and beth curtis i want to go to you.r brother is serving life in prison for essentially marijuana-related charges. do you think the mandatory minimum is cruel and unusual or justified? >> of course i think my brother's sentence is cruel and unusualal. my brother was indicted in florida in 1994. it was a dry conspiracy where no marijuana was found, and instituted by a fugitive who went to the prosecutors and said he would like to see if he can get somebody to come to florida and agree to off load marijuana, and then he would like for them to reduce -- or eliminate his charges. so a dea officer and an officer from the gainesville police department impersonated drug dealers and the fugitive brought a couple of people that he knew from san francisco -- >> beth i'm sorry to jump in, but in the interest of time i really want to get to your revelations about the way the u.s. handles drug policy and sentencing procedures based on what you have learned. and when you look at the patch work on laws across the united states, what is

director of the drug policy alliance, via skype, founder of coalition for a drug-free california, and beth curtisho's brother is serving a life sentence for conspiracy to distribute. so paul what is the starting point for a discussion about america's mixed up drug policies? >> yeah, thanks. my first recommendation would be let's stop calling it a war on drugs. let's call it a cancer. the other side calls it a war on drugs, and that's pretty much damaging on the over all effect. we need to try to make the problem smaller. drug usage today is about half of what was a decade ago. so we have a lot of work to do, but i would say we have to treat the problem as a cancer to hopefully eliminate it if not make it much, much smaller. >> ethan your thoughts? >> the issue of drugs in our society is something to be managed. i think drugs are here to stay. people recognize that. so i think the question is how do we learn how to live with this fact, so it causes the least possible harm and in some cases the greatest possible benefit. what we are seeing around the country on the issue of marijuana is a remarkabl