 When you look at the Gallup poll that came out in late October about Americans' opinions about making marijuana legal and you see that support has almost doubled since 1983 to 44% and that it's jumped dramatically in just the last four years, so we really do have the wind in our back. Although public support for drug prohibition is fading, most people have no idea what a post-prohibition regime could look like. November 12th to 14th, 2009 at the International Drug Policy Reform Conference in New Mexico, we asked leading drug policy reformers to explain their views on future legal regulation models regarding illicit drugs. In the United States, the term legalization is one that some people understand in terms of tax and regulate, but a lot of people think the term is associated with anarchy. The free market system we know is designed to maximize consumption. If we look at Nike, Coca-Cola, Blue Jeans, if you look at any large multinational corporation, they're all in the same business, which is increasing consumption, regulate and control currently illegal drugs. That's the way that I talk about it. It's about regulation and control. Legalization to me means regulated legalization, taxation. We want more control, not less. All drugs need different models. Different drugs vary on a degree of harm, a degree of addictiveness, a degree of compulsivity, a degree of physical damage. More harmful drugs would probably need more regulatory options, and the less harmful drugs would need fewer regulatory options. Transpon produced a paper, which is a blueprint for legalization. Can you just introduce us to this document? It's basically the first time ever that we've outlined that anyone really has outlined precisely and in detail how people would get hold of drugs in a post-prohibition world. And that means applying normal regulatory frameworks to a situation that is currently completely out of control. We basically have three choices in the post-prohibition world. We prescribe them by doctors, we dispense them from pharmacies, or we sell them under license. Cannabis, it's going to be sold under license in the same way that you would for any other drug. So it's not going to be next to your Hershey bar. This is a consumer rights issue. Currently in Holland, you buy a packet, which you have a vague idea of how much THC is in there. But we would like to see a government stamp on it. We would like to know that a government regulator has overseen that process. We would like to see a health and safety warning on it. We would want to see an ingredients list saying how it's grown and the kind of products that went into the growing process. And part of the licensing conditions would be giving advice to people who use it, particularly for people who are misusing, if they're using too much or using inappropriately, or for people with mental health problems, people with vulnerabilities. We have to learn from the lessons of alcohol and tobacco. I have, when I'm doing my PowerPoint presentations, images that have been traditionally associated with alcohol and tobacco. And they're called sexy bodies, they're called muscular bodies, they're sex, they're glamorous, they're fabulous. The model of alcohol and tobacco has been the model of commercialism. The first issue is branding. If you allow a product to be branded, it will be advertised. Even if you have advertising as illegal, if you allow branding to occur, advertising will occur. In fact, if you look at the various ways that it can be made available, it can be made available in a cylindrical, inconvenient medicine container with a snap top. Can you walk down the street and smoke a joint? Probably not at first. So it would be for home use, informed adults in unattractive packaging in non-branded forms. Do you have any ideas how to regulate the production of cannabis? Okay, so this isn't new in terms of regulating production and supply. All the frameworks are in place. There are controls over the production of tobacco. There are controls over the refining of tobacco. They're not as good as they should be. They're really not. We need much better controls. But the frameworks are basically there. I fight fiercely to end marijuana prohibition. But the thought that it would one day be controlled by Philip Morris or Anheuser-Busch or the major pharmaceutical companies or consumer good companies does not fill me with joy. But what's happening in the United States and I think other countries as well in the last couple of decades is the emergence of all these smaller breweries, oftentimes just making for local communities, local states regulated by the state, but producing in relatively small amounts, sometimes owned by the larger companies, sometimes not. And I think that that model, which continues to emphasize the quality of the product, which continues to provide employment for local people all around the country, I think that's one that jibes very well with where the marijuana market is now. Okay, let's talk about other drugs like stimulants and opiates, how that regulation would differ from that of cannabis. We regulate legally two very hard drugs, alcohol and tobacco. So what we're talking about here is adding drugs into those frameworks. So if we start with heroin, heroin as the most concentrated form of opium-based products would only be available initially from a doctor. But with all drugs, there are different concentrations so that you can put opium in various different things. You can have opium tincture, you can smoke opium. So it would likely be that opium would be available in the same way that cannabis is in the kind of coffee shop system. I would not advocate a system where anyone can simply go into pharmacy and buy. I want to try some heroin today. You have to be diagnosed first as an addict before you could get this and that there should be sanctions for people who then turn that over to the black market and give it to people who aren't diagnosed. It would make sense to me that both methadone and heroin were available. Heroin perhaps for take-home use, perhaps not, perhaps use on site, but certainly starting with the most dependent drug users of the population, give them heroin and methadone in some kind of combination that works for them. And then see if that monitor the size of the illegal market. If you started with all the dependent users and the illegal market has dropped 80%, maybe you could leave it at that. But if you wanted to go to other people who are wanted to participate, informed adults who could use it in a certain way, you'd have to make that decision at the time. Unlikely that we're going to see cocaine on prescription for recreational use. The suggestion is that cocaine powder will be available from a chemist. Again, perhaps with licensing on consumption, perhaps rationing controls. Coca leaves, no licensing at all. There's no reason why people shouldn't be able to go and buy that from the same shop where you go and buy your lettuce and tomatoes. What we're looking at here is the opportunity to review the entire process the whole time. So you operate the precautionary principle, operate strict controls. You begin to let them go if it looks like it's going wrong. You squeeze them back in again. It's really neat. Not like what we have now because you don't have any opportunity to intervene at all. Does it apply to psychedelic drugs as well? No different model. If you think about psychedelic drugs, all of the harms from the drugs come from set and setting. What's set and setting? Set is expectation and setting is the circumstances of use. So if people are unsupervised when they take the drugs, harm can happen. So the whole process of psychedelic drugs is essentially you have to require supervision. How does that model look? Well, what it looks like is you allow people to apply for a license. And when you are granted a license, you are guaranteeing that you will supervise people for unsetting setting issues for the entire duration of their trip. So you'll become responsible for this person's behavior for eight hours. The first people that would be invited to participate would be Shalman's and psychotherapists who've been involved with doing this for centuries now. Let's see Shalman. With tobacco, we've been able to reduce dramatically the use of tobacco in the United States. And we didn't throw any people in prison. We did it through public health and education. And I think that's what we need to do with drugs. But it has to be honest education. It can't be the kind of propaganda that we get from the drug warriors that try to scare kids. It only makes them more cynical. And they disregard the message. I think the adults are lying to us again to try to scare us. And it has the opposite effect. Drug reformers, I believe, have clearly the high moral ground because a moral position is that of compassion and inclusion and caring of people that are brutalized by our current system. That's where morality is. Morality and compassion for me have the same thing. So the reformers have the moral high ground. Putting people in jail is an amoral approach to this particular problem. The drug policy reform stands in 2009 where the gay rights movement was in the late 60s, early 70s, or where the civil rights movement was in the early 50s. You know, I just don't want people to sort of all of a sudden get so excited that when all of a sudden the wind starts to blow the other direction or when things start to slip backward, that we get demoralized. Because we have to be tough. We have to see this as a multi-generational struggle trying to grab and change as much as we can in the moment. But being ready to understand this is going to be a long struggle. There's no two ways about that.