Marijuana Legalization in California, Policy Perspectives

Google Tech Talk July 15, 2010 ABSTRACT Visiting speaker, Beau Kilmer, Co-Director of the RAND Drug Policy Institute discusses the policy implications of marijuana legalization in California, nationally, and internationally. There has been a dramatic shift in drug policy in recent years. Ballot initiatives have been proposed at the state level, and municipalities are today grappling with how to regulate marijuana dispensaries and enforce existing drug laws. Kilmer brings his breadth of knowledge to bear on current drug policy trends. Beau Kilmer is Co-Director of the RAND Drug Policy Research Center. His primary fields of interest are illicit markets, community corrections, drug treatment, and the use of advanced technologies to help monitor drug and alcohol use among problem populations. Kilmer's current work includes projects to estimate the economic costs of drug use and evaluations of community-level effects of drug treatment. He is currently engaged by the European Commission to calculate the size of the global drug market and is also working on a project to improve available data for understanding drug-related crime in Europe. Before earning his doctorate, Kilmer worked with the San Francisco Drug Court as a Judicial Administration Fellow.