David E. Smith Biography, Age, Height, Wife, Net Worth and Family

Smith served as medical director of the clinic for 39 years, since its inception. He resigned from the clinic in February 2006 amid legal, medical, and business disputes with the Clinics’ administration.

Smith and Darryl S.Inaba, PharmD founded the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic, which opened in June 1967 on Haight Street in San Francisco to respond to the medical needs of thousands of young people who were coming to the city for the Summer of Love. The Free Clinics still operate today in San Francisco, and continue to serve those without adequate health insurance.

The Clinic was initially funded through proceeds of benefit concerts, many of which were organized by Bill Graham (promoter). The first of such benefit concerts took place on July 13, 1967, at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco. Another, titled “Dr. Sunday’s Medicine Show”, took place on October 8, 1967, in San Jose, California.

Through the benefit concerts organized with Bill Graham in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Darryl Inaba and George “Skip” Gay created Rock Medicine with the support of Smith. In the spring of 1973, Bill Graham staged two consecutive Saturday concerts at Kezar Stadium in San Francisco featuring The Grateful Dead and Led Zeppelin. Bill Graham asked the Clinic to staff a “medical emergency care tent” during both concerts. These small stadium concerts, about 18,000 at the Dead and 25,000 at Led Zeppelin, evolved into Bill Graham’s Days on the Green concert series. The “medical emergency care tent” became Rock Medicine, which is a branch of the Clinic that still exists today and provides medical care at hundreds of Northern California music concerts and events each year.

David E. Smith (born 1939) is an American medical doctor from the United States specializing in addiction medicine, the psycho-pharmacology of drugs, new research strategies in the management of drug abuse problems, and proper prescribing practices for physicians. He is the Founder of the Haight Ashbury Free Clinics of San Francisco, a Fellow and Past President of the American Society of Addiction Medicine, Past President of the California Society of Addiction Medicine, Past Medical Director for the California State Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs, Past Medical Director for the California Collaborative Center for Substance Abuse Policy Research, and former adviser to the Betty Ford Center.