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.
"Abstention from drug use is defined here as no past 30-day use of alcohol, marijuana, or nicotine by vaping or by cigarettes. Abstention levels in 2024 were at the highest recorded by the survey since it first started tracking this outcome in 2017. The percentage of students who abstained from drug use in 2024 was 67% in 12th grade (compared to 53% in 2017), 80% in 10th grade (compared to 69% in 2017), and 90% in 8th grade (compared to 87% in 2017). The increases from 2023 to 2024 were statistically significant in 12th and 10th grade.
"Alcohol use, marijuana use, and nicotine vaping all decreased in 2024 in 12th grade, in 10th grade, and in 8th grade.
"In 2023, 24.3% of adults experienced chronic pain, and 8.5% of adults experienced high-impact chronic pain (or 34.9% of adults who had chronic pain). Women were more likely than men to experience chronic pain. Chronic pain was also generally higher in American Indian and Alaska Native adults and those age 65 and older. Similarly, high-impact chronic pain was higher in women, American Indian and Alaska Native adults, and those age 65 and older. Percentages of adults who had chronic pain and high-impact chronic pain in the past 3 months increased with decreasing urbanization level.
"Steroids
"In 2023 lifetime prevalence of anabolic steroid use was 1% in all grades. In general, lifetime, past 12-month, and past 30-day use have decreased, sometimes unevenly, since highs in the early 2000s.
"Prevalence of past-12 month ketamine use among 12th grade students has been below 2% for the past decade and in 2023 stood at 1%. This 'club drug' was added to the survey in 2000. It showed little change in its usage levels through 2002. Since then use has declined in all grades. Because of the very low levels of use of this drug by 2011, questions about its use were dropped from the questionnaires administered to 8th and 10th graders."
"SCRA vaping products were almost exclusively on sale as liquid formulations for refilling EVDs. It therefore does not appear that the rise in popularity of disposable nicotine e-cigarettes [17] has so far impacted on the online SCRA vaping product market. The most common bottle size on sale was 5mL. Given the lack of data on the concentration of SCRA in these liquids, it is difficult to quantify how many SCRA doses this may constitute.
"This study provides evidence of a rapidly evolving and active online marketplace from which SCRA vaping products seem to be easily obtainable, but also difficult to identify as controlled substances. Using simple search terms on a widely used search engine, we identified 62 websites selling SCRA vaping products, with 1225 individual listings and 128 unique brands.
