lindesmith award speech

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hereinstead.com: lindesmith award speech

On December 8, 2007, I was the recipient of the Alfred R. Lindesmith Award for distinguished scholarship. The award, first created by the Drug Policy Foundation in the late 1980s, is now presented by the Drug Policy Alliance at their conferences, this year held in New Orleans. At the request of others, I am posting my acceptance speech ... hereinstead.
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From the time Ethan Nadelmann told me I'd been selected for this award he's been reminding me that I'd have only three minutes to talk. Only three minutes.

Then Craig Reinarman called from the Netherlands to say he was coming back to the U.S early to introduce me. He said "I have two minutes to introduce you, what do you want me to talk about?"

I thought about it and said: "I want you to talk about one minute and give me the other minute." But Craig never does anything I ask.

I want to thank the DPA very much and I want to congratulate the other award winners tonight. It is an honor to be among such smart, hard working, righteous and dedicated people. I also want to thank and acknowledge Arnold Trebach and Kevin Zeese, who first created these awards and conferences, and also Eric Sterling who has been working on drug policy reform even longer than I have.

At an earlier drug policy awards dinner, one awardee said, and I quote: "Awards are like hemorrhoids, sooner or later every asshole gets one." This fellow says many clever things but not all of them are accurate or true, and this one is neither. In my opinion there are not nearly enough awards, especially for people in this movement.

In addition to the enormous and powerful evil that we take on - what the great Lynn Zimmer called "the drug war establishment" - and in addition to the horrible damage that the drug war and drug prohibition bring - one outstanding characteristic of our movement is the incredible people who join it and stay with it. I've made some of the best friends of my whole life in this movement, many of them I first met or got to know at conferences like this one. And as all of you have seen over the last few days, the battle against drug prohibition and for humane and just drug policies continues to attract a remarkable number of bright, articulate, soulful, joyous, courageous, people.

I want to honor a few of them tonight, people I've known for a long time and without whom I could not have figured out even a small portion of what I have learned and gotten to write about.

In the mid 1990s, when Ethan first created his drug policy think tank and organization, he agonized for ages over what to call it and finally settled on the name of the heroic sociologist for whom this award is named - Alfred Lindesmith. So Ethan set up shop and answered the phone saying "Lindesmith Center." "Lindesmith Center."

And almost immediately callers began asking: "Who is this woman Linda Smith and why did you name your organization after her? Who is Linda Smith?"

So tonight I have created my own Linda Smith Awards. I don't have a plaque or certificate, but I will provide one later. I would not have done one tenth of what I accomplished without the help of these people - in ways even they cannot understand. A famous play set in New Orleans talked about depending upon the kindness of strangers. Personally, I've always depended upon the kindness of people I know well. And I want to honor them.

My first Linda Smith Award goes to Marsha Rosenbaum, who first nominated me for this award. Because of her own enormous and important research and writing, she should have won it many times over, but she's been ineligible because she is formally on staff.

I want to give a Linda Smith Award to my son Jesse Levine, who has grown up learning about drug policy reform. At age 14, Jesse proposed a harm reduction program for people considering becoming parents. He thought people contemplating parenthood should be told: "We don't think you should do it. We hope you don't do it. Please don't do it. But if you still choose to become a parent, here's some things you should know."

In addition, I have Linda Smith Awards for:

Craig Reinarman - my truly better half;
Sheigla Murphy - the wisest of the wise;
Ira Glasser - who after a lifetime of civil liberties battles on many issues, chose to devote his retirement years to our issue above all others - and you gotta love him for that.

Four Linda Smith Awards go to people here in spirit:
Peter Cohen, the Dutch drug policy genius;
John Morgan, the pharmacologist and marijuana musicologist supreme;
Loren Siegel, the civil liberties and drug policy Amazon warrior;
and my fabulous girl friend Elaine Frezza,

And I want to give Linda Smith Awards to:

Deborah Small - my brilliant partner in our marijuana arrests project
Alex Wodak - the prince of Australian harm reduction;
Pat O'Hare - the true, secret, Lex Luthor-like evil genius behind the entire international harm reduction movement and also much scholarship about international drug policy;
Ernie Drucker - for doing more to bring European and Australian harm reduction and drug policy thinking to America than anybody on earth, and for creating an important new journal;
Freek Polak - the emperor of Dutch anti-prohibitionists;
And Ethan Nadelmann - don't ask.

I want to congratulate all the winners of my personal Linda Smith Award.

When the wise and wonderful Lynn Zimmer was told she got this award, she wanted to say something that people would remember. Then she did a bit of research and discovered that nobody ever remembered anything anyone ever said at an awards dinner, except maybe a joke. She said that took a lot of pressure off her.

So if anyone asks you what Harry Levine talked about when he got the Lindesmith Award, you can say: He talked about three minutes and then sat down.

Thank you.

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