Drug Policy Alliance

I'm really interested in learning about what made him go full force into that, because with me, it was the drug war that helped guide me from switching from corporate law into doing criminal defense.

He was involved with starting the Linda Smith Center, however you pronounce that, and which I guess merged into the Drug Policy Foundation and became the Drug Policy Alliance.

He has been a very important part of drug reform to help counter this insane drug war that we have in the US and perhaps to say the insane drug wars around the world.

He has told me he's not going to be able to talk to me much about tips for what to do in court, but I don't think that's necessarily true because when he talks about how it is much better to have drug reform rather than just throw people away and lock the key, lock the door.

I invited me to lunch and it turned out he was interested in the war on drugs.

We hit it off.

I left Princeton, started up my organization in 94, first as part of his Open Society Institute, and then built it up into something called the Drug Policy Alliance.

And that became the leading organization advocating for drug policy reform, not just in the U.S., but around the world.

I worked on marijuana legalization campaigns.

And through that, I got to know the Drug Policy Alliance and worked there for nearly a decade on dozens of marijuana legalization ballot initiative campaigns and working to end the drug war and treat drug use as a health issue rather than a criminal problem.

And then most recently, I was at

the National ACLU, where I led both the criminal justice campaign teams and the abuse of power campaign.