User:Lmack/sandbox

Donald Alexander MacPherson Donald MacPherson is an acclaimed human rights advocate based in Vancouver, Canada, and the founding Executive Director of the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition (CDPC), based at Simon Fraser University. For over three decades he has been a leading figure in this area of expertise and advocates for renewed local, national and international drug policies that are based on principles of public health, scientific evidence, human rights and social inclusion. He has served on many not-for-profit boards, and since 2020 has been the chair of the Amsterdam based International Drug Policy Consortium.

Starting in 1987, MacPherson worked for the City of Vancouver becoming North America’s first Drug Policy Coordinator. He is the author of Vancouver’s ground-breaking Four Pillars Drug Strategy, which called for new approaches to drug problems based on public health principles and the appropriate regulation of all psychoactive substances. The four pillars are Harm Reduction, Enforcement, Treatment and Prevention. MacPherson has published several reports and articles and is co-author of books including: Raise Shit! Social action saving lives (2009) and More Harm than Good: Drug policy in Canada (2016). MacPherson has received several awards including the Kaiser Foundation National Award of Excellence in Public Policy in Canada (2007), the Richard Dennis Drug Peace Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Drug Policy Reform by the Drug Policy Alliance in the United States (2009); and the City of Vancouver was awarded the Canadian Urban Institutes Secure City Award for the Four Pillars Drug Strategy authored by MacPherson. He also received the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal (2013), the Nora and Ted Sterling Prize in Support of Controversy at Simon Fraser University (2017) where he is an Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences. In 2019 he received an Honorary Doctorate for his commitment to Human Rights from Adler University (Chicago, Vancouver). Donald MacPherson was born in 1952 in Ottawa and holds a BA from Concordia University in Montreal in Applied Social Science (1982) followed by years of graduate studies in Adult Education at OISE, University of Toronto (1882 -1886). He moved with his family to Vancouver in 1986 and began working at the Carnegie Centre in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside developing literacy and adult education programs before becoming the long term director of the centre (which is the largest in Canada) till 1996. From 1997 he continued to work for the City of Vancouver working closely with four Mayors including Philip Owen and Larry Campbell and writing and negotiating the policy work to help start Insite: North America’s first comprehensive safe injection site. He left working for government in 2009 to strengthen the civil society dialogue at national and international levels and to be a founding member of CDPC.