Timothy McMahan King is a writer, nonprofit professional, Senior Fellow for Clergy for a New Drug Policy and the owner of Vagabond Strategies. He has worked as a community organizer in Chicago, a chief strategy officer with Sojourners, and has served as a consultant for national non-profits, advocacy campaigns and political candidates.
The author of Addiction Nation: What the Opioid Crisis Reveals About Us, King is an active advocate for those in recovery and to reform United States drug policy. PLUS one minute of the new drug czar Dr. Rahul Gupta making some sense.

President Ruth Dreifuss , first woman to hold the Swiss presidency, is the founder and president of the Global Commission on Drug Policy. The commission wants “responsible state control, from production to consumption of drugs” but that the opposite is now the case. “It’s an unregulated market in the hands of criminal groups.”

Rick Steves the travel writer and PBS star joins us to talk about cannabis laws, drug reform and progress around the world + Nurse Ken Wolski Exec Director: Coalition for Medical Marijuana--New Jersey, Inc, discusses medical cannabis laws, need for home grow

Tris Tristone of High Desert Pure discuses changes and comparisons of Washngton State drug laws to those of Texas and elsewhere PLUS Matt Elrod, computer guru and drug reformer extraordinaire..

Keri Blakinger covers breaking news, prisons and the death penalty. She was hired at the Houston Chronicle through the Hearst Fellows program. After three years at the Chronicle, she moved to The Marshall Project. PLUS: Debby Goldsberry, cannabis dispensary owner, author of Starting & Running a Marijuana Business (Idiot's Guides) She is a partner in Bridgetown Solutions, providing cannabis operators with real-world business intelligence.

Sanho Tree is a Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and has been Director of its Drug Policy Project since 1998. A former military and diplomatic historian, his current work encompasses the reform of both international and domestic drug policies by promoting alternatives to the failed prohibitionist model. In recent years the project has focused on ending the damage caused by the drug wars in Colombia, Bolivia, Mexico, Afghanistan, and the Philippines. Establishing humane and sustainable alternatives to the drug war fits into the IPS mandate as one of the major contemporary social justice issues at home and abroad.

Eric Sterling who worked with the US congress to craft many of our nations drug laws Plus Dr. Richard Andrews a Houston doctor working with patients praciticing harm reduction of opiates.

Major Neill Franklin has more than 30 years experience wearing the badge of law enforcement. Today Neill is the Executive Director of Law Enforcement Action Partnership which has thousands of experienced police, prosecutors and legislators calling for an end to drug prohibition. Neill is one of the stars of our September 11 Premiere of our video Production: SEEEKING THE MORAL HIGH GROUND (On Drugs). To learn more please visit www.LEAP.cc

Colombia’s new leftist leader is proposing steps to legalize elements of his country’s flourishing narcotics industry, signaling a potential break with a past hard-line strategy on drugs and a test of Bogotá’s ties with its most powerful ally, the United States. President Gustavo Petro, a former guerrilla whose election this summer marked an end to decades of conservative rule in Colombia, described plans that would permit small-scale farmers to legally grow coca leaf, the raw material for cocaine, and address deforestation and climate change by paying farmers not to plant the crop — or anything else — in Colombia’s rainforest.

Zachary Siegel is a writer based in Chicago. A recent piece in Harpers was titled: A Hole In The Head, a procedure to implant electrodes into the brain to stop addiction. His work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Slate, and WIRED, among others.