The drug policy reform movement is a broad, growing, and increasingly diverse movement of people, of networks coming together to basically say "Enough is enough. It's time to reform drug policies and move away from the disastrous and damaging policies of the past." This movement includes representatives of people who use drugs, representatives of farmers who grow crops destined for the illicit market, people advocating for women's rights, for racial equality, for the end of the death penalty, for access to controlled medicines, for the relief of pain and suffering, for economic justice, for ensuring development outcomes. It is a very diverse movement and particularly following the UNGASS in 2016. The UNGASS in 2016 serve to attract many new actors enter the drug policy reform movement who saw that there was an intersect between the work that they did or the things that they cared about and a pursuit of damaging and problematic drug policies. So the movement has grown exponentially in the past few years and continues to grow. In addition to many of the advocates and activists from all over the world, we also have important high profile individuals who speak out in favor of reform. The most prominent group of these have formed the Global Commission on Drug Policy, and these include ex-heads of state, ex-senior UN officials, powerful public global figures who also have made the case that the war on drugs has failed and that it's time to consider new approaches including legal regulation. Their voices helped to bolster this movement because many people would not expect such individuals as Mr. Kofi Annan or Richard Branson to speak out for the rights of people who use drugs and to say the things that they're saying. The fact that they've spoken out has given cover for many governments also to be honest about the need for change. So, it is an important and growing and diverse movement. It's global in nature and it is an exciting time for drug policy reform. In the old days, people tended to think about the issues of drug policy as one of two choices, either we waged a war on drugs or we were going to legalize all drugs, and that of course, was always a false and somewhat absurd choice. The way I've tended to think about drug policy and about drug policy reform is about addressing or advancing a set of options along the spectrum, a spectrum of drug policy from the most punitive drug policies on the one hand to the most free market on the other. From the kind of lock-him-up, hang-him, torture-him, pull-out-their-fingernails kind of Saudi Arabia and Singapore and other repressive countries' policy, and even to some extent the United States, to on the other hand the sort of free market policy. Maybe the policy we have with respect to cigarettes in many countries 40 or 50 years ago. The objective of drug policy reform, if I was to summarize it in one sentence, long sentence but one sentence, would be that what we're seeking to do is to reduce the unnecessary role of criminalization and the criminal justice system in drug control policy as much as possible but stopping short at the point at which it would risk threat to public safety or public health. So once again, it's about reducing the role of criminalization and the criminal justice system in drug control policy as much as possible while still advancing public health and safety, down this spectrum. If you ask, what's the drug policy reform movement? Well, we're the people who lie at this end of the spectrum and we're diverse in our views. We all agree that the war on drugs is doing more harm than good. We all agree we have to pull away from heavy reliance on criminalization and on the criminal justice system. We all agree that we need to address drug policies with a sense of science, compassion, health, and human rights, and that those are core values. But when you get down here, we, of course, have our differences. There are those who may be free market libertarians or people who are frustrated by the horrific consequences of the drug war who say, "Just legalize everything and that will produce the best consequences." Then there are others who say, "Well, wait a second. Legalization of everything goes too far. Maybe cannabis but with the other ones, we need a harm reduction approach, a decriminalization approach." What's important, as our movement grows, is not to be caught up in fierce battles over where we are this spectrum, especially not while most of drug policies around the world lie at this end of the spectrum. Our job is to be as unified as possible in trying to move the policies down this direction. We've been successful. Look what's happened in Europe over the last 30 years with harm reduction and even emerging in the United States. Look what's happened with cannabis reform with now eight states in the United States have been chosen to legalize marijuana for all adults in 29 states as of early 2017, legalizing it for medical purposes. Look at Portugal and Switzerland and Netherlands. Look at some of the debates that emerged in Latin America in recent years. So, we see this movement but we still have very far to go. So, drug policy reform around the world is at different stages in different countries and different regions. I think the last five or 10 years that have, however, seen an enormous step forward both in terms of the penetration of formally controversial drug policy initiatives like harm reduction, which are now penetrated most countries around the world. The trend towards decriminalization is gathering momentum and has now got high level support across the UN and doing governments and in academic institutions around the world, and significantly, perhaps most significantly of all, the legalization of certain drugs has moved from the margins of public debates towards the mainstream. It's now not just a theoretical discussion. It's actually reality, particularly with cannabis reforms that we're seeing in the US and Canada, in Uruguay, in Jamaica, and increasingly around Europe. So, we're not anywhere near the finish line in terms of drug law reform but we're certainly not stuck in the starting blocks anymore. It's picking up pace. It's gathering momentum, and I think the direction of change is only going to go in one direction from here on in. We're moving away from the failures of the sort of punitive prohibitionist war on drugs model towards a much more pragmatic evidence-based approach which prioritizes community well-being and public health and that can only be a good thing. In many respects, I think we're just entering the second generation of whether inevitably will be a multi-generation at least regeneration movement. That means, understanding we're in this for the long term. It means understanding that the way we pursue reform most successfully is by keeping a vision ahead of us, a vision of drug policies grounded in science, compassion, health, and human rights, but at the same time, understanding that most of reform in most situations and certainly with drug policy is a matter of taking incremental steps. Vision is important, so that when we advocate for incremental steps, whether it involves alternatives to incarceration, new policing strategies, cannabis reform policies, it's important to keep that vision in mind so that we don't land up taking two steps forward and then three or four backward, right? I think that's where we're headed. It's a rough moment right now in 2017. The United States with the election of Donald Trump and the appointment of Jess Sessions as Attorney General and Tom Price as head of Health and Human Services, I mean, these are nightmarish characters. They're a throwback to an ugly older time, and you look elsewhere around the world with Putin and Xi in China and Erdogan and Duterte in the Philippines and some of the ugliness emerging in Latin America, and it's a very difficult period. It's wonderful to be here in Canada and be able to admire with the Trudeau government is doing right now. But our times will come again and what we also know is that most of the significant reforms begin and manifest at the local level, in the states, in the cities, in the Canton, in the Lander. That's where policy emerges and eventually becomes national policy. So this is a long term struggle. I've been doing it for 30 years and I hope for another 30 to come, and that's the way we're going to succeed over the long term.
