Ten years after the 2016 United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on the World Drug Problem, the War on Drugs is far from over.

But the movement fighting it has changed. And so has the world.

During the 2026 UN General Assembly High-Level Week (UN Week) in New York City, Students for Sensible Drug Policy brought together some of the people who helped build the modern drug policy reform and harm reduction movements with a new generation of leaders who are deciding where they go next.

Watch the full conversation below…

From UNGASS to What Comes Next

The conversation started with a look backward — not out of nostalgia, but because understanding how we got here matters for figuring out where we go next.

Ethan Nadelmann, founder and former Executive Director of the Drug Policy Alliance, helped build the modern drug policy reform movement in the United States and internationally. He reflected on decades of fighting prohibition, the victories that once seemed politically impossible, and the lessons of the 2016 UNGASS ten years later.

But changing laws is only one part of changing drug policy.

Sam Rivera, Executive Director of OnPoint NYC, brought the conversation to the street level. After more than three decades in harm reduction, public health, reentry, HIV/AIDS, overdose prevention, and social services, Rivera now leads the organization that opened the first two sanctioned overdose prevention centers in the United States. Dr. Rebecca Linn-Walton, Assistant Commissioner of the Bureau of Alcohol and Drug Use at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, brought the view from inside government — and the opportunities and challenges that come with translating harm reduction principles into public systems.

That line between community and government isn’t always as clear as it looks. Logina Mostafa, MPH, now Director of Community at Brooklyn Psychedelic Society, previously worked at the New York City Department of Health. Her experience on both sides helped bridge the conversation between public institutions and community-based work, while raising questions about how a rapidly growing psychedelic movement can remain grounded in harm reduction, access, and the people most affected by drug policy.

And the same values can look very different depending on where you are doing the work.

Anna Meyer spoke about going from leading an SSDP chapter at Vassar College to doing frontline harm reduction work in a New York City shelter. The environments could hardly be more different, but Anna described recognizing the same core principles in both: meeting people where they are, respecting their autonomy, and giving them the information and resources they need to make their own lives safer.

Today, Anna is also a Program Assistant at SSDP, working on Breaking the Paper Shackles, SSDP’s expungement and record-clearing guide. That work connects another piece of the conversation: harm reduction doesn’t end with preventing an overdose or making drug use safer. The War on Drugs itself causes harm — through criminal records, incarceration, lost jobs, lost housing, and barriers that can follow someone long after an arrest or conviction. Anna connected addressing those harms with changing the policies that created them, making the case for drug policy reform itself as a form of harm management.

That was the thread running through the panel: harm reduction and policy reform aren’t separate projects.

The people working to keep someone alive today and the people working to change the law tomorrow are responding to different parts of the same problem. Community organizations, government agencies, advocates, researchers, and young organizers may approach that problem from very different places, but each has something to teach the others.

And that is especially important when we talk about global drug policy.

SSDP Executive Director Kat Murti moderated the conversation, joined by Jackson Rund, Vice Chair of SSDP’s youth-led Board of Directors, and Jorge Valderrábano, Chair of SSDP’s Global Drug Policy Committee, who connected the discussion to SSDP’s work ensuring young people have a voice in drug policy at the United Nations.

Drug Policy Is Global. Young People Belong in the Room.

Holding this conversation during UNGA week was intentional.

International drug control decisions shape what governments around the world do — and too often, the people most affected by those decisions have the least power in making them.

SSDP has spent nearly three decades working to change that.

A decade after UNGASS, this conversation asks some big questions: What have we actually learned? What is working? Where has the drug policy reform movement fallen short? And what should the next generation keep, change, or leave behind entirely?

There are no easy answers. That’s why we brought different generations, different experiences, and different parts of the movement into the same room.

Because the future of global drug policy shouldn’t be decided only by governments.

The people who will inherit it should help build it.