2006 Green Party candidate for Governor, CT

Available to speak on the following subjects:
Drug Policy and Criminal Justice Reform
Education
Health Care

Bio
Clifford W. Thornton, Jr., 62, is a Co-Chair of the Green Party of the United States. Thornton, an international expert on drug policy, is a retired African-American businessman who ran for Governor of Connecticut on the Green Party line in 2006. In the last three years he has spoken to over 200,000 people on drug reform in some 450 venues all over the US, Columbia, Canada, Europe, and New Zealand, and has been interviewed on 400 radio shows. He is described as "America's foremost anti-Drug War African American activist" by Amherst College's online newspaper. Thornton also speaks on the drug war, education, and health care.

Thornton encourages citizens to re-examine drug policy, challenges the mentality of the drug war, and promotes open discussion of alternatives and public-health awareness. Marijuana policy reform is at the core of most of his presentations. Although he speaks about the need to change the laws regarding all drugs, a large portion of each presentation is devoted toward the reasons to end marijuana prohibition. He believes that marijuana law reform is the key to all drug policy reform. In 1995, Thornton founded Efficacy, a non-profit to educate the world about drug policy reform.

Prior to working full-time in drug policy, Mr. Thornton was a middle-level manager with Southern New England Telephone Corporation, 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. He also served as Parliamentarian of the Greater Hartford African American Alliance and was president of Jazz Radio New England..

A Hartford native, Thornton and his wife Margaret now live in Glastonbury. He has five daughters and two granddaughters. Thornton, an Army veteran, earned a bachelor's degree in Marketing from Waterbury's Post University in 1986.

Back