Do we really want to base our 21st-century policy on what the colonialist preferred at a certain time in history, not at all based on health or what the preferences of different cultures might be? That's just ridiculous.

In a criminal justice setting, it's very hard to create a therapeutic environment where people do feel safe, but the real important thing to do is to do your best to do that.

Science could never get you to make alcohol and tobacco legal and marijuana illegal. Only racism can do that.

A lot of addiction actually ends by age 30 - something like 50 percent of all addictions with the exception of tobacco - and I think a lot of what's going on there is that the self-control areas of the brain are finally developed enough to be able to stop yourself from relapsing or just continuing. There is a maturational aspect to it as well.

I don't have kids, but I've often noticed when people first become parents they seem to completely forget their own adolescence and they start to, as their kids become teenagers, try to do the things that didn't stop them themselves. And I jokingly frame this as: Your brain gets wiped of those memories when you become a parent.

Because addiction is a developmental problem, the developmental stage is important, things like employment are important, things like having a sense of purpose, meaning and hope are important, and this is why there's been so many spiritual cures for addiction, because those things often give people a sense of meaning and purpose.

A lot of the stuff that we say about drugs is just wrong.