The New York City Health Department’s “Let’s Talk Fentanyl” marketing campaign made headlines for putting posters that promoted unlawful drug use: “Don’t be ashamed you are using, be empowered that you are using safely.” Amid an unprecedented overdose disaster, public-health officers ought to acknowledge the impossibility of “using safely.” Treatment with the aim of full restoration is the way in which to stop overdoses.
The posters’ message is correct in a single respect: Users shouldn’t be shamed for having a substance-use dysfunction. Negative perceptions of dependancy too typically discourage folks from looking for assist and lead to preventable deaths. But asserting that medication empower customers desensitizes the general public to the actual harms of drug use. Lower threat perceptions will lead to extra informal experimentation. The desensitization and normalization of drug use will inevitably lead to extra overdoses.
The poster’s message falls underneath an rising drug-policy strategy often called “harm reduction,” which goals to cut back the dangers of continued substance use reasonably than intervening to cease it. That encompasses some smart insurance policies, such because the distribution of naloxone to reverse opioid overdoses. But selling drug use as empowering and secure is irresponsible and lethal.
Harm-reduction insurance policies typically extend drug use and fail to extend admissions to therapy whereas elevating the probability of an overdose. Oregon decriminalized the possession of exhausting medication by way of a 2020 poll initiative, which additionally expanded harm-reduction packages. Less than 1% of customers have entered therapy. Law-enforcement sources informed Portland’s KGW-TV that this strategy, within the station’s abstract, has “led to a huge increase in the amount of drugs on the streets—and now, an increase in crime,” together with assault, prostitution and drug dealing.
In New York City, 2,062 residents died of overdoses in 2020, up virtually 38% from 2019—and almost 8 in 10 have been from fentanyl. Yet public-health officers consider that telling customers to devour medication like fentanyl “safely” will one way or the other alleviate this disaster.
Treatment and accountability should stay the first pathway to a wholesome, drug-free life. Public-health officers ought to concentrate on lowering the frequency of drug use reasonably than fake it may be secure and empowering. By increasing therapy availability, educating in regards to the harms of drug use, and making certain that folks know dependancy may be overcome, officers can flip the nook of the overdose epidemic.
Real hurt discount is about assembly folks the place they’re. But let’s be sure we don’t go away them there.
Mr. Sabet is CEO of Smart Approaches to Marijuana and the Foundation for Drug Policy Solutions. He was a senior coverage adviser within the Obama and Bush White House.
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