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.