Ten years ago, world leaders gathered at the United Nations for the 2016 Special Session on the World Drug Problem (UNGASS), amid growing calls for a different approach to the War on Drugs.

A decade later, where are we now — and where do we go from here?

On Tuesday, September 22, Students for Sensible Drug Policy is bringing the conversation to New York City during UNGA High-Level Week with From UNGASS to What Comes Next: Overdose Prevention, Harm Reduction & the Future of Global Drug Policy.

From 6:00–10:00 PM at The Psychedelic Athenaeum in Midtown Manhattan, we’re bringing together UN delegates, youth leaders, harm reductionists, public health experts, advocates, researchers, and people with lived experience for an evening of honest conversation, new connections, and movement building.

The evening will feature Sam Rivera, Executive Director of OnPoint NYC; Ethan Nadelmann, founder and former Executive Director of the Drug Policy Alliance; and Dr. Rebecca Linn-Walton, Assistant Commissioner of the Bureau of Alcohol and Drug Use at the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

They’ll be joined by a new generation of movement leaders: Emil Belgau of the Norwegian Association for Safer Drug Policies and SSDP; Anna Meyer of SSDP; and Logina Mostafa, MPH, Director of Community at Brooklyn Psychedelic Society.

SSDP Executive Director Kat Murti will moderate.

Together, we’ll ask what we’ve learned in the decade since UNGASS, what is actually working to save lives, where policy continues to lag behind evidence, and what it will take to build a global drug policy rooted in health, human rights, dignity, and compassion instead of punishment.

Then we’re getting out of panel mode.

From 8:00–10:00 PM, stay for drinks and a UNGA-week networking reception designed to bring together people who rarely get enough time in the same room. Because global drug policy isn’t changed only in conference rooms. It changes when people find each other, trade ideas, build relationships, and turn those relationships into action.

And your ticket does more than get you into the room. Ticket sales help SSDP bring more young voices to the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs and empower the next generation of global harm reduction and drug policy leaders.

Come for the conversation. Stay for the people. Leave with new allies.

Learn More & Get Your Tickets Before They Sell Out!

Special thanks to Psychedelic Assembly for generously hosting us at The Blue Building in Midtown Manhattan and creating space for our community to connect, organize, and imagine what comes next.