We absolutely should legalize marijuana.

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

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

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.

Drug warriors' staunch opposition to needle exchanges to prevent the spread of HIV in addicts delayed the programs' widespread introduction in most states for years. A federal ban on funding for these programs wasn't lifted until 2009. Contrast this with what happened in the U.K. At the peak of the AIDS epidemic in the mid-1990s, the HIV infection rate in IV drug users in the U.K. was about 1%. In New York City, the American epicenter, that figure was 50%. The British had introduced widespread needle exchange in 1986. That country had no heterosexual AIDS epidemic.

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.

There's traditionally been two different ways of seeing addiction. Either it's a sin and you're a horrible bad person and you are just choosing to be hedonist or it's a chronic progressive disease. And while I certainly believe addiction is a medical problem that should be dealt with by the health system, the way we've conceptualized addiction as a disease is not actually accurate, and it has unfortunately become stigmatizing and it's also created a lot of hopelessness in a lot of people.