This article is part of the following series: Reducing Harm Responsibly
Addiction is exceedingly moralized. Perhaps no other concept associated with the experience of addiction reveals this more than that of responsibility. Too often, addiction is understood in terms of a lack or failure of personal responsibility; rehabilitation is understood in terms of instilling a sense of such responsibility; and, as this collection of essays attests, public health programs aimed at drug use …
This article is part of the following series: Reducing Harm Responsibly
Behind the long counter of Café Dugnad, smells of spices and meat float out of industrial ovens. Light streams in through the glass doors of the smallish café, as loud hip-hop plays through the speakers. All day, someone hands out coffee and juice over the counter, and the café serves around 200 plates of food at lunch and dinner. At …
This article is part of the following series: Reducing Harm Responsibly
Canada, like most capitalist societies of the global North, faces “an unprecedented and devastating wave of overdoses” and overdose deaths (Wells, 2017), intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic (Government of Canada, 2021). In the summer of 2017, activists including people who use drugs (PWUD), allies, and nurses in Ottawa responded to this wave of overdoses by establishing the city’s first unsanctioned …
This article is part of the following series: Reducing Harm Responsibly
In 2019, Sebastian Kaleta, a member of the Polish parliament associated with the ruling Law and Justice party, published a report denigrating Warsaw-based organisations working in the fields of LGBTQ+ rights and harm reduction. The report alleged that these non-governmental organisations and informal groups spend public money to de facto ‘affirm’ the use of psychoactive substances and ‘promote’ non-heteronormative sexual …
This article is part of the following series: Reducing Harm Responsibly
Figure 1: Non-safe-injection site behind Paris’ Gare du Nord, February 2016 (all photos by author).The first time I ever saw a person shooting up was right behind Paris’s Gare du Nord railway station in 2015. He was crouched in front of the low concrete wall in the picture (Figure 1). I had met André[1] when I volunteered at …
This article is part of the following series: Reducing Harm Responsibly
Philadelphia is the poorest of the ten largest cities in the United States and has one of the highest rates of fatal opioid-related overdoses in the state of Pennsylvania. Faced with a limited landscape of social services and community-based support, and the responsibility of keeping their defendants alive, judges and attorneys in Philadelphia have begun to use probation and incarceration …