Why is the Department of Veterans Affairs still backing extreme “harm reduction”?
Yes, drug users should have access to lifesaving medications and medication-assisted treatment if necessary. But those need to serve as a path out of addiction, not as part of a lather-rinse-repeat cycle within it.
And there’s a world of difference between that and the examples below—drawn from material currently available via the VA website.
First up, there’s a two-pager called “How to Smoke Drugs Safer.”
The title is already a problem. But the content is truly worrying.
Here’s the lead-in:
It almost reads like . . . an advertisement. What signal does that send to someone in crisis?
Then there’s this:
Those checkmarks and the bouncy, cheery tone: This communicates almost zero sense that smoking any drug is terrible for you, and that smoking some of the ones listed at the brochure’s top can literally kill you.
But the real kicker is here:
How is that any different from simply encouraging use?
But it gets worse. Look at another brochure, “Safer Injection Practices for People Who Inject Drugs.” It contains a literal roadmap to worse addiction and death.
Or the below: The fact that the government is telling users to “never lick” skin or needles—presumably to clean them—shows that the deep and unmet needs of the target audience here are well-known to the brochure’s creators. But this is not going to meet anyone’s needs or help anyone defeat addiction.
Is this image—from the brochure’s title page—meant to suggest that intravenous drug use can be a real “power to the people” moment?
Here are some helpful chemistry lessons, right below an admonition not to cook your drugs in toilet water.
Then there’s this short course in moving from intermediate to advanced addiction—and note again the bizarrely cheery tone and friendly exclamation points!!!
Here’s another dubious claim:
Is it, though?
But worst of all, from the title page:
This certainly reads like an effort to co-opt the idea of prevention—i.e. the proven best way of keeping people from developing substance-use disorders through education about the risks early in life—into meaning something like you’re a success story if you don’t get hepatitis.
None of these are messages anyone should be hearing, let alone from an agency with the power and prestige of the federal government. People with substance abuse disorders need help and compassionate encouragement to break the cycle of addiction—not granular instructions how to stay entrenched in it until it eventually kills them.
The VA should take this stuff down posthaste. But what’s a viable alternative?
Look no further than the Hyannis Consensus from the Foundation for Drug Policy Solutions.
Instead of instructions on where to the hold the lighter when you’re smoking drugs, the Consensus proposes a culture of prevention in which, from early childhood on, practices that don’t normalize use are incorporated across all aspects of life. Instead of red-light-green-light guides on where to inject, the Consensus proposes available, accessible, affordable treatment and intervention programs backed by permanent investment for funding. And while meeting people where they are is a key principle within it, the FDPS policy architecture does not advocate leaving them there, trapped in their cycle, but instead giving them a hand up into recovery surrounded by a loving community and infrastructure that foregrounds getting away from addiction.
You can learn more by clicking here.