Drug Reform
Owen is most noted, however, for his championing of drug policy reform.
After four years of research, Owen led local and national debate to fight drug addiction problems in Canadian cities through a "Four Pillar Approach", a comprehensive program with provisions for prevention, treatment, enforcement and harm reduction. An 85-page action plan was passed unanimously by Vancouver City Council in May 2001. This new policy had the support of over 80 per cent of Vancouver's residents, as well as the Federation of Canadian Municipalities' Big City Mayor's Caucus.
As a result of the Four Pillar Approach, Vancouver opened Insite, North America's first legal safe injection site for intravenous drug users, in 2003.
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Famous quotes containing the words drug and/or reform:
“While man can still his body keep
Wine or love drug him to sleep,
Waking he thanks the Lord that he
Has body and its stupidity....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“When I go into a museum and see the mummies wrapped in their linen bandages, I see that the lives of men began to need reform as long ago as when they walked the earth. I come out into the streets, and meet men who declare that the time is near at hand for the redemption of the race. But as men lived in Thebes, so do they live in Dunstable today.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)