 So how do you feel after leaving DPA? I'll tell you, Peter, I feel spectacular. You know, one thing when I announced to the board in late January that I was going to step down, and obviously the board chair had known for quite some time because we had to organize it, but it was if all of a sudden I had let go of a 75-pound backpack that I'd been carrying without realizing I was carrying it. And it's just this feeling of being lighter and happier. And so what I'm feeling right now is I feel very good about what I accomplished with DPA, building DPA and in the broader movement. I feel delighted to have this new freedom. I feel very good about the transition and to my successor, Maria, that it's going to be in good hands and that Ira Glasser, the board chair, has been able to remain. And I'm not leaving drug policy reform. I mean, I'm going to stay involved. You know, this has been my commitment for my entire life, adult life. And I expect to be much more involved internationally than I was before because, you know, DPA was always sort of 90% U.S. and 10% global. But my own, I came to this issue originally 30, 35 years ago from an international perspective. And so my heart has always been not just with my own country, but with the global movement. What are your plans now for the future? Well, my only plan is no plans. I mean, I told people, you know, starting that I know that for at least one year, as of this past summer, I know I don't want to run anything and I don't want to have to be anywhere every week, right? And so I'm really making no plan. And I figure I'll write my book or two at some point coming. I've been thinking about doing my podcast. I was excited about that in the spring. And then I decided I want to take it easy for a while. You know, I'm enjoying, I'm skeptic invitations to travel internationally. So I was in Warsaw for a conference on nicotine harm reduction and in Geneva for the Global Commission on Drug Policy and in Vancouver for a meeting on heroin maintenance and in South Africa for things. And I'm going to Japan and to Macau in some weeks from now to help local activists or to stir up some debate. So I'm enjoying those kind of things, but it's at a slower pace where I can now take some time off in between and be more relaxed. So that's my only plan right now. And I'm not really, you know, worried about the next steps. It just feels really good. So you are leaving DPA in quite difficult times. You made tremendous success in terms of cannabis reform in the U.S. but now we see that there is the Trump administration trying to reverse some of that reform and we see the opiate crisis in America. How do you see what are the main challenges for ahead of DPA? Yeah, I mean I should say, you know, I made the decision and to leave and to step down, you know, last summer. So when I assumed that Hillary Clinton would be the next president and then I briefly asked myself, do I need to reconsider my decision once Trump won? And I and Ira Glasser, the board chair, we agreed the decision was made. Let's stick with it. But here's the way I think about it. I mean, we made over the last number of years incredible. I mean, obviously with the cannabis reforms in the U.S. and elsewhere it was the most dramatic. But we also transformed the dialogue around mass incarceration and the role of the drug war. And we also really began to make significant advances on treating drug use and addiction as public health issues and harm reduction spreading in the United States and things like that. So I feel good about the progress that we made. With respect to the threat posed by Donald Trump and especially by his attorney general Jeff Sessions it's important to understand it is a problem. But remember the United States is a federal political system and most of drug policy, whether it's law enforcement or health happens at the local and state level. And that's not going to be rolling backward. I mean, you're going to see safe injection facilities probably opening up in the next year, needle exchange spreading, overdose prevention is spreading. More and more that's going to keep happening at the local level for all sorts of reasons. And there's not very much that the Trump administration can do to block that, right? Secondly, in Washington D.C. on Capitol Hill you now have the Democrats increasingly supportive of drug policy reform. You have a growing number of the Republicans who are saying the drug war has gone too far and are now allying with Democrats. Now it's going to be harder to push legislation through because of Trump and Sessions, but it means that there is no longer a drug war monolithic sentiment on Capitol Hill that Trump and Sessions can tap into. In fact, quite the opposite. If they want to pass new drug war legislations, it's not so easy. Now obviously the third part is, it is problematic. On the cannabis issue, you know, Jeff Sessions, the Attorney General, is now appointing US attorneys, our chief federal prosecutors in the states who are not going to be friendly to the new cannabis legalization. You know, they're already issuing executive orders that involve locking up people for longer periods of time. You know, they may step in the way of certain harm reduction interventions. So there are things they can do that are going to make life more difficult. And I'm also concerned about what this may mean on the international stage because that's the area of drug policy that lies most in the hands of the executive branch of the White House. So that will be an issue. But I think overall, you're going to see the momentum for reform continue to progress in the United States with the Trump administration and the Attorney General if he survives, which is by no means certain, throwing some wrenches in the works. Michelle Alexander in her speech said that she's a bit concerned, you know, about the sustainability of the reforms if we do not put racial justice in the center of this movement. Do you agree with her in that? I think... I mean, Michelle Alexander, the power of what she's had to say and in her book The New Jim Crow about explaining the drug war in the context of racism and racial injustice, I mean, it was just a breakthrough in the United States. I mean, it transformed the thinking of many, many people. It played a pivotal role in moving African-American both leadership and youth forward. It had an impact, not just on white literables, but others. In that sense, it was very, very important. And the fact that you now have this dynamism from Black Lives Matters to other African-American leadership and now beginning with Latinos as well in support of embracing drug policy reform, that Black Lives Matters sounds like DPA, Drug Policy Alliance when they talk about drug policy is monumentally important. And Michelle has played a key role in all of that. That said, I don't fully agree with her analysis. In fact, I think at this moment, the way that I think about it really is that to be successful with drug policy reform requires a profound understanding and analysis of the ways in which racism and racial injustice has driven the drug war from its origins. The ways in which the drug war has manifested. The ways in which the drug war is disproportionately about targeting people of color and especially African-Americans in this country. That analysis is absolutely crucial and fundamental. Then the question is, what do you do with that? What does that mean in terms of messaging? What does that mean in terms of building alliances? What programmatically do you do in order to advance legislation to roll back the drug war? How do you take advantage of the situation presented by growing numbers of white people dying of overdoses and struggling with opioids in order to build broader coalitions? And that's where I think I and Michelle will diverge a bit because I believe that you need to be incredibly... You need to use the best judgment in terms of identifying the language. If one of the points I made as I was stepping down from DPA is DPA needs to remain first and foremost a drug policy reform organization, not a racial justice organization. A drug policy reform organization driven by a fundamental analysis and an understanding of the role of racism and racial injustice. But there's many, many racial justice organizations out and about doing great work, many of which are allying with DPA. But there's only one really major pivotal drug policy reform organization and it needs to stay focused on that mission. We also have to remember, you know, we've dealt, the phenomenon of racism is still permeates America in so many other countries, right? And you have elements of sexism that continue in all of this. But for lack of a better word, there's another phenomenon called drugism. Or let's not call it, it's a terrible phrase. We need a different word for it. But the acceptance of discrimination against people, not just black but brown and white and every other ethnicity and color, that they deserve to lose their freedom simply because of what they put in their body. That idea, the notion that you can say the most virulent things against people based solely upon the substance they put in their body, the notion you can take away people's freedom based solely on that, that you can segregate them, that you can essentially have apartheid-like systems based upon what people put in their body. That remains, and that's a pivotal civil rights and civil liberties struggle for the future, right? And so if drug policy alliances not remain focused on that, I think that, you know, it's not just that the drug role will continue. It's that racism will continue to manifest throughout the drug war and into the future as well. So the drug policy reform movement is often labeled as a legalization movement. But do you see any role for the movement beyond legalization? Like, do you think that if the drug use will be legalized in the whole United States, then it's the over of the mission for DPA? No, I mean, the way I see it is, you know, it used to be more characterized. People would conflate drug policy reform or even harm reduction with legalization. And I think that's less and less the case. I mean, I think people understand that the mission of drug policy reform is to think about this not as either or prohibition versus legalization. It's to think about drug policy options as a rate along a spectrum, from the most punitive drug policies to the most free market libertarian, but with everything in between. And if the objective of drug policy reform for most of us is not to leap from drug war to free market legalization, it's to move policies down the spectrum, away from the heavy reliance on criminalization and criminal justice institutions and policies, towards decriminalization, regulation, human rights, but stopping short at that point at which any further reforms would present serious risks to public health or public safety, right? It's that evolution. I think with cannabis, it's been clear. The argument, the case for making cannabis legal and well-regulated in a responsible way is overwhelming in this country and I think in most, if not all others. I think that's pretty clear. I think there are other substances, perhaps some of the synthetic substances, the psychedelic substances, the lower potency versions of other drugs, as well. But remember, the other major thrust of DPA and of the movement for many years is just becoming more prominent now and people think it's new but it's existed forever, is to end the criminalization of drug use and possession. That core notion that nobody deserves to be punished for what we put in our bodies if we don't hurt anybody else. That's been a fundamental principle of DPA from the beginning, right? It's a fundamental principle of this movement. I'm delighted that that was not just DPA and AIDS Watch and UN health agencies that are also embracing this idea as well but that needs to move forward. That does not automatically mean legalize the supply and distribution as well but it does mean whether we're looking at Portugal, Uruguay or other places that ending that criminalization is pivotal. And then there's the other sides of this. It's about how we deal with the issues of stigma, right? It's about how we deal with the issues of people who grow things, you know, these plants whether it's opium or cocoa or cannabis or other things. So I think it's going to continue to be about moving drug policies down the spectrum, away from the punitive side but not with some free market ethos at the end except for some. It's about a responsible decent drug policy. Do you think that there is some risks of that in the U.S. it will happen in the right way, not in the right way? Because whenever you start to implement no policy once you succeed it's rarely the case that the actualization of those policies the implementation of the things you fought for is actually able to manifest everything you hope for, right? People focus on eliminating the evil they have different ideas about what should come in its place but then the struggle begins. People were united that we needed to repeal the 18th amendment and federal alcohol prohibition but incredibly divided about what should come in its place. Similarly with respect to repealing marijuana prohibition people agree it on the need for that but what should come in its place and what model and when you see the diversity of approaches both globally but even within the United States there is no agreement there, right? We happen to live in the United States in the most dynamic capitalist society in history and one at the same time one has to acknowledge that on the one hand and do everything possible to sort of smooth the edges and try to create some social justice policies within that capitalist framework, right? So, you know, it's always going to be a challenge but part of the challenge as well is avoiding the missteps I think of some of the early years of drug policy reform in the late 80s and 90s when some of our allies would embrace drug courts and it seemed on its face about putting fewer people in prison but they didn't stop to look that they might be taking two steps forward with drug courts and then three or four backward because they were building the social control net of the criminal justice system over people who use drugs so I think it's about being tactical being smart thinking about drug you know, I used to say that essentially I sometimes would think of myself and my role as a violent guerrilla insurgency right? and it was about taking some territory here planting seeds over there seeding ground over here making a faint there we have to get there I don't know if you want to call it the promised land but to a different way of living and being with drugs and that involves complex strategies and complex messaging while remaining focused on the core principles they drive us if you look at the global level you see a kind of crackdown on civil society recently and NGOs like ours are demonized and George Soros as the main donor of this movement is demonized in many countries what do you think why is it happening now and what can we do to to fight back I mean, there's a lot that people are doing to fight back as best they can right, against this rise of right-wing populism and quasi-fascism and all the terrible things we see happening in my country and your country and so many others the piece that I think is sometimes inadequate and it's not easy is how successfully we're able to have the robust dialogues among ourselves among the reformers right, the thing that worries me in my own country many others is that ability to really fight with one another over languaging and messaging and priorities and then resolve or agree to disagree but then come back as a unified group fighting against the bigger threat that's the thing I oftentimes see missing because it's difficult and it's painful it's remembering that when you look at the people who are supporting Donald Trump or Urban in your country or other ugly faces ugly leadership leaders that much of their support are coming from people who really share their values and they we just have to fight with but there's another group that shares only some of their values that is frustrated because of policy X with regard to refugees or migrants or this or that and that group they're up for grabs they may vote for the right wing populists now but they can be disillusioned by them as well and at the same time they need to feel some degree of being welcome or open to our side of this struggle well that means taking care about the language we use it means thinking strategically about how we keep the door open how we keep pulling that group back over with us and I think that's where I don't know enough about countries outside the United States in that regard but it's something I worry about in my own country