Governor Gary Johnson, Chairman:

The Republican governor of the state of New Mexico from 1995 to 2003. Gov. Johnson is a well-known and much-respected longtime opponent of the War on Drugs. He was the first governor in the history of New Mexico to be elected to consecutive four year terms. An avid athlete, he was also the first governor to compete in the Ironman Triathlon, completing it three times. In 2003 he climbed Mount Everest.

Richard Glen Boire:

Co-Director and Legal Counsel for the Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics. He is a writer, social systems analyst and legal scholar, specializing in dissident thinking and control theory. His dedication to examining the developing legal and cultural issues related to freedom of thought has led to a varied and unique career. In addition to authoring several books, Mr. Boire's articles have appeared in a wide spectrum of magazines and journals, from mainstream and scholarly, to underground and aesthetic-focused. He has been a featured speaker at conferences both in the U.S. and internationally, and has provided interviews via print, radio, television, and RealVideo on the Internet. From 1993 to 1999, Mr. Boire was the editor of The Entheogen Law Reporter, a quarterly journal reporting and commenting on legal cases and legislation affecting users of shamanic inebriants. From 1990-1993, he was an associate legal counsel at law firms in Los Angeles and Sacramento, but resolved that traditional law offices were not good for his soul. Mr. Boire received his Doctorate of Jurisprudence from the University of California, Berkeley (Boalt Hall School of Law), in 1990.

David Borden:

Executive Director of the Drug Reform Coordination Network. He is a graduate of Princeton University (A.B. Astrophysical Science 1990) and New England Conservatory of Music (M.M. Jazz Composition). He has previously worked in computers, music, and as an instructor at the high school and college level. He founded DRCNet in 1993.

Graham Boyd:

Graham Boyd is the founder and director of the ACLU Drug Law Reform Project. The Project conducts the only national litigation program addressing civil rights and civil liberties violations arising from the war on drugs. Its mission is to expose the costs of the "war on drugs" through litigation and public education activities, and to promote pragmatic drug policy reform through state and national coalitions. Mr. Boyd is currently litigating constitutional challenges concerning racial profiling, drug testing of welfare recipients, medical marijuana, and use of drug-sniffing dogs in schools. In March 2002, Mr. Boyd argued before the Supreme Court of the United States in a case concerning drug testing of high school students. In addition, Mr. Boyd has litigated a precedent setting case involving DEA targeting of rave promoters in New Orleans, an effort that has led to consultation with rave organizers in over a dozen states over the past year.

Jack Cole:

Jack A. Cole is the Executive Director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP). He worked for the New Jersey State Police Department for 26 years. For twelve years he worked undercover narcotics where his investigations spanned the spectrum of possible cases, from street drug users and mid-level drug dealers in New Jersey to international "billion-dollar" drug trafficking organizations. Cole holds a B.A. in Criminal Justice and a Masters degree in Public Policy. Currently writing his dissertation for the Public Policy Ph.D. Program at the University of Massachusetts, his major focus is on the issues of race and gender bias, brutality and corruption in law enforcement. He is passionate in his belief that the drug war is steeped in racism, that it is needlessly destroying the lives of young people, and that it is corrupting our police.

Matthew M. Elrod:

A former library cataloguer and director of his family's business Special Libraries Cataloguing, Inc. In 1996, his interest in drug policy led him to the Drug Reform Coordination Network. Inspired and encouraged by the effective efforts of Mark Greer and the DRCNet's Media Awareness Project, Matt founded the Canadian Media Awareness Project. In addition to maintaining the web sites of the Media Awareness Project and DrugSense, Matt provides internet services to a number of other drug policy reform organizations, most of which are listed at http://www.drugsense.org/sitemap.htm#hosted

Carl Hart:

Dr. Hart is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Neuroscience in the Department of Psychiatry and an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Psychology at Columbia University. He is also a Research Scientist in the Division of Substance Abuse at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. Dr. Hart received his undergraduate degree in psychology at the University of Maryland (1991), and completed his graduate training in experimental psychology and neuroscience at the University of Wyoming, where he received a M.S. (1994) and a Ph.D. (1996). Following graduate school, Dr. Hart participated in postdoctoral research training at the University of California at San Francisco, Yale University, and Columbia University. After completing the Substance Abuse Postdoctoral Training Program at Columbia University with Drs. Marian W. Fischman, Richard W. Foltin, and Herbert D. Kleber, he joined the faculty in the Division on Substance Abuse. Since arriving at Columbia, Dr. Hart’s research has focussed on the evaluation of drug effects on workplace-relevant behaviors and the development and implementation of new executive cognitive tasks that can be used to assess the functioning of drug abusers.

Rob Kampia:

 

Rob Kampia is co-founder and executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project, a non-profit advocacy group based in Washington, D.C. MPP is the largest membership-based organization in the nation that is dedicated to ending the war on marijuana users. Kampia has testified before the California, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Ohio, and Washington state legislatures, as well as before the U.S. Sentencing Commission and a handful of other federal agencies. Kampia has appeared on dozens of national and local TV programs and has been quoted repeatedly in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and hundreds of other newspapers.

Glenn C. Loury

Glenn C. Loury is the Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences and Professor of Economics at Brown University. He has taught previously at Boston, Harvard and Northwestern Universities, and the University of Michigan. He holds a B.A. in Mathematics (Northwestern University) and a Ph.D. in Economics (MIT). In addition to this scholarly work, Professor Loury is also a prominent social criticand public intellectual. His over 200 essays and reviews on racial inequality and social policy have appeared in dozens of influential journals of public affairs in the U.S. and abroad. Professor Loury's books include One by One, From the Inside Out: Essays and Reviews on Race and Responsibility in America (The Free Press, 1995 – winner of the American Book Award and the Christianity Today Book Award); The Anatomy of Racial Inequality (Harvard University Press, 2002); and, Ethnicity, Social Mobility and Public Policy: Comparing the US and the UK (Cambridge University Press, 2005).

Doug McVay:

A writer, researcher and webmaster with a great deal of experience in drug policy reform. Doug is the editor of Drug War Facts and maintains the websites for Drug War Facts and for Common Sense for Drug Policy. Doug has been active in marijuana law reform efforts since developing a college chapter of NORML at the University of Iowa. He went on to work with the Oregon Marijuana Initiative in the 1986 election cycle. Following that, Doug worked for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) until the beginning of 1990. He was a co-founder of the Cannabis Action Network in 1990. Doug is also a court-qualified expert witness on the subjects of marijuana use, sales and cultivation, and has testified in both State and Federal courts in the US.

Ethan Nadelmann:

Founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, the leading organization in the United States promoting alternatives to the war on drugs. Prof. Nadelmann was born in New York City and received his BA, JD, and PhD from Harvard, and a Masters degree in International Relations from the London School of Economics. He then taught politics and public affairs at Princeton University from 1987 to 1994, where his speaking and writings on drug policy -- in publications ranging from Science and Foreign Affairs to American Heritage and National Review attracted international attention. He also authored the book, Cops Across Borders, the first scholarly study of the internationalization of U.S. criminal law enforcement.

Marsha Rosenbaum:

A medical sociologist and director of the San Francisco office of Drug Policy Alliance. She received her doctorate in sociology from the University of California at San Francisco in 1979. From 1977 to 1995 Rosenbaum was the principal investigator on ten grants funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, completing studies of women heroin addicts, methadone maintenance treatment and policy, MDMA (Ecstasy), cocaine and drug use during pregnancy.

Clifford Thornton, Jr.:

Clifford Thornton is the founder and executive director of the Connecticut-based drug policy reform organization Efficacy. He is a retired African-American businessman who ran for Governor of Connecticut on the Green Party line in 2006. Mr. Thornton's mother died of a heroin overdose when he was 18 years old. As a result of this loss, he wanted drug laws to be harsher. Now he believes that if heroin use had been legal, and supervised by doctors, his mother might have lived a relatively safe and healthy life. Students can book Mr. Thornton to speak on their campuses.

Adam Wolf

Adam Wolf is a Staff Attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union Drug Law Reform Project, a division of the ACLU’s national legal department. Mr. Wolf has litigated in numerous federal and state courts, including in the United States Supreme Court. Some of his high-profile cases have addressed the following issues: the constitutionality of the federal law that denies student aid to people with a drug conviction, the application of the infamous 100:1 sentencing ratio for crack- and powder-cocaine offenses, the federal government’s issuing a subpoena for the medical records of medical-marijuana patients, and the right to possess injection drug equipment to decrease the spread of infectious disease. Prior to working for the ACLU, Mr. Wolf taught at the University of California-Los Angeles and represented labor unions with the firm Altshuler Berzon. Mr. Wolf is a graduate of Amherst College and the University of Michigan Law School. Upon graduating from law school, he served as a judicial law clerk for judges on the federal court of appeals and federal district court.

Kevin B. Zeese:

Kevin Zeense is president of Common Sense for Drug Policy. Mr. Zeese has worked on a wide array of drug related issues since he graduated from George Washington University Law School in 1980. Kevin Zeese has written for newspapers and journals on a range of drug issues, including an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on the Colombian drug war. He has also appeared on every major television network as a commentator. He served as a consultant to Walter Cronkite for the Discovery Channel special: The Drug Dilemma: War or Peace? He has spoken at nationally recognized legal seminars and testified before Congress on drug related issues. In April 2002, Mr. Zeese debated DEA Administrator Asa Hutchinson at a conference hosted by Rice University's James Baker Institute. Segments of the forum, "Moving Beyond the 'War on Drugs'," including the Zeese-Hutchinson debate, are available as streaming video. Also, see a streaming video of Mr. Zeese at a Cato Institute forum on medical marijuana by clicking here. A listing of articles in which Mr. Zeese appears is available by clicking here.