What is Harm Reduction?
The goal of harm reduction is to decrease negative health outcomes–like injury, illnesses, and diseases–that may happen due to activities that come with risks, such as drug use or sex. Harm reduction includes things like using condoms/barriers for sex, carrying NARCAN, or using sanitary drug consumption supplies.
We believe in respecting people’s choices about what they do with their own bodies. Complete sobriety and abstinence is NOT the only way to be successful! People are going to use drugs and have sex–and they deserve access to safe supplies. Harm reduction is practical, and is based on decades of research and evidence. Most importantly, harm reduction saves lives.
Learn more about harm reduction here: https://www.samhsa.gov/find-help/harm-reduction
Harm Reduction in History
The HIV epidemic of the 1980s was the catalyst for implementing what we now know as Harm Reduction. The movement for harm reduction was created and applied as a form of civil disobedience and radical advocacy especially for those who use drugs and those that have HIV/AIDS.
Because of the HIV epidemic, any methods to reduce the spread or transmission of blood-borne infections like HIV was crucial. Not only was this crisis widely spread globally and largely fatal, it also occurred during the crack cocaine epidemic in the USA. This unfortunately created a lot of barriers and difficulty in the implementation for harm reduction programs since it was widely believed that harm reduction actually condoned and promoted drug use, which is not true.
