Meeting with Sam Thiara

When planning to organize a big event, getting the right people to help and advise is paramount, but the problem is that too often people don’t know what they’re doing or lack experience. Fortunately, here at SFU, we have a great resource when it comes to organizing, planning, and managing great projects and this person is Sam Thiara. I guess most of you have at least heard of him, and if not then open your BBA student agenda and there are 2 glossy pages, Sam’s picture is on one of them. One of his official titles is called “Manager of Student Engagement and Recruitment” another is called “Student Affairs Officer”. But the thing is that Sam does everything and knows everyone and his job title will never clearly define everything he’s involved in and does in the business department. A short and incomplete list of what Sam manages would be: Competitions, Student Development, International Exchanges, Conferences, and he’s also involved with and advise business clubs and associations.

So as you probably understand, Sam is the person you want on board with your project, and it seemed natural for us to try to get Sam on board. It took many attempts to successfully have a meeting with him, but the wait was worth it. In what seems to be 5 minutes, but was probably more like 15 minutes, Sam has given us 2 contacts, advises on funding, given 2 website URLs which turned out to be great resources, he also gave his opinion and advised on how to maximize our chances of success and even offered more help!

So from here, we will try to get funding from at least 2 levels of government: municipal and provincial since they are the ones more closely affected by drug addiction in DTES and are therefore more likely to help us, and Sam has also contacts at these 2 levels.

Sam also advised that it would be lengthy and complicated to get a credit for the seminar, but it could be done with determination and good arguments. One good point he has brought is that the first event is all about numbers, how many people you can get, then those people will talk to other friends and the word will spread. So we might have to change our strategy a little in this regard.  Another idea was to have a panel discussion with a broad selection of experts: health care expert, DTES drug addict, government representant, someone close to the cause that think we’re not doing enough and maybe even someone from the 2010 committee.

One last thing that Sam talked about and that will get its own post is called Vancouver Agreement and involves the 3 levels of government in an attempt to to promote and support sustainable economic, social and community development. We’ll blog more about this initiative.

We invited Sam to come to our presentation on Monday, to be part of the booth and have a chance to network (because that is Sam’s strength). Of course someone like Sam is busy and he might not be able to attend because of prior engagements, but we keep our fingers crossed!

losing ground, gaining support

A discussion with Alan Campbell, Director of Mental Health and Addiction Services for the Vancouver Island Health Authority (VIHA). VIHA offers a range of services for addiction and their priority is providing appropriate accessible services for adults with serious mental illness and/or addictions. (Note: the views expressed here are of Alan Campbell’s, and do not reflect the views of the Vancouver Island Health Authority). 

As someone who works day-to-day addressing addiction and drug use, Alan is in a unique position to provide us with some insightful feedback on our social issue, drug policy, and our proposed solution. Addiction and drug use is a greater issue than treatment and prevention, it is about drug policy and how we deal with drugs overall; how we respond to this issue will affect addiction. Alan stated that this social issue is a ‘critical public policy issue’ an went further to say that ‘engaging the general public and providing clear information about addiction and substance abuse’ is vital. The hope is that this would ultimately result in a greater support for alternative and more effective approaches to dealing with the issue.

In our society at this time, we are facing an increase in drug use and there are views that we are ‘losing ground’ on drug availability, use, and addiction. Campbell stated his belief that the illegal drug industry has evolved more rapidly, with greater funding than the public policies that we have put in place to combat it. There is a sense of exasperation among people who work in the addiction community that they cannot alone tackle the problem and this creates a welcoming of alternative ideas from outside the community. 

The combination of feelings and evidence this presents a opportune time to step back from the issue, examine what is not working and look at what we can be doing differently to address this social issue. An open dialogue event such as the one we are proposing we hope would do just that. Addiction and drug use affects all areas of society and unfortunately, according to Campbell, not all groups affected are included in policy making. A discussion and generation of policy alternatives would have to include and represent everyone.

Campbell said the key issue that must be addressed is that most people do not understand what addiction is and what it is not- this is important to understand as it might allow people to address policy in a more effective way. In particular, I would argue this applies to policy makers at higher levels. They are often not exposed to the day-to-day consequences of addiction and drug use that communities are, however, policy makers often fall short of including these types of groups when designing policy. An event such as ours would need to present facts and evidence describing why exactly addiction is a problem and what impact it has on the various areas of society- a goal we would hope to achieve with our diverse panel of speakers.

Speaking about business students in particular, Campbell offered some reassurance that we do have something to contribute to the policy discussion and extended this to other groups outside the realm of addiction. Though we are fairly uninvolved and outside the addiction community, this may be an asset as we can see the issue from a different angle than someone surrounded by it. When you are do deeply involved in an issue, particularly addiction, you tend to become very passionate and your emotions can weigh in on the decision making process. Discussing addiction as outsiders and from more of an economical viewpoint as business student may provide some interesting ideas on alternatives; particularly in Vancouver where drug addiction is a visible issue. Campbell also went on to stress the importance of the commerce side of society to be informed and involved in social issues as it ultimately affects them as well.

Economic Drain

A discussion with Donald MacPherson, creator of Vancouver’s Four Pillar Drug Strategy to reduce drug related harm in the city. The approach is a coordinated, comprehensive approach that balances public order and public health in order to create a safer, healthier community. (Also see previous post)

Given Donald’s extensive experience with the issue of drug use, policy, and addressing addiction, speaking with him regarding our ideas was an excellent opportunity to receive valuable input. A really interesting point that Donald made was that cities have quite a unique opportunity to inform and shape drug policy from higher levels of government. Cities are experiencing the issue of addiction/drug use on a day-to-day level and and observing the consequences of use that federal policy makers do not observe. Unfortunately, drug policy development often does not include representation from municipal levels of government, which is a tragedy as they have much to offer.

Given this, change in opinion and the movement to reform drug policy must really come from cities and lower levels of government. Drug policy transformation must follow from changes in policy at the Federal level, which starts by transforming the way we look at drugs and addiction. Part of the resistance to abandoning prohibition is the stigma associated with users- whereby any policy that is compassionate is just feeding their addiction. According to Donald, society must first come out of denial about the extent of drug use in our city. Collaboration between all areas of society and levels of government is needed for policy transformation to become a reality, and its critical that users are included in policy development.

Speaking directly about the business community, the perspective of people in business toward drugs and addiction must change. Business people need to understand the economic and social costs associated with prohibition to understand that perhaps an alternative approach will be better socially and economically for all of society. Dialogue is needed between all facets of society for this to be realized. 

When I asked Donald what he felt was critical to include in an event such as the one we are proposing, he had some interesting suggestions. An inclusive dialogue between all areas of society that must include research people to inform the dialogue with a certain amount of scientific evidence. The dialogue itself should be just that, and not a debate as they tend to become largely ineffective for exploring alternative ideas. Exploration of a variety of perspectives would lead to a greater sharing and creativity overall.

Broad Exposure

A discussion with Mark Haden, a supervisor at Vancouver Coastal Health, a published author on drug policy in Canadian and international journals, an advocate of the failure of drug prohibition, a public educator on drugs and drug policy, and a member of the Keeping the Door Open (KDO) coalition. 

Mark is an advocate of drug policy reform with a number of publications on policy alternatives, and as such was very interested in being involved in our event. He provided a great deal of resources to assist in policy and in organizing and facilitating discussion at a dialogue such as the one we are proposing. As a member of the KDO coalition, Mark participates in open dialogue on drug policy and other drug related issues in Vancouver, much like the event we are hoping to launch for students.

To begin with, Mark described our dialogue event as ‘fascinating challenge’, whereas developing drug policy alternatives is no easy task. However, Mark welcomed the idea of ‘thinking outside the box’ and utilizing a collaboration of people for discussing policy alternatives especially those who may not commonly be exposed to an issue such as a addiction. In order to have the creative and innovative discussion necessary, we must have a variety of individuals speak about this issue and expose participants to a variety of views. The idea of collaboration is essential to the development of such novel alternatives. 

In exposing participants to such a variety of views however, it was recommended that we steer the discussion away from a debate format. As Mark suggested, the debate format often quickly narrows the discussion to only those views and people will tend to be less creative. Using more of an open dialogue approach to looking at addiction and drug policy will allow for a broader range of thought; people will be much more creative and apt to explore the edges of what is possible in approaching this topic. 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. Perhaps our event discussion can focus specifically on foundations of a new model for drug policy and the best approach for an alternative.

A really great suggestion for recognizing the views of the whole group of participants was to use an activity that asks all the participants specific questions on how a specific drug should be controlled for a variety of drugs. This engaging exercise would create a collective model and help promote discussion in the smaller group exercise involving the development of policy alternatives.

Meaningly Inclusive Dialogue

A discussion with Mark L. Winston, a Fellow in the Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue at Simon Fraser University and director of the Undergraduate Semester in Dialogue. 

The Undergraduate Semester in Dialogue (UGSID) at SFU is a course that each semester focuses student education on public issues through an intensive learning experience involving dialogue. From their website: “The Undergraduate Semester in Dialogue addresses what we believe is the principal challenge for contemporary education: to inspire students with a sense of civic responsibility, encourage their passion to improve Canadian society, and develop innovative intellectual tools for effective problem solving.” 

Each semester, the Undergraduate Semester in dialogue course organizes and executes public dialogues regarding the issue of focus. I spoke with Mark about our idea for an addiction dialogue event and aspects that make dialogue on social issues effective and meaningful. 

To begin with, our event must have clear goals. Who are we trying to educate and about what in particular? As our event is likely to include primarily business student, it was suggested that it may be valuable to look at it keeping this in mind. Business students often do not get the exposure to social issues in their post secondary education so addressing this issue in our event may be critical- educating students to transform their way of thinking about addition and how it is related to them. Asking questions like what is is that business can contribute to social issues, in particular, addiction? In what way has business contributed to the failure of drug policies?

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. Addiction and drug policy is a broad issue, so the topic of discussion at our event needs to be on a manageable level. We will need to focus on a specific set of policy issues and perhaps why they have been ineffective or effective. This will help to both emphasize the type of dialogue we are looking for at the event and provide a specific focus to direct the dialogue itself.

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. We want to foster a creative and open environment where students will share ideas- as Mark said, the success of an event such as ours depends on the specific contribution of the students and not just lectures from professionals. 

Overall the dialogue must be ‘meaningfully inclusive’ where it includes, and even focuses on, those least powerful in the room. This includes students and others in the community who may not be professionals, but are affected by addiction in our community. A suggestion made was to begin the event with everyone sharing a story about how addiction has affected their lives in any way- a method that will help to create a collective compassion, that puts the participants all at the same level to collaborate on developing novel ideas. 

As as means of facilitating continuing discussion and possibly developing policy alternative suggestions through dialogue, I proposed the idea of partnering with the UGSID to have in a semester following our our event a semester course on the topic of addiction and drug policy. Students participating in our event would be exposed to the opportunity to further their interests in the social issue of addiction through participation in the UGSID. Three requirements were discussed: the budget, how the dialogue would be structured, and that a diverse set of individuals would need to participate for the dialogue to be meaningful (including professionals, community representatives, politicians, business community representatives, and addicts).