Lester Grinspoon

Lester Grinspoon, Associate Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, served for 40 years as Senior Psychiatrist at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center in Boston. A Fellow of both the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Psychiatric Association, he was the founding editor of both the Annual Review of Psychiatry and the Harvard Mental Health Letter. He is the author or coauthor of over 160 journal articles or chapters and 12 books. A major area of interest has been "illicit" drugs. In 1990 he won the Alfred R. Lindesmith Award of the Drug Policy Foundation for "achievement in the field of drug scholarship." His first book, Marihuana Reconsidered, originally published in 1971 by Harvard University Press, was recently republished as a classic. His latest book, Marihuana, the Forbidden Medicine, co-authored with James B. Bakalar, was published by Yale University Press in 1993 (revised and expanded edition, 1997) and has now been translated into ten languages.

Dr. Grinpsoon is currently at work on a book about marijuana's many uses.

Lester joined the CCLE's Board of Advisors in 2000.