David Nutt is Chair of our Scientific Committee and currently the Edmund J Safra Professor of Neuropsychopharmacology and Head of the Neuropsychopharmacology Unit in the Centre for Academic Psychiatry in the Division of Brain Sciences, Dept of Medicine, Hammersmith Hospital, Imperial College London. He is also visiting professor at the Open University in the UK and Maastricht University in the Netherlands. He currently is the founder Chair of DrugScience and has held many leadership positions in both the UK and European academic scientific and clinical organisations. These include presidencies of the European Brain Council, the British Neuroscience Association, the British Association of Psychopharmacology and the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology as well as Chair of the UK Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. He is a Fellow of the Royal Colleges of Physicians, of Psychiatrists and of the Academy of Medical Sciences. He is also the UK Director of the European Certificate and Masters in Affective Disorders courses and a member of the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy. David has edited the Journal of Psychopharmacology for over twenty five years and acts as the psychiatry drugs advisor to the British National Formulary. He has published over 500 original research papers and a similar number of reviews and books chapters, eight government reports on drugs and 31 books, including one for the general public, ‘Drugs Without the Hot Air’, which won the Transmission book prize in 2014 for Communication of Ideas.

Stephen Bazire is an Honorary Professor, School of Pharmacy, University of East Anglia in Norwich, a Director of Mistura Enterprise (running the international Choice and Medication website) and Mistura Informatics (MaPPs 2), and a Trustee for Norwich and Central Norfolk Mind. He is the former Chief Pharmacist for Norfolk Mental Health Services (1986-2011) and then Consultant Pharmacist in Medicines Management until retiring from the NHS in January 2015. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain and was awarded an MBE in 2010 for services to pharmacy, and the Guild of Healthcare Pharmacists Gold Medal in 2013. He is probably best known as the author of the Psychotropic Drug Directory, of which there have been 28 editions (latest 2018) and over half a million copies sold worldwide. His special clinical interests include depression, bipolar, adult ADHD, and user and carer information and education on medicines. He has been Chairman and Council member of the College of Mental Health Pharmacy, a member of the Council of British Association for Psychopharmacology, and Visiting Fellow and External Examiner for the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Aston University, Birmingham.

Brigitta is a Consultant in Anaesthesia and Pain Management at University London Hospital Trusts, where she has developed a strong interest in acute and chronic pain management. Brigitta has been leading the Acute Pain Service for many years and is actively involved in pain research. Her clinical experience is in vascular and thoracic anaesthesia and also in acute, chronic, cancer and complex pain at UCLH. Brigitta has been an Examiner for the European Society of Anaesthesiology for many years examining in German and English. As chair of SPIN (Specialists in Pain International Network) she supports multidisciplinary pain management in countries struggling to introduce basic services.

Professor Alex Stevens has worked on issues of drugs, crime and health in the voluntary sector, as an academic researcher and as an adviser to the UK government. He has published extensively on these issues, with a focus on the sociology of drugs and crime, on risk behaviours by young people, on the use of evidence in policy and on quasi-compulsory drug treatment. His published works include a book on ‘Drugs, Crime and Public Health‘, studies of decriminalisation of drugs in Portugal, of the right to use drugs, on gangs and on the ethnography of policy making.

Professor Stevens’ interest in drugs and crime dates back to his time working with UK charity Prisoners Abroad, which provides advice and information to British prisoners held in foreign prisons, and as European project manager and coordinator of the European Network of Drug and HIV/AIDS Services in Prison for Cranstoun Drugs Services.

Professor Stevens has a PhD in Social Policy from the University of Kent, an MA in Socio-Legal Studies from the University of Sheffield and a BA in French (in the School of European Studies) from the University of Sussex.

Dr Lawrence Phillips works as a process consultant helping key players in organisations facing difficult decisions that must balance uncertainty and multiple conflicting objectives. He is a well-published Emeritus Professor of Decision Science at the London School of Economics, and a Director of Facilitations Limited. His most recent research has focused on the harm of psychoactive drugs and the benefit-safety balance of prescription drugs. In November 2005, the Decision Analysis Society awarded Dr Phillips its highest honour, the Frank P. Ramsey medal for distinguished contributions to decision analysis. Larry was recently awarded the ‘Pioneer Award’, the most prestigious award of the Society of Decision Professionals, at the annual conference of the Decision Analysis Affinity Group

Professor Val Curran’s interests span across a wide area of psychopharmacology. Her research is in human experimental, cognitive and clinical psychopharmacology and currently has 4 main foci: 1) transitions from substance use to misuse to addiction to recovery and relapse; 2) neurochemical bases of psychotic symptoms; 3) the differential effects of various cannabinoids upon cognitive, emotional and dependence-related processing; 4) the short and long-term effects of ‘recreational’ drugs (e.g. alcohol, mephedrone, ‘ecstasy’, cannabis, ketamine) on cognition, emotion and the brain. Professor Curran was an undergraduate at Cambridge, did her PhD at London University and qualified as a Clinical Psychologist. She went from Research Fellow through to Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry from 1984-1995 and since then has worked at UCL. She set up the UCL Clinical Psychopharmacology Unit in 1996 and was appointed Professor of Psychopharmacology in 2000. Val is also Research Lead at the Substance Misuse Services at a Mental Health NHS Trust. She has been a Principal Editor of the journal ‘Psychopharmacology’ since 2003.

Professor Colin Drummond is Professor of Addiction Psychiatry at the National Addiction Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London, and has over 20 years of experience in alcohol misuse research, primarily epidemiological, health service and public health research. He is Chief Investigator for the UK Department of Health National Screening and Brief Intervention Research Programme (SIPS). He chaired the alcohol treatment guideline development group for the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. Professor Drummond is also an advisor to the UK Department of Health and National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse and is a member of the World Health Organisation’s Expert Committee on Drug and Alcohol Problems. His work has included the development of Models of Care, the national framework for drug and alcohol services in England.

Niamh is Executive Director of Release – the UK’s centre of expertise on drugs and drug laws. Niamh has co-authored Release’s two most recent policy papers ‘The Numbers in Black And White: Ethnic Disparities In The Policing And Prosecution Of Drug Offences In England And Wales’ and ‘A Quiet Revolution: Drug Decriminalisation Policies Across the Globe’. Niamh is also responsible for drafting many of Release’s briefings for parliamentarians and policy makers. She has presented at international and national conferences and is regularly invited to comment in the media. Niamh has been a technical advisor to the Global Commission on Drug Policy and is Associate of The London School of Economics IDEAS International Drug Policy Project. She is also a member of the Expert Steering Group for the Global Drug Survey.

Professor Barry Everitt FRS is Professor of Behavioural Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge. He is one of the world’s leading researchers on the neural and psychological mechanisms underlying drug addiction. His recent research concerns the neural basis of compulsive drug taking and vulnerability to addiction as well as the development of novel treatments targeting the aberrant memories that lead to relapse.

Patrick Hargreaves is a school inspector, and a regional PSHE adviser. For 10 years, he was the Drugs and Alcohol Adviser with County Durham Children & Young Peoples’ Services where he was responsible for the delivery of drug and alcohol education to children and young people both in and out of school and for the quality of policies across County Durham’s Children & Young People’s settings. He is now independent. He is a member of Drugscope, Alcohol Concern, the Drugs Education Forum, the PSHE Association and NSCoPSE, the national PSE association for advisers, inspectors and consultants. He sat on the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs for 5 years until he resigned in December 2010. He regularly works with the Department for Education and Home Office on educational matters. Previously he has worked in the care system, as a youth worker, taught in all phases of education including special education both in the UK and overseas and set up and managed a Pupil Referral Unit for permanently excluded young people.

Graeme Henderson FBPharmcolS is professor of Pharmacology at the University of Bristol. His research is mainly concerned with the acute and chronic actions of opioid drugs in the brain at the molecular, cellular and behavioural levels. He is an editor of Current Opinion in Pharmacology and an author of a general pharmacology textbook, Rang & Dale’s Pharmacology 7th Edition.

Dr John Marsden is a Reader in Addiction Psychology at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London. A senior member of the Department of Addictions, John is Regional Editor for Europe, Africa and Asia for the scientific journal Addiction and a former member of the UK Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. His research interests focus on the development and evaluation of treatments for addiction.

Professor Fiona Measham was appointed Chair in Criminology at the University of Liverpool in 2019. Fiona has conducted research for three decades across a broad area of criminology and social policy, exploring changing trends in legal and illegal drugs; festival and night life venues and the socio-cultural context to consumption; gender; club drug cultures; issues of deterrence, displacement and desistance; the regulation and policing of intoxication; and broader policy implications. A key feature of her work has been in-situ research in leisure locations, a working environment with which she is familiar, having spent her early adulthood working in bars and clubs across several continents.

Fiona has served on numerous scientific advisory committees including previously being an appointed member to the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs 2008-18; the Ministerial Review of New Psychoactive Substances; Public Health England review of drug treatment; Liberal Democrat cannabis regulation expert panel, and currently, Labour Party and Conservative Party drug policy reform expert panels and is a permanent member of the ACMD Technical Standing Committee and NPS Standing Committee.

Fiona is co-founder and co-director of the Loop (established in the UK 2013 and in Australia 2018), non profit organisations providing advice, information and harm reduction services to reduce drug and alcohol-related harm and promote health and wellbeing in festival and night life venues: www.wearetheloop.org . The Loop is best known for introducing Multi Agency Safety Testing (‘drug checking’) to the UK in 2016.

After over thirty years of following the Aldous Huxley methods of drug research, Ian joined a lived experience group run by Pathway. For the last three years he has been giving lectures and presentations on all aspects of homelessness and drug use. He was also asked to write an article for the BMJ about how to recognise and look after someone using new psychoactive substances. This lead to his being invited to appear and get involved with many organisations like Drugscience that recognise the value of listening to the people who have been there and done it. He now advise organisations on how to set up lived experience groups and where the cracks in the system are that prevent people getting the help they need.

Jo Neill is Professor of Psychopharmacology at the University of Manchester (Division of Pharmacy & Optometry). She is co-founder of b-neuro (b-neuro.com) a University based Contract Research Organisation developing new treatments for mental illness through animal models, and is an active researcher. Jo is immediate past President of the British Association for Psychopharmacology (President 2016-2018). She served on the Research Excellence Framework panel for Unit of Assessment 3 (Allied Health Professions, Dentistry, Nursing and Pharmacy) in 2014. Jo is working with Policy at Manchester (policy.manchester.ac.uk) to educate the public about the urgent need for drug law reform and suspension of Schedule 1 restrictions to enable research into the medicinal properties of currently illegal drugs. She has 2 daughters, lives in Manchester with her husband Keith, is a keen squash player, gardener, park runner and is training to run the Manchester 10K race in May this year.

Dr John Ramsey is an analytical toxicologist and Director of TICTAC Communications Ltd. at St. George’s University of London (SGUL). TICTAC is a commercial database used by UK Healthcare and Law & Order professional to identify drugs. TICTAC analyses the contents of club amnesty bins, attends outdoor music festivals, and test purchases drugs from websites and head shops in order to monitor the appearance on new compounds used as drugs. John is a founder member of the team at SGUL that monitors mortality from volatile substance abuse.

Steve Rolles is Senior Policy Analyst for Transform Drug Policy Foundation, a UK based think tank and charity focused on drug policy and law reform. Lead author on a range of Transform publications including 2009’s ‘After the War on Drugs: Blueprint for Regulation’, Steve has been a regular contributor to the public debate on drug policy and law for over 15 years; in the media, at UK and international events, and at various UN and Government forums around the world. Steve was recently an adviser for the Uruguayan Government in developing their new cannabis regulation model, and was also lead drafter and technical coordinator for the recent ‘Taking control: Pathways to Drug Polices that Work’ report from the Global Commission on Drug Policy. Previously Steve worked for Oxfam and the Medical Research Council, having studied for his Geography BSc at Bristol University and Development Studies MSc at Manchester University.

Ilina Singh is Professor of Neuroscience and Society at Oxford University. Her work examines the psycho-social and ethical implications of advances in biomedicine and neuroscience for young people and families. Her research has several goals: To investigate the benefits and risks of biomedical and neuroscience technologies for children and young people; to enable evidence-based policy-making in child health and education; and to bring social theory and ethical insights into better alignment with children’s developmental capacities. Ilina is Co-Editor of the journal BioSocieties, and is on the Editorial Board of The American Journal of Bioethics-Neuroscience.

Dr Polly Taylor is a veterinary surgeon who graduated in 1976. After a few years in general practice, Polly specialised in anaesthesia, becoming Reader in Anaesthesia in the Department of Clinical Veterinary Medicine, University of Cambridge. In 2002 she became an independent consultant in Veterinary Anaesthesia, dividing her time between clinical anaesthesia, teaching for Continued Professional Development, anaesthesia for research, and drug registration.

Dr Tim Williams is a consultant addiction psychiatrist within the NHS and honorary clinical lecturer with the University of Bristol. He has published papers on the biological basis of drug and alcohol addiction and written risk assessment documents on ketamine, khat, and GBL. His continuing research is investigating the clinical risk factors that lead to sudden death in drug and alcohol users.

Professor Adam R Winstock is a Consultant Addiction Psychiatrist and Addiction Medicine specialist based in London. He is Honorary Clinical Professor at the Institute of Epidemiolgy and Health Care, University College London. He has published over 120 papers. He is also founder and director of Global Drug Survey which runs the biggest drug survey in the world. He is also the architect of the free online and smartphone apps DrugsMeter and DrinksMeter and and the world’s first safer use cannabis guidelines at www.saferuselimits.co

Dr Dima Abdulrahim is employed by Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust and is the lead researcher and programme manager of the NEPTUNE clinical guidance and learning and development programme on the management of the harms of club drugs and novel psychoactive substances.

Dima has been working in the field of drug misuse treatment for over 20 years. This includes work for the National Treatment Agency, the Substance Misuse Advisory Service (Health Advisory Service), the Drugs Advisory Service Haringey and the Department of Psychology of the University of East London. Dima was a member of the Advisory Council for the Misuse of Drugs from 1991 to 2010 and a sits on the editorial board of Drink and Drugs Today.

Stephen is a GP at the Windmill practice in the inner city of Nottingham & has worked there for the past 20 years. He also works as a “GP for the homeless” at the local Friary Drop-in; in both roles he sees a wide variety of people who use alcohol & other drugs, often in harmful ways. Twice weekly he works as a consultant for the city’s specialist alcohol service. He has a public health role with Nottingham city council as clinical lead for alcohol & substance misuse. Finally he is the national chair for the RCGPs  “Managing Drug and Alcohol Problems in Primary Care” conference, now in its 23^rd year.

Dr Roland Archer is Guernsey’s States Analyst, he runs a state-of-the-art analytical laboratory and is responsible for analysing drugs seized locally. He is highly regarded in his field as an independent expert on drug identification, and regularly advises the courts during drug-related cases. Dr Archer also gives technical advice on Guernsey legislation relating to drugs, and acts as an expert witness in local and UK courts. A medicinal chemist with over 19 years’ experience, he is particularly skilled at identifying potential new substances of abuse which have been designed by people seeking to circumvent drug legislation. A particular area of interest for Dr Archer is illicit drug manufacture, he assesses whether a drug may be synthesised illicitly by evaluating the difficulty, time and cost of production using commercially available precursors. He also has an interest in the application of quantum chemistry to predict the outcome of competing reactions during drug synthesis to identify impurity profiles of illicit substances. He has authored over 20 peer-reviewed articles, and is a member of the Chartered Society of Forensic Sciences and The Royal Society of Chemistry.

Prof Michael Lynskey is an epidemiologist and addiction researcher who has held academic appointments in New Zealand, where he’s from, Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom. His research largely focuses on the onset and escalation of drug use during adolescence and he has worked on multiple longitudinal studies examining the assessment of drug related problems and their associations with mental health. Given rapid changes occurring in the regulation of cannabis use and supply, he is increasingly interested in studying policy approaches to cannabis.

Roz Gittins is the Director of Pharmacy for a national third sector substance misuse treatment provider. She is the Registrar for the College of Mental Health Pharmacy and a credentialed member. She is also an accredited senior trainer for the RCGP Drug and Alcohol Certificates and has experience of providing training for a variety of audiences and for several providers including the NHS, RPS, Local Authorities and private care providers.

Roz has worked as a Scholar and Pharmacist Topic Expert for NICE, and is serving a three year term as an Expert Advisor. She has contributed to numerous publications and training resources on the use of medication in psychiatry and substance misuse, and consulted for various organisations, including ITV and the BBC. She is also a Pharmacist member of the GPhC Statutory Committees and has won awards for her research and service development work. She co-lead the UK’s first Home Office licenced drug checking service and is currently studying for a Doctorate, exploring the misuse of over the counter and prescription only medication.

Rudi Fortson QC is an independent practising Barrister for over 35 years, and a Visiting Professor of Law at Queen Mary, University of London He took silk in 2010.

Rudi Fortson QC served on the ‘Runciman’ Independent Inquiry into the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971” as its principal legal adviser (Police Foundation, Chair: Lady Runciman DBE), and he was a member of the Criminal Justice Forum for the Institute for Public Policy Research (‘Them and Us’). He was also a member of (and the principal legal adviser) the ‘Independent Working Group on Drug Consumption Rooms’ (Joseph Rowntree Foundation).

In recent years Rudi Fortson QC has advised various businesses and individuals on complex UK and EU legal issues concerning the production, importation and distribution of medicinal products, psychoactive substances, hemp products, medicinal cannabis, CBD products, licensing, the medicines legislation, food products, product safety, cosmetics, and their regulatory controls.

Lynne Dawkins is Professor of Nicotine and Tobacco Studies at the Centre for Addictive Behaviours Research (CABR), School of Applied Sciences, London South Bank University. She joined LSBU in 2016 having previously worked at the University of East London where she led the Drugs and Addictive Behaviours Research Group. She completed her PhD and post-doc in Psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Professor Dawkins has over 20 years of research experience in nicotine addiction, smoking cessation and tobacco harm reduction and has published over 50 research articles on the subject. She is particularly interested in understanding the psychological mechanisms that prevent successful quitting and the role that novel reduced risk nicotine products such as e-cigarettes can play. Her work has directly fed into the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee’s inquiry into e-cigarettes and the subsequent recommendation from the UK Government to review e-cigarette legislation. She is currently a Senior Editor for the journal Addiction and committee member of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco Studies Europe.

Celia Morgan is a Professor of Psychopharmacology at the University of Exeter. She completed her undergraduate degree and Ph.D at University College London (UCL) and completed a scholarship programme at Yale University. After competing a Ph.D she then worked at the University of Melbourne as a visiting research fellow, returning to UCL for a fellowship and then Lectureship. She joined University of Exeter as a Senior Lecturer in 2013 and was given a Chair in Psychopharmacology in 2015. Prof. Morgan also holds an Honorary Readership at University College London. Prof. Morgan is academic lead for both Exeter Translational Addiction Partnership (ETAP) and Ketamine for Reduction of Alcoholic Relapse (KARE).