Harm Reduction, Damage Control or Worse?
Settled science is resigned science. And it’s not science at all. Increasingly it has become a means of justifying profitable agendas. It’s also how we’ve gone from prevention to “harm reduction.”
And the harm we’re settling for is arguably one of the biggest threats we face on many fronts.
We’ve gone from “First do no harm” to collateral damage.
…from stopping opioid addiction to preventing overdose.
…from disease prevention to disease trade-offs.
…from healing to symptom avoidance.
Running from one form of suffering to another, we have become escape artists and victims, missing critical opportunities for growth, learning, cultivation and true healing. This weakens us and robs us of courage, grit and resilience.
And it shows.
What is Harm Reduction?
According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), “Harm reduction is an evidence-based approach that is critical to engaging with people who use drugs and equipping them with life-saving tools and information to create positive change in their lives and potentially save their lives. Harm reduction is a key pillar in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Overdose Prevention Strategy.”
But according to Michael Schellenberger, “we’re subsidizing addiction where we should be subsidizing recovery from addiction.”
One of the things I’m worried about is when you have people in authority, government agencies on the internet and on television talking about safe places, safe havens, clean needles, it can be taken as an implicit endorsment that this is now safer. That it’s ok. And they say, “well we’re saving lives here.” And that’s true… you’re standing there with a paramedic while you’re shooting up… You can save probably even more lives if you just start shooting up in the ER. But is that not enabling? - Dr. Phil
Harm reduction programs pour billions of taxpayer dollars into this resignation.
How did we get here?
In a prime example of governments creating problems and then trading those problems for new ones with their “solutions”, consider S3957/A5630. This legislation, which “expands exemptions from criminal drug paraphernalia laws to additionally exempt certain harm reduction supplies,” was sponsored by Senator Joe Vitale and Assemblyman Herb Conoway, both chairs of their respective health committees.
"Harm reduction supplies" means any materials or equipment [designed to identify or analyze the presence, strength, effectiveness, or purity of controlled dangerous substances or controlled substance analogs, including, but not limited to, fentanyl test strips; opioid antidotes and associated supplies; and any other materials or equipment that may be used to prevent, reduce or mitigate the harms of disease transmission, overdose, and other harms associated with personal drug use as are designated through] used or intended for use in preventing, reducing, or mitigating the adverse effects associated with the personal use of controlled dangerous substances, controlled substance analogs, or toxic chemicals, which adverse effects may include, but are not limited to, disease transmission and overdose.
Current law establishes criminal penalties for possessing, manufacturing, distributing, dispensing, or advertising drug paraphernalia, which items used in connection with the production, distribution, and use of illicit drugs. Current law provides certain exceptions from the definition of “drug paraphernalia” for fentanyl test strips and hypodermic needles and syringes that are sold by a pharmacy.
https://www.njleg.state.nj.us/bill-search/2022/A5630/bill-text?f=A6000&n=5630_S1
In other words, New Jersey’s primary response to the opioid crisis is to subsidize “safer” addiction practices. (And in terms of mitigating the spread of blood borne disease, clean needles only benefit users. Once used, what becomes of the dirty discarded needle?)
If we go back a few years, we can readily see how these same legislators played a significant role in allowing the opioid crisis to take root in New Jersey.
Conaway’s penchant for government interference in patient decisions shifts considerably when it comes to the regulation of opioids. More than once he blocked legislation that was geared towards limiting opioid abuse, saying, “The concerns that I have deal with intrusions by the government in the doctor-patient relationship…That relationship is critical to patients receiving the care they need. It’s critical to good outcomes in healthcare.”
In 2016, the Senate passed legislation to restrict first-time opioid prescriptions to seven days, but Conaway would not hold hearings in his committee. “Either you believe that the government can practice medicine or you don’t,” he said.
It’s a troubling pattern.
COVID response is perhaps the most egregious example of lowering/burying/annihilating the bar when it comes to our well being. But there are so many…
Remember when vaping was introduced as a harm reduction approach to cigarette smoking?
2015…
The comprehensive review of the evidence finds that almost all of the 2.6 million adults using e-cigarettes in Great Britain are current or ex-smokers, most of whom are using the devices to help them quit smoking or to prevent them going back to cigarettes. It also provides reassurance that very few adults and young people who have never smoked are becoming regular e-cigarette users (less than 1% in each group).
2019…
Lung injuries and deaths linked to the use of e-cigarettes, or vaping products, have continued to rise in recent weeks… As of November 21, the CDCTrusted Source has confirmed 2,290 vaping related lung injury cases, with 47 deaths.
2024…
Don’t settle for their “science” or their “solutions.”
Instead, follow the silenced. You may find a wealth of solutions there.
With regards to harm reduction, I suggest you look at the work of Dr. Mutulu Shakur, a civil rights activist who was involved in Black liberation and acupuncture healthcare movements from the late 1960s to the 1980s. Mutulu used the NADA acupuncture protocol to help thousands of drug users detox at the Lincoln Detox People’s Program in the South Bronx.
In the midst of a drug epidemic that devastated local communities both physically and morally, the Center and acupuncture provided hope for the patients, and “the potential of self-determination.” The practice restored a level of agency in the hands of patients, and it was “an important contribution to that struggle” against the drug crisis. Many patients even became practitioners, and the movement began to spread as a “barefoot doctor acupuncture cadre” where “brothers and sisters [were taught] the fundamentals of acupuncture to serious acupuncture, how it was used in the revolutionary context in China.”
https://www.ofpartandparcel.com/blog-2/dr-mutulu-shakur-and-the-lincoln-detox-center
Let’s restore empowerment, personal responsibility and self-determination.
Powerful & informative article - thank you much. To enable is to disable. Passing on to many ...
The vaping problems in 2019 had nothing to do with vaping but with people adding the wrong materials while manufacturing homemade THC cartridges. I've been vaping for 10 years and have had zero problems, has saved me from a 2 packs/day cigarette habit.