Donald MacPherson, recently honoured with a lifetime achievement award in recognition of his advocacy for evidence-based approaches to substance use, sometimes feels like there’s yet a lifetime of work before him.
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He moved to Vancouver in 1986, when alcohol abuse was the big problem in the Downtown Eastside. As director of the Carnegie Community Centre, he saw the number of deaths from overdose begin to climb, then soar, especially when heroin sold on the street became stronger.
“I began very passionately questioning what was going on here,” MacPherson said. “There was no response but ambulances and more police, and even the police say we can’t arrest our way out (of the drug problem).”
After a decade at Carnegie, MacPherson took up his position with the city in 2000 and was there 12 years before taking on his current job that united five or six dozen organizations and 3,000 individuals working toward developing progressive drug policies grounded in science, guided by public health principles and respectful of human rights, according to the
Canadian Drug Policy Coalition mission statement.
The coalition is run through SFU, where MacPherson is an adjunct professor in the faculty of health sciences.
