Content

Content

Planning and development of our event involved discussion and consultation with a number of professionals representing the realm of addiction and counseling, business, politics, non-profits, dialogue facilitators, drug policy makers, student groups, and community advocacy. All provided a great deal of guidance and information on both the social issue of addiction in Metro Vancouver and planning an open dialogue event. We took away from these consultations three ideas for critical content in our event.

Honest Drug Education- participants in our event are generally not exposed to social issues, especially addiction, in an educational setting. In addiction, misinformation about addiction also contributes to a poor understanding of the issue and the kinds of things that are needed. We plan to provide education about the current state of addiction and drug policy through expert speakers and visual aids in an open setting with question and answer periods. Through this, we hope to give the participants a basis for generating policy alternatives and ultimately encourage awareness of this far-reaching social issue.

Meaningfully Inclusive Dialogue- collaboration between all areas of society is critical to our event. To develop innovative solutions, input is needed from all levels. To have meaningful dialogue, the topic of discussion must be specific to provide participants with a clear idea of the issues and an attainable goal. As this event will involve students with little professional knowledge or experience on the issue of addiction, the environment cannot be intimidating. Intimidation creates feelings of incapability of dealing with the issue and will deter from creativity and innovative ideas. The success of our event depends on the specific contribution of the student participants, so dialogue must look to include those least powerful in the room- students, community individuals, and users themselves.

Deter debate and encourage discussion- It is critical that this type of discussion is open and collaborative, and steers away from a debate format to allow for a much broader range of thought on the issue. People will be much more creative and apt to explore the edges of what is possible in approaching this topic through open discussion. It was also suggested that the discussion not focus on the failures of current or previous policies, but strictly on the creative aspect of developing an alternative method. Our event discussion can focus specifically on innovations for new drug policy alternatives through open discussion and directed case study task.

We have support and tentative participation from a number of people/organizations we spoke to. This includes Mark Haden, Libby Davies, Ann Livingston and a user, SFU’s Dialogue Faculty, Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association, and Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy, as well as sponsorship interest from The Economist through their ‘think differently’ marketing campaign.