We are sad to report that the co-founder and President of Common Sense for Drug Policy, Kevin B. Zeese, passed away on September Fifth, 2020. He is sorely missed.
Kevin was one of the nation's foremost authorities on drug policy issues. He worked on a wide array of drug related issues since he graduated from George Washington University Law School in 1980.
We are sad to report that the co-founder and President of Common Sense for Drug Policy, Kevin B. Zeese, passed away on September Fifth, 2020. He is sorely missed.
Kevin was one of the nation's foremost authorities on drug policy issues. He worked on a wide array of drug related issues since he graduated from George Washington University Law School in 1980.
Kevin wrote 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 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 spoke at nationally recognized legal seminars and testified before Congress on drug related issues.
A Feb. 2005 interview with Kevin on the syndicated radio program Cultural Baggage is available. In April 2002, Kevin 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. A listing of articles in which Kevin appears is available by clicking here.
He was the author of Drug Testing Legal Manual, Drug Testing Legal Manual and Practice Aids and co-author of Drug Law: Strategies and Tactics, all published by Clark Boardman Callaghan. Kevin served as editor of Drug Law Report for Clark Boardman Callaghan from 1983 to 1998. In addition, he was the author of Drug Prohibition and the Conscience of Nations. Mr. Zeese was the editor of Friedman and Szasz On Liberty and Drugs and edited numerous books on drug policy and manuals on criminal defense.
Kevin Zeese litigated a variety of drug policy-related issues. Among these are the medical use of marijuana, the use of the military and national guard in domestic drug enforcement, the spraying of herbicides in the United States and abroad on marijuana, drug testing of government workers and the right to privacy as it relates to marijuana in the home. He had been a legal advisor to needle exchange workers prosecuted for their anti-AIDS efforts, buyer's clubs who distribute marijuana to the seriously ill, and medical marijuana patients prosecuted for the medical use of marijuana.
Kevin facilitated the Alliance of Reform Organizations, a network of all the major reform organizations in the United States. He served on the Executive Committee of the Harm Reduction Coalition. He served on the Board of Directors of the Drug Policy Forum of Texas and was a Board member emeritus of the DrugSense.
He was a co-founder of the Drug Policy Foundation (now renamed the Drug Policy Alliance), where he served as Vice President and Counsel, and is a former Executive Director and Chief Counsel of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.
Zeese served on Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke's Mayor's Working Group on Drug Policy Reform and served on San Francisco District Attorney Terence Hallinan's Harm Reduction Council. Both were efforts to implement a model urban drug policy. Zeese was also involved with advocacy related to the fatal shooting of Esequiel Hernandez, the legal rights of patients, doctors and their caregivers in California, and the UN General Assembly Special Session on drugs (the UNGASS).
In 2000, Kevin Zeese was the recipient of the Richard J. Dennis DrugPeace Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Field of Drug Policy Reform from the Drug Policy Foundation at its 13th Annual International Conference on Drug Policy Reform.
"Moving marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III, without other legal changes, would not bring the state-legal medical or recreational marijuana industry into compliance with federal controlled substances law. With respect to medical marijuana, a key difference between placement in Schedule I and Schedule III is that substances in Schedule III have an accepted medical use and may lawfully be dispensed by prescription, while Substances in Schedule I cannot. However, prescription drugs must be approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
"Slightly less than half of all sworn SROs reported that they had confiscated drugs (45%) within the past 30 days (figure 6). Nearly 4 in 10 SROs had made an arrest (39%) or issued a criminal citation (37%) in the past 30 days. About 23% of SROs had confiscated a weapon.
"About 83% of sworn SROs had conducted video surveillance of schools in the past 30 days (table 7). About half of all SROs had conducted security audits or assessments of school campuses (51%) or monitored social media (47%). About 45% of SROs had participated in crisis preparedness training or on a threat assessment team.
"About 83% of all sworn SROs were male, and 17% were female (table 2). In both local police departments and sheriffs’ offices, 84% of SROs were male and 16% were female. In school district police departments, 81% of SROs were male and 19% were female. There were no statistically significant differences by agency type in the percentages of male SROs or female SROs.
"At the end of the 2019–2020 school year, there were approximately 23,400 sworn school resource officers (SROs) in the United States (figure 1, table 1).1 About 11,500 (49%) of these SROs were employed by local police departments, 7,600 (32%) were employed by sheriffs’ offices, and 4,400 (19%) were employed by school district police departments."
"Among 207,781 national YRBS [Youth Risk Behavioral Survey] respondents (mean [SD] age, 16.04 [1.23] years; 50.90% male), 13.35% were Black or African American, 17.09% were Hispanic, and 60.13% were non-Hispanic White. Among 1 549 075 state YRBS respondents (mean [SD] age, 16.01 [1.23] years; 50.20% male), 16.53% were Black or African American, 17.78% were Hispanic, and 58.09% were non-Hispanic White.
"Cannabinoid agonist treatment is unlikely to be an approach relevant to all cannabis users seeking treatment, as evidenced by the large numbers of individuals who did not complete the study screening process, and the modest 12-week treatment retention rates. Whereas nicotine-agonist and opioid-agonist treatments are considered front-line therapies, our findings suggest a more cautious approach for cannabinoid agonist treatment at this time.
"Early implementation issues and tensions included prescriber concerns about safer supply prescribing in a highly politicized environment, accessibility challenges for service users such as stigma, encampment displacement, OAT requirements, program capacity and costs, and tensions between addiction medicine and harm reduction. Navigating these tensions included development of clinical protocols, innovations to reduce accessibility challenges such as outreach, wraparound care, program coverage of medication costs and prescribing safer supply with/without OAT.
