John Walsh
Director for Drug Policy
Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA)
Mr. Walsh has written extensively on the need to reassess drug policy goals, strategies, and indicators, focused on limits and harms of supply-control efforts under a prohibitionist framework. Connecting domestic U.S. reforms to the international drug policy debate, Walsh has worked extensively on the implication of cannabis legalization for the prohibtiionist UN drug contorl treaties, co-authoring the report “Balancing Treaty Stability and Change: Inter se modification of the UN drug control conventions to facilitate cannabis regulation." His work has contributed to the expansion of the international drug policy reform debate, and been instrumental in convening reform advocates and practitioners from across the hemisphere to discuss design and evaluation of legal, regulated cannabis.
A frequent commentator on drug policy developments in the U.S. and Latin America, Mr. Walsh has been quoted in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Associated Press, National Public Radio, and numerous television and international news outlets. In addition to his congressional testimony, publications, press appearances, Mr. Walsh has organized and spoken at numerous U.S. and international conferences. Prior to joining WOLA, he served as director of research at Drug Strategies and worked at the Center of Concern on the “Rethinking Bretton Woods Project,” an effort to forge consensus on ideas for reform of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and international trade arrangements.
He received a B.A. in Theology from Georgetown University (1986) and an M.A. in Public Policy from the Johns Hopkins University (1997).