 This is the global peak body for discussing drug policy. This is the body that must recognise that the scope of issues covered must be much broader than just cracking down on drugs and seizing and arresting people. In 2012, we made notable progress in improving equitable access to HIV services for people who inject drugs. And yet, HIV transmission through injection drug use continues to be one of the main unresolved challenges of international community. Why spread stigma, discrimination, lack of access to evidence-informed HIV services are imamzaki challenges. I am fully committed to reaching the 2011 UN General Assembly special session target and we know what needs to be done. And let me be clear, human rights and public health considerations must be at the core of international response to drug use and to HIV. UNIDC is also working hard to meet the threat of new psychoactive substances and we are presenting a new technical study on these issues at this session. Head of UNIDC mentioned the New Zealand example. Can you explain what it is saying and what are real views on his opinion? He described the New Zealand approach as smart, as clever, as innovative and I think he's right. How do you feel about the reactions here at the CNU? The reaction here has been remarkably positive from governments, from Mr Fedotov and his remarks yesterday to a meeting I had this morning with the international NGOs. There's a lot of support for what we're doing. A number of countries at the moment have long lists of products that they ban or long categories of products that they ban. And the difficulty is that the manufacturers are sufficiently smart to be able to go away and reconstitute their products in such a way that they get around these bans. We will have in place law which turns the whole thing on its head. It says that for any product to be sold or available in New Zealand, it first will have to be proven to be safe in the same way that a new medicine coming onto the market will have to be proven to be safe. Under the new law, there will be an independent expert advisory committee established and an expert regulatory regime put in place which will determine the criteria against which that assessment will be made. Once that law is passed and assuming a product does come through as proven to be safe, there will be regulations about where it could be sold, the age of the people to whom it can be sold, how it can be promoted, etc. So even if a product is proven to be safe, there will still be a number of restrictions regarding the way in which it is promoted to the public. Countries should look at new ways of dealing with these things, and then that starts raising very interesting questions for the global drug control system. You know, if the status quo of prohibition ain't working, what is the role of new regulations? According to the U.S. Convention of 1961, the coca leaf is known as a test. I would like to express our firm position. If it is not now, sooner or later, under the knowledge and the reflection of the world, the coca leaf will be removed from the list of 3% of the United Nations. The fight against the doubt is the same time as a failure of our international standards. That is to say, the Convention of the United Nations. Today, there is more and more drugs in the markets. Today, there are more and more weapons that feed on social violence. Today, there is more and more weapons that feed on social violence. That is why we need to see what can we do to ensure better implementation of this Convention. That is my reading of what President Morales has said. Conventions are there, they are valid, but we need to do more to ensure their full implementation. How would you comment on Mr Morales' speech today? Do you see it as a sign that times are changing at the C&E and in 2016 there will be some kind of reform of the international control system? It is very interesting to see how Bolivia's experience has moved the debate forward internationally. It seems like the international community is really quite tolerant of what Bolivia was doing. Partly, I think, because Bolivia went through established legal channels. I mean, denunciation and reassession are allowed within the treaties. They weren't violating any treaties. They really played it by the book. I think there was broad sympathy for Bolivia, but what the implications of that are for wider drug law reform, I'm not so sure. I mean, in a way, the issues around Colorado and Washington, or Uruguay for example, and the cannabis reforms, which would be really much more clearly a violation of the letter and spirit of the conventions, because they're not playing by the book at all. They would be moving outside of what is allowed. My other question concerns the two states of the United States that legalized the recreational use of marijuana. What are your reviews on this and what are the international consequences of these decisions there? For the international obligations, including under international law, including the conventions on drug control, that is the federal government of the United States, rather than the states within the United States that bear primary responsibility. And I'm aware of some steps and decisions taken by federal authorities in Washington, D.C. It seems like what was possible five years ago and what is possible now has greatly changed. Just from the cannabis meeting that was this afternoon where the assistant executive director came out and talked about what's possible within the convention, it seems like they've woken up to the wind that's been blowing for the last five or six years in terms of drug policy reform and are actually starting to realize that this is where it's going and either jump on the bandwagon or be left behind. Can you talk about the plans of your government to regulate marijuana? Yeah. Well, we sent a bill of law to the parliament the first time and now it's in the middle of a major discussion in the country. So we think that we need to move for the prohibitionism to the strictly regulated market and we need to create a strictly regulated market under the state so we create the condition to have a license from the state that the marijuana is produced by the state and then is selling in a specific place with the controller of the state for the people but only for the purpose to keep out the market from the narcotraffic dealers and we create better conditions for our health policies. Can you explain us this cooperation project between the Guatemalan government and the Beckley Foundation? Yes. They invited me to go and meet President Molina and we talked about how I would reform drug policy for Guatemala because they don't have a big drug use problem. We suggested legalizing the currently illicit poppy growth. Guatemala, like the rest of the underdeveloped world, 80% of the world has no painkillers, amazingly, because of the international convention. By Guatemala producing its own legal poppy, it can then produce legal painkillers, first for Guatemala and then for the region and also it would produce income for the farmers and hopefully income for the country. For us it's no question that the last 40 years we follow some policies that cannot good results for us, particularly in our country in Latin America. The international community, they must have the opportunity to discuss if we need to have a global revision of the last conventions. I know that this is very, for some people it's very freaky and say, wait, it's very dangerous, but real dangerous is continue with these policies because we still have the problem of drugs, still have the problem of narcotraffic, still have more violence, more problems. So it's very important for a politician to understand when you fail, you must change. How do you see the prospects of 2016, the General Assembly? We've got three years to prepare now for the young guys in New York. No one really knows what it's going to look like. We don't know if it's going to be another declaration from civil society's point of view. We're a lot more organized than we were in 1998. 2016, you know, regardless of what happens then becomes a target date for us to work towards and to do a lot of education, do a lot of advocacy, do our own diplomacy around how, you know, with missions, with the UN bodies, how to approach drugs differently. Thank you.