As a traveler, I've often found that the more a culture differs from my own, the more I am struck by its essential humanity.

It's going to have to come to a point where politicians in their own political self-interest think it's safe and advantageous to come out on the side of drug law reform. Right now, they don't care about drug safety. They just care about their standing with the electorate.

I would like travelers, especially American travelers, to travel in a way that broadens their perspective, because I think Americans tend to be some of the most ethnocentric people on the planet. It's not just Americans, it's the big countries. It's the biggest countries that tend to be ethnocentric or ugly. There are ugly Russians, ugly Germans, ugly Japanese and ugly Americans. You don't find ugly Belgians or ugly Bulgarians, they're just too small to think the world is their norm.

Travel challenges truths that we were raised thinking were self-evident and God-given. Leaving home, we learn other people find different truths to be self-evident. We realize that it just makes sense to give everyone a little wiggle room.

We're still a racist country, but we've come a long way since the civil rights eras and we are still a homophobic country, but we've come a long way in that regard. And we still got a war on marijuana and have come along in that regard.

I travel around the world in a way that tries to open my mind and give me empathy and inspire me to come home and make this world a better place.

If you can get conservatives to sit down for 20 minutes and listen to you on drug policy reform you might have a good chance to - if not convert them - at least respect your opinion.