Virginia Lawyers Weekly

University of Virginia law professor Richard J. Bonnie would prefer that the Virginia Tech massacre had not occurred and become a focal point of the state commission on mental health reform that he heads.

“But it would compound the tragedy if we didn’t take advantage of the political opportunity,” he said.

The danger may be that the General Assembly will feel the need to take limited action at its next session when a comprehensive overhaul is needed, Bonnie said. “The legal structure will never work unless you have adequate resources for it,” he said.

To that end, Bonnie said he hopes that the commission will be able to recommend for the 2008 session elements of the total package that can stand alone and to present a full blueprint that will take perhaps four years to implement. The commission had hoped to wrap up its work this fall with a comprehensive proposal, but it had become clear that it would not be able to do so even before Seung-hui Cho killed himself and 32 others on April 16.

Virginia Chief Justice Leroy Rountree Hassell Sr. appointed the commission and “deserves a tremendous amount of credit for taking this on,” Bonnie said. The Supreme Court staff, the Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse Services and other state agencies have contributed to its work, he noted. The commission has about 30 members with about 120 more people working on task forces that examine aspects of the system.

As the director of the Institute of Law, Psychiatry & Public Policy at U.Va., Bonnie was a logical selection to head the commission’s efforts. He has been involved with mental health and substance abuse organizations for more than 30 years, serving as a member of the national Advisory Council on Drug abuse from 1975 to 1980, as a member of several American Bar Association Projects and as an advisor to the American Psychiatric Association’s Council on Psychiatry and Law since 1979, among many other projects.

He appeared before Congress recently in his role as a co-chair of a committee of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences that studies ways to reduce tobacco use, especially among teenagers.

The committee recommended regulation of the manufacturing, marketing and distribution of tobacco products by the Food and Drug Administration, a move the agency is resisting.

Although the debate has changed since the committee issued a report in 1994 condemning the marketing of cigarettes to youth, the percentage of adult smokers has not decreased substantially, he said. With about 20 percent of adults continuing to smoke, tobacco is “still a major health disaster,” he said.

Biography

Education: B.A., Johns Hopkins University, 1966; LL.B., University of Virginia School of Law, 1969.

Areas of interest: criminal law and procedure, mental health and drug law, public health law, and bioethics

Achievement: Chairman of the commission on mental health reform appointed by Chief Justice Leroy Rountree Hassell Sr., co-chair of Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences committee on reducing tobacco use

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