Rosalie Pacula

Biography

Rosalie Liccardo Pacula PhD holds the Elizabeth Garrett Chair in Health Policy, Economics & Law at the Sol Price School of Public Policy, University of Southern California and is a Senior Fellow with the Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics, where she co-directs the RAND-USC Schaeffer Opioid Policy Tools & Information Center of Excellence (OPTIC) in addition to leading numerous National Institute of Health funded studies examining the impact of federal, state and local laws on the supply, demand and access to treatment for intoxicating substances.  Previously she spent 21 years at the RAND Corporation, serving as co-director of RAND’s Drug Policy Research Center for 15 of those years, working on drug policy studies for the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, European Commission, and the U.K. Home Office.  She served on NIDA’s National Advisory Council Cannabis Policy Workgroup (2017), the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA’s) technical advisory committee on preventing cannabis use among youth (2020-present), the World Health Organization’s Technical Expert Committee on Cannabis Use and Cannabis Policy (December 2019-2020), the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine Committee on the Review of Specific Programs in the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (2021 – present), the CDC’s National Injury Prevention’s Board of Scholarly Counsellors (2021- present), and is currently President of the International Society for the Study of Drug Policy (2019- present).  Dr. Pacula is a graduate from the Santa Clara University and received her doctorate in economics from Duke University.

Selected Publications

• Axeen, S., Pacula, R. L., Merlin, J. S., Gordon, A. J., & Stein, B. D. (2024). Association of daily doses of buprenorphine with urgent health care utilization. JAMA Network Open, 7(9).
• Myran, D. T., Gaudreault, A., Konikoff, L., Talarico, R., & Pacula, R. L. (2023). Changes in Cannabis- Attributable Hospitalizations Following Non-Medical Cannabis Legalization in Canada. JAMA Network, 6(10), e2336113.
• Powell, D., Peet, E. D., & Pacula, R. L. (2023). Understanding the rise in overdose deaths involving opioids and non-opioid prescription drugs in the United States. International Journal of Drug Policy, 104104.