Canada - TED speaker shares family tragedy to show drug bans ‘not effective and...

[S.J.B.]

TED speaker shares family tragedy to show drug bans ‘not effective and ... not ethical’
Marsha Lederman
The Globe and Mail
March 18th, 2015

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.

Read the full story here.

Wow, it's not often you see a clandestine chemist being portrayed positively in a mainstream publication. Thanks, Bruce!

I wonder how exactly Paul Haden managed to kill himself doing chemistry in his kitchen.

 

[greengummybear]

In his view, the greatest harm in our culture’s relationship with drugs was 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.

this is true, especially the part on honest information about responsible use. after the failures of "Just Say No" America hasn't made the decision to fix the issue. the DEAs new website (www.justthinktwice.com) doesn't consider alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine drugs. the website also lacks any information on how people should make responsible choices about using psychoactive when they do.