A native of Edmonton, Alberta, Dr. Beyerstein received his undergraduate degree from Simon Fraser University and his Ph.D. in Experimental and Biological Psychology from the University of California at Berkeley.

Dr. Beyerstein's publications in psychopharmacology (the area that studies drug effects on consciousness and behaviour) have included areas such as drug effects on mental processes, mechanisms of addiction, environmental effects on drug use, and social consequences of drug use. He has also been involved in issues related to how scientific data should inform drug policy and various aspects of legal approaches to drug regulation. Dr. Beyerstein is a member of the Advisory Board of the Drug Policy Foundation (Washington, DC) and a founding board member of the Canadian Foundation for Drug Policy (Ottawa, Ontario). He is a former contributing editor of the International Journal of Drug Policy (Manchester, UK).

Dr. Beyerstein has testified as an expert witness in numerous civil and criminal cases. He has testified regarding drug effects on consciousness, memory, perception, aggression, etc., and on topics such as addiction and recidivism. He has also testified before and been consulted by various official boards and organizations in regard to urinalysis as a means of reducing drug abuse. Dr. Beyerstein was invited to address the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health during their discussions leading up to passage of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the bill which replaced the Narcotics Control Act.

Elected to the House of Commons in 1997, Libby Davies represents the federal riding of Vancouver East, in the city of Vancouver, with a population of over 100,000. The riding includes the neighbourhoods of the Downtown Eastside - the lowest income urban community in Canada, Strathcona, Grandview Woodlands, Mount Pleasant and Hastings Sunrise.

Libby is the federal NDP spokesperson for Children, Youth, Post Secondary Education, Social Programs and Housing.

A community activist in Vancouver for 25 years, Libby has always fought for social justice and equality for all. Libby, along with her late husband Bruce Eriksen, was a key figure in the formation of the Downtown Eastside Residents’ Association (DERA) in 1973. In 10 years of community organizing work with DERA in the Downtown Eastside, Libby developed her strong grassroots approach to working with people and diverse communities.

Libby was elected to Vancouver City Council in 1982 - 1993 and served 5 consecutive terms. During this period, Libby’s work in Vancouver involved her in every community issue, from protecting community services to developing affordable housing, to fighting for parks and to working for the elimination of poverty.

Libby has always been a strong supporter of Vancouver’s cultural and immigrant communities. She supported the development of the Chinese Cultural Centre, Italian seniors housing and the Chilean Housing Co-op. Libby has also worked tirelessly for human rights - fighting for racial, gender and sexual equality. She has helped many families and individuals, assisting them with local problems and concerns at every level of government. Libby is an outspoken and well known advocate for social equality and social policy development.

Libby has also been a longstanding ally of the labour movement, and has worked closely with labour and trade unions for fair wages, employment equity and social solidarity. She has served in the role of Ombudsperson for Human Rights with the Hospital Employees’ Union (HEU), as well as a Complaints Investigator. Most recently Libby was with Human Resources with the HEU, the largest health care union in BC.

As a result of her achievements in the field of social justice, Libby received the Helena Gutteridge Award in 1995 for her civic contribution, the Syd Thompson Community Service Award in 1993 from the Vancouver and District Labour Council and the Peace Medal Award in 1990 from the YMCA. She has published in “City Magazine” and has been a contributing author to 2 books about peace and the arms race.

Libby was born in 1953 in England and came to Canada in 1968. She has lived in Vancouver since 1969 and has one son, Lief Eriksen.

Homepage: http://www.libbydavies.ca/
Email: daviel@parl.gc.ca

J. McRee (Mac) Elrod was born in Georgia in 1932. He has obtained a B.A. (Magna cum laude), two M.A. degrees, and an M.S. He has worked in Korea, Tennessee, Missouri, Ohio, and British Columbia Canada. He was active in the Southern civil rights movement in the United States, and moved to Canada in 1967, due to opposition to the conflict in Vietnam. He is a retired Unitarian minister living in a log house on a mountain in Metchosin. Seeing that the relative harm caused to his six children by legal nicotine vs. illegal marjuana bore no relationship to their relative legal status, he has come to feel that present drug policies are both unjust and unwise. Rev. Elrod has delivered his sermon "Values and the War on Drugs" to a number of Unitarian congregations in the Pacific Northwest.

Homepage: http://slc.bc.ca/mac/
Email: mac@slc.bc.ca

For the past seven years, Matthew Elrod has been providing research, web design, programming and technical support for over three dozen drug policy reform organizations including; the American Medical Marijuana Association, the British Columbia Compassion Club Society, the Canadian Cannabis Coalition, the Canadian Foundation for Drug Policy, Common Sense for Drug Policy, the Drug Policy Alliance, the Harm Reduction Coalition, the Marijuana Policy Project, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, the November Coalition and the Vancouver Island Compassion Society

Matt is a father of three girls who works from his log home in Metchosin, B.C.

Homepage: http://drugsense.org/me/
Email: matt@elrod.ca

David Hadorn is a physician and a philosopher, with four children (ages 9-22), an M.D. from UC San Diego (1976), and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand (2001).

Dr. Hadorn was born and raised in the Chicago area, and moved to California at age 17, where he went to college (at UC Irvine) and medical school. Because of his interests in the brain, including the nature of schizophrenia, he initially wanted to become a psychiatrist. However, late in medical school he changed his focus: He wanted to be able to handle almost any medical problem that might come along, from the injuries that occur in car accidents to heart attacks.

For this reason, Dr. Hadorn enrolled in an emergency medicine residency at Louisville General Hospital, graduating in 1979. He then worked full-time in emergency departments, mostly in California and Colorado. In 1988, while director of the emergency department at Boulder Memorial Hospital, he received a Master's degree in philosophy from the University of Colorado. His thesis concerned distributive justice, life-prolonging health services, health status measurement, and related issues.

While living in New Zealand, Dr. hadorn became interested in governmental policies toward "illicit" drugs. Despite the fact that a substantial proportion of the NZ population used cannabis on a regular basis, New Zealand practiced U.S.-style cannabis prohibition. Indeed, New Zealand has an even higher arrest rate for cannabis than the United States.

In response to this situation, he helped put together the Drug Policy Forum Trust, a group of well-known and respected physicians and professionals. The NZDPFT developed position papers, responded to unscientific and false information on cannabis policy, and testified at government hearings on the subject of cannabis policies.

Currently he serves as medical consultant to BC Pharmacare, the Canadian federal health minister's office, and GW Pharmaceuticals, a British company developing cannabis-based medicines. He is also involved in a consultative capacity in the area of drug policy reform.