HARM REDUCTION WORKS –
June 3, 2022 – Whether it’s the safe-injection sites in Harlem and Brooklyn or the decriminalization of cocaine and opioid possession in British Columbia (announced this week), advocates of the harm-reduction approach must be willing to accept evidence.
Accepting hard-drug use signals that public-health authorities believe they have no tools to reverse a public-health crisis, that they are giving up on thousands of citizens or embracing the misbegotten idea that one can be a productive drug addict. Here’s another idea for the city Health Department: a subway campaign urging riders not to use drugs in the first place. Heavy-handed “Just say no” warnings may not be the right approach — but in a city filled with the most creative advertising firms in the world, we should not rule out a campaign that could change habits and lives.
It is ironic indeed that we see no such public-health campaign even as the state continues to run graphic portrayals of end-stage lung cancer and regrets from its victims that they ever took up smoking. A similar anti-drug campaign could include grief-stricken parents who have lost children to overdoses — and saw their potential snuffed out.
