We are sad to report that the co-founder and President of Common Sense for Drug Policy, Kevin B. Zeese, passed away on September Fifth, 2020. He is sorely missed.
Kevin was one of the nation's foremost authorities on drug policy issues. He worked on a wide array of drug related issues since he graduated from George Washington University Law School in 1980.
We are sad to report that the co-founder and President of Common Sense for Drug Policy, Kevin B. Zeese, passed away on September Fifth, 2020. He is sorely missed.
Kevin was one of the nation's foremost authorities on drug policy issues. He worked on a wide array of drug related issues since he graduated from George Washington University Law School in 1980.
Kevin wrote for newspapers and journals on a range of drug issues, including an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on the Colombian drug war. He also appeared on every major television network as a commentator. He served as a consultant to Walter Cronkite for the Discovery Channel special: The Drug Dilemma: War or Peace? He spoke at nationally recognized legal seminars and testified before Congress on drug related issues.
A Feb. 2005 interview with Kevin on the syndicated radio program Cultural Baggage is available. In April 2002, Kevin debated DEA Administrator Asa Hutchinson at a conference hosted by Rice University's James Baker Institute. Segments of the forum, "Moving Beyond the 'War on Drugs'," including the Zeese-Hutchinson debate, are available as streaming video. A listing of articles in which Kevin appears is available by clicking here.
He was the author of Drug Testing Legal Manual, Drug Testing Legal Manual and Practice Aids and co-author of Drug Law: Strategies and Tactics, all published by Clark Boardman Callaghan. Kevin served as editor of Drug Law Report for Clark Boardman Callaghan from 1983 to 1998. In addition, he was the author of Drug Prohibition and the Conscience of Nations. Mr. Zeese was the editor of Friedman and Szasz On Liberty and Drugs and edited numerous books on drug policy and manuals on criminal defense.
Kevin Zeese litigated a variety of drug policy-related issues. Among these are the medical use of marijuana, the use of the military and national guard in domestic drug enforcement, the spraying of herbicides in the United States and abroad on marijuana, drug testing of government workers and the right to privacy as it relates to marijuana in the home. He had been a legal advisor to needle exchange workers prosecuted for their anti-AIDS efforts, buyer's clubs who distribute marijuana to the seriously ill, and medical marijuana patients prosecuted for the medical use of marijuana.
Kevin facilitated the Alliance of Reform Organizations, a network of all the major reform organizations in the United States. He served on the Executive Committee of the Harm Reduction Coalition. He served on the Board of Directors of the Drug Policy Forum of Texas and was a Board member emeritus of the DrugSense.
He was a co-founder of the Drug Policy Foundation (now renamed the Drug Policy Alliance), where he served as Vice President and Counsel, and is a former Executive Director and Chief Counsel of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.
Zeese served on Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke's Mayor's Working Group on Drug Policy Reform and served on San Francisco District Attorney Terence Hallinan's Harm Reduction Council. Both were efforts to implement a model urban drug policy. Zeese was also involved with advocacy related to the fatal shooting of Esequiel Hernandez, the legal rights of patients, doctors and their caregivers in California, and the UN General Assembly Special Session on drugs (the UNGASS).
In 2000, Kevin Zeese was the recipient of the Richard J. Dennis DrugPeace Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Field of Drug Policy Reform from the Drug Policy Foundation at its 13th Annual International Conference on Drug Policy Reform.
"In 2020, nearly $80 billion was budgeted for local police departments nationwide (table 15). The estimated 110 departments serving 250,000 or more residents in 2020 accounted for 43% of this funding. (See table 4.) These departments represented fewer than 1% of all local police departments but employed about 41% of all full-time sworn local officers.
"In 2020, about 1,056,000 full-time personnel worked for general-purpose law enforcement agencies at the state, county, or local level (table 2). Of these personnel, almost 57% worked for local police departments. Of the 708,000 full-time sworn officers employed across the country, about 67% worked for local police departments. Local police departments employed 36% of the 348,000 full-time civilian personnel. These departments also employed about 69% of the 86,000 part-time personnel in general-purpose law enforcement agencies.
"As of December 31, 2020, more than 14,700 general-purpose law enforcement agencies in the United States employed about 708,000 full-time sworn officers and 348,000 full-time civilians. Local police departments accounted for about 80% (11,800) of the general-purpose agencies, employing nearly 67% (473,000) of full-time sworn personnel and 36% (126,000) of full-time civilian personnel (figure 1, table 1).1
| Number of People | |
| Total | 1,185,648 |
| Federal Facilities | 146,108 |
| State Facilities |
| Demographic Characteristic | Number of People |
| White Non-Hispanic | 317,100 |
| Black Non-Hispanic | 234,900 |
"Moving marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III, without other legal changes, would not bring the state-legal medical or recreational marijuana industry into compliance with federal controlled substances law. With respect to medical marijuana, a key difference between placement in Schedule I and Schedule III is that substances in Schedule III have an accepted medical use and may lawfully be dispensed by prescription, while Substances in Schedule I cannot. However, prescription drugs must be approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
"Slightly less than half of all sworn SROs reported that they had confiscated drugs (45%) within the past 30 days (figure 6). Nearly 4 in 10 SROs had made an arrest (39%) or issued a criminal citation (37%) in the past 30 days. About 23% of SROs had confiscated a weapon.
"About 83% of sworn SROs had conducted video surveillance of schools in the past 30 days (table 7). About half of all SROs had conducted security audits or assessments of school campuses (51%) or monitored social media (47%). About 45% of SROs had participated in crisis preparedness training or on a threat assessment team.
