The Problem with "Harm Reduction"

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 I used to think that “harm reduction” was a good thing.  Better that addicts don’t share their needles and thereby spread deadly diseases like HIV and Hepatitis C. So, it benefits society for the government to provide free disposable needles to addicts in order to prevent this. But the BC health authority's policy of giving addicts free doses of opiates in order to protect them from overdosing from street fentanyl goes too far. Yes, it may have led to decreased deaths,  but, unfortunately, it has introduced more youth to these opiates because, (suprise surprise!) that supposedly “safe supply” is now being sold on the street. These policies are actually encouraging opiate use in the name of reducing harm.


 There is a whole industry out there producing and distributing street drugs, getting rich off destroying people’s lives.  And what’s even worse is the lives destroyed by addiction itself.  We know it is causing great harm to society.  That’s what makes it a moral problem. 


Morality works by strictly forbidding seriously harmful behaviour. We may disagree about what should be forbidden.  Some will argue that addicts are victims; or, that addicts cannot help themselves.  That means that they believe that addicts ought to be considered as outside the moral system since they lack moral responsibility.  This is what “Harm Reduction”  often amounts to.  


 We make a distinction, in calling some people not morally responsible  because we accept that in order to be morally responsible a person has to be able to tell right from wrong.   But most addicts can tell the difference between right and wrong, and as users of street drugs, they  become a willing part of an evil system.  We must never encourage evil.  That means that we need some means of controlling the demand for these drugs.  If we don’t do this and only concentrate on controlling supply, we are missing a necessary cog in the system, and we can’t solve the problem.  So, how to do it humanely in a way that helps people recover?  We are very likely to disagree about how to do this, but either insisting on draconian punishments, or assuming that addicts aren’t morally responsible and therefore, we should give them access to a “safe supply”, are both ways of pretending to solve the problem rather than actually solving it.  We need effective solutions to the drug problem, not showboating!

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