Thursday, June 24, 2021
7-8:30 p.m. EST

Register here.

An event to honor Lester Grinspoon (June 24, 1928 - June 25, 2020)

An online conversation among experts and activists mentored and inspired by Dr. Grinspoon, this event will focus on his life, activism, and work, including his groundbreaking research on cannabis use, psychedelics, and other drugs, in the 50^th-anniversary year of his book Marihuana Reconsidered.

This free virtual event, on what would have been Dr. Grinspoon’s 93^rd birthday, will feature an expert group of people who knew Grinspoon and drew inspiration from him.

This event will formally launch a campaign to raise funds to process and digitize the Lester Grinspoon Papers, one of the major collections related to drug policy and social change held in Special Collections and University Archives, UMass Amherst Libraries. It is a prelude to a larger event scheduled for June 24, 2022.

Panelists

Richard M. Evans, Esq. (moderator), is a lawyer and former NORML board member who authored the first comprehensive cannabis regulation/taxation plan to be introduced as legislation in any state and later chaired the Massachusetts Yes on 4 initiative campaign committee, helping draft the first legalization law to include a social equity mandate.

Rick Doblin, Ph.D., founder and executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), has a doctorate in public policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and has been researching uses of cannabis and psychedelics for 35 years.

Peter Grinspoon, M.D., a primary care physician and cannabis specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital, instructor at Harvard Medical School, and certified Health and Wellness Coach, serves on the board of directors of Doctors for Cannabis Regulation (DFCR). He is the author of the memoir Free Refills: A Doctor Confronts His Addiction.
 

Staci Gruber, Ph.D., director of the Cognitive and Clinical Neuroimaging Core at McLean Hospital’s Brain Imaging Center and associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, has studied the impact of recreational cannabis use on the brain for more than two decades and in 2014 launched Marijuana Investigations for Neuroscientific Discovery (MIND).   

Allen St. Pierre ’89, former longtime executive director of NORML, was instrumental in the development of SCUA’s drug policy archival collections. He has authored numerous policy reports and magazine articles, has made thousands of media appearances, and remains prominent in cannabis activism and entrepreneurship, currently serving as board chair for the California-based cannabis cultivation company Cypress.

Genester Wilson-King, M.D., is a board-certified obstetrician and gynecologist, founder of Victory Rejuvenation Center (VRC), and vice president of the Society of Cannabis Clinicians. She serves on the board of directors of DFCR, the first and only national physicians’ association dedicated to the legalization and regulation of cannabis for adults.

Location: Online