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.

I know that sounds really extreme, but if you just look at the history, you will find Harry Anslinger [first U.S. commissioner of the Bureau of Narcotics] going on about satanic swing and how reefer will make black people think they're as good as white people - which to him, obviously, was a very horrible outcome. This is the basis of our drug laws.

We should not be putting kids in cages and hoping that is going to fix their psychological problems of any type.

I also had my own addiction to cocaine and heroin in my 20s. I knew that it was driven not by the things that the drug workers were telling me; in fact, I couldn't believe any drug information that was given to me by authorities because I knew from my own experience that it was wrong.

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

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.

Incarceration is as useful for addiction as it is for diabetes - i.e., not useful and potentially harmful, particularly for kids.