Peter Reuter

Peter Reuter, born December 4, 1944, is an American criminologist and economist who serves as a professor at the University of Maryland with joint appointments in the School of Public Policy and the Department of Criminology, and who was named University of Maryland Distinguished Professor in 2020. After earning his doctorate in economics from Yale University in 1980, with a dissertation on the organization of illegal markets, Reuter joined the RAND Corporation in 1981 and in 1989 established RAND's Drug Policy Research Center, directing it until 1993 before moving to the University of Maryland. Since the mid-1980s he has focused on researching alternative approaches to drug policy in the United States and Western Europe, and a 1988 New York Times article described him as one of the few economists who studies illegal drug markets, reflecting his role as a pioneer in applying economic analysis to drug policy questions.