Drug Policy Forum of Texas
Speakers’ Bureau
DPFT’s goal is to promote open debate and discussion about how to have a more effective, less costly drug policy. We have outstanding speakers across Texas who help us do this.
| From the Southeast Texas area: | |
 |
Jerry Epstein holds degrees from Rice University and the University of Houston . He served as an officer in the US Marines Corps. He is a businessman and writer who has extensively researched drug policy options. In 1995 he joined with Dr. Alan Robison, the retired Chairman of the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston to form the Drug Policy Forum of Texas to promote discussion of scientific information about drugs and effective alternatives to a failed drug war. |
William Martin serves as the Chavanne Senior Fellow for Religion and Public Policy at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice. Dr. Martin's recent research and writing have focused in two areas: 1) religious fundamentalism and its impact in the political arena; and 2) issues related to drugs, with particular emphasis on ways to reduce the harms associated with drug abuse and drug policy. He has organized and chaired a series of programs at conferences at the Baker Institute dealing with these issues. These can be accessed through the Baker Institute website at http://bakerinstitute.org/. |
 |
 |
Carl Veley is a retired petroleum engineer and management consultant. He has traveled extensively in five continents and lived several years in various Middle Eastern, European and Asian countries. His children attended American schools in Iran, Austria, England, and France, and he has observed a spectrum of drug control policies ranging from unrestricted distribution to total prohibition. He was an invited speaker at the New Mexico Governor’s Conference on Drug Policy. He was previously Operations Manager for the Drug Policy Forum of Texas. Local newspapers as well as national ones, including the Wall Street Journal, have published some of his numerous essays on drug policy issues. Carl is a past president of DPFT. |
| From the Central Texas area: | |
 |
John Delaney was educated at Princeton University and the University of Texas School of Law. He was a U. S. Navy officer during the Vietnam War era. He practiced law in Bryan for eleven years before being elected to the 272nd District Court in Brazos County where he served until his retirement in 2000. John now practices mediation of civil and family cases while serving as a substitute judge and as judge of the Child Protective Services Court of Brazos County. John is a member of the Rotary Club of Bryan, District Chair for Group Study Exchange, an instructor in Medical Ethics at the Texas A & M School of Medicine and an adult Sunday school teacher at First Methodist Church of Bryan. |
| Michael J. Gilbert, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Texas at San Antonio. He teaches a course titled “Drugs, Drug Laws and Crime.” Before joining the university faculty, Dr. Gilbert had over 20 years of experience in corrections and criminal justice. Working with offenders and justice system officials he became aware of the adverse consequences of the “war on drugs”. He began to question the validity, morality, and practicality of drug prohibition. The more he studied the problem the less prohibition made sense. Mike also represents Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, www.leap.cc |  |
| Russ Jones worked in professions related to illegal drugs for over 30 years. He has been a narcotics detective in San Jose, California, a Drug Enforcement Administration task force officer and an observer in Latin America during the Nicaraguan Contra conflict. Russ has conducted studies of the impact of drug abuse on crime and has written and taught drug rehabilitation courses for court mandated clients. He has been recognized as an expert in the psychological and physiological effects of drugs by both state and federal courts. Russ also represents Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, www.leap.cc. | |
| Craig Schroer is a reference librarian at the Benson Latin American Collection at the University of Texas at Austin. He brings his skills as an information professional to the field of drug policy reform where he has served on the DPFT board. He is keenly interested in the disconnect between evidence-based drug policy and the punitive model which continues to prevail. |  |
| From the North Texas area: | |
 |
Alan and Nancy Bean (shown with daughter, Lydia) spent twenty years serving Baptist and Methodist congregations in Western Canada, Colorado, Wyoming and Kansas. They moved to Tulia with their three children in 1998. In the wake of the infamous Tulia drug sting Alan helped found Friends of Justice, a criminal justice reform organization. His work has been featured on NPR’s Weekend Edition. Alan served as President of DPFT in 2004. He moved to the DFW area in 2007. Alan also represents Friends of Justice, http://friendsofjustice.wordpress.com/ |
| Dr. Rodney Pirtle holds numerous degrees including one from Perkins School of Theology at SMU. He is retired from Highland Park ISD where he became aware that kids can get illicit drugs in the black market easier than they can get beer. He has devoted years to determining how we can do better. Rod is the recipient of a “Distinguished Service Award” from Highland Park ISD. He served as president of DPFT in 2003. |  |
 |
Larry Talley served as an intelligence specialist in the United States Navy from 1987-2007. He frequently deployed to support counterdrug operations in Central and South America. Larry was struck by the violence endemic to the black market drug trade and by the failure of his and his colleagues’ efforts to affect the price or availability of the drugs. He became fully convinced that prohibition was the wrong approach when his daughter told him she could easily buy any drug if she wanted to – except cigarettes and alcohol. Larry also represents Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, www.leap.cc. |
| Suzanne Wills is a retired CPA. She graduated from SMU and had her own practice in east Dallas for 16 years. She is a board member and treasurer of DPFT and Drug Policy Chair of the League of Women Voters of Dallas. Her talk is entitled “Drug War: How We Got Into This Mess and the Special Interests That Keep Us Here.” It is accompanied with a Power Point slide show. It can be presented in from 18 to 45 minutes or as two separate talks. |  |
Contact Suzanne Wills to schedule a speaker for your group.
suzy@dpft.org or 214-324-1594 in Dallas, 877-667-1888 toll free