The thing about our drug laws is that they're not based on science.

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.

Because of the war on drugs, pain patients are treated with skepticism and pain doctors live in fear of being prosecuted for overprescribing. The end result is that addicts still get their opioids without much trouble, while genuine patients often can't find treatment. Those who do must typically be tracked in a database and must schedule frequent, expensive doctor visits for surveillance like urine testing.

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.

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.

Marijuana is not not harmful, but is the least harmful psychoactive substance that we have, with the possible exception of caffeine.

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