Dr. Benson B. Roe is a highly distinguished and experienced heart surgeon with four decades of practice and research. In his long career he has been chief of Thoracic Surgery at both St. Luke's and St.Joseph's Hospitals in San Francisco (1953-58), Professor of Surgery at the University of California at San Francisco (1965-89), Chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery at UCSF (1958-76) (he was co-chief from 1976 until 1987), and a Senior member of the Cardiovascular Research Institute at UCSF (1957-86). He has been Emeritus Professor of Surgery at UCSF since 1989. Over the last 25 years, Dr. Roe has published scores of scientific articles on various aspects of cardiothoracic medicine and surgery. Recently, he has published a number of pro-drug policy reform op-eds.Dr. Roe recounted how he came to be interested in drug policy issues in an op-ed piece from San Francisco Medicine in July 1993:"More than 20 years ago when I was removing destroyed heart valves from infected intravenous drug abusers I assumed that these seriously-ill patients represented just the tip of the iceberg of narcotic abuse. In an effort to ascertain what proportion of serious or fatal drug-related disease this group represented, I sought information from the San Francisco Coroner. To my surprise he reported that infections from contaminated intravenous injections were the only cause of drug-related death he saw _ except for occasional acute deaths from overdoses. He confirmed the inference that clean, reasonable dosages of heroin, cocaine, and marijuana are pathologically harmless. He asserted that he had never seen a heroin user over the age of 50. My obvious conclusion was that they had died from their habit, but he was confident that they had simply tired of the drugs and just quit. When asked if the same were basically true of marijuana and cocaine, he responded affirmatively. That caused me to wonder why these substances had been made illegal…."Dr. Roe has since been an advocate in the medical community for reconsideration of our nation's drug laws and policies, and calls for a better answer to the legitimate problems caused by drugs.