Episode #109 High Truths on Drugs and Addiction with Dr. Lynn Silver on Getting It Right From the Start with Marijuana

Pediatrician, public health researcher and advocate, Silver is Senior Advisor at the Public Health Institute (PHI) and Clinical Professor at University of California San Francisco. She directs PHI’s Prevention Policy Group, including Getting it Right from the Start, a project of PHI founded in 2017 to support adoption of cannabis policies to better protect youth, public health and equity. Silver is an expert on the use of policy and law to prevent chronic disease, its risk factors and inequitable impact, including unhealthy diet, tobacco, and physical inactivity.  She is an NIH supported researcher evaluating chronic disease prevention policy and cannabis regulatory policy. Silver was Assistant Health Commissioner of New York City under Mayor Bloomberg, where she led groundbreaking policy initiatives including the nation’s first trans-fat ban, calorie labeling law, and the National Salt Reduction Initiative. In California, she served as county health officer in Sonoma County, and has contributed to the passage of the first successful U.S. soda taxes in the Bay Area and many local cannabis laws. She serves on the CA Advisory Group for the Proposition 64 cannabis tax revenue, the Board of the Center for Science in the Public Interest and chairs the CA Alliance for Prevention Funding which fights for health equity investments. Silver was previously Visiting Scholar of International Health at the Karolinska Institute, Dean and Associate Professor at University of Brasilia’s School of Health Sciences,  and taught at Brazil’s National School of Public Health. She has worked widely on health policy as a researcher, educator, government official, consultant and advocate. She has served as consultant to the World Health Organization/Pan American Health Organization, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, the World Bank, the Low Income Investment Fund, hospitals and foundations. She received her MD and MPH degrees and pediatric training from the Johns Hopkins University. Silver has published widely and was honored to be the recipient of the 2011 Wavemaker Award of the Campaign for Public Health.