Edumacating Harper

Beth points to EducatingHarper.com, a simple but clever advocacy website on drug policy reform:

This is a protest and education site by drug policy researcher and educator Dr. Susan Boyd in partnership with Beyond Prohibition Coalition, a Vancouver- based group that promotes community health, safety and drug policy reform.

It comes in response to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s new legislation that will see mandatory minimum sentences for growing marijuana, reduced funding for harm reduction and increased funding for police enforcement (Bill C-26).

For each of the next 52 weeks, I will send Prime Minister Harper a letter containing educational information on harm reduction and drug regulation. These articles, as well as any reponses to these letters, will be posted below.

This is a great, media-friendly idea, and a very respectful approach. I have a few suggestions for improvements:

• Make the site a blog, so that each letter gets its own entry. This will enable people to easily reference individual letters, and will include an RSS feed that enables visitors to get updates when you post a new letter.
• Make the letters available in plain HTML, as opposed to a Flash file (oddly). This would enable people to easily copy and paste the letters. They could send their own or excerpt them elsewhere (such as here, for example). Plus, the italicized text in that Flash file is a little hard to read.
• Can’t…resist…copy…editing…fix the title capitalization in the header graphic.
• Add a contact form or email address. Dr. Boyd’s email address is actually on this page and linked from EducatingHarper.com, but that’s not obvious enough.