which has been a champion and the drug policy alliance as well as the naacp. i also want to thank san francisco's district attorney george gascon who is at our public hearing at the safety committee a couple weeks back. george was there to speak on behalf of the bill we were working on together but he proactively came for this bill, s.b. 1506, to say that he's been law enforcement for 30 years and bring back 30-year experience to this consideration of this bill, and he said this bill makes sense because drug treatment works and this is in spite of the fact we'll be battling the district attorneys along with many other arms of public safety. [laughter] >> we've got the data, we've got the facts and we know this will provide great benefit to our communities, to our neighborhoods, and to all of california. thank you for your support. [applause] >> tal, i want to go back to the question that marty posed earlier, which is in effect this idea that in order to incentivize people making the decision to seek treatment that the fear of a felony conviction or possible st

joined by ethan nadelmann he's in new york he is the founder and executive director of the drug policy alliance and thank you for being with us on the program here i think you heard part of that here i mean you're the other side of the coin here the war on drugs you would say is a failure of course it's a failure i mean i just heard the last moments of what kevin favorite said but his notion that you need a criminal justice system to deal with addiction in every case is absurd by his logic we taking people's cigarette addiction alcohol addiction food addiction everything else and using. drug and i threaded prison with i mean drug testing so i think that's an absurd notion i think beyond that he appears to be oblivious to the refeed negative consequences to the failed prohibitionist policies i mean quite frankly one reason why voters in washington in colorado supported an end to marijuana prohibition was because they said it's time to stop trying to enforce it and forcible prohibition why should we be empowering gangsters in mexico in the united states why should we be empowering a black market