Noted researcher tapped for No. 2 drug czar

PHILADELPHIA — In another clear break from past policy, President Obama announced Friday that he intended to nominate as the nation’s No. 2 drug czar a scientist often considered the No. 1 researcher on addiction and treatment.

A. Thomas McLellan, a University of Pennsylvania psychologist, will be charged with reducing demand for drugs, a part of the foreign-supply-and-domestic-demand equation that many policy experts say has been underemphasized for years.

“We’re blown away. He understands” that addiction “is a parent, a family, a child issue,” said Stephen J. Pasierb, president and chief executive of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America.

If confirmed by the Senate, McLellan will be deputy director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, which advises the president and coordinates anti-drug efforts. Obama last month nominated Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske to head the office.

Kerlikowske’s reputation for innovative approaches to law enforcement and McLellan’s stature as a treatment scientist make them “a perfect match,” Pasierb said.

Although hardly known outside his field, McLellan is regarded as a leading researcher on a range of addiction-related issues.

As a scientist at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Philadelphia in the 1980s, he led development of two measures, known as the addiction severity index and treatment services review, that characterized multiple dimensions of substance abuse. The tools, used worldwide, help determine the type and duration of treatment.

In 2000, he was lead author of a groundbreaking paper that compared drug addiction with chronic medical conditions.