Sean Penn: ‘My Article Failed’ Creating Conversation About Drug Policy I Intended

ROSE: "Are you fearful for your life?"
PENN: "No."
ROSE: “I first wanted to know why you wanted to do this? Why you wanted to go there? A second I want to know the sense of how you thought about the risk you might be taking and why that risk was worth it?”
PENN: “I had only — only that I thought this is somebody who — upon whose interview could I begin a conversation about the policy of the war on drugs. That was my simple idea.”
ROSE: “You wanted to have a conversation about the policy of the war on drugs?”
PENN: “That’s right. We’re going to put all our focus — forget about blame. We’re going if put all our focus, all our energy, all our billions of dollars on the bad guy. And what happens? You get another death the next day. The same way.”
ROSE: “Do you make a moral equivalency between El Chapo and people who either buy or sell drugs in America?”
PENN: “I do if it’s me. I can’t — I don’t make that judgment for everyone else. But I wouldn’t go so far as to buy or sell drugs.”
ROSE: “So he’s no better than you or no worse than you.”
PENN: “I say, I can’t make him worse than me if I’m not out there doing everything that I can to get a conversation going on the way in which we prosecute that war.”
ROSE: “You have said to the A-P, and I’m asking now — you have no regrets?”
PENN: “Yeah I — I have the terrible regret.”
ROSE: “What are the regrets.”
PENN: “I have a regret that the entire discussion about this article ignores its purpose, which was to try to contribute to this discussion about the policy in the war on drugs. Let’s go to the big picture of what we all want. We all want this drug problem to stop. We all want the killings in Chicago to stop. We are the consumer. Whether you agree with Sean Penn or not. There is a complicity there. And if you are in the moral right or on the far left, just as many of your children are doing these drugs — just as many. And how much time have they spent in the last week since this article came out talking about that? One percent?” [crosstalk]
ROSE: “You’re saying there’s not much to dialog about —“
PENN: “I think it could be generous.”
ROSE: “Has a result of the El Chapo —“ 
PENN: “My article failed. Let me be clear, my article has failed.”