Steven M. Teutsch, M.D., M.P.H. (Chair), is senior fellow at the Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics at the University of Southern California and was formerly adjunct professor at the University of California, Los Angeles Fielding School of Public Health. Until 2014, he was chief science officer at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, where he continued his work on evidence-based public health and policy. Previously, Dr. Teutsch worked at Merck, where he was responsible for scientific leadership in developing evidence-based clinical management programs, conducting outcomes research studies, and improving outcomes measurement to enhance quality of care. Prior to joining Merck, he was director of the Division of Prevention Research and Analytic Methods at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where he was responsible for assessing the effectiveness, safety, and cost-effectiveness of disease and injury prevention strategies. Dr. Teutsch has served as a member of the Community Preventive Services Task Force, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, American Health Information Community Personalized Health Care Workgroup, and the Evaluation of Genomic Applications in Prevention and Practice Working Group. He chaired the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Genetics, Health, and Society, and he has served on and chaired several National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine panels; Medicare’s Evidence Development and Coverage Advisory Committee; and several subcommittees of the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Healthy People 2020 and 2030. Dr. Teutsch has published more than 200 articles and 8 books in a broad range of fields in epidemiology, including parasitic diseases, diabetes, technology assessment, health services research, and surveillance. He was certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine in 1977 and the American Board of Preventive Medicine in 1995, and he is a fellow of the American College of Physicians and American College of Preventive Medicine. Dr. Teutsch received his undergraduate degree in biochemical sciences from Harvard University, an M.P.H. in epidemiology from the University of North Carolina School of Public Health, and his M.D. from Duke University School of Medicine.

Yasmin L. Hurd, Ph.D., is currently the Ward-Coleman Chair of Translational Neuroscience and the director of the Addiction Institute at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She also serves as a professor in the departments of Psychiatry, Neuroscience, and Pharmacology and Systems Therapeutics. Dr. Hurd’s research focuses on the neurobiological mechanisms underlying substance use disorders with a focus on opioids and cannabis. Her recent research has centered on developmental cannabis exposure in humans and animal models where epigenetic mechanisms associated with the drug’s protracted effects on behaviors into adulthood and even across generations have been identified. Dr. Hurd aims to be a critical scientific voice to the public regarding addiction and its health impact in interest of advancing policy. A member of the National Academy of Medicine and National Academy of Sciences, she has also attained membership to the Scientific Council, American Society for Neuroscience, and the New York Academy of Sciences. She currently serves on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s committee on Neuroscience and Nervous System Disorders, and she formerly served as a member of the committee on Medication-Assisted Treatment for Opioid Use Disorder. Dr. Hurd earned her B.A. in biochemistry and human behavior from the State University of New York at Binghamton and her Ph.D. in neuropsychopharmacology from the Karolinska Institute in Solna, Sweden. She has received cannabinoids for use in her research studies from cannabis companies, including Ananda Scientific, Brains Bioceuticals, GW Pharmaceuticals, and New Age Ventures, and her studies were conducted in compliance with federal laws on drug research. Dr. Hurd also received funding from Brains Bioceuticals for the conduct of phase 1 pharmacokinetic studies on their cannabidiol-based product.

Douglas A. Berman, J.D., is Newton D. Baker-Baker & Hostetler chair in law and executive director of the Drug Enforcement and Policy Center, housed in the Moritz College of Law at the Ohio State University. Professor Berman’s principal teaching and research focus is in criminal sentencing and drug policy, though he also has teaching and practice experience in the fields of legislation and intellectual property. Professor Berman is the co-author of two casebooks. One of these, Sentencing Law and Policy: Cases, Statutes and Guidelines, published by Aspen Publishers, is now in its fifth edition; the other, Marijuana Law and Policy, was released by Carolina Academic Press in 2020. In addition to authoring numerous publications on topics ranging from marijuana reform to sentencing guidelines, Professor Berman has served as an editor of the Federal Sentencing Reporter for more than 25 years and as co-managing editor of the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law. After graduation from law school in 1993, Professor Berman served as a law clerk for Judge Jon O. Newman and Judge Guido Calabresi, both on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. After clerking, he was a litigation associate at the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton, and Garrison in New York City. Professor Berman’s Drug Enforcement and Policy Center receives partial funding from the Charles Koch Foundation, though the foundation does not review or oversee the center’s research. He holds an undergraduate degree from Princeton University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.

Ashley Brooks-Russell, Ph.D., M.P.H., is an associate professor and director of the Injury and Violence Prevention Center at the Colorado School of Public Health. She also serves as director of the Healthy Kids Colorado and Smart Source Surveys. Along with adolescent health, her research addresses injury prevention and traffic safety issues including the impacts of cannabis-impaired driving. Dr. Brooks-Russell has supported the state of Colorado on evaluation of the public health impacts of cannabis, but she is not directly involved with developing cannabis policies for Colorado. She earned her B.A. in anthropology and a M.P.H. from Case Western Reserve University. She received her Ph.D. in health behavior from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill followed by a post-doctoral fellowship through the National Institutes of Health. To support her research on cannabis-impaired driving, Dr. Brooks-Russell has commercial relationships with companies that conduct oral fluid and breath testing (LifeLoc and Inspect IR). She has paid a cannabis company (Bud and Mary’s) to pick up samples of cannabis from study participants and deliver the samples to an independent lab for analysis.

Magdalena Cerdá, Ph.D., is professor and director of the Division of Epidemiology, as well as director of the Center for Opioid Epidemiology and Policy at the Department of Population Health at New York University Langone Health. Her work integrates approaches from social and psychiatric epidemiology to examine how social contexts and drug and health policies shape substance use, violent behavior, and common forms of mental illness. Dr. Cerdá’s current research focuses on the impact that cannabis laws, opioid prescribing policies, and harm reduction laws and services have on cannabis and opioid-related harms in the United States. She has published more than 260 peer-reviewed journal articles as well as chapters in major textbooks in her field. Dr. Cerdá is president of the Interdisciplinary Association of Population Health Sciences. She served on the planning committee for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Workshop on Methadone Treatment for Opioid Use Disorder and served as chair of the National Academy of Medicine’s Expert Group on Integrating Social Determinants of Health in Opioid Prevention, Treatment, and Recovery. She received a Ph.D. in public health from Harvard University and was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health and Society Scholar at the University of Michigan. Dr. Cerdá has made several social media posts about her research findings about cannabis policy and has provided expert testimony for opioid litigation trials.

Ziva D. Cooper, Ph.D., is the director of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Center for Cannabis and Cannabinoids of the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior and professor in the departments of Psychiatry and Anesthesiology in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. Dr. Cooper’s research, funded by the National Institutes of Health and state of California, focuses on controlled human drug administration studies of cannabis, cannabis constituents, and emerging cannabinoid products to understand variables that impact their adverse and potential therapeutic effects. Her funded studies also investigate the impact of cannabis regulation on behavior and health outcomes. Dr. Cooper is president of the International Cannabinoid Research Society and an associate editor of Neuropsychopharmacology, and she was previously board director for the College on Problems of Drug Dependence. Dr. Cooper served on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Committee on the Health Effects of Cannabis. She has a Ph.D. in biopsychology from the University of Michigan. Dr. Cooper has received cannabinoids for use in her research studies from cannabis companies, and these studies are conducted in compliance with federal laws on drug research. She has also reviewed research and development protocols for pharmaceutical companies developing cannabis-based drug products, including Canopy Growth Corporation and FSD Pharma.

Dustin T. Duncan, Sc.D., is professor of epidemiology and associate dean for Health Equity Research at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, where they direct Columbia’s Spatial Epidemiology Lab and co-directs the department’s Social and Spatial Epidemiology Unit. Dr. Duncan’s research broadly seeks to understand how social and contextual factors, especially neighborhood characteristics, influence population health. Their intersectional and health equity-based research focuses on Black cisgender gay, bisexual, and other sexual minority men and transgender women of color across the African diaspora, including in the United States, the Caribbean, and Africa. Dr. Duncan was formerly a fellow of the National Academy of Medicine emerging leaders program. They received a B.A. from Morehouse College and Sc.D. and Sc.M. degrees from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Debra M. Furr-Holden, Ph.D., is dean and professor of epidemiology at New York University School of Global Public Health. Previously, she held the positions of associate dean for Public Health Integration; director, Division of Public Health; C.S. Mott Endowed Professor of Public Health and director at the National Institutes of Health-funded Flint Center for Health Equity Solutions at the Michigan State University College of Human Medicine from 2016 to 2022. From 2011 to 2016, she was associate professor in the Department of Mental Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Furr-Holden’s research expertise includes health disparities and health equity, policy-level interventions, drug and alcohol epidemiology, and prevention science. She is a member of the National Academy of Medicine. Dr. Furr-Holden received her B.A. from Johns Hopkins University and her Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Sean Hennessy, Pharm.D, Ph.D., is professor of epidemiology and of systems pharmacology and translational therapeutics at the University of Pennsylvania, where he leads the Division of Epidemiology and the Center for Real-World Effectiveness and Safety of Therapeutics. In these leadership roles, he has sought to improve the quality, impact, and visibility of his organizations’ research and educational programs and to help fellow members of his organizations articulate and achieve their professional and life goals and feel that they are part of something larger than themselves. Dr. Hennessy’s research evaluates the real-world effectiveness and safety of prescription drugs using healthcare data with a focus on the health effects of drug–drug interactions. He has served on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Committee on the Health Effects of Cannabis and is a member of the National Academy of Medicine. Dr. Hennessy holds a B.S. and Pharm.D. from the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. In 2018, he consulted for Greenwich Pharmaceutical, a sister company for GW Pharmaceuticals, a manufacturer of cannabis drugs.

Beau G. Kilmer, Ph.D., M.P.P., is the codirector of the RAND Drug Policy Research Center and a senior policy researcher at RAND. He also serves as the vice president of the International Society for the Study of Drug Policy and is professor of Policy Analysis at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. Since 2010, he has conducted extensive research on the topic of cannabis legalization, with a special focus on supply options, design considerations, public health implications, and social equity. Dr. Kilmer’s publications on these issues have appeared in top journals (e.g., New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA Psychiatry, American Journal of Public Health) and media outlets (e.g., Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal), and two editions of his coauthored book on cannabis legalization were published by Oxford University Press. He received the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Public Service Award for his “leadership and innovation in the areas of alcohol and drug-impaired driving program and policy research,” and he was selected to serve as a member of the Council on Criminal Justice in 2020. Dr. Kilmer received a B.A. from Michigan State University, an M.P.P. from University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in public policy from Harvard University.

Ellen T. Kurtzman, Ph.D., M.P.H., R.N., F.A.A.N., is professor of health administration in the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University. She also holds a courtesy appointment in the division of nursing science at Rutgers School of Nursing. Before arriving at Rutgers, Dr. Kurtzman was on faculty at the George Washington University School of Nursing. Her investigator-initiated research explores the impact of federal, state, and institutional policies on health care delivery including states’ cannabis policies. From 2018 to 2019, Dr. Kurtzman served as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Fellow and worked in the Office of the Speaker of the House and the Office of the Surgeon General. From 2014 to 2016, she served as the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS)/AcademyHealth Health Policy Fellow, and in 2009 she was inducted as a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing. Dr. Kurtzman received her B.S.N. from the University of Pennsylvania, her M.P.H. from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and her Ph.D. in public policy and administration from the Trachtenberg School at the George Washington University.

Rosalie L. Pacula, Ph.D., holds the Elizabeth Garrett Chair in Health Policy, Economics & Law at the University of Southern California Sol Price School of Public Policy. Previously, she spent 21 years at the RAND Corporation, serving for 15 years as co-director of RAND’s Drug Policy Research Center, where she led or contributed to studies for the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the European Commission, and the U.K. Home Office. Trained as an economist, Dr. Pacula has conducted evaluations of state public health and health care policies for more than 25 years, applying advanced statistical methods appropriate for causal inference. Her work evaluating the supply and demand for addictive substances, including payment for and delivery of addiction treatment services, has brought her recognition. She has been invited to serve on the National Institute on Drug Abuse’s National Advisory Council Cannabis Policy Workgroup (2017), the World Health Organization’s Technical Expert Committee on Cannabis Use and Cannabis Policy (December 2019–2020), and the CDC’s National Injury Prevention’s Board of Scholarly Counsellors (2021–present). Dr. Pacula also serves as a committee member for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2021–2022), and she is co-chair of the National Academies Forum for Mental Health and Substance Use Disorders (2023–present). She recently completed a 4-year term as president of the International Society for the Study of Drug Policy. Dr. Pacula currently serves as the co-chair of the Forum on Mental Health and Substance Use Disorders and was formerly a member of the committee on the review of specific programs in the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act. She received her undergraduate degree from Santa Clara University and her doctorate in economics from Duke University. As a prominent cannabis policy researcher, Dr. Pacula has made public statements about her research findings related to cannabis policy.

Joseph F. Spillane, Ph.D., M.A., is chair of the Department of History at the University of Florida, where he also served as associate dean for student affairs in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences from 2012 to 2022. During his time at the University of Florida, Dr. Spillane has served as president of the Alcohol and Drug History Society, and he is the co-founder of the organization’s Points blog. His primary professional and research expertise lies in drug policy history. Dr. Spillane’s other ongoing research interests include the development of the addiction research field, the history of abuse liability assessment, and police practices relative to illicit markets. His notable works include the books Cocaine: From Medical Marvel to Modern Menace in the United States and Coxsackie: The Life and Death of Prison Reform, both published through Johns Hopkins University Press. Dr. Spillane earned his bachelor’s degree in history from Gettysburg College and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University.

Donald R. Vereen, M.D., M.P.H., is a director of Community-Based Public Health at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and the Michigan Institute for Clinical and Health Research. He previously served as the deputy director at the Office of National Drug Control Policy and as a special assistant to the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Dr. Vereen’s primary professional and research expertise lies in research strategy, health policy, violence, drug abuse, addiction, and community-based research. He has served on the District of Columbia Task Force on Health Affairs as a representative of the National Institutes of Health, and he has collaborated with the mayor of the District of Columbia’s Health Policy Council. Dr. Vereen has an A.B. in biology and M.P.H. from Harvard University, and an M.D. from Tufts University. He advised the state of Michigan on medical marijuana policies in 2013.

Larry Wolk, M.D., M.S.P.H., is the chief medical officer of The Wonderful Company. Prior to that, he served as executive director and chief medical officer of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. His accomplishments include overseeing the implementation of research, education, and surveillance of the nation’s first legalized marijuana program. Prior to this role, he served as the chief executive officer for Colorado’s Health Information Exchange and president and chief operating officer for Correctional Healthcare Companies. Dr. Wolk started his career by directing the outpatient pediatric clinic at the Hospital for Infants and Children at Presbyterian/St. Luke’s Medical Center. In 1996, he created the Rocky Mountain Youth Clinics (now known as Every Child Pediatrics), where he served as a part-time pediatrician and where he currently serves as a board director. Dr. Wolk has been honored as a Colorado Pediatrician of the Year, a Volunteer of the Year, a Healthcare Executive of the Year, a “Denver7 Everyday Hero,” and he is a recipient of the University of Vermont’s Award for Service to Medicine and Community. He received his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and his M.D. from the University of Vermont. Dr. Wolk received his training in pediatrics and adolescent medicine, including his M.S.P.H., from the University of Colorado and the Colorado Children’s Hospital. In 2022, he had a consulting relationship with the Hawthorne Gardening Company.

Kelly C. Young-Wolff, Ph.D., M.P.H., is a licensed clinical psychologist and research scientist at Kaiser Permanente Northern California Division of Research. She is also an adjunct associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco; an adjunct lecturer in medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine; and an associate professor at Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine. Dr. Young-Wolff’s program of research is focused on understanding risk and protective factors related to the onset and course of drug and alcohol use disorders among vulnerable populations, including pregnant individuals and adolescents. She currently has four National Institute on Drug Abuse-funded studies that examine the health impacts of cannabis use and cannabis legalization on adolescents and pregnant individuals. Dr. Young-Wolff received her B.A. in psychology and anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley, and her M.P.H. and doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Southern California. She is an active cannabis researcher and makes statements related to her research.

Nickolas Zaller, Ph.D., is senior director of research and evaluation at the Health Alliance for Violence Intervention. He was formerly a professor at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Fay W. Boozman College of Public Health and founding director of the Southern Public Health and Criminal Justice Research Center. Dr. Zaller’s research focus is the overlap between behavioral health disorders, including addiction and mental illness, infectious diseases and incarceration both in the United States and internationally. He earned his bachelor’s degree in microbiology and East Asian Studies from Kansas University. After graduation, he lived in China for a year as a Fulbright Scholar and then earned a doctorate in public health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. After his Ph.D. training, Dr. Zaller completed a National Institutes of Health post-doctoral fellowship in HIV and Other Infectious Consequences of Substance Use at the Miriam Hospital and the Alpert Medical School of Brown University, where he served as a faculty member for 10 years prior to moving to Arkansas. He collaborates with harm reduction organizations and has written opinion pieces about the need for cannabis policy reforms to limit health impacts associated with incarceration.

Elizabeth Barksdale Boyle, M.P.H., is a senior program officer in the Health and Medicine Division’s Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice after serving for several years as a program officer with the Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology. Formerly, she was an environmental health scientist at Westat, where she supported the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Institute of Child Health and Development, and the National Cancer Institute. Before her tenure at Westat, Ms. Boyle was a student epidemiologist at the Minnesota Department of Health and an industrial hygienist at a consulting firm in Cincinnati. She is a fellow of the Bloomberg American Health Initiative at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where she is pursuing a Doctor of Public Health in environmental health. Ms. Boyle has an M.P.H. in environmental health from the University of Minnesota, a certificate in risk sciences and public policy from the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, and she is a Certified Industrial Hygienist.

Rose Marie Martinez, Sc.D., has been the senior board director of the Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice (BPH) at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine since 1999. BPH addresses the science base for population health and public health interventions and examines the capacity of the health system, particularly the public health infrastructure, to support disease prevention and health promotion activities, including the education and supply of health professionals necessary for carrying them out. BPH has examined topics such as the safety of childhood vaccines and other drugs, systems for evaluating and ensuring drug safety post-marketing, the health effects of cannabis and cannabinoids, the health effects of environmental exposures, population health improvement strategies, the integration of medical care and public health, women’s health services, health disparities, health literacy, tobacco control strategies, and chronic disease prevention, among others. Dr. Martinez was awarded the 2010 Institute of Medicine (IOM) Research Cecil Award for significant contributions to IOM reports of exceptional quality and influence. Prior to joining the National Academies, she was a senior health researcher at Mathematica Policy Research (1995–1999), where she researched the impact of health system change on public health infrastructure, access to care for vulnerable populations, managed care, and the health care workforce. Dr. Martinez is a former assistant director for health financing and policy with the U.S. Government Accountability Office, where she directed evaluations and policy analysis on national and public health issues from 1988 to 1995. Her experience also includes 6 years directing research studies for the Regional Health Ministry of Madrid, Spain (1982–1988). Dr. Martinez is a member of the Council on Education for Public Health, the accreditation body for schools of public health and public health programs. She received a Doctor of Science from the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health.

Khala Hurst-Beatty, M.P.H., is an associate program officer with the Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice in the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Health and Medicine Division. Prior to this consensus study, Ms. Hurst-Beatty worked on several Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration grants where she analyzed individual and program outcomes of rehabilitation and other substance abuse treatments. Her primary interests are translational research and health equity. Ms. Hurst-Beatty conducted her graduate studies at the George Washington University. She attended Hampton University in Virginia as a presidential scholar, earning her Bachelor of Science in biology with a minor in leadership studies.

Alexandra McKay, M.A., is a research associate in the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Health and Medicine Division. While at the National Academies, she has contributed to consensus studies concerning environmental health, including Guidance on PFAS Testing and Health Outcomes, the Reassessment of the Department of Veterans Affairs Airborne Hazards and Open Burn Pit Registry, and the Review of the Department of Veterans Affairs Presumption Decision Process. Ms. McKay has also supported other convening activities, including Children’s Environmental Health: A Workshop on Future Priorities for Environmental Health Sciences and several other activities across the Health and Medicine Division and the Division on Earth and Life Studies. She has also worked for the National Park Service as an interpretation ranger, concentrating on science education and public engagement. She graduated from Yale University, where she received her M.A. in archaeological studies.

Mia Saltrelli, B.S., is a senior program assistant at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. She works in the Health and Medicine Division on the Board of Population Health and Public Health Practice. Ms. Saltrelli graduated from Furman University with a Bachelor of Science in public health.