I think our drug laws need to be made scientifically, as best as possible, recognizing that values will always be part of that.

Because addiction is a developmental problem, the developmental stage is important, things like employment are important, things like having a sense of purpose, meaning and hope are important, and this is why there's been so many spiritual cures for addiction, because those things often give people a sense of meaning and purpose.

Science could never get you to make alcohol and tobacco legal and marijuana illegal. Only racism can do that.

If you're worried about a kid and drug use, the safest, best thing to do is individual counseling or family therapy, none of which will expose kids to more deviant or problematic peers and both of which are proven to be effective and at the very least, they won't hurt.

Do we really want to base our 21st-century policy on what the colonialist preferred at a certain time in history, not at all based on health or what the preferences of different cultures might be? That's just ridiculous.

The thing we want for all our kids is that they be connected with a learning community and that they have strong social and familial relationships. If we can do whatever we can do to create that and to reduce bullying and to reduce the kind of pain and shame so many kids feel for so many reasons, that stuff is going to reduce drug addiction.

Love is great and it does help a lot of people, but a lot of people do have things like depression or schizophrenia or bipolar disorder or other disorders, all of which will need to be addressed in order for people to stay in long-term recovery.

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

I don't think there's a single child who's ever benefitted from being arrested for marijuana or for underage drinking this does not solve the problem. It makes worse problems because a) it puts them into the system, and b) it gives them a potential criminal record to have to deal with and it can have consequences for school.

In order for people to recover, we can't just say 'love is all we need.'

The best outcomes that are seen for therapy intervention and for other psychological interventions is where the therapist really connects and the person really feels understood. That matters often even more than the technique.

Incarceration is as useful for addiction as it is for diabetes - i.e., not useful and potentially harmful, particularly for kids.

I don't have kids, but I've often noticed when people first become parents they seem to completely forget their own adolescence and they start to, as their kids become teenagers, try to do the things that didn't stop them themselves. And I jokingly frame this as: Your brain gets wiped of those memories when you become a parent.

The thing about our drug laws is that they're not based on science.

We absolutely should legalize marijuana.

I also had my own addiction to cocaine and heroin in my 20s. I knew that it was driven not by the things that the drug workers were telling me in fact, I couldn't believe any drug information that was given to me by authorities because I knew from my own experience that it was wrong.

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