Fights over drugs have enduring meaning  | Exeter Lakeshore Times Advance

By Diana Gifford-Jones Article content

Every so often, history taps you on the shoulder. That happened to me recently when I discovered a book on the science, culture, and regulation of drugs by Prof. Lucas Richert , a historian of pharmacy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The book devotes its entire first chapter to none other than my father, Dr. Ken Walker — better known to readers by his pen name, W. Gifford-Jones, MD. Article content

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Richert’s book, Strange Trips , presents the history of recreational, palliative and pharmaceutical drugs and the tension in debates between evidence and opinion, compassion and politics.

Readers may not know that in the late 1970s and early 1980s, my father became Canada’s most vocal advoca