The Speaker

A native New Yorker, Boyce began his distinguished 33-year career with the New York State Police in 1987. In 1996, he was appointed to the Bureau of Criminal Investigation as an Investigator, where he was assigned to the Community Narcotics Enforcement Team, working multiple level narcotics cases throughout much of the Central, Southern and Western New York areas. In 1998, Boyce was cross-designated a U.S. Customs Officer by the U.S. Department of Treasury. In 1999, he completed the New York State Police Basic Hate/Bias Criminal Investigations School to become a Bias Crimes Investigator. He was deputized as a Drug Enforcement Agent Task Force Officer to assist with major narcotics investigations. In 2015, Boyce was accepted into the distinguished New York State Police Employee Assistance Program and subsequently promoted to Senior Investigator / Director.

The Workshop

Clearing The Air: Harm Reduction & The Illicit Market :
Wednesday, October 21, 2026 01:00P

Well-intentioned tobacco control policies are producing an illicit marketplace that undermines both public health and community safety. Nicotine consumers are acutely price-sensitive.

When the cost of legal alternatives rises, or those alternatives are banned entirely, many turn to illicit products that carry greater health risks and funnel revenue to criminal enterprises, including drug trafficking organizations.

This panel brings together criminal justice professionals to examine how harm reduction frameworks that preserve access to reduced-risk alternatives like e-cigarettes, nicotine pouches, and vapor products — regulated and taxed proportionally to their risk profile rather than banned or prohibitively taxed — and strategic enforcement strategies can simultaneously advance cessation goals, protect tax revenue, and relieve law enforcement of the burden of policing markets that prohibition and punitive taxation inevitably create.