Working on drug policy issues for more than eighteen years, Kevin Abraham Sabet, Ph.D., is an internationally-acclaimed expert on substance abuse. From 2009-2011, he served in the Obama Administration as the Senior Advisor to Director Kerlikowske at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). In this position, Dr. Sabet advised Director Kerlikowske on all matters affecting priorities, policies, and programs of the National Drug Control Strategy. He was one of three main writers of President Obama’s first National Drug Control Strategy, and his portfolio included leading the office’s efforts on marijuana policy, legalization issues, international demand reduction, drugged driving, and synthetic drug (e.g. “Spice” and “Bath Salts”) policy. Dr. Sabet represented ONDCP in numerous meetings and conferences, and led the Administration’s international drug legislative and diplomatic efforts at the United Nations. Representing his non-partisan commitment to drug policy, he previously worked on research, policy and speech writing at ONDCP in 2000 and from 2003-2004 in the Clinton and Bush Administrations, respectively. He remains the only staff member at ONDCP to hold a political appointment in both the Bush and Obama Administrations.

Through www.kevinsabet.com, Dr. Sabet is currently is a consultant to numerous domestic and international organizations and his past and present clients include the United Nations, the U.S. Department of State, the National Institutes of Health, Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America (CADCA), the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse (CCSA), and other governmental and non-governmental agencies. He also currently holds a position at the University of Pennsylvania as a Fellow at the Center for Substance Abuse Solutions and is an adjunct professor in the Department of Psychiatry.

Dr. Sabet has published widely in peer-reviewed journals and books on the topics of drug policy, cocaine sentencing, legalization, marijuana decriminalization, medical marijuana, addiction treatment, drug prevention, crime, law enforcement, and other issues. He is a contributor to editorial pages and the television news media, including the Washington Post, New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, CNN, CNBC, and more than a dozen other media outlets. Dr. Sabet first offered testimony on drug policy to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in 1996.

As a Marshall Scholar, he received his Ph.D. and M.S. in Social Policy at Oxford University and B.A. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley. He currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with his wife, Shahrzad, a Ph.D. candidate and instructor at Harvard University.

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