ACTIVIST AIMS TO SCHOOL HARPER IN DRUG POLICY

Every week for the next 52 weeks, Susan Boyd will be "educating"
Prime Minister Stephen Harper about harm reduction and drug
regulation by sending him a letter.

Vancouver-based Boyd is an associate professor in the studies in
policy and practice program and a senior research fellow at the
Centre for Addictions Research of B.C., both at the University of
Victoria. She told the Georgia Straight she has been "interested in
drug policy for almost 20 years" and is part of the Vancouver-based
Beyond Prohibition Coalition.

Proponents of harm reduction claim it mitigates the potential dangers
and health risks associated with drug use and does not focus time and
effort on incarceration and criminalization.

"I became much more interested in educating him this past year, with
the 2007 throne speech, 2007 budget, and his bill to bring about
mandatory minimums for drug offences and trafficking," Boyd said by
phone. "So all of these issues brought together my idea that I should
do something a little more public in relation to education and protest."

Boyd is posting each of the 52 letters-the first one went out
February 3-on www.educatingharper.com/. For this on-line idea, Boyd
gives credit to Spanish-born Canadian Yann Martel, author of The Life
of Pi. Martel has been sending Harper a secondhand book every two
weeks to promote appreciation of the arts.

Former three-term Vancouver mayor Philip Owen, also listed in the
ranks of Boyd's coalition, said Harper "doesn't listen" on this issue.

"The words harm reduction, they simply don't understand them," Owen
said by phone. "They have prevention, treatment, and enforcement.
They have $64 million for those three pillars and nothing about harm
reduction. And that is spread over two years right across the
country, so that they can say, 'Look, we just funded prevention,
treatment, and harm reduction.' "

Boyd noted that in 2002, then-political neophyte Larry Campbell won
the Vancouver mayoral race on a drug platform that promised to carry
on the work of Owen, city drug-policy coordinator Donald MacPherson,
and the Four Pillars Coalition, who pushed for Insite-North America's
first supervised injection site.

"It was an election issue here in Vancouver, and I think it could be
and needs to be again," she said. "I think it would be worthwhile to
think about the larger issues connected to drug policy in relation to
our tax dollars going towards police initiatives and prohibition.
It's very expensive. We would do better to look at this issue, have a
legal and regulated market, and put more funding into prevention,
education, and initiatives that really speak to local issues as well,
instead of constantly supporting a failed policy that becomes more
and more expensive."

Boyd asserted that if drugs were legally regulated, "we would not
have the type of drug-trade violence that we have experienced since
prohibition began."

Added Owen: "But the [U.S.] federal government in Washington has
blinkers on, and Harper has to phone Washington to get permission to
go to the bathroom, I think. He won't make a move without talking to
George Bush-not on Afghanistan or anything. But the media and the
public agree with me, because it [harm reduction] is the right thing to do."

The Web site of the Drug Prevention Network of Canada dismisses harm
reduction as a philosophy that is "fatalistic and faulty at its
core". Harper thanked the network for participating in discussions
when he announced his National Anti-Drug Strategy in October.

Owen said he is "pissed off" by this line of thinking.

Harper and Health Minister Tony Clement did not respond to Straight
requests for an interview. Chuck Doucette, vice-president of the
Ottawa-based Drug Prevention Network of Canada, did not return a call
by deadline.