Ethan Nadelmann Leaves Princeton, Starts The Lindesmith Center, a Research Center for Drug-Related Issues in New York City

ACTIVIST NEWS July 1994

Ethan Nadelmann, the Princeton University professor whose powerfully written articles in The Public Interest and Foreign Policy in 1988 (and Science in 1989) coincided with the speech to the U.S. Conference of Mayors by Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke to kick into high gear the movement for drug policy reform, has left Princeton. Nadelmann has been called by the Drug Policy Foundation "one of the top intellectual advocates of the legalization of drugs."

Nadelmann has founded and is now the Director of The Lindesmith Center, based in New York City. The Center is a project of the Open Society Institute, funded by George Soros. Dr. Nadelmann described The Lindesmith Center as an activist think tank that will serve as an intellectual forum for analysis on drug-related issues, looking at history, sociology, anthropology, politics, policy and the criminal justice dimensions.

The Center will study issues of individual autonomy and sensible public policy where they clash with popular morals and prejudices. The Center will be establishing a substantial library and archive in these areas with a full-time librarian. There will be openings for resident academic fellows. Seminar series are being developed on harm reduction issues, tobacco policy, new perspectives on drug testing, and prescription drug control.

The Lindesmith Center is not going to be an advocacy organization nor have a mass membership. It has opened offices at 888 Seventh Avenue, Suite 1901, New York, NY 10106 (Tel. 212-887-0695).

Recently Nadelmann co-authored an article, "Toward a Sane National Drug Policy," (p. 24) with Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner in Rolling Stone No. 681, May 5, 1994. (That issue of Rolling Stone was a special issue on "Drugs in America" with nine articles on aspects of the drug problem, and included an article by Kurt Schmoke ("Side Effects," p. 38) and a feature on the Drug Policy Foundation ("Smart Money," p. 42) by Cynthia Cotts.)

The Center is named after Alfred R. Lindesmith, the Indiana University Professor who wrote about drug addiction from the 1930s through the 1960s. A number of Lindesmith's books, including Opiate Addiction (1947) and The Addict and the Law (1965) are landmarks in the field of drug policy analysis.