The Cannabis Conversation: Global Drug Survey

Dr. Larissa J. Meier at swissnex San Francisco's SciComm Studio 015: "The Cannabis Conversation." Larissa presents her research, including the Global Drug Survey, a tool intended to collect meaningful data about global views on drug use, drug consumers, and drug policy.


Dr. Maier is an SNSF-funded postdoc at the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Her research aims to evaluate substance use behavior in relation to drug policy contexts and to leverage digital health technologies to increase access to treatment for people with problematic use. She is committed to changing the negative narrative about people who use drugs to reduce stigma and increase public health by means of effective science communication. Before moving to San Francisco, Larissa worked as a research associate at the Swiss Research Institute for Public Health and Addiction (ISGF) at the University of Zurich and as a consultant in drug use epidemiology at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Vienna. Since 2014, she is a member of the Core Research Team of the Global Drug Survey (GDS) aiming to make drug use safer, regardless of the legal status of the drug. Also, she is an active member of several professional societies (CPDD, EUSPR, ISSDP, ISSUP, SPR) with an international focus and has, most recently, joined the leadership team of the UCSF Science Policy Group.