WHITE CALLS FOR MORATORIUM ON DRUG STRATEGY

Randy White is now retired from his former Abbotsford MP position,
but that doesn't necessarily mean he has stopped working.

He is now the president of the Drug Prevention Network of Canada, an
organization that has just tabled a report entitled The Hijacking of
Drug Policy in Canada: Implications and a Call to Action.

"I think we have an obligation to provide the public with the facts.
Lately, it's been a one-sided argument all about harm reduction,"
White said. "[The report] is not anti-harm reduction, it's to make
people remember the main issues of prevention and treatment," he
said. "Harm reduction does not have a goal of getting people off
drugs, it's maintaining them on drugs."

Jeffrey Hansen-Carlson, who ran for the New Democratic Party in the
Jan. 23 election and is now head the Abbotsford Action Network, disagrees.

"The objective of harm reduction is not to keep people on drugs. It
is a tool to keep them alive until there are treatment options
available," Hansen-Carlson said.

Hansen-Carlson says the Abbotsford Action Network will advocate for
the implementation of a four pillars model community-based drug
strategy with key components looking at enforcement, prevention, harm
reduction and treatment.

"Harm reduction is just a component of a strategy that has to be
assessed alongside treatment, prevention and enforcement,"
Hansen-Carlson said. "It all has to happen together to be effective .
. . funding for treatment really is the maker or breaker, and there's
cities all over the world using a four-pillars approach - and
receiving the funding for [treatment]."

But White is hoping the DPN report, authored by DPN director of
research Dr. Colin Mangham [PhD in community health], will catch the
attention of Prime Minister Stephen Harper and others across the
country "and around the world, even." Among other recommendations,
Mangham's report calls for a moratorium on the current Canadian drug strategy.

"The darn thing is just not working - there's more people on drugs,
there's more crime because of drugs and there's more money being
spent on maintaining people on drugs," White said. "And I'm not going
to stop until we do something about it."