Pubdate: Mon, 22 Aug 2005
Source: Salt Lake Tribune (UT)
Copyright: 2005 The Salt Lake Tribune
Contact:  http://www.sltrib.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/383
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/hr.htm (Harm Reduction)

GETTING REAL: THE HARM REDUCTION PROJECT

'Soft On Drugs' Charge Is Absurd

Nobody wants their daughter taking meth. Nobody wants their son shooting 
heroin. Not because those behaviors are illegal - though they are and 
almost certainly always will be - but because that junk kills people. But 
no parent protects her children by denying that drug abuse exists. Even the 
most bellicose of the drug warriors will tell you that. And when the 
anti-drug crusaders condemn such reasonable and realistic efforts as the 
Harm Reduction Project as somehow being soft on drugs, then it is the drug 
warriors who are in deep and harmful denial. Harm Reduction advocates know 
better than anyone that drugs kill people. In many cases it is their own 
children who have died, or who have come much closer to death than any 
parent wants to imagine.

But they also know that a one-track approach to drug abuse - arrest, jail, 
disgrace, rap sheet, deeper addiction - is no cure and, if anything, makes 
death from accidental overdose even more likely. No matter how many laws we 
pass or how many prisons we build, no matter how many dedicated police 
officers and brave DEA agents seek to enforce those laws and fill those 
prisons, drug abuse is not a law enforcement problem susceptible to a law 
enforcement solution. It is a public health problem that will only be 
addressed - addressed, not eliminated - with a public health approach.

The Harm Reduction Project, bravely hosted in Salt Lake City this past week 
by Mayor Rocky Anderson, is in the enlightened public health model of 
dealing with drug abuse and addiction. Harm Reduction abandons the pipe 
dream of a world without drugs and concentrates instead on educating people 
on how to avoid drugs, how to avoid overdosing on drugs and what to do if 
someone has overdosed.

The idea is not to judge or punish, just to save lives. The approach wisely 
mirrors the attitude of doctors who are prepared to treat the results of 
germs, viruses, firearms, sharp objects and inattentive drivers but who, 
unlike those who take a more enlightened approach to drug abuse, are not 
accused of favoring disease or disaster. There is no shortage of examples 
where someone headed down the suicidal road of drug addiction was indeed 
saved by being busted.

If, that is, the cops got to them before the needle did. For those who 
aren't so lucky, the clear-eyed approach of the Harm Reduction Project is 
the best answer we have.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Beth