Drug controls are 'absolutely pathetic,' activist says regulation will save lives
The cost of not making changes to update and modernize our drug laws has cost thousands of citizens across the country their lives
Tuesday, April 25, 2017
A Vancouver based drug policy researcher has been working for decades to get the federal government to regulate illegal drugs like heroin and cocaine. Don MacPherson authored the groundbreaking Four Pillars Approach to Drug Problems in Vancouver in 2001 — calling for this kind of regulation. Now, 16 years later, and in the midst of a year-long public health emergency in B.C. centred around overdose deaths, MacPherson continues to try to convince politicians that this is the only way out of the overdose crisis. "It's clear that every thing we are doing is not working. It's absolutely pathetic that we can not move beyond this paradigm that we have supported for so many years and at the cost of so many lives." (See also: And the band played on: Overdoses, death and a resistance to change)
