Meet Cliff Thornton

Clifford W. Thornton, Jr., is a retired African-American businessman, whose mother died of a heroin overdose when Mr. Thornton was 18. As a result of this loss, he wanted drug laws to be harsher. Now he believes that if heroin use had been legal, and supervised by doctors, his mother might have lived a relatively safe and healthy life.

Cliff Thornton is the founder of Efficacy, a non-profit organization that has been concentrating efforts on drug policy reform.

Prior to working full-time in drug policy, Mr. Thornton was a middle-level manager with Southern New England Telephone Company in Connecticut. He was in charge of the delivery of all internal telecommunications to the corporation, serving some 10,000 employees with a $50,000,000 annual budget, supervising 23 people. He worked at SNET for 25 years. He was (and is) very active in community projects as well. He served as Vice President of the Greater Hartford Festival of Jazz for three years. This three-day event attracted approximately 75,000 people every year with a mere $50,000 budget. He also served as Parliamentarian of the Greater Hartford African American Alliance and was president of Jazz Radio New England.

Efficacy started as a public affairs program at the University of Hartford’s radio station WWUH in 1996. Efficacy produced programs on domestic violence, education reform, race/class relations, political candidates, and drug policy. Efficacy evolved from a radio program to non-profit organization having articles and pamphlets published worldwide.

Mr. Thornton taught a graduate level course entitled “Illegal Drugs and Public Policy” at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut in the spring semester of 2002.

Mr. Thornton helped shape the Unitarian Universalist statement of conscience on drug policy reform which was passed in the summer of 2002 at the General Assembly in Quebec, Canada.

Mr. Thornton is partially responsible for the removal of DARE from the Ocean City, New Jersey school system a few years ago. Efficacy gave a presentation to the board of education which received great reviews and helped facilitate the change to a more humane policy.

Mr. Thornton has lectured widely in the U.S., Canada, England and New Zealand.

A native of Hartford, Mr. Thornton now lives in Glastonbury, CT, with his wife Margaret. He has five grown daughters.

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