Alex Berenson is a former New York Times reporter and the author of Tell Your Children: The Truth About Madness, Marijuana and Violence, a controversial tome that has been widely dismissed by many scientists as a cherry-picking, fearmongering book that confuses correlation and causation and misinterprets much of the scientific research cited within. Dr. Peter Grinspoon is a physician at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital, as well as the author of Free Refills: A Doctor Confronts His Addiction. The debate, which took place at Yale Law School, was moderated by Dr. Jason L Schwartz, assistant professor of health policy and the history of medicine at the Yale School of Public Health, who also wrote before the event that he was “looking forward to moderating what I expect to be a very lively debate” about the pros and cons of cannabis. Read the article at The London Free Press Watch the debate below or click here.
[Paraphrasing] "Literally my whole childhood there were opponents of marijuana legalization in my living room throwing things or proponents of legalization in my living room passing joints around." -@Peter_Grinspoon at @SolomonCtrYLS debate.
— Solomon Center @ YLS (@SolomonCtrYLS) October 17, 2019
Peter Grinspoon, MD, is a primary care physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and an Instructor at Harvard Medical School. He is the author of Seeing Through the Smoke: A Cannabis Specialist Untangles the Truth About Cannabis, as well as the memoir Free Refills: A Doctor Confronts His Addiction. He is a TedX speaker. He spent two years as an Associate Director of the Massachusetts Physician Health Service helping physicians with addiction and mental health issues. He graduated with a B.A. in Philosophy with honors from Swarthmore College. He then spent five years as a Campaign Director for the environmental group Greenpeace before entering medical school at Boston University School of Medicine, where he graduated with honors. He completed his residency at Harvard’s Brigham and Woman’s Hospital, in the primary care program. He has been on national television including NBC, C-SPAN, and Fox and Friends, and his writings have been published in The Nation and The Los Angeles Times. He is a Contributing Editor to Harvard Health Publications.