Ethan Nadelmann

Dr. Ethan Nadelmann conference presentation:

Dr. Nadelmann is a leading advocate for legalizing marijuana, ending mass incarceration, and treating drug use and addiction as health care matters rather than criminal justice issues. He founded the Drug Policy Alliance, an organization dedicated to ending the war on drugs, and led the organization from 2000 to 2017. He also co-founded the International Harm Reduction Development (IHRD) program at the Open Society Institute.

Dr. Nadelmann earned his BA, JD, and PhD from Harvard and taught law and public policy at Princeton University before devoting himself fulltime to advocacy. His TED talk, Why we need to end the War on Drugs has been viewed more than 2.2 million times. He currently hosts a podcast, PSYCHOACTIVE, on all things drugs.

Drug Policy Reform: Past, Present, and Future:

Dr. Nadelmann will discuss the evolution of drug policies in the US, the harms that result from punitive prohibitionist policies, and the range of alternatives for better treating drug use and addiction as matters of health rather than criminal justice. He will focus in particular on four sets of psychoactive drugs: cannabis, opioids, psychedelics and nicotine.

Full Bio:

Described by Rolling Stone as “the point man” for drug policy reform efforts and “the real drug czar,” Ethan Nadelmann is widely regarded as the outstanding proponent of drug policy reform both in the United States and abroad.

He was born in New York City, received his BA, MA, JD and PhD in Political Science at Harvard, taught at Princeton University (from 1987 to 1994) and then founded and directed first The Lindesmith Center (1994-2000) and then the Drug Policy Alliance (2000-2017), the world’s leading drug policy reform organization. He also co-founded the Open Society Institute’s International Harm Reduction Development program.  Ethan has authored two books on the internationalization of criminal law enforcement (Cops Across Borders and (with Peter Andreas) Policing The Globe), published extensively, and spoken publicly in roughly forty states and forty countries.  His TED Talk on ending the drug war has over two million views, with translations into 28 languages.

Ethan and his colleagues were at the forefront of dozens of successful campaigns to legalize marijuana, reduce the incarceration of drug law offenders, treat drug use and addiction as health, not criminal, issues, and otherwise promote alternatives to the war on drugs.  He played a key role as drug policy advisor to George Soros and other prominent philanthropists as well as elected officials ranging from mayors, governors and state and federal legislators in the U.S. to presidents and cabinet ministers outside the United States.

He recently started a podcast about all things drugs called PSYCHOACTIVE.  And he has become increasingly engaged in the debate over tobacco harm reduction.