Richard J. Baum has served at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) for 25 years through five presidential administrations. He was part of the team which drafted the Biden Administration’s National Drug Control Strategy and works on Emerging Drug Threats as well as anti-doping and sports issues.

Baum was Acting Director of ONDCP – or Drug Czar – from March 2017 to February 2018, responsible for coordinating the United States’ $42.5 billion Federal drug control budget and the nation’s government-wide approach to the drug issue. While Acting Director he served concurrently as Executive Director of the President’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis, managing the development and editing of the Commission’s reports and recommendations. During his career at ONDCP, he led the development of numerous strategic documents, including six editions of the agency’s key publication, the National Drug Control Strategy, as well as the 2011 Transnational Organized Crime Strategy.

Mr. Baum is also an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University's McCourt Graduate School of Public Policy where he teaches the course: The War on Drugs: Causes, Consequences and Alternatives. He has earned a B.A. in Government and an M.A. in National Security Studies from Georgetown University, and an M.P.A. (Masters in Public Administration) from the University of Colorado. Recently he has presented at both the Rx Drug Summit and at AllRise. He was raised in New York City and resides now in Falls Church, Virginia with his wife, Linda Bloss-Baum and their two children.