Past Winners

The award categories are:

The Richard J. Dennis Drugpeace Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Drug Policy Reform

This award is given to the individuals who most epitomize loyal opposition to drug war extremism.

Richard J. Dennis is a successful businessman, philosopher, and philanthropist, and an extraordinary advocate for free and more democratic societies. Mr. Dennis was the first philanthropist to make a major contribution to drug policy reform. His support was critical to the early success of the Drug Policy Foundation (which merged with the Lindesmith Center in 2000 to create the Drug Policy Alliance).

Past Awardees:

2017 Ethan Nadelmann, founder of the Drug Policy Alliance and executive director from 2000-2017
2015 Ira Glasser, leader in drug policy reform for almost fifty years, longtime executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (1978-2001) and board chairman of the Drug Policy Alliance since 2000
2013 Global Commission on Drug Policy, distinguished group of former Presidents and other prominent figures
2011 John Sperling, Ph.D., founder of Apollo Group, the largest provider of private-sector higher education in the United States
2009 Donald MacPherson, former Drug Policy Advisor to four successive Mayors of Vancouver, Canada
2007 Rev. Howard Moody, minister emeritus of Judson Memorial Church, Greenwich Village, NY; senior minister 1956-1992
2005 Ross C. “Rocky” Anderson, mayor of Salt Lake City, UT
2003 Philip Owen, former Vancouver mayor; Pierre Claude Nolin, LL.L., member of the Canadian Senate; Larry Campbell, M.B.A., mayor of Vancouver
2001 Gary Johnson, former governor of New Mexico
2000 Kevin Zeese, president, Common Sense for Drug Policy
1999 Arnold S. Trebach, founder of the Drug Policy Foundation and professor emeritus at American University in Washington D.C.
1997 John B. Vasconcellos, California state senator
1996 Sasha and Ann Shulgin, authors of the psychedelic research books Pihkal and Tihkal
1995 Jocelyn Elders, former U.S. Surgeon General
1994 Gustavo de Greiff, former prosecutor general of Bogotá, Colombia
1993 Frank M. Jordan, former mayor of San Francisco, CA
1992 R. Keith Stroup, executive director, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML)
1991 Milton Friedman, economist and Nobel Prize winner
1990 Jon C. Parker, founder of the National AIDS Brigade of Boston, and Dave Purchase, founder of the needle exchange project of the Tacoma-Pierce Health Department
1989 Kurt L. Schmoke, M.D., former mayor of Baltimore, MD

The Edward M. Brecher Award for Achievement in the Field of Media

This award honors those in the media who have produced the highest quality of journalistic coverage of drug policy and other drug issues.

Edward M. Brecher was a freelance writer and journalist specializing in medical and scientific topics for more than 50 years. His first journalistic inquiry into drug policy began when Consumers Union asked him to write a book looking at drugs and drug policy as consumer issues. His synthesis of history and policy analysis resulted in the book Licit and Illicit Drugs. After Mr. Brecher’s death in 1989, an editorial in The New York Times described Licit and Illicit Drugs as a monumental work. In 1988 he was awarded the first Alfred R. Lindesmith Award for Achievement in the Field of Scholarship.

Past Awardees:

2017 Javier Valdez, Mexican journalist who received several international awards for his courageous writing on drug trafficking and organized crime in the Mexican Drug War
2015 Eugene Jarecki, acclaimed documentarian behind The House I Live In, which has been instrumental in advancing public understanding of the devastating impact of the drug war and mass incarceration in the U.S.
2013 Phillip Smith, Editor of the AlterNet Drug Reporter and author of the Drug War Chronicle
2011 Huffington Post, reinvented the way news, information and entertainment is delivered, consumed and engaged with.
2009 Montel Williams, medical marijuana advocate and host of Montel Across America, nationally syndicated by Air America Radio
2007 Alan Bock, opinion editor for the Orange County Register and AlterNet, Webby Award-winning progressive news portal and information source
2005 Jacob Sullum, senior editor of Reason magazine and Maia Szalavitz, journalist and senior fellow at media watchdog group STATS
2003 The Economist, one of the most respected weekly publications covering business and political news
2001 Dan Forbes, investigative journalist, and Dan Gardner, reporter for the Ottawa Citizen and Vancouver Sun
2000 Rolling Stone Magazine, one of the nation’s leading magazines on music, politics, and pop culture
1999 Ofra Bikel, producer of PBS Frontline’s “Snitch,” and Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation and Reefer Madness
1997 Garry Trudeau, cartoonist
1996 Hugh Downs, Emmy Award-winning news anchor
1995 Catherine Crier, Emmy Award-winning journalist and former Texas judge
1994 William Finnegan, staff writer for The New Yorker

The Alfred R. Lindesmith Award for Achievement in the Field of Scholarship

This award recognizes scholars, like Alfred Lindesmith, whose personal courage and quality of published research constitute a source of rational inspiration for all who labor in drug policy scholarship.

Alfred R. Lindesmith was the first prominent scholar in the United States to challenge conventional thinking about drug addiction and drug policy. A distinguished professor of sociology at Indiana University, Professor Lindesmith believed that the legal prohibition of psychoactive drugs was futile and wrote widely on the threat to democracy inherent in such a policy. His powerful critique of U.S. drug policy often angered leaders of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and other national drug agencies, who unsuccessfully sought to discredit his research and have him dismissed from his university post. Professor Lindesmith’s two books on addiction and drug policy, Opiate Addiction (1947) and The Addict and the Law (1965), constitute a rational inspiration for the growing number of scholars working in drug policy reform.

Past Awardees:

2017 Michelle Alexander, acclaimed civil rights lawyer, advocate, legal scholar, and best-selling author
2015 Robin Room, prolific scholar and director of alcohol and drug research institutes in the U.S., Canada, Sweden and Australia, whose work over fifty years has powerfully informed and bolstered the global movement for drug policy reform
2013 Paul Armentano, Deputy Director, National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana laws (NORML)
2011 Thomas Kerr, M.D., co-director of the Urban Health Research Initiative at the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS and associate professor at the University of British Columbia
2011 Evan Wood, M.D., co-director of the Addiction and Urban Health Research Initiative at the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS and founder of the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy
2009 Jeffrey Miron, Ph.D., Harvard economist
2007 Harry Levine, Ph.D., professor of sociology at Queens College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York
2005 Martin Jelsma, coordinator and founder of the Drugs and Democracy Programme at the Transnational Institute (TNI)
2003 Marc Mauer, M.S.W., assistant director of The Sentencing Project
2001 David Vlahov, director of the Center for Urban Epidemiologic Studies at the New York Academy of Medicine and expert on the history of HIV infection among injection drug users
2000 Lynn Zimmer, co-author of Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts
1999 Mike Gray, author of Drug Crazy, and Craig Reinarman, author of Crack in America: Demon Drugs and Social Justice
1997 Peter G. Lurie, University of Michigan researcher and needle exchange advocate
1996 Patricia Erickson, author, research scientist, and director of the Canadian Drug Policy Research Program
1995 Dan Waldorf, author of Cocaine Changes: The Experience of Using and Quitting and senior scientist at the Institute for Scientific Analysis
1994 Stanton Peele, psychologist and author of numerous books including 7 Tools to Beat Addiction
1993 Peter Cohen, researcher at the Center for Drug Research at the University of Amsterdam
1992 Ethan Nadelmann, J.D., Ph.D., author of Cops Across Borders and former Princeton University professor
1991 Dr. Thomas Szasz, psychiatrist and author of Ceremonial Chemistry: The Ritual Persecution of Drugs, Addicts, and Pushers
1990 Lester Grinspoon, M.D., Harvard Medical School professor and author of Marihuana: the Forbidden Medicine
1989 Rufus King, Esq., pioneer of humane drug policy and author of The Drug Hang-Up: America’s Fifty-Year Folly
1988 Edward M. Brecher, author of Licit and Illicit Drugs: The Consumers Union Report on Narcotics, Stimulants, Hallucinogens, and Marijuana – Including Caffeine

The Robert C. Randall Award for Achievement in the Field of Citizen Action

This award honors citizens who make democracy work in the difficult area of drug law and policy reform.

Robert C. Randall pioneered the medical marijuana issue in America. He was a model citizen who has took on the federal government and assisted in the defense of people accused of criminal offenses involving marijuana. In receiving treatment for glaucoma, Robert C. Randall became the first medical marijuana patient in the United States. After winning his case against the federal government, Mr. Randall continued to fight for others in need as founder and representative of the Alliance for Cannabis Therapeutics. In the early 1990s, he also founded the Marijuana AIDS Research Service, intended to help place people living with HIV/AIDS in programs and studies that administer medical marijuana. This service’s closure was a driving force in the adoption of California’s Proposition 215, the first medical marijuana ballot initiative.

Past Awardees:

2017 Kathie Kane-Willis, co-founder of the Illinois Consortium on Drug Policy and advanced several harm reduction policies in the Midwest, including 911 Good Samaritan laws, naloxone access laws, ensuring methadone access for Medicaid-eligible individuals, and bringing attention to drug-induced homicide laws
2017 Kenneth Glasgow, advocate for harm reduction, prison reform, and restoration of rights and opportunities for formerly incarcerated people, and the founder and President of The Ordinary People Society
2015 VOCAL-NY, Grassroots membership organization that has helped reduce New York’s unconstitutional and racially-biased marijuana arrests, raised awareness about overdose prevention, restored the rights of formerly incarcerated people and provided voices to those most impacted and stigmatized by the war on drugs
2015 Gretchen Burns Bergman, Executive director and co-founder of A New PATH, which has given a voice to parents whose children have struggled or perished because of addiction and the failed war on drugs
2013 Lorenzo Jones, Executive Director, A Better Way Foundation & Steph Sherer, Founder & Executive Director, Americans for Safe Access
2011 Dale Gieringer, state director of California NORML
2011 Dorsey E. Nunn, executive director of Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, co-founder of All of Us or None and Critical Resistance
2009 Howard Lotsof, discoverer of ibogaine's anti-addictive effects, patient activist, president of Dora Weiner Foundation and author of the Ibogaine Patient's Bill of Rights; and Deborah Small, executive director, Break the Chains: Communities of Color and the War on Drugs
2007 Cliff Thornton, primary speaker and founder of Efficacy, Inc.
2005 DrugSense, a nationwide network of volunteer drug policy reform activists.
2003 Allan Clear, executive director of the Harm Reduction Coalition
2001 Mikki Norris, Chris Conrad, and Virginia Resner, authors of Shattered Lives: Portraits from America’s Drug War and founders of Human Rights 95, Cannabis Consumers, and Green-Aid; Randy Credico, activist for the William Moses Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice, Inc.; and Nora Callahan, executive director of The November Coalition
2000 Diana McCague and Harry Simpson, founder of the Chai Project in New Jersey
1999 Elvy Musikka, medical marijuana patient and advocate, and one of only eight recipients of medical marijuana through the federal marijuana program
1997 Sandee Burbank, founder of Mothers Against Misuse and Abuse; Cheryl Simmons, expert on women and addiction treatment and incarcerated women’s issues; Imani Woods, educator at Progressive Solutions and the Harm Reduction Coalition, and Lennice Werth
1996 Joyce Rivera, founder of St. Ann’s Corner of Harm Reduction, a needle exchange program and center in the Bronx, NY
1995 Dennis Peron, author of Proposition 215 and founder of San Francisco Cannabis Buyers’ Club; Edith Springer, clinical director of the New York Peer AIDS Education Coalition
1994 Jack Herer, activist and author of The Emperor Wears No Clothes: Hemp and the Marijuana Conspiracy; Louis Jones, founder of STANDUP Harlem, Inc.
1993 Julie Stewart, founder and president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums
1992 Richard Bradbury, activist against abusive treatment tactics and founder of Community Improvement, Inc.
1991 Barbara and Kenneth Jenks, national co-chairs of Marijuana AIDS Research Service and pioneer advocates for medical marijuana treatment for AIDS patients
1990 Arnold and Mae Nutt, medical marijuana activists whose late son used medical marijuana for chemotherapy-related nausea
1989 Robert Randall, the first medical marijuana patient under the now-defunct federal program

The Norman E. Zinberg Award for Achievement in the Field of Medicine

This award recognizes medical and treatment experts who see beyond politics and make influential contributions to the fields of science and medicine.

Norman E. Zinberg was an eminent psychiatrist, Harvard Medical School professor, drug abuse treatment expert, public advocate of drug policy reform, and world-renowned author. Dr. Zinberg’s 1984 book, Drug, Set and Setting: The Basis for Controlled Intoxicant Use, was a landmark work that documented the powerful role of “set and setting” in shaping individual drug use. He also conducted groundbreaking research on heroin “chippers,” people who use a “highly” addictive drug without becoming addicted. Dr. Zinberg was a leading scholar responsible for the first legitimate research on marijuana with human subjects, as well as the first research on the use of THC in cancer therapy. He consistently advocated scientific research and drug policy reform even though his positions were politically unpopular.

Past Awardees:

2017 Dr. Jack Fishman, pioneer in the study of opiate antagonists and developer of a number of medicinal compounds that aid in reversing the effects of opioids – the most prominent of these being naloxone, a life-saving medicine now widely used throughout the world
2015 Dan Bigg, pioneer in community-based naloxone distribution as well as founder and director of the Chicago Recovery Alliance, which promotes harm reduction practices in Chicago and around the world
2013 Serviço de Intervenção nos Comportamentos Aditivos e nas Dependências (SICAD), a branch of Portugal’s Ministry of Health & Dr. João Castel-Branco Goulão, Portugal's national drug control office
2011 Dr. Julie Holland, psychiatrist, psychopharmacologist and author of Weekends at Bellevue: Nine Years on the Night Shift at the Psych ER
2009 Dr. Martin Schechter, physician, researcher and national director, Canadian HIV Trials Network
2007 Kasia Malinowska-Sempruch, MSW, director of the International Harm Reduction Project at the Open Society Institute
2005 Valerie and Michael Corral, medical marijuana activists and founders of the Wo/Men’s Alliance for Medical Marijuana
2003 Rick Doblin, Ph.D., founder of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies
2001 Drs. Thomas Zeltner, Ambros Uchtenhagen, Margret Rihs-Middel, Robert Haemmig, and Andre Seidenberg, a Swiss team of medical specialists conducting Switzerland’s heroin maintenance trials
2000 Jose Alvarez de Choudens
1999 Vincent P. Dole, professor emeritus, Rockefeller University
1997 Dr. Kathleen M. Foley, pain specialist and director of the Project on Death in America and Dr. Carey Stratton Hill Jr., Open Society Institute
1996 Reverend (ret.) Hans Visser, Saint Paul's Church, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
1995 Ernest Drucker, professor of Epidemiology and Social Medicine, Montefiore Medical Center and Albert Einstein College of Medicine
1994 Robert G. Newman, M.D., president of Beth Israel Medical Center
1993 Herbert M. Klein, a Circuit Court judge in Florida who developed drug courts
1992 Alex Wodak, M.D., former director of Alcohol and Drug Service at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney, Australia, and founder of the first needle exchange program in Australia
1991 Prevention Point, a model needle exchange program in San Francisco, CA
1990 John Marks, Pat O’Hare, and Allan Parry, Liverpool activists who produced the Mersey, England harm reduction model
1989 Andrew Weil, M.D., clinical professor of Internal Medicine, University of Arizona College of Medicine, and author of From Chocolate to Morphine: Everything You Need to Know About Mind-Altering Drugs

The H.B. Spear Award for Achievement in the Field of Control and Enforcement

This award is given to those involved in law enforcement who have demonstrated a balanced regard for the needs of enforcement and human compassion.

H.B. Spear played the lead role in British drug control policy for more than a quarter century. He was an inspector in the Drugs Branch of the Home Office and eventually rose to the rank of chief inspector, a post from which he retired in 1986. As the leading expert on addiction and drug treatment policy in Great Britain, Spear advocated heroin and methadone maintenance. The front-line police in Scotland Yard came to him for advice and so did street addicts. Influenced by the 1926 Rolleston Report, “Bing” Spear believed drug control and law enforcement could be rational and humane.

Past Awardees:

2017 Dianne Goldstein, executive board member for the Law Enforcement Action Partnership; spent 21 years with the Redondo Beach Police Department working assignments including drugs and gangs. Both her professional experience and the death of her brother from a drug overdose inspired her to turn grief into activism
2015 Neill Franklin, former police officer with the Maryland State Police and current executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) since 2010, who has empowered and passionately represented the voice of law enforcement in drug policy reform advocacy
2013 The Seattle Police Department, pioneer in implementing law enforcement assisted diversion (LEAD)
2011 Ronald E. Hampton, DC representative for Blacks in Law Enforcement of America and law enforcement fellow at the University of the District of Columbia’s Institute for Public Safety and Justice
2009 Peter Christ, co-founder and vice director, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP)
2007 Norm Stamper, Ph.D., Seattle police chief 1994-2000, author, and Law Enforcement Against Prohibition speaker
2005 Jack Cole, founding member and executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition
2003 Commander Brian Paddick, Metropolitan Police Authority, London, United Kingdom
2001 Patrick Murphy, former police commissioner of New York City
2000 Gilbert Puder, Vancouver police officer and instructor at the British Columbia Police Academy
1999 Terence Hallinen, San Francisco district attorney
1997 Peter Frerichs, vice president of the Frankfurt, Germany Police Department and Dr. Hans Korner Harald, public prosecutor, Frankfurt, Germany
1996 Thomas Frazier, city police commissioner of the Baltimore Police Department
1995 Rob Hessing, chief of police, Rotterdam, Netherlands
1994 New Haven Board of Young Adult Commissioners, Community Liaison Group for the Police, New Haven, CT
1993 Werner Schneider, Paul Vasseur, Dr. Horst Bossong, and Ueli Locher—drug policy coordinators of Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Hamburg, and Zurich, respectively
1992 Joseph D. McNamara, Ph.D., research fellow at the Hoover Institution in Stanford, CA, and former police chief of Kansas City, KS and San Jose, CA
1991 Nicholas Pastore, former police chief of New Haven, CT, and advocate of harm reduction strategies
1990 Eddy L. Engelsman, former Dutch drug czar and proponent of humane drug policy
1989 H.B. Spear, former chief inspector in the Drugs Branch of the British government.
1988 Wesley A. Carroll Pomeroy, former assistant director of the DEA and former Drug Policy Foundation board member

The Schmoke/LeDain Award for Achievement in the Field of Law (formerly the Justice Gerald LeDain Award)

This award is given to those involved in law who have worked within official institutions when extremist pressures dominate government policies.

Shortly after being elected mayor of Baltimore, Maryland in 1987, Kurt Schmoke bravely spoke out against the rapidly escalating war on drugs and for serious consideration of alternatives to punitive, prohibitionist drug policies. His outspokenness came as a surprise to many because he had previous served as Baltimore’s state’s attorney (chief prosecutor). Notwithstanding fierce opposition to his comments both within Baltimore and around the country, Mayor Schmoke did not relent. He was re-elected twice, serving as mayor for a total of twelve years, during which time he introduced needle exchange and other harm reduction programs to Baltimore, fought for similar reforms throughout Maryland, joined the board of the Drug Policy Foundation (and subsequently the Drug Policy Alliance) and continued to speak out boldly for both incremental and transformational drug policy reforms. Kurt Schmoke subsequently served as dean of Howard University Law School from 2003 to 2012 and was appointed president of the University of Baltimore in 2014. His commitment to drug policies grounded in science, compassion, health and human rights has never wavered.

Past Awardees:

2017 Senator Cory Booker, national leader in the Congressional push for common sense criminal justice reform, advocating for front-end sentencing reforms, pushing for the banning of juvenile solitary confinement in federal facilities, and spearheading legislation to make the hiring process fairer for the formerly incarcerated
2015 Mark Golding, Jamaican Justice Minister who played a pivotal role in Jamaica’s sweeping marijuana reforms, which included decriminalization of possession for personal use as well as for religious, scientific and medical purposes
2013 Alison Holcomb, Director, ACLU Campaign for Smart Justice and architect of Initiative 502, the measure that legalized recreational marijuana in Washington state & Steve Fox, Mason Tvert and Brian Vicente, Esq, leaders of Colorado Amendment 64 which legalized recreational marijuana in that State
2011 Nanna W. Gotfredsen, founder of The Street Lawyers, the leading reform organization in Denmark serving drug users and street based sex workers
2009 Hon. Jeffrion L Aubry, New York State Assembly member, chariman of the Assembly Corrections Committee and advocate for Rockefeller drug law reform
2007 Libby Davies, Canadian Member of Parliament for Vancouver East since 1997
2005 Vanita Gupta, NACDL attorney who played a pivotal role in the Tulia, Texas pardons
2003 Congressman John Conyers, Jr., J.D.
2001 Lynn Paltrow, executive director of the National Advocates for Pregnant Women
2000 John Kane, Jr., federal judge, Denver, CO
1999 Eric Sterling, president, Criminal Justice Policy Foundation
1997 Connecticut Law Revision Commission
1996 John Morgan, co-author of Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts and professor of Pharmacology, City University of New York Medical School
1995 Patrick Hallinan, prominent San Francisco defense attorney who has been active in high-profile and political issues involving the conflict between the exercise of governmental power and individual liberty
1994 Michael Moore, founder of the Australian Parliamentary Group for Drug Law Reform and member of the Legislative Assembly, Australian Capital Territory
1993 James P. Gray, judge in the Superior Court of Orange County and proponent of drug legalization
1992 Tony Serra, Esq., renowned criminal defense attorney who defended needle exchange workers; Michael Michaelson, J.D., M.D., who successfully defended a Massachusetts medical marijuana patient
1991 Robert W. Sweet, federal judge, New York
1990 Gerald Le Dain, Canadian Supreme Court Justice, 1984-1988, and chair of Canada’s landmark Commission of Inquiry into the Non-Medical Use of Drugs
1988 The Law Firm of Steptoe and Johnson, attorneys for Robert C. Randall, the first recipient of the federal medical marijuana program

The Dr. Andrew Weil Award for Achievement in the Field of Drug Education

This award is given to those involved in drug education who have promoted honest, science-based drug education in place of ineffective scare tactics based on myths and deceit.

Dr. Andrew Weil’s book From Chocolate to Morphine: Everything You Need to Know About Mind-Altering Drugs, is widely regarded as the best drug education book ever written. His first book, The Natural Mind, transformed popular understanding of why people use drugs and why people experience psychoactive drugs in different ways. And his other writings about drugs, including The Marriage of the Sun and the Moon, have pioneered new ways of thinking about drugs. Over the past two decades, Dr. Weil has emerged as the leading figure in the field of integrative medicine, gaining international recognition with books such as Spontaneous Healing and Healthy Aging as well as his columns, websites and speeches. He is currently director of the Program in Integrative Medicine of the College of Medicine, University of Arizona.

Past Awardees:

2017 Mark Kinzly, national trainer and consultant on issues related to substance use – ranging from HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C interventions, to the development of appropriate responses to the complexities of addiction
2015 Charles Ries, Founder of UpFront Programs, the cutting-edge harm reduction and drug education program for adolescents in the U.S.
2015 Jerome E. Beck, Co-creator of the University of Oregon Drug Information Center (DIC) and pioneer in harm reduction and drug education for forty years
2013 DanceSafe, public health organization promoting health and safety within the nightlife and electronic music community
2011 Earth and Fire, co-founders of Erowid Center, an educational non-profit organization that collects, reviews, and publishes data about psychoactive plants, drugs, technologies, and practices
2009 Marsha Rosenbaum, Ph.D., director emerita of the Safety First Project and of the San Francisco office of the Drug Policy Alliance
2007 Rodney Skager, Ph.D., author of Beyond Zero Tolerance: A Reality-Based Approach to Drug Education and School Discipline
2005 Carla Niño and Pat Klotz, leaders within the California State Parent Teacher Association (PTA) who championed positive drug education reform measures