Debunking Marijuana Myths

Special Agent, Tennessee Bomb and Arson Section, Knoxville, TN

Jason Poore has been in law enforcement since 1999 and is currently employed as a Special Agent with the Tennessee Bomb & Arson Section in Knoxville, Tennessee. Prior to this position he was a Special Agent with the Tennessee Alcoholic Beverage Commission (ABC).

Poore was assigned to the Tennessee Governor’s Task Force on Marijuana Eradication for nine years. In that position, he investigated outdoor marijuana cultivation, indoor marijuana growing operations and other narcotic violations. He also enforced the state liquor laws and regulations through undercover and overt investigations and operations.

Poore has a Master’s degree in Criminal Justice Administration from the University of Wisconsin, Platteville and a Bachelor’s degree in sociology with a concentration in criminal justice from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Director of the Institute on Drug Policy (IDP) at the University of Florida, Asst. Professor in the College of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry

Kevin Sabet has been working on drug policy issues for more than eighteen years. From 2009-2011, he served in the Obama Administration as the Senior Advisor to Director Kerlikowske at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). Prior to that appointment, he worked for ONDCP on research, policy and speech writing in the Clinton and Bush Administrations.

Sabet is a staff columnist at TheFix.com and a regular contributor to opinion-editorial pages worldwide, including the Washington Post, Huffington Post, New York Times, Vancouver Sun, San Francisco Chronicle,Seattle Times, CNN, CNBC, and more than a dozen other media outlets.

Since leaving the White House to consult full-time, Sabet has been quoted in more than 15,000 news stories relating to drug policy.
As a Marshall Scholar, he received his Ph.D. and M.S. in Social Policy at Oxford University and B.A. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley

Associate Director for Scientific Affairs for the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), at the National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Susan Weiss serves as a senior advisor to the NIDA Director, and provides scientific guidance and oversight to staff of NIDA who are responsible for such key areas as communications, program development, science planning and policy analysis, and government relations.

Previously at NIDA, Weiss served as the Chief of the Science Policy Branch, where she supervised a dozen staff working on various aspects of drug abuse and addiction.

Before coming to NIDA, Weiss was the Senior Director of Research at the National Mental Health Association (now Mental Health America), where her job was to make sure that scientific research was part of the organization’s planning, public education, and advocacy efforts. Weiss also oversaw the behavioral biology research program at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) at NIH, which focused on developing treatments to address the evolving nature of psychiatric and neurologic illnesses like anxiety, bipolar disorder, and substance use disorders.

She has published more than 140 scientific manuscripts and book chapters. Weiss earned her Ph.D. from the University of Maryland and her BS in Psychology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.