional or recreational user I try to evaluate if there is any kind of needs in terms of family situation social situation that can be addressed and so I try to to address that person to the adequate responses on society and this this system this system has been very effective in identifying really situations that along with drug use can lead people to problematic drug use so it's a kind of a second line of preventive intervention and these it has now we have 12 years of this system put in place and we have a very good very good evaluation of the what is happening there so yeah thank you I for those of you who want to read more a few years ago the Cato Institute put out a good report on this it's actually by Glenn Greenwald who has since become quite famous in his work on the on the snow the snowden story and such and that one mostly emphasized more of the decriminalization side and not so much the public health perspective then there's a fantastic article in the British Journal of Criminology a couple years ago by Alex Stevens and Caitlin Hughes a very scholarly assessment that showed very good findings of this and if you look outside on the table of the open society foundations you'll see summary booklet summarizing the Swiss and the Portuguese and the Czech and I think Dutch drug policies so you can find more about that when I'm oftentimes asked what's the real difference I say in America if you get stopped with drugs and don't have a big criminal record maybe you get one or two chances right to get clean and then sorry we got to put you in jail in Portugal you get one or two and another and another and another and another there's a commitment to doing everything possible to not put people in jail for simple drug possession and it's not about you know and as somebody I think your colleague once explained Nuno that it we know it's not that we send people to drug treatment we say go to the health clinic because many people struggling with addiction don't want to go to get treatment tomorrow or today but everybody has a reason to go to a health clinic and that that can be a useful place to do this is that basically correct that's okay well yeah let me turn now because you know all of a sudden out of the blue all these Latin American ex presidents current presidents are proposing a change in the regional global debate and I'll come to that in a moment and then almost out of the blue in Uruguay a little country of what three or four million people right between what 3.3 million people between Brazil and Argentina you know the president mojica former tupamaro gorilla from the left not the right in this case says let's talk about legalizing marijuana and look a year and a half later and this could actually happen Diego why did he do that why did he do that and what do you think is going to happen next month thank you very much he's gonna say first of all thank you for the invitation to be here in the in the state of Colorado and in Denver second excuse my English and not practice language for a long time so I start for God's expression on words I have my friend Fernando have an accent in English until then to me and help to me about that so first of all I want to be here for several reasons but one reason and I start with that is to say congratulations for the people of this state of Colorado and the city of Denver about your past this referendum in the last month that great for us really was for us was a great news you know because the United States is not only an important country in the region of Latin America is around the world in this issue but what happened in Uruguay is is different that's not related about the United States situation what happened in Uruguay is it's it's very complicated to explain because it's very simple the president of course it's not you know it's not one one decision because we have a decision in the middle of a package of different policies I'll try to explain you in five minutes Uruguay is the first country that we passed a law that we allow abortion in the country a few months ago we allow the sex marriage in the country we are the second in the country in the region we are the first country in the in the region that we allow adoption of sex marriage a couple so we have this also in the country so I know that we are always under the radar and we love to be under the radar that's a problem to us now that is a big delegation of why I'm here from the our drug commission and for a member of the parliament the two key the key guys that working very hard to pass this law Curio Bango and Tati Sabini but it's true story that's we have a story of progressive society it's not a it's possible because we have a story behind us that is to create this kind of change to the country that's the first step it's not a isolation idea of the president secondly what happened well we we start to have a lot of problems to increase the lack of traffic problem in the country not like what the mala or the other countries is the for example the average murdered in the country is low within the United States and it's low within the average of European countries but in the in our society so quiet full very peaceful people to start have a problem that increasing violence in our in our in our faith in the criminal felonies in one discussion that we have that and the parallel of that we have a discussion about marijuana issue like United States medical usual to use in medical marijuana recreation or not and about what is the impact in our judicial system and so on but one day we're discussing about that the president said well in the council we have a council minister and then we have a cabinet of security and different cabinet and we have a cabinet of production and in this cabinet the president start to discuss about why why we don't legalize the marijuana don't create a change of this policy we don't have an answer different ministers start to say well who opposite this here in this table no one why so why we don't change what is what happened here because we we believe strongly in in the evidence in the public policies we are from the left party but we are very pragmatic guys because you know we understand that you know what is the problem of the politician and i'm a politician the guy who knows about this issue is the guys Julio Calzada the secretary general only the politician that is strongly support these ideas and this process in the government but the first step is that our the politicians we fall in love in our mistake often why why we fall in love in our mistake we know what we know why because a politician needs to convince the people this is our life we need to convince people every day not only campaign every day that we live we need to convince people the different ideas so when you became a government you are so convinced because to convince people you are you need to be so convinced in your ideas and then you try to deploy your ideas and the reality show you that you are wrong and what happened with that the first reaction of us the politicians is to insist not with idea because reality is wrong because my it's not possible that i'm wrong that's that's what happened with us so but this is this isn't you can understand that that that what happened when you have 40 years the same policy and you have the and you don't have good results why we don't change we are a stupid guy the politicians no no because there is a real problems and i try because it's very easy to speak here my friend Fernando i have a very close relationship with Fernando the minister of foreign affairs of Guatemala foreign planning minister he said to me a few minutes ago it's very easy to speak here because all of you support marijuana legislation so it's very easy but the true story that we are politicians we need to know what happened to society to push an idea and the true story that 40 years of the same speech in the society in the whole region in the media in the political discussion in institution in a lot of advertising doing that create a unique vision about this this problem so at the beginning we said to the president okay we all agree with that so do it that's the president musica is very particular guy so esco really mean so open nine and he said that okay if this is don't show us results we need to change so change that's so simple and we start to change we start to create the condition to send the bill to the parliament but at the beginnings have a lot of problems don't believe that this is a dream only said you know a paradise story no we have a lot of problems at the beginning political problem we are conservative of course not like the conservative in the Czech Republic but but people who agree against that because the majority of the population in the in the first polls say that they are against to change the policy 60 percent of the population so there is a lot of political politicians that say okay time of opportunity they start to speak in the in the tv and of course in the media to say this is a madness idea of the of the government the poor musica he lost on mine how we can legalize this possibility and then we start to talking about well it's not the legalization exactly we create a strictly regulated market because we study a lot what is the best way to the country and we have a lot of help with a lot of people are sitting here of course ethan and the dpa and a lot of other institutions and we learn we we we hear a lot we listen what happened in other parts of the world what is the best approach to change that our best approach we need to the next step is to create a strictly regulated market with by the state and we we tried to we studied in the Netherlands the Dutch but we are Latin people we cannot do that the Dutch do what no because the hypocrites of the the Dutch system is incredible but it's they can do that the Anglo-Saxon or the Anglo-Saxon people in British and they can do that also no we don't can't do that we don't why not because when we study then the law in in Netherlands said that drugs is still illegal illegal but you can consume and you can buy but you can you cannot produce and so you know the one of the jokes said that the queens no take the taxes in the front door but they don't know what happened in the in the in the back door and you know why because it's a system as it works ethan said to me it's better the hypocrites system of of Netherlands that the prohibition and I agree with that but it's better when you say the truth we need to change what happened that why we need to still continue with that why because we have a convention that the biggest discussion oh my god we have a 1961 convention in the u.a. and said it's forbidden to create and to create something law that's allowed marijuana recreation or something is not from scientific research and medical purpose okay that's true so what we say we need to change that's all that's a true if not what happened this country because my president said well what happened in the United States what president at the federal level is not allowed to consume marijuana or even another drug itself and said okay but why would I read that you have some state I have marijuana no well president there is 18 states with medical marijuana and what it means well you use when you have a medical problem okay but then we have a report from Oregon from California that you can use your your you can buy marijuana only with a a lot of excuse the president said I don't like to lie I don't like to lie we why we need to create a liar system we need to speak with the truth with the people either people don't support us it means that the people not not no well prepared to change and this means that this is our work like politicians to make the change to change the reality but don't lie to the people say the truth we need to change because we fail in the political in the policy that we follow the last 40 years to create a better society in the treatment of drugs that's a true story it's a very unusual it's a very unusual approach to being president no I mean since when the president said let's just tell him the truth I mean yeah no well you need you you you you met the president in New York and the president 78 old man and it's uh it's you you met the guys a long time so and it's a very particular story and so it's a guy so it's how you're saying English dad it's porenzi my linear mouth it's yeah yes it's about above good or evil you know it's a guy who have a some relation with this kind of issue that it's possible that they they have the will to change but finally I want to say all of you that you are activism that it's not easy for the political will to have the political will to change why because the polls show difficulties because the true story is that we don't know if this is the right direction that's true I know that you don't like this but when you ask to us to say well this new law because in our law we create strictly related market but we legalize the production we we regulate the production the the harvest the communist commercialization the point of sale how the household how many plants that you have in your house how many there how many people how you have new clubs and also how easy you regulate the market but what is the question here for the problem you must understand that the first step is political will it's not enough but the true story when you tell you oh well I we agree with you we want to do what we cannot do is bullshit it's sorry my english is bad but I know that is bullshit very clear perfect that's true is it if you want to change if you if you say that you want to change and you are in consequence you're still beginning to change so this is the first step so I think then you while I happen well we have a president that's so different muhica is the key player in this change and then we have a the idea that we need to change because for us it's a double vision first of all because what is the main drugs in Uruguay alcohol it's a legal drug what are the main problems with drugs in Uruguay alcohol the legal drugs what are the second drugs in Uruguay in consumption tobacco what are the second problems in in drugs in Uruguay tobacco consumption we have 4 000 people dying because consequences of tobacco consumption every year we don't know but we don't have four hands of people dying with marijuana consumption in the country so the third drugs in consumption Uruguay is marijuana and we ask why we treat and we create a strictly related marketing alcohol a strictly related marketing tobacco and would you say the same in marijuana so the true story is that we create it's not a big change it's we need to handle marijuana exactly that we handle the problem of tobacco and alcohol because for us marijuana itself is not good or bad it's bad if you have an addiction the same addiction you have an alcohol or the same problem you have in tobacco addiction but we need to be make visible what is invisible to have very good public policies to treat that because to handle that because tobacco control is very hard in Uruguay we are one of the leaders in the world in tobacco control and we have a lot of problems because that with the international company like philip morris we have a very big trial and a process of arbitration in tiadi exit in english in the world bank with philip morris and but we think that is a sovereignty of the country to protect the public health and for us public health is above the drug conventions and this is most important for us thank you thank you thank you so before i turn before i turn to fernando and put this in a more international perspective you know new zealand i mean nobody it felt like nobody was paying attention and then all of a sudden along comes new zealand and does something that seems remarkably radical i mean they basically say we got an issue here going on with young people doing all these club drugs what's being called alphabet amines and all this and we don't know this and and and there's this gray market industry and and and what do we do and the government and the industry say well maybe we should figure out a way to set up a regulatory process and like control this i mean and ross it's extraordinary so what exactly happened here and what do you think is going to play out well can i thanks they think i first um acknowledge the first nations people who have traditionally occupied this land um thank you i'm not only the token non-government person i'm the the token guy that has the short name so it's ross bell nice and nice and easy i thought i thought to answer your question ethan it's best i give a chronology of how we've got to this place that we have in new zealand because i think the story everyone says new zealand is quite unique i actually think when i tell the story a lot of people will see that it's quite similar to what the us is facing and what a lot of other countries are facing so i don't think we're too different all i think that's happened in new zealand is that our politicians have run out of patience faster than your guys have so about about 10 or 11 years ago um a smart person realized that if something if a chemical wasn't listed in our misuse of drugs act which was passed in 1975 so if a chemical wasn't on the list of banned drugs then it was by definition legal so what's stopping me from coming up with chemicals that aren't on the list and and putting them on on to market so the first the first substance we had on market was a was a drug called bz or benzylpiprazine which was kind of an ecstasy slash amphetamine mimic and and this this this drug was sold in pill form was it was on the market for a long time because it wasn't illegal and and therefore it was sold with no control there were no age restrictions there were no warning labels and these kind of things and for a while this wasn't a problem but then clever people realized that they could also be selling this so what we ended up happening with bzp was that within a couple of years um you could buy these drugs this product from a corner store we call them dairies you have them as seven elevens so you could walk into any store buy your buy your lollipops and buy your drugs um the media you can see where the story is going the media caught wind of that and and communities became concerned that you could school kids could go into these stores and buy these drugs and so all of that usual noise that you see around these new new drugs started happening and so our drug policy minister said to his experts tell me what i should do with these drugs shall i ban them because in new zealand we have a group of experts who who assess the substance and give advice about whether it should be a class a bc or whatever drug and his experts came back and said we don't know enough um uh about the substance to give you advice on where it should be scheduled but what you should do is create a new category within a misuse of drugs act that we can put these new chemicals into so actually in about 2006 new zealand created a regulated market so you could put that these these these new chemicals would would be placed into let's call it class d uh kind of a holding pattern and we can have things like age restrictions health warnings and so on um and so this law was passed uh and it gave the officials um powers to create a whole lot of regulations to to deal with these drugs at the same time the the drug policy minister said and we need to invest research into identifying what are the problems with this substance long story short that drug bzp um became banned new advice came back from the experts that said actually we think that this is a more problematic drug it needs to be scheduled as a illicit substance but the industry who had been making all this money said hang on if you do that they're a bit silly the industry but it's another story if you do that we will have a new drug to replace this product the very next day um anyway bzp was banned literally the very next day a new product hit the market and this is what you'll recognize so that drug was banned and a new product hit the market and so on and so on synthetic cannabis came along we banned some products and new products came onto the market and so the drug policy minister got a bit sick of that and said we need to review this thing let's review a whole drug law so a group of independent experts came conducted a review came back and said we need to fix up this regulated market so what we now have um what we've just passed in in in august after all of this work is a law it's a it's a new act it doesn't sit in the misuse of drugs act it's a new law that says to the industry the the the burden is on you if you can develop a product prove to us that it's a low risk and here's various hoops you'll have to jump through to do that we will let you sell these products but we will sell it under very tight controls the same kind of controls we have around alcohol and tobacco so that law was passed um a few months ago it took effect a few months ago and it was passed in parliament by 120 votes to one so so you think oh okay so we've got a whole lot of political consensus here so anyway we are we are the first country to try to regulate all of these new these new chemicals that are coming along the drugs themselves I think are going to be a little bit dull you have to remember New Zealand's far away we're a small country we're not a big market for drugs like cocaine and heroin so we have you know we have these things instead so the drugs themselves that they're going to come up with aren't going to be that great um but but what but what this thing has enabled us to do is it very quickly highlights the the glaring failure of prohibition because what we've found is that you can't just ban something because the the clever people in the industry can can cook something new up and so it's kind of fast tracked the kind of debates that we need to have around what should a reform system look like so I think that's the value of the New Zealand model is that it's allowed us to have a conversation about well prohibition ain't cutting it what's the alternative Ross thank you um and I think we have this this is session right that's paying a lot of attention here is it did already happen or it's coming up later on this afternoon so you want to know a lot more about the New Zealand session go to that one later so what I'm going to do is turn to Fernando Fernando in a second um and then then I'm going to move this conversation more quickly with quicker answers and a little more dynamic interaction here but the way I'm going to frame this is in two ways first of all to say that when I met Fernando for the first time in February of last year I will tell you that in all my years as a professor and an activist I have never seen somebody learn the ins and outs of drug policy with such sophistication and nuance as quickly as he did it and he did it while he was serving as a cabinet minister so absolutely extraordinary um the same thing I want to say is that you know most of what we've heard here has been you know countries relatively small in size doing their own thing not actively you know President Moeka is not out there tell everybody to do what Uruguay does New Zealand you know the checks basically we're doing our thing trying to do it right in Guatemala you know domestically they're beginning to try some interesting things but I'm looking at this thing and here you have a former general head of military intelligence from the conservative right gets elected president about a couple of years ago and he stands up and he says we need to fund a mentally different discussion that might include putting all options like legalization on the table and this is a regional and global issue Fernando why did he do that and what's it been like with him playing this international leadership over the last year and a half thank you Ethan thank you everybody here um that's what I said to Diego that I have never seen a crowd so enthusiastic about drug policy reform I go to international fora where there are governments and discussing this and they are quite aggressive sometimes against the idea sometimes they are passive about it sometimes they support you but they tell you in secret they support you they cannot say publicly but it's because um fundamentally the issue had become a taboo for governments to debate okay and the most important thing with president Otto Peres is that he decided he had to break that taboo okay and the taboo is that governments cannot debate drug policy that's the taboo you people activists civil society whatever you want to call yourselves you can discuss that academics can do that you know people who have no governmental responsibilities but those who have governmental responsibilities cannot debate drug policy okay they just need to apply the formula that exists for the last 60 years and it's about prohibition and the war on drugs okay and if you want to break that is because you are completely crazy okay it's absolutely crazy okay because that's what you do when you are part of civil society you're an academic but not when you are a responsible government okay why president Otto Peres decided to open his mouth on this being a sitting president now the former president we have a visit a few weeks ago from president former president some pair from Colombia and he said to president Otto Peres that the best thing in the world that can happen to a person is being a former president it's a great thing you have all the protocol that is given to presidents you have all the relevant importance that is given to presidents but you don't need to sign anything and you don't need to say anything really substantive and the only problem uh Mr. St Peres said to president Otto Peres is that in order to be a former president you have to be a president first so that's the only real problem with that okay so he said well resist as you are a president because then next you're gonna have a nice life as a former president okay but anyway why being a sitting president he decides to say something because yes he was a watermelon army general and he was the head of intelligence of the army 20 years ago and when he was there he had a strange opportunity of doing something unusual he found in watermelon territory a guy who was a very important drug dealer called Chapo Guzmán okay and he found Chapo Guzmán and he said well we found the guy incredibly but we did he communicated this to the US and the Mexican government and all of a sudden we have done something tremendous and he imagined that by doing that he had done I mean he had completely won the war on drugs okay because you have Chapo Guzmán I mean you capture Hitler okay so you you have Hitler in your hands the war is over as simple as that you know well he captured Chapo Guzmán he was sent to a Mexican prison and a few years after Chapo Guzmán left his prison in Mexico on the front door you know after paying nobody knows how many millions of dollars to everybody in the jail and he went for free and he's still free today more over Chapo Guzmán today is listed in the most important wealthy persons in the world by force magazine okay it's in the top 50 percent 50 people that are wealthiest in the world okay so Chapo Guzmán is a stronger today than 20 years ago and President Otto Berners said well it was like we have won the war but 20 years afterwards what we have is that the guy we capture is a stronger than ever okay something is wrong and that is done by I'm that is said by someone who was involved in the war a civil war a very bloody civil war that we have in Guatemala a terrible civil war and he understood immediately that if his opponent was a stronger today than 20 years ago is because the war on drugs is failing as simple as that well realizing that was good saying that in public was something different okay because that has been said by many people to tell you the truth because President Otto Berners was not the first one to say it okay he was the first sitting president to say it but not the first one to say it so he said that in public and all of a sudden everybody started to ask him why he meant what he meant by that okay and he started to tell this a story about Chapo Guzmán all the time you know and Diego was saying yes politicians tell stories so that people understand things okay and they are not experts or university professors or anything they just need to tell stories like Jesus Jesus did in his time you know tell the story to people so people understand what's going on okay so he told the story of Chapo Guzmán several times I heard him and they I was the secretary of planning the ministry of planning Guatemala economic planning so I'm an economist by training nothing to do with unfortunately he said fortunately in my opinion but anyway I'm an economist by training so I turned to him and said I work 14 years in the United Nations system and I can tell you something if you want to change the drug policy paradigm that exists today it will take you ages to do that okay it will take you ages and I gave you an example the convention on the rise of the child a very well recognized convention in the human rights world took 14 years to negotiate at the UN and it created a consensus among more than 150 countries so the most consensual convention on human rights has taken 14 years to be approved of the UN so reform in the system may take I don't know no less than 10 years to 15 years maybe 20 years okay so why are you doing this president you have four years as president and that's it and he said well I guess someone has to start with this you know as simple as that I told him something else I told him the story of the peace process of Central America the peace process in Central America has started really in in a big fashion when the presence of Central America agreed in 1986 and 1987 that we have to have peace in Central America which is what is the process that is called in Central America the escapulas process but the peace occurs in Guatemala we're signing 10 years afterwards in 1996 and I told him you see you can be the first one to be at the escapulas but you are not going to be the one that is going to sign the end of the war and drops okay and he said to me well I signed the peace of course of Guatemala I can start you know a process of peace in a different way now okay and I'm not willing to be the one to sign this time I can just start and wait for the movement of the world to come okay so with that decision I told him okay well I tried to be reasonable with you what are you going to do with the US okay and he said to me well we're friends with the US let's try to talk with them and say okay he's a good guy okay actually I was not very sure what was going to be the US reaction but that was not the foreign minister so I was happy you know I didn't need to deal with the US I was the minister of planning so perfect so I said to him well as a minister of planning what I can do for you is help you in collecting information and that's where Ethan says that I started to study everything and my iPad got completely full with documents on this on a specific subject that I have never tried before I had to read I don't know how many pages I remember that my iPad had 400 documents at a certain point that I read in trips and overnight you know I started to read at two o'clock in the morning finish at four o'clock five o'clock just to understand what's the issue really about and there are three things I learned when there are the only three things more or less we know about this okay one is that in order to prevent people from consuming something you don't prohibit the consumption okay if you want to prevent people from consuming something other you put a lot of taxes so it becomes so expensive that it's difficult to buy or you alert people through education or you do both things you know but you alert people about education you tell him tobacco is bad because it's going to produce cancer okay and you create a whole legislation that regulates that but you don't prohibit tobacco and you do not allow tobacco to be sold legally because you believe tobacco is good for him I hope you don't do that you know it produces cancer but we do it because if we prohibit tobacco then we create that's the second lesson learned an illegal market and when you create an illegal market you create a black market you create a mafia that is going to run that illegal market problem in Guatemala is not that we have a large market of marijuana and a large market of consuming cocaine problem of us is that we are right in the middle between the consumers and the producers okay so we need to dismantle the market the illegal market okay otherwise we will continue to have the same problem all the time and the demands from those countries that have consuming markets is that we need to stop drug from getting into their borders and it is reasonable to control consumption but not to prohibit consumption okay so the paradigm is fail completely has failed completely it's a flawed paradigm okay and it is based on false assumptions from there we decided that we had to move not in the domestic market of what you want but the international arena okay and that we need to go and debate this worldwide not just in the region for several reasons and this is the end of my story is we move very quickly at the organization of american states at the hemispheric level and we realized that we have a chance to do that there was something unusual that happened is that what the model has requested to be the convener of the general assembly of the organization of american states in 2013 this year and because of that because we were the convener we were the ones that suggested the topic for the assembly okay and president got the parents turned to me and said not tell me you have a second topic well i thought i was talking about the foreign minister's task so i said to him yes said drug policy no problem the foreign minister we have to deal with that and well all of a sudden i have to change in the cabinet post and i moved from secretary of planning into minister of foreign affairs so i had to face the music okay and i have to preside that general assembly and i have to go and talk with our friends in washington and all the stuff that i thought was not my job okay so be careful about what you say when you are in government okay whenever you reach government yes this is you may say many things when you're a free person but when you're in government yeah as as a former minister of the united states said you are locked in the cabinet okay so you are locked there really okay so that is a real issue so i have to face the music together with president about the parents on this but the real interesting thing is that we started the debate that is rational okay it was not based on ideology position ideological positions we were not saying we want this because we don't like or we believe that these values are different it's just this doesn't work as simple as that so so it's a pragmatic issue yeah so it doesn't matter whether you are liberal conservative left wing or right wing there's a question that doesn't work okay and you need to find a solution okay and the solution is not to prohibit that's the only thing we know so far so we're not saying so we're going to take this thank you we're we're going to go past 1 30 because we started late and i'll count on all of you to get into the rooms we'll we'll go to take this longer and get into the rooms for the next thing at two o'clock on time but what i want to do now is to move this more quickly and i'll be cutting some of you off and getting quick answers but listen first question i have is so the us right i mean how much you know obama is changing there's a little more openness the car to henna summit last year he said he'd be open to stuff i don't see any pressure on uruguay but then again our drugs are was visited in portugal and that sounded so good and i don't know if there's been any reaction to stuff there in guatemala i mean it's not all been easy so just a sentence or two from each of you about what it's been like with my government jao do you want to start all right let's say jao and then yeah well yeah well i'm at mr karlikovsky he was he was very interested but in the end i i think we didn't impress him too much i can tell you i did my best but i think he was not very enthusiastic by the end i think someone pointed there are still some some people in portugal that opposes our policies and he went first to talk to that people then he came to me and he was quite skeptical but uh in fact i have no no idea yeah and the ego in uruguay no pressure right well you know we we are lacking because montevideo is the fastest capital to the washington is in natural america so we are the far yes and we are out of the radar the united state for a long time god bless us for a long time about that and it's very important but the true story that we have conversation with the united the united state government about this issue not only at the level of the department state with the guys who is running the the drug policy we took directly with the member of the white house and they asked us about their tried to be involved to more information about what happened in uruguay and we thought we have a very good relation we had a left party in the government left the party and but we have a good relation with the united state and i think that and i cannot open speech here because it's a public uh because we have responsibility in our government some conversation that we have but uh it's important to say that this is all off the record no no yeah i don't know i don't know but i can't say you i can't see you this message i think that the people in washington know that it's changing so fast the society in the united state they are no stupid don't think that you are not stupid they are the people that are intelligent that's they they need to manage different approach and different interests but they know that the change the time is changing so one of the big problem with this country is you have a mad system every member of the parliament every congressman have a election every two years so it's and you change the district in the state assembly every two years and you have a system that's very complicated to to create a a natural agenda of that i think that one of the big message was what the president of the white house decided to note used the prosecutor general to overrule the state of colorado and wash the decision the supreme court i think that this is a big step because it means that we started a discussion that is it's possible that you have a change your policy in the next year so this is the reality in united states so it's it's i think that is the problem is that united states you know the big problem in this problem in this issue if you don't want i think that the position of china russia is the problem yeah and international level so let me and for now in guatemala not much of a problem with the us right or a little or i think it's completely different because we are very close to the us okay but there are several things one is that the u.s. government has any government has many phases it's not just one phase okay and one speech or one discourse okay in any government they finally reach a consensus about something particularly about important issues but i would say that in drug policy you have diverse versions within the u.s. government and within the u.s. state department different versions independent the house not the story carol koski in the white house has another story and and you need to manage that diversity of opinions and and try to make a sense of what what is possible within those differences that exist but it wasn't that easy at the beginning what the malo receives more or less once in a while some important senior people from the us but in less than three months we receive the head of the napolitano from homeland security napolitano we have kiro koski which was the nicest we had also the head of inl of course at the state department's narcotics division and and we have Joe Biden the vice president in central america okay so so much attention in such a little time was due to something okay but what was important and and this is what has to happen because what the malo is not and is not interested in becoming an opponent of u.s. policy in general terms we are a friend of u.s. policy in many dimensions and in many areas and it has been an issue for many many years it's not that we started with that with president autopedis so the fact that as colombia as mexico and as what about we are let's say allies of the u.s. up to a certain point in many dimensions this creates a complete different way of dealing with the issue because at the beginning there were many questions about if we were moving into something opposing the u.s. in broad terms so then you become a threat to u.s. security you know but our position was we are we're friends we're part of a same team in many ways colombia is a strong ally maybe the strongest ally of the u.s. in latin america mexico is a strong ally of the u.s. what am i as well so it's more a debate about among friends and there's an expression that you have in english and heard it in the 80s when president oscar arias started with a peace process in central america and oscar arias from castorica and newsweek had a from page cover page with him saying tough words from a good friend okay so we started to say tough words to a good friend okay we started to say things that maybe some people in the u.s. government didn't want to hear but we are friends so it's tough words for a good friend and i think with that approach that we are saying something tough but not from an aggressive position not as a security threat that create a whole difference and now we have a dialogue okay well let me ask you and i don't consider anything on this which is that so this issue of the international conventions right the single convention all this and there's a lot of perspectives on this right some will say ignore it to some extent i mean when switzerland and other european countries moved forward with safe injection heroin maintenance and they received letters from the international contest control board and they basically the government's responded you have your lawyers at the un we have ours other people say you know there's actually a lot of flexibility within the conventions but then i hear some of you talking about we need to change the conventions right now you know i mean i mean you know mojica president mojica is not out there publicly but you said the convention may need to change you know at au pair is what he's talking about ultimately convention you know and interest you played a role i think in the european circles and being a sort of provocateur on some of these fronts so why don't you just answer about what you think is going to happen or what can happen with these conventions well i would like to hand my cards to my colleagues politicians no no i'm a national drug coordinator which is the drugs are as you call it here in the republic so in the republic is a highly political role so why don't we meet up in prak with our prime minister and the minister's minister of foreign affairs and discuss the issue of what do we do for next cnd meeting in march in uh in uh vienna well when i raise this issue in in in our european circle uh the eyebrow eyebrow goes up isn't that right joe but uh i believe strongly it is a time to start pushing it i spoke uh recently informally to to the officials from the us site and uh we decided to start an official debate on at least amendment of single conventions single convention because i said come on guys it's time for you to walk out of the battlefield with the head up isn't that right so uh and they said yes we like the idea let's do it i suspect it's because they want to control the situation but i think it's better to pull those people in because uh i think at this moment as you said the biggest opposition at the end of the day is not going to be us it's going to be china it's going to be russia so and i think it this part of the world is in in in the area of public health extremely dangerous we have today about two million people in in russia injecting drug users 1.2 1.5 millions hiv positive who the the wealth health organization says today the biggest threat in hiv epidemics is in russia among injecting drug users following ukraine 700 000 hiv positive among injecting drug users we have to change this these people travel the whole planet they go and buy houses and parts of towns in europe in spain portugal i believe in chic republic uh in chic republic we are very proud of having the policy so so uh successful that there is no hiv among among injecting drug drug users there is the hepatitis c dropped by half but but when we go and test the russian speaking community it's totally different so i think come on this is a this is a but you're suggesting is with the russians and the chinese and others who are forceful is there really i mean the what what one would hope for would be a sort of alliance among the more forward thinking latin american governments right you now have santos in columbia you have a lot of parents you have uruguay hopefully in chili with a new election there'll be somebody sympathetic there maybe close to rica a few others that in europe right you have a whole you know from portugal switzerland maybe denmark maybe the polls are moving along the italian is there actually some effort to create i believe i believe even though the the people in european uh union don't don't see it yet i believe will pull them all in one united voice at the end uh-huh which end which which which end you mean the end of this year or in the end uh a generation at the end of this year for the cnd 2014 uh-huh civilization in the end of civilization and ross new zealand has there been anything in terms of international pressure negative reaction or is it positive interest or anything along those lines nothing from the us because they still pestered us for the nuclear ship bane um but absolutely internationally and i think that this is you know while the these new substances aren't you know so awesome they they do highlight the need for reform and so we've had fed it off at the the head of united nations office on drugs and crime talk about the new zealand model in very favorable terms i'm at the commission on narcotic drugs countries have passed resolutions saying with all of these new substances that are a big challenge uh to all countries we need to look at alternatives to the to the rate that wasn't on paraphrasing you know we need to look at alternatives to prohibition using consumer protection law or medicines law or or regulations like new zealand and so i think the these that these new substances have highlighted that the whack-a-mole approach to drug control isn't working and so i think it is it is getting countries thinking about having to do new things i think one of the challenges though and it might be a risk that's not actually a problem one of the things in the new zealand model is that we're going to know a whole lot more about the substances before they go on the market the industry has to to to present a whole lot of information now the way that drugs can be scheduled internationally is that the who provides advice to the to the un on where they should be scheduled so what could happen with the new zealand model is that it could grab all of the data about the new drugs that we've got help them to you know give advice to the un to schedule these things so our system could collapse if suddenly all of the drugs that we have are listed as schedule drugs in the and the treaties uh-huh didn't well i just want to add that the biggest trouble we had was not with the us official cb was with un uh control body the in cb so obviously we had the inspector of in cb which was the former yeah uh us diplomat though mr uh is there an argument for abolishing the in cb no i think the in cb should be that by the way the in cb for you know is the international arcana's control board and it's especially the the organization that sees itself as the watchdogs of the international convention but they've defined their role in a very very very sort of retrograde conservative fashion and that's been the problem yeah well what they do they usually uh when for example we had the 2010 part of the penal law changed into government having a power to decide the amount which is not under criminal uh offense uh he was the reaction of in cb straight away but when we asked the in cb so why don't you watch the whole convention uh why don't you look at areas of uh uh demand reduction uh services uh accessibility to to to health care they said well that's not our role so they witness situations such as such such such happened in china i don't know it's five years ago in during the international day against drugs uh they held public executions for drug users people who were once in treatment second time shot in their heads publicly and i and cb was quiet yeah so i think if that control system is there unless there is one uh option for the president to do in funny four years to just step out of the convention totally that's another option i think but yeah let me know if we if we are here to present preserve the the control system then the i and cb has to change totally into uh yeah areas like human rights treatment so okay spread in the the and there's some discussion here i think damon barron others been talking about the conflict between the international drug conventions on the one hand the international human rights ones on the other but diego yeah i think that's the first step is that we have a lot of people are thinking that it's necessary to change that is good but it's not enough because that's my friend franando said we know that it's a very long process don't believe that we start a discussion all change this convention and we have this change in two one two three or four five years we know it's a more than 10 years discussion at the united nation level why because there is a lot of people that's in favor of this change they have son of frets because we don't know the results of the discussion it's possible they have a very bad convention in 10 years so we need to know exactly what's the way to to manage this i think that the next even is not in march in in vienna i think that 2016 is our main goal to start this discussion is the special session of general assembly and we are working together with some countries on on latino america and at the level european countries talking and working politically to create another kind of environmental to discuss these these problems and to discuss how is the way to start a discussion about the the evaluation of the convention the last four years what is the result of this convention i think that as you said the first step that we when we start this kind of discussion at this international level it's not the only things because he's the minister of foreign affairs and the chief of staff we have a lot of issues with the different countries this is one issue it's important but it's not the main problem for this it's all we need to put in the table there's only one issue so no no no no but we need to know that when you discuss another government international level you have a lot of different issues and you need to know how is the priorities in different times so finally i said that i think that the best way is we need to change in the special session general assembly the mood that we have discussed this this is the first step and we are working very hard to move from vienna to new york some part of the discussion is very important for us it's symbolic that we need to discuss in new york and not only vienna at this point of view because the staff the people who work in vienna for a long time they have some interest some vision that is difficult to discuss and i think the best step is at the same time it's possible to discuss some amendment to create some more flexible position and to allow some countries to say okay we share the objectives the goals of this convection but we need to have the possibility to have another way so let me finish up by asking this question because we have to clear room in a few minutes um is it here's what worries me a little bit right now on the one hand you know jindred says described in check republic how under multiple governments the policy continues it's fairly stabilized but you just had to change a government in portugal and mojica leaves next year and adel peres in a couple years and santos has an election and i worry a little bit especially in latin america that it's being driven by courageous presidents who are out ahead of their public opinion you know in portugal you have some concerns here we've seen in the dutch when a center-right government took over they almost tried to shut down the coffee shop system and succeed but and so how much do you think this momentum is really building and it's going to continue beyond the the the terms of your presidents and that will be the the last question so with quick answers please jiao first just quickly about portugal and then yes i think the the political situation in europe and particularly in portugal for instance i i don't believe that's a strong political will to push forward in our case we are much more concerned in keeping what we got until now because who just tell you the portuguese government now is supported by the same coalition who voted against the criminalization i think well they are not they already declared publicly they have no intention to go back but i don't believe they go forward okay so our our role in this moment is to step on what we got and i i believe most of the european countries are facing the same kind of situation they have other kind of concerns the the financial crisis the social crisis and the the drug's question is not an issue now but i believe that the with latin america pushing forward and with those movements that we will are watching now and will it continue yeah will it continue three four five years from now when mojica is retired and when they're all ex-presidents joining the global commission on drug policy will there continue to be uh in what the malay for nanda's the next candidate we assure that that sounds good yeah okay don't count on that okay um i think the question will be in the case of latin america what is creating the momentum that is sustainable is the process of the oas okay because the oas is a established international organization and it really is prepared to to generate a process that is going to dialogue with the un on how to change policies and i'm really amazed that how far we have moved in the last 18 months at that level okay so i think the sustainability does not come from internal sources but from international sources and and i see the oas playing a fundamental role and yes there's going to be change of leadership up to a certain point fortunately we are democracies not a dictatorship so we have the possibility of changing our leaders so that's not a bad thing but i think what is happening is that now we have an international growing consensus at the hemispheric level and i can tell you you know even the u.s government as you know has started to change certain positions so so it's not that things are going to go back to where we were okay i think we have already pushed the car the car a little bit farther and i think it's not going to return okay well we'll need to let me just say here before i conclude this um i need to note one thing there is uh this is probably the first multi person plenary at a drug policy alliance conference in which every panelist has been a man with lighter skin complexion there are various reasons why that was the case here but in this case i hope you understand that part of this is the countries that are leading the way part of this is chance part of this is that we had an unusual opportunity to have five incredibly courageous and wonderful people up here to tell us about what's going on the world so please join me in thanking them for leading the way i drug policy here thank you