I'm sure everybody in this room, I'll speak for you all that we all believe in better living through chemistry, right? Because there is no alternative, right? I mean, like you were saying, we're all on drugs all the time, and it's, we might as well get good at it, good at it, at a paraphrase. You might as

well know what we're doing, right? You're a brand.

Let's talk a little bit about your personal journey. You are 35 years old. You are, you were born in India, you were raised there in Texas. I'm not exactly born here in Manhattan at St. Vincent's Hospital. I don't think it's open anymore. But I did grow up

mostly between North Texas, Dallas and South India, my family's from Chennai. So I went back and forth up until I was 16. I was spending several months of the year in India the rest of the time in the U.S. Do

your parents know you do drugs? I never said I did drugs. Okay, okay, very good. But what does that mean, right? What does that mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought everybody does drugs. I have alcohol. What was it like, I guess sketch a little bit of how is drug culture? And by that I don't mean people using drugs. But how are attitudes towards drugs, even in your relatively young life? How do you think they've changed? North Texas. Radically, right?

Radically. Think about it. I started working specifically around legalizing cannabis in 2007 with normal. At that point, I joined SSDP in 2009.

And you were at school at Berkeley.

At Berkeley, yeah. So I was involved with normal in Texas. I went up to California, looked around for a normal chapter. And surprisingly in the Northern California, I didn't see one. Someone who is actually in this crowd here started our SSDP chapter at Berkeley. I found out about this. I got hooked and have been involved ever since, right? That was a whole different world. I remember in 2007 thinking about, yes, I absolutely think that we will be legalizing marijuana. I think that it's going to happen in my lifetime. But it's probably going to be when I'm like getting old, retired. And then the Prop 19 campaign happened in California in 2010. I was the field director for the campaign. This was the first statewide cannabis legalization.

Recreational adult

use legalization campaign since the 70s. It's probably the most effective one that had happened since marijuana prohibition. And that really started the ball turning, right? So we didn't win that campaign. That felt like a huge defeat, but then Colorado happened. And then all these other states happened just across the board. Now even places like Texas, we're seeing a lot of decriminal bills happening at the local level. A lot of people at states are trying to push it. And as people looked around and all of a sudden people that they knew, people that they loved, people that they trusted, people that they knew were responsible adults in their life, used cannabis, used marijuana openly, legally. And they saw, hey, the world is not ending like we were told. That dare model, that wasn't true. All of these scare stories, no one smashing an egg with a frying pan, right? And the public opinion radically changed. And it radically changed so quickly. Like I said, more than 90% of Americans nowadays believe that cannabis

should be legal. I look forward to a future I had never thought of this until this moment, but I look forward to a future when Chich and Chiang are on our Bitcoin or something.

Right. But I mean, like we're in psychedelic space, think about even psychedelics. The conversation around it, the conferences that happen, who's involved Wall Street, these are conversations we would not have been having a few years ago. So the landscape has absolutely changed. Do

you think that's primarily a function of, I know you and other people in the space talk about cognitive liberty? Is it that people are actually looser now that they believe we have some right to change our minds, literally and figuratively? Or

is it just

the old guard is getting old and ossified, the empire is crumbling? Is it a mix of the two?

I would like to say that it is a mix of the two. It probably depends how optimistic I'm feeling on a given day. Because I do worry that even though we've seen a lot of wins on issues like cannabis, I've talked a lot about that. Even though we're seeing a lot of conversation happening in the mainstream about microdosing psilocybin or things like that. We're also seeing fear, fear coming about fentanyl, about a life. Chinese fentanyl, right? That is coming in, your marijuana is being laced with fentanyl. That's not a problem. But we're hearing that. There's all of these new scares. We're hearing about the opioid epidemic is a problem. What we really need to do is crack down on doctors prescribing. We're seeing these laws come about that leads to new deaths. We're seeing all of these anti vaping measures, even though I personally don't like nicotine. But it is a drug that helps a lot of people. It's a drug that a lot of people have had problematic relationships with. And vaping has made them a lot safer and really had a real harm reduction benefit. And now all of a sudden we're criminalizing that. I think that that prohibition mindset has just shifted onto which drugs are considered more acceptable

among certain levels of society, certain members of society. And so I don't think that fight is over. Talk a bit about, so you grew up in India and Texas. You went to Cal Berkeley where you got turned on to drug policy.

You've spent a lot of your career at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in DC. You started a group called Feminist for Liberty, which

is kind of trying to broaden the way libertarians talk about sexual identity and things like that. Is

there a through line? How does that put you

in a great position or a tough position at SSDP or among

the drug reform movement? Let me tell you how I found out I was a libertarian. And I say found out because I've always been a libertarian. I think throughout my whole life I'm not a test trip for them. There should be. It's called the four way political test. And yeah, so I was 15 years old. I was debating on a message board because that was a thing at that point saying that yes, of course marijuana should be legal and not just that all drugs should be legal because we own ourselves and we own our bodies and it's a nonviolent offense. And so anything that's nonviolent and consensual shouldn't be a crime. However, I was concerned about what taxation and regulation might look like under a legal regime. So I was like, oh, so you're a libertarian. I was like, I'm a what now? Yeah. I took the four way political test. It said I was a libertarian. I googled that. I found the Cato website for the first time in my life. I was like, oh, these people are making all those arguments that I thought no one else thought. I was going to have to go study political science and write a book because we always want to write books. Right. So that's how I knew as a libertarian, I've always been a libertarian. I joined normal after that. I joined SSDP after that. I said I joined SSDP as a college student in 2009. Went on to become an intern. I ran what was a program that we called amplify. We no longer do. Maybe it's coming back as he did. We don't know connecting touring bands with the drug policy reform movement. So we would promote the touring bands. They would promote SSDP. We would talk about drug policy. And I was on the board for 11 years. I did. I think we actually had a conversation on the recent podcast many years ago about intersectionality because I chaired our intersectionality committee called various things as the term changes over time for eight and a half years. These are all things that I've done as a libertarian. I would always do them as a libertarian. That said, I do think that as we've moved forward in this space as it's become less of an issue of we should legalize weed and more of an issue of yes, but how? What does a licensing regime look like? What kinds of regulations do we need? But also as our society overall has become more polarized as we've seen a lot more political tribalism as folks block people who have a slightly different opinion than them on whatever their local ballot issue is. And we don't want to engage anymore. I think that there has been that it has become a lot more heated space. That's something that I care about deeply because I think that it's really stopped a lot of wins in this area. And this is people who care about ending the drug war that you would think our missions focused on this. And yet when it becomes about team red or team blue or are we left wing or we right wing, they suddenly start getting a little cagey about what they want to support. And so I think that there is a lot that we can do with bringing folks together. So that's kind of what our four-twenty week of unity was all about was about, hey, let's get it started with a conversation back in November of last year. Let's get all the serious people in the room who care about cannabis to get together. We spent a few days hammering it out, discussing all the things that we disagreed on, right, left, industry folks. What are the things that we can all agree that we could do? We can do this year. We all agree on that we can go into the space and say, like, hey, this isn't a left issue, this isn't a right issue, this is a simple freedom issue. And so what we came up with was de-scheduling cannabis, releasing all cannabis prisoners and clearing marijuana charges from people's rights, right? Yeah, we should do it, we

should do it. Let us, let's pivot when you hear applause, let's pivot to the audience Q&A. And I'm going to ask you to ask a question, not recite the Pledge of Allegiance or a series of random

thoughts. No, filibustering, please. Okay.

First of all, Kat, if you were a politician, I would be joining your campaign.

Yeah, people tell me that all the time, but libertarians don't tend to win. Okay,

well, yeah. Well, the way you articulate and the fact that you could cut Nick off before he finished a question is really extraordinary. Yeah. Thank you, Nick, for bringing Kat here. I have a question for the audience. Is there anybody else besides me that didn't look at their cell phone during this entire interview? Raise your hand. Okay. There you go. Okay, well, that was miraculous for me. That's really all I wanted to say, that what you both are doing for society is so important. I was going to bring up something about it. You know, I met a guy a while ago who did some prison time for first offense, a small amount of cocaine, and he met a lot of black people in the federal prison who were doing 12 years for marijuana. So the issue of racism, which wasn't really brought up, and I don't think necessarily if you have to bring it up, but I think that's also an important consideration. It's a

huge consideration. That's right. That's part of the war on drugs. You know, the very first drug law, anti-drug prohibition law that we had in this country was specifically to keep the Chinese out, right? And it was where smoked opium was criminalized, but other forms of opium as it was used as laudanum by white Victorian ladies was just fine. And we have seen a lot of racialized impacts of the drug war over the years. The crack versus cocaine sentencing disparities are a huge part of them. It used to be 101. They're the same drug, crack and cocaine are the same drug. And you know what else they are? Adderall. They're that legal drug that a ton of people in this room probably use every day to go to their jobs, go to school. And yet there was a disparity where people who were consuming it in one form were going to prison for edda and getting sentenced at 100 times the rate. Now that's been moved to 18 to one disparity,

but it's ongoing. It has racialized. And just to complicate that even more, you know, a lot of the disparity in sentencing actually came from the Congressional Black Caucus because the crack trade was happening more in their districts and areas because when you criminalize substances, you push people into certain type, you know, into lower income. Probation

doesn't work. Probation doesn't work. Probation creates all the problems that people associate

with drugs. Yeah. And then they say we need to criminalize more things in order to deal with this. You believe in reparations for victims of the drug war, right? Yes,

absolutely. Can you talk a little bit about them? Yeah, let's talk about it. Let's talk about what that could look like. If you got locked up for drugs for specifically, let's say that you got locked up for selling weed and now there is a dispensary down the street. Maybe you were doing time locked behind bars while that dispensary was selling larger amounts of cannabis in a day than the amount that you were locked up for. If we're going to start talking about social equity licensing, who should be first in line? Those people, right? Let's clear their charges. Let's make sure that they can do things like go get a mortgage or go to university. But let's also pay them back for their time that they spent. Those oftentimes tens of thousands of dollars of fines. Let's make sure that not only can they actually participate in this legal economy that they help build, that people are making billions of dollars on, but that they're first in line to get those licenses. Great.

Next question.

Yes, actually funny enough, my question touches on that list a little bit. Marijuana here in Manhattan, it's been legal for what? A little over a year or something like that? I don't know. It's complicated.

Right.

But there's been a lot of criticism about how that's done, right? With maybe an excessive focus on the taxing structure and some of the controversy around what you were suggesting about who's first in line to get those licenses. What do you think are the lessons we can learn from what's been done here and maybe in particular related to who gets the licenses first, that kind of thing? Great.

Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a really great question. I mean, the biggest lessons that we can learn, not just from New York, but from everywhere that we have done this, is that we need full decriminalization. People need to stop getting arrested. People need to stop getting criminal records, getting locked up. When it comes to licensing and regulation, certainly I think more people should be able to get those licenses, period. If we are going to be talking about things like restitution or social equity or things like that, let it go to the people who have been impacted in those communities specifically by drug laws. The people who haven't been able to thrive in the way that they could have and shouldn't have and haven't been able to contribute to their communities in the way that they otherwise would have, because we locked them up, because they had a... They smoked a joint on a sidewalk or whatever it

is. Can I ask just to play devil's advocate, but what if those people are not necessarily very good business people?

Well then their business will fail. Okay. Right. But here's a problem with the social equity licensing model that I'm not going to say applies everywhere, but applies in a lot of places. They're actually a two-track to getting that license, and the people who are getting those social equity licenses have much higher barriers to jump through to be able to get that. It's a harder license to get. And so you're supposedly helping people, but you're putting them in a position where they have to follow much more strict regulations. Their access to capital is limited in a much greater way, not just because of their background and because of all of that, but also because of specific requirements in order to get that license. And so I think that there's a lot of space there to look at too. Yeah.

Great. Next.

Thank you so much for these really refreshing perspectives. I'm curious in light of the impending presidential election that we have coming up, which candidate you think is the strongest on drug policy?

That is a wonderful question, and it's not an easy one, right? Because I want to remind folks it's not really a left or right issue. There are lots of Republicans who are interested in specific laws when it comes to harm reduction or psychedelics or cannabis. So it's really not a red versus blue issue. I think that this current White House, the administration is certainly willing to campaign on these issues. They're certainly willing to try to get the marijuana vote. I think that we need to be very careful about if giving it to them is something that they have earned. You could say the Trump administration when Trump was in the office, he actually pardoned people. He got people out of prison for cannabis. Biden has not gotten a single person, not one. Zero people have been released as a result of his two major cannabis pardons, right? They're talking about it. I think that that's a positive. They want to engage on it because they think that it's going to get them votes. I think it's important that we push back and say, you know, whoever is getting that vote, whether it's team red, whether it's team blue, whether it's something else, they're actually doing the work. They're letting people out of prison, they're clearing those records, they're changing the laws. Great.

Next question. Nick asked you what would be the best state doing the best job so far, but would you mention a country that is doing the best job around? And the other thing is just because we keep mentioning licensing. I come from Brazil. In Brazil, you don't need a license to sell alcohol or you don't change. You don't change. It's allowed to sell alcohol in a market or in a church. People sell alcohol in churches and they drink alcohol in the streets. Do you see the US ever getting there?

I mean in New Orleans, right? There are places. Yeah.

And I will point out the Catholic mass is built around wine. Right.

I mean I think that there are social norms, right? And social lies that we tell ourselves. People drink on the streets all the time in New York. They are just putting a little paper bag over

it. Do you think, is there a country, I mean people for a long time, looked at Portugal for decriminalization, but that's kind of, they've changed a bunch of their laws. But is there a country you think that is really moving

towards a good model of drug? Yeah, that's a great question. I was thinking about it when you said brought it up. I would have said Portugal before. I might still say Portugal now, but it's difficult. I think it depends on the issue, on the particular drug. There's a patchwork. Some places are doing better on one thing. Some places are doing better on another. But I do think that we are now in a space where countries increasingly are realizing that these policies don't work. I think also say what you will for US imperialism or hegemony or whatever you want to call it, but a lot of places around the world have horrible, horrific responses to drugs and drug use and up to the death penalty or things like that. And a lot of that is because the US led these policies. And as the US has had to turn inwards a little bit more and hasn't been as involved in, and we still are, we still are, but hasn't been as involved in enforcing drug laws around the world. I think that there's a lot more appetite for rethinking how these things should work. Question.

Yes.

Well, I guess there's several, but I'll just take one. How much can we actually blame on the war on drugs? Because

I've noticed,

I've noticed during the 1960s, there was a massive crime wave before President Nixon officially launched the federal drug war. And also we had a massive crime drop during the tough on crime broken window era in the 90s, at which point drug legalization wasn't exactly in full swing. How much can we actually blame on the war on drugs? Okay.

Yeah,

that's a good question. I mean, I want to say that, yes, of course, Nixon created what we consider the war on drug policies, and then they were ramped up under Reagan, of course, but drug prohibition had existed since long before then. And I do think that we saw a lot of problems resulting from it. You know, what does drug prohibition look like? I mean, alcohol prohibition is a war on drugs, right? We saw how that didn't work. Yes, is the entire problem policy? No, there's a lot of other problems. There's stigma. There's a wider thing. It certainly doesn't help, and it makes the situation a lot worse. And I would say that, you know, even with the tough on crime policing that we saw in the 90s, we saw a lot of deaths from overdose that happened in the 90s. We saw a lot of people get really alienated from their communities. We saw a lot of negatives that came out of that as well. And we saw a lot of people get locked up for decades for things that they really shouldn't have. I don't think we know the full impact. And I do think it is a largely negative impact on communities that did lose people, communities that had families broken up, that had no fathers in the home, that had no hope anymore, hope taken away from them. So I think that this, I would say that the war on drugs, I think we can pretty clearly say was a failure, even if it's not just around drug policy or drug use. Thank you.

Two final questions. Go ahead.

I appreciate you really sticking firmly on your belief in changing the stigma on drugs without making an argument out of every piece in your interview today. And I wanted to see if you could speak to, you mentioned safe use site centers in regard to a safe space to use a supply that is safe. And if we could speak more to that, like if there's anything else that is a necessity of that, what does the safe supply look like? Is that the question? No, like so, you know, let's say, you know, this is a room and let's say we have a safe supply here for everyone to use, but outside of that, beyond that, then what? Right now, now you can use something and then what? What if you don't want to use anymore? What if you want to work, but you have been using so where you're going to work at?

You know, like the additional pieces. I think there's a lot. So part of that is expungement record ceiling clearing charges from people's records. We actually just launched SSDP, breaking the paper shackles. And they are called paper shackles because people have a criminal record. They may not even have gone to prison for it. Maybe they just had a charge that they thought was dismissed, but it's popping up. And you know, now they're not able to get a job. They're not able to move forward. They may not even know that it's what's holding them back. So there is that stuff that is happening there. But as far as what a safe supply, what a safe space could look like, I think it really is about integrating that better into the community. It's about making all supply safer. It's about having legal pathways for people to be able to pursue drugs within those spaces, but also outside of those spaces. It's about people being able to seek out help when they want it and having it be the right help that works for them because there isn't one right model. Right? You know, 12-step works for some people. It doesn't work for most people. Complete abstinence works for some people. It doesn't work for most people. You know, we've seen things like methadone assisted therapy might be really helpful for a lot of people who have opioid use disorder, maybe not all people. And certainly not when you have a model where people have to go to a specific place multiple times a day to get it. Now, how are they going to get a job? Right? Like, maybe they could just get that dosage and then go do their job, especially if they're able to use it safely, just like we expect, you know, we don't expect a diabetic to go get their insulin shots from the doctor multiple times a day.