Dr. Mark Tyndall is an infectious diseases specialist, epidemiologist and public health physician with a focus on urban health, drug use and harm reduction. He has held a number of academic leadership positions and most recently was the Director of the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC). He is an author on over 300 peer-reviewed publications, and was co-lead investigator on the evaluation of Insite, North America’s first supervised injection site. His current work includes innovative solutions to prevent overdoses through safe supply programs and the use of biometric dispensing machines for opioids (MySafe). Dr. Tyndall is a strong Canadian advocate for public health through the lens of human rights and has championed the scale-up of vaping as a response to reducing the harms associated with tobacco use.

Mark Oates is the Director of We Vape and the Snus Users Association, which are both consumer groups standing up for the right of individuals to use safer nicotine products. He advocates for evidence-based harm reduction in a range of areas from tobacco to drug policy, a subject he has written on for the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Adam Smith Institute, where he is a Fellow. He also provided consumer evidence in the 2018 ECJ case to overturn the ban of snus across the European Union and worked on the successful 2018 campaign to legalise medical cannabis in the UK.