Guest Contributor

Ed Gogek, MD is a psychiatrist who, in thirty years of practice, has treated over 10,000 addicts and alcoholics in mental health centers, private practice, jails, prisons, homeless clinics, and many substance abuse treatment programs. He is the author of Marijuana Debunked: A handbook for parents, pundits, and politicians who want to know the case against legalization.

In the 1990’s, Dr. Gogek and his journalist brother, Jim, wrote a column on the politics of mental health and addiction. It was carried on the New American News Service, a branch of The New York Times Syndicate. Dr. Gogek’s op-eds have appeared in over a dozen major U.S. papers including the New York Times, Newsweek, and the San Jose Mercury News.

A lifelong, partisan Democrat and environmentalist, Ed helped to defeat a proposed nuclear power plant in central Illinois in the 1970s, was a Paul Tsongas delegate to the 1992 Democratic convention, and in 2006 was the Democratic candidate for state senate in Arizona’s LD-4.

In 2010, he worked with Keep AZ Drug Free, the committee opposing Arizona’s medical marijuana ballot measure. Lastly, in writing Marijuana Debunked, he drew on the experience of his own regular marijuana use for two years of his late teens back in the 1970s.

Dr. Gogek earned a B.S. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and in 1983 received his MD from the University of Illinois College of Medicine. He did his residency in psychiatry at the Maine Medical Center in Portland and the University of Western Ontario in London.