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Cannabis Influencers: Doctor of Reform

Cannabis Influencers: Doctor of Reform

David L. Nathan, MD, DFAPA

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Media
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date
October 16, 2020
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Article excerpt:

This story is part of a series of profiles, The CannaInfluencers: The people shaping the cannabis industry in the Garden State. Written by NJ Cannabis Insider reporters, the profiles will publish in the weeks leading up to the Nov. 3 election, when New Jersey voters will decide whether to legalize recreational, adult-use cannabis. Dr. David Nathan has become a leading voice in the medical community’s conversations around drug policy reform after forming Doctors for Cannabis Regulation. And he’ll admit, he grew up and even went to college without questioning laws that banned drugs. “I had grown up as a drug warrior, just like everybody else,” Nathan, 52, said. “It was one of the few true epiphanies in my life that I realized the Drug War made no sense.”

That came early on during his enrollment in medical school at the University of Pennsylvania during the early 1990s. While editing an ethics journal, he read an article that highlighted the futility or prohibition and its disproportionate impact on minorities.

Read the article at NJ.com

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About the Author

David L. Nathan, MD, DFAPA

David L. Nathan, MD, DFAPA

David L. Nathan, MD, DFAPA is a psychiatrist, writer, and educator in Princeton NJ. He is the founder of Doctors for Cannabis Regulation and served as our first President. Dr. Nathan is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. While maintaining a full-time private practice, he serves as Director of Continuing Medical Education for the Princeton HealthCare System (PHCS) and Director of Professional Education at Princeton House Behavioral Health (PHBH). While serving on the steering committee of New Jersey United For Marijuana Reform (NJUMR.org), Dr. Nathan was surprised by the absence of any national organization to act as the voice of physicians who wish to guide our nation along a well-regulated path to cannabis legalization. This need was the inspiration for Doctors for Cannabis Regulation.