Harm Reduction

Rural County Takes Notes From Iceland’s Drug Prevention Model

December 22, 2025 Anabel Peterman, Next City. Create! Drugs, Harm Reduction, Health Care, Kentucky, Opioid crisis, Rural

While serving a three-year prison sentence for meth trafficking, Matewood Gerald got the call that she’d soon be a grandmother. Gerald started abusing drugs when she was just 13, and she says everyone in her small town of Irvine, Kentucky, has seen her at her worst. But she had to become the best version of herself for her granddaughter. “I would lay there and think, is she gonna like me? Am I going to be perfect whenever I get out?” Gerald recalls. Less than five years later, she is a peer support specialist with Mercy Health Marcum and Wallace Hospital in rural Irvine.

Experts Credit Harm Reduction For 27% Drop In Overdose Deaths

May 16, 2025 Mike Ludwig, Truthout. Strategize! CDC, Drug use, Drugs, Harm Reduction, Overdoses

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced on May 14 that the number of drug overdose deaths in the United States dropped by nearly 27 percent in 2024. The number represents a significant decrease after more than a decade of steeply climbing drug-related fatality rates that billions of dollars in federal spending on policing and border enforcement failed to contain. At the beginning of 2015, the CDC reported fewer than 50,000 overdose deaths annually. By 2021, that number had surpassed 100,000 before peaking at 111,451 during the summer of 2023. The CDC found massive racial disparities in the data, with the number of deaths recorded between 2019 and 2020 falling among white populations with better access to public health interventions while skyrocketing in Black and Indigenous communities where heavy policing trumped health care, for example.

OnPoint United Workers Fight To Unionize Overdose Prevention Site

February 26, 2025 OnPoint United Workers, Left Voice. Organize! Harm Reduction, New York City (NYC), Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

It’s been over a year since we won recognition and began negotiations at OnPoint NYC, an uphill battle to ratify a union contract. The compassion and love required to do the vital work we provide often comes at a personal cost to us as employees, yet our organization’s leadership refuses to extend that same love to us. As the first organization of its kind, there are no existing structures to support us, often leaving us burnt out and without proper protections for our well-being and mental health. Yet despite winning recognition over a year ago, our employer continues to union bust at every turn. We say: enough is enough.

Inside America’s First Official Safe Drug Consumption Site

January 1, 2025 Rebecca L. Root, Next City. Create! Harm Reduction, Opioid crisis, Overdoses, Safe Consumption Sites

At 8 a.m. on a Monday morning, most of the soft recliners in the waiting area of the three-story East Harlem overdose prevention center (OPC) are already occupied by those who have come to consume their first dose of the day. Whether it’s for fentanyl, heroin, or another drug, people of all ages trickle into the consumption room at OnPoint NYC, where mirrored cubicles line opposite sides of the room and a staff station sits in the middle with trays of needles, elastics, and wipes organized in rows. A man, who looks to be in his late 30s, unwraps today’s first fix of what most likely is the opioid fentanyl, which staff say is the most common drug used here.

2024 Roadmap For Opioid Settlement Funds

August 14, 2024 Mariah McGough, VOCAL-US. Create! Drug War, Harm Reduction, Opioid crisis, Public Health

Unfortunately, since we released our inaugural Roadmap last year, the overdose epidemic has only gotten worse. In fact, we are in the midst of an unprecedented overdose epidemic, with more than 220 people each day dying from opioid-related drug overdoses. Rather than focus on proven solutions —such as supportive housing, services and care — state lawmakers across the country are instead trying to “ticket and arrest” their way out of the problem. These punishing measures are torn directly from the well-worn pages of failed Drug War and “tough on crime” playbooks, which for decades have failed to get people off the streets and into stable housing.

How The ‘War On Drugs’ Tears Families Apart

June 9, 2024 Princess Harmony, Workers' World. Resist! Child Protective Services, Families, Harm Reduction, Public Health, War On Drugs

Medication Assisted Treatment for Opioid Use Disorder (also known as opioid addiction) is a valid pathway to recovery. In fact, it can be recovery itself, even if a patient requires staying on it for a set period of time or indefinitely. The viewpoint that MAT for chaotic opioid use is a form of recovery is one that people are slowly coming to accept, even if it comes into conflict with other, abstinence-based viewpoints of recovery. Unfortunately, there is a stigma associated with MAT, as expressed in the Narcotics Anonymous World Services Board of Trustees Bulletin #29, “Regarding Methadone and Other Drug Replacement Programs”: “We make a distinction between drugs used by drug replacement programs and other prescribed drugs because such drugs are prescribed specifically as addiction treatment.

Stop Attacks On Harm Reduction In Idaho

April 13, 2024 Princess Harmony, Workers World. Educate! Drug War, Harm Reduction, Health Care, Idaho

Harm reduction is exactly that: a reduction of the harm that can potentially be caused by drug use. For some, harm reduction includes trip sitting — having a sober friend watch over them, either in person or through emergency hotlines such as Never Use Alone, while they use drugs. For others, it can include distribution of information on how to identify fentanyl and xylazine with test strips. Providing clean and safe works — called “drug paraphernalia” by the government — is another key piece of the harm reduction puzzle.

Alberta Must Do More To Address Rising Drug Poisonings

June 28, 2023 Anna Junker, Edmonton Journal. Resist! Canada, Drug War, Harm Reduction, Health Care

There is a sense of desperation on Edmonton streets as outreach workers battle drug poisonings while Alberta recorded its highest-ever number of opioid fatalities in a single month. In an update to the province’s Substance Use Surveillance Data this week, Alberta recorded 179 opioid deaths in April, the highest number of opioid fatalities recorded in a single month since 175 deaths were reported in December 2021. In total, 613 Albertans died from an opioid poisoning between January and April this year. Data for May has not been released. February saw 151 opioid deaths, up from the 115 recorded in January.

Tribal Nations Turn To Harm Reduction In Battle Against Opioids

May 21, 2023 Elyse Wild, Native News Online. Create! Addiction, Harm Reduction, Health Care, Indigenous Peoples, Opioids

A group of children from the Pala Band of Mission Indians was walking home from school in 2016 when they found a plastic bag holding 100 bright blue pills. The kids tossed the bag back and forth as they walked to the tribe’s youth center, where they turned it into the staff. The staff at the youth center quickly called law enforcement, who informed them the pills were fentanyl, a highly potent synthetic opioid 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine. That same year, 16 youths from the Pala Band of Mission Indians died of opioid overdoses. For the California tribe — which has a population of around 1,000— the losses were a devastating sign that the opioid epidemic had gained footing in their community.

Drug Decriminalization Saves Lives

March 20, 2023 Editors, In These Times. Create! Harm Reduction, Health Care, Legalization, War On Drugs

The criminalization of drugs hasn’t kept them from becoming a public health hazard — and we can’t just pretend they don’t exist. More than 106,000 people died of drug overdoses in 2021 in the United States, a number that has doubled since 2015. Three-quarters of the overdose deaths in 2021 were from opioid use, and nearly 3 million Americans struggle with opioid use disorder today. To help affected people, many are arguing for a policy of “harm reduction” to make drug use less risky. Sites provide clean syringes and alcohol wipes to prevent the spread of infectious diseases for IV drug users, for example and are prepared with oxygen masks and the anti-overdose drug naloxone to help manage bad reactions.

Another Year Of Devastating Overdoses In Baltimore

December 2, 2021 Brandon Soderberg, The Real News. Create! Harm Reduction, Health Care, Human Rights, Opioid crisis

Last year, I hid behind an abandoned building in East Baltimore with three guys who all used heroin together as they tested their drugs, injected them, and made sure they were there for each other in case any of them overdosed. It was about 8AM in the middle of January 2020, sunny but cold, and “D”—Black, in his late thirties, without a home, and requesting anonymity for obvious reasons—held court behind a vacant rowhouse. D saw to it that he and his friends were as safe as possible—he’s more fastidious and more experienced than the others. Heroin had been part of his life for about 20 years. “I’ve been using off and on,” D explained to me. “Mostly on.” Most mornings back then, D and his friends looked out for one another because they understood that they were most likely to overdose when they used alone.

Amid Overdose Crisis, Public Health Groups Urge Congress To Pass Life-Saving Bills

December 1, 2021 Julia Conley, Common Dreams. Create! Congress, Harm Reduction, Opioid crisis, Public Health

Two weeks after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released sobering statistics showing a record-breaking number of drug overdoses in the U.S. in the first year of the coronavirus pandemic, more than 260 advocacy groups called on lawmakers Tuesday to urgently pass public health proposals to mitigate the crisis. Led by the Drug Policy Alliance, People's Action, the National Harm Reduction Coalition, and VOCAL-NY, the organizations said the unprecedented number of overdoses in the 12-month period ending in April 2021 was "grim, but not unexpected" considering the criminalization of drug use in the United States and lack of resources for people with drug use disorders.

Dan Bigg, Revolutionary Of Harm Reduction Movement, Dies

September 14, 2018 Kevin Zeese, Popular Resistance Educate! Drug Policy, Drug War, Harm Reduction

A colleague of mine, Dan Bigg of the Chicago Recovery Alliance, died on August 21 at his home. Bigg was at the forefront of bringing harm reduction into practice in the United States. The Fix called Dan "The Patron Saint of Harm Reduction" in a notable 2014 interview, and the Chicago Tribune described his work as "revolutionary." As a result of Bigg's efforts, friends and colleagues said, thousands of people who would have died from infections or overdoses are still alive - a flesh and blood legacy of the "harm reduction" philosophy Bigg helped to popularize.

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