About the Author:
Robert L. DuPont, Jr. has been one of the nation's leaders in drug abuse prevention since the late 1960s when he developed the Narcotics Treatment Administration, the comprehensive program that treated over 15,000 heroin addicts in the District of Columbia between 1970 and 1973 while he was Director. He then moved to the federal government, where he became the first Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, serving in that capacity from 1973 to 1978. From 1973 to 1975 he was the White House Drug chief. As NIDA Director, Dr. DuPont visited more than 20 nations to study drug problems. He represented the United States at five consecutive meetings of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs, and he was Chairman of the Section on Drug and Alcohol Abuse for the World Psychiatric Association.

Since leaving the government, Dr. DuPont has been President of the nonprofit American Council for Drug Education in Rockville, Maryland. Dr. DuPont directs the Center for Behavioral Medicine, which provides clinical psychiatric services from offices in Baltimore, Rockville, Richmond, Norfolk, and Raleigh. He is Vice-President of Bensinger, DuPont, and Associates, Inc., a national firm with offices in Chicago and Rockville, providing consultation on drug abuse prevention in the workplace.
A graduate of Emory University and the Harvard Medical School, Dr. DuPont is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Georgetown Medical School and Visiting Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard. Medical School. He is a Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.
Dr. DuPont maintains an active clinical practice of psychiatry, having worked directly with hundreds of drug-dependent people and their families during the last 15 years. He is married and has two teenage children.