Drugs and Society

Dr. Glen R. Hanson is the vice dean of the School of Dentistry and a professor of pharmacology in the School of Dentistry at the University of Utah. He is also the Senior Advisor for the Mountain Plains PTTC (Prevention Technology Transfer Center), which is supported by the Substance Abuse Mental Health Service Administration of the Department of Heath and Human Services. During his approximately 30 years in academics, he has received more than $30 million from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), affiliated with the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to research the neurobiology of drug abuse, and he has authored more than 240 scientific papers and 50 book chapters on the subject. Dr. Hanson has lectured on drug abuse topics throughout the world. He served as the director of the Division of Neuroscience and Behavioral Research at NIDA, after which he became NIDA’s acting director from 2001 to 2003. Dr. Hanson works with scientists, public officials, policy makers, and the general public to more effectively deal with problems of drug abuse addiction.

Dr. Peter J. Venturelli has been the coauthor of this text since the second edition of Drugs and Society in 1988. In addition to revising this text every two years, the experiences and qualifications of Dr. Venturelli in academia and professional life include publishing research in drug and ethnic anthologies and scholarly journals, authoring approximately 60 conference papers at national professional sociological meetings, serving in elected and administrative positions in professional sociological and drug research, associations, receiving research grants involving drug use and ethnicity, authoring the latest drug research, serving as a board member at the Baldwin Research Institute (alcohol and drug retreats), and teaching undergraduate and graduate students for the past 32 years.

Peter Platteborze, Ph.D., joined St. Mary’s University in 2016 and is passionate about teaching students the interdisciplinary nature of Forensic Science and how teamwork is essential to be successful in the field of Forensic Science. Before joining St. Mary’s, Platteborze served in the active duty U.S. Army where he was a biochemist for more than 20 years. His military assignments included, serving as a principle investigator conducting defensive research on chemical agents; a principle investigator conducting defensive biological agent research with an emphasis on creating a live, attenuated Eastern Equine Encephalitis viral vaccine; a deputy commander in the Army’s Tripler Forensic Toxicology Drug Testing Lab; a branch chief for the Army’s MLT clinical chemistry training program; a postdoctoral clinical chemistry fellow at the University of Washington; a program manager for the Army’s Forensic Drug Testing; and Chief and Medical Director of Brooke Army Medical Centers Core, Toxicology, Reference Chemistry and Emergency Department Labs. Some of his greatest accomplishments include, publishing extensively in a wide range of fields and receiving a U.S. patent for his military vaccine research.