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.

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.

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

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

If you're worried about a kid and drug use, the safest, best thing to do is individual counseling or family therapy, none of which will expose kids to more deviant or problematic peers and both of which are proven to be effective and at the very least, they won't hurt.

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.