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Robin Room is a sociologist who is a Professor at the School of Population Health, University of Melbourne, and the director of the AER Centre for Alcohol Policy Research at Turning Point Alcohol & Drug Centre, Fitzroy, Victoria, Australia. He is also a professor at and was the founding director of the Centre for Social Research on Alcohol and Drugs at Stockholm University. He had previously directed research at the Addiction Research Foundation of Ontario (1991-1998) and the Alcohol Research Group in Berkeley, California (1977-1991).
Room has studied effects of alcohol, drug and gambling policies. He is a coauthor of a number of books on alcohol policy, including Young Men and Drugs (NIDA, 1975), Alcohol in Developing Societies (Finnish Foundation for Alcohol Studies, 2002), and Alcohol - No Ordinary Commodity (Oxford UP, 2003). His research interests include historical, cultural and social epidemiological studies of alcohol and other drugs, including comparative research across psychoactive substances.
Peter Reuter is an economist and public policy researcher who is a Professor in the School of Public Policy and in the Department of Criminology at the University of Maryland. He is the Director of the Program on the Economics of Crime and Justice Policy at the University and also Senior Economist at RAND. Reuter founded and directed RAND's mutlidisciplinary Drug Policy Research Center from 1989-1993.
His early research focused on the organization of illegal markets and resulted in the publication of Disorganized Crime: The Economics of the Visible Hand (MIT Press, 1983). Since 1985 most of his research has dealt with alternative approaches to controlling drug problems, both in the United States and Western Europe. His other books are (with Robert MacCoun) Drug War Heresies: Learning from Other Places, Times and Vices ( Cambridge UP, 2001 and (with Edwin Truman) Chasing Dirty Money: The Fight Against Money Laundering (Institute for International Economics, 2004).He is currently finishing a project on global heroin markets.
He has served as a consultant to numerous US government agencies and to organizations elsewhere, including the European Monitoring Center on Drugs and Drug Abuse, the United Nations Drug Control Program and the British Department of Health.
Wayne Hall is Professor of Public Health Policy in the School of Population Health, University of Queensland. He was formerly Director of the Office of Public Policy and Ethics at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, UQ (2001-2005) and Director of the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre at UNSW (1994-2001). With Rosalie Pakula, he is the author of Cannabis Use and Dependence: Public Health and Public Policy (Cambridge UP, 2003).
He has advised the World Health Organization on: the health effects of cannabis use; the effectiveness of drug substitution treatment; the scientific quality of the Swiss heroin trials; the contribution of illicit drug use to the global burden of disease; and the ethical implications of genetic and neuroscience research on addiction.
He is currently researching: the policy and ethical implications of research on the genetics and neurobiology of nicotine dependence, biological interventions that purport to extend human life expectancy, and the regulation of pharmaceutical drugs.
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Benedikt Fischer is Professor and CIHR/PHAC Chair in Applied Public Health at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, and the Director of Illicit Drugs, Public Health and Policy Unit at the Centre for Addictions Research of British Columbia (CAR-BC). He is also affiliated as a Research Scientist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, and as adjunct faculty to the Departments of Public Health Sciences and Criminology at the University of Toronto.
He has published several articles on Canadian cannabis and other drug policies, and has contributed to substance use policy development in Canada at local and national levels. In 1998, he led the writing of a study by a pan-Canadian working group for options for cannabis use control reform in Canada. Originally trained as a criminologist, Fischer's research focuses primarily on illicit substance use, marginalized populations, infectious disease, criminal justice and public health, with a strong interest in policy and program development.
Simon Lenton is an associate professor and Deputy Director at the National Drug Research Institute, Perth, Western Australia, and he works as a Clinical Psychologist in private practice. He has published more than 30 scientific articles, book chapters and reports on cannabis, health and the law and presented on the topic at numerous national and international conferences. He is first author of Cannabis Possession, Use and Supply, a monograph published in 2000.
Lenton was a former member of the Ministerial Working Party on Drug Law Reform which advised the Western Australian Government on the design and implementation of the Cannabis Infringement Notice scheme which came into effect in March 2004. He is currently heading a large pre-post evaluation of that scheme. Lenton's research interests include illicit drug use and harm reduction, impact of legislative options for cannabis, and drink and drug driving.
Amanda Feilding, founder and director of the Beckley Foundation, has long advocated an evidence-based approach to drug policy that seeks to minimise the harms associated with drug use. She has hosted 7 seminars on International Drug Policy issues, entitled 'Society and Drugs: A Rational Perspective'. These meetings bring together leading academics, experts and policymakers from around the world and have helped broaden the debate, which, among other outcomes, led to the call in 2007 in the UK for a drug classification system based on a scientifically-evaluated scale of harms. In 2006, it was her awareness of the lack of attention paid to cannabis in international drug policy discussions, despite cannabis being the most widely used illegal substance and the mainstay of the war on drugs, that led her to convene the Global Cannabis Commission Report. The Foundation has produced over 30 much-cited academic reports, proceedings documents and briefing papers on key drug policy questions.
The Beckley Foundation is a charitable trust that promotes the investigation of consciousness and its changing states from a multidisciplinary perspective. It directs research into the science, health, and politics of practices used to alter consciousness. Its activities include initiating and directing scientific research programmes, hosting high level seminars, researching policy and disseminating information to academics, policymakers, and the public. It is particularly interested in scientific research that has practical implications in improving health and wellbeing.
Out of concern that international drug policy lacked a sound scientific evidence base, the Beckley Foundation Drug Policy Programme was set up to develop research in drug policy analysis, and provide a rigorous, independent review of global drug policy. It aims to establish how we can manage the use of psychoactive substances in the future to the best advantage for both the individual and society, and has produced over 30 much-cited academic reports, proceedings documents and briefing papers on key policy questions and recent policy initiatives. In 2005 the Foundation established two organisations to further international drug policy research and analysis: the International Society for the Study of Drug Policy and the International Drug Policy Consortium.
The Beckley Foundation's Policy Programme is complemented by the Scientific Programme, which, collaborating with leading scientists and institutions around the world, works to provide scientific evidence on which better informed policy decisions can be based.
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