Pubdate: Thu, 19 Mar 2015
Source: Globe and Mail (Canada)
Copyright: 2015 The Globe and Mail Company
Contact:  http://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/168
Author: Marsha Lederman
Page: S4

'PROHIBITION' ON DRUGS DOESN'T WORK

An unlikely expert says narcotics and addiction must be considered
health issues, not criminal issues

Bruce Haden is an award-winning Vancouver-based architect. On
Wednesday, he spoke at the TED conference - not about architecture or
urban design, but about drug policy. He called for a move away from
controlling drug use by making it illegal, and moving to a different
system of regulation.

"The supporters of the current policy of prohibition have had their
time to make it work and they have failed," he said. "Drug
interdiction is not effective and it's not ethical."

Mr. Haden's knowledge of this issue was not learned in school or from
reading a story in the newspaper. It hit him in the gut on June 7,
2008, when he could not reach his younger brother, with whom he was
supposed to be having dinner. He went to his brother's three-storey
stucco walk-up apartment in Kitsilano with his girlfriend to look for
him.

"As we climbed the stairs, we noticed a terrible chemical stench. His
doorway was blocked by a heavy object," he told the silent TED
audience. "That object was his body."

Paul Haden was a respected hospital lab technologist who loved
science, his brother explained. He was also a manufacturer of illegal
drugs, principally MDMA - or ecstasy. He died purifying 2.2 kilograms
of dirty street ecstasy in his kitchen.

He was not driven by financial considerations (even if he did make
money doing it), Mr. Haden says. Rather, his core passion was a
commitment to a safe supply for ecstasy users.

"Paul was not a drug dealer in the usual sense; he was an activist. He
believed that drug use was, like prostitution, an ingrained aspect of
any advanced culture that could never be wiped out by prohibition. In
his view, the greatest harm in our culture's relationship with
drugswas the absence of a safe supply and a lack of honest information
about responsible use and risks. This harm is a direct result of a
system that treats matters of drugs and addiction as criminal justice
matters, not as issues of health and education," Mr. Haden said to
hoots and applause from the well-heeled and educated TED crowd.

"Put another way, he knew that kids were going to do 'E' at raves no
matter how many cops you have on the street. And he thought those kids
should know what they were getting."

Mr. Haden says his brother, who worked at Burnaby General Hospital,
was no hero - he lied about his drug use, and his final actions forced
his neighbours to evacuate their homes for two days. (The beakers of
chemicals boiling on his stove top also meant the contents of his own
apartment were so toxic they had to be destroyed. The family could not
even recover photos from his computer hard drive.) But his brother's
death, at the age of 44, has led Mr. Haden to become an advocate
himself and fight for changes in drug policy.

"There is a direct line between the death of my brother, at least 10
recent and completely avoidable deaths in Western Canada caused by
toxic dirty ecstasy, millions of lives ruined by incarceration, gang
violence and more than 50,000 vicious drug war deaths in Mexico and
Central America," Mr. Haden said. "As creators of the current system
of prohibition, those deaths are our responsibility. We have blood on
our hands."

Mr. Haden pointed out that his father, a successful psychiatrist, was
also addicted to a substance - but because it was alcohol, and he had
access to a reliable and clean supply of scotch, he was able to hold a
job and raise a family and live his life. (Another brother, Mark
Haden, is a drug and addiction counsellor and drug policy activist who
focuses on the issue of gradated legalization.) Bruce Haden says he is
speaking openly about Paul's death because he believes people with
personal experience and credibility who are not necessarily experts
about an issue can be important catalysts for change when they speak
out.

"A strategy guided by public health best practices that makes
substances carefully available, but does not promote the use, is one
that's proven to reduce use, abuse, addiction and the terrible social
consequences of prohibition."

Mr. Haden has spoken about his brother and this issue before in
Vancouver, but bringing it to the TED stage takes it to another level.
"For me, this is a little bit of an act of service because the TED
audience is so powerful," he told The Globe and Mail after his
appearance.
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