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The controversial term “harm reduction” defines a public health approach that aims to mitigate the damaging effects of illegal drug use through programs such as clean-needle exchange. Those who oppose this approach argue that it facilitates and legitimizes illicit drug use. Meanwhile, advocates of harm reduction point to its proven effectiveness in reducing disease. The two sides went head-to-head during a recent session of the U.N. Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND), resulting in the adoption of a plan that will set the agenda for international drug control policy for the next decade, without any reference to “harm reduction.”

Opponents to inclusion of the “harm reduction” approach included the U.S., Russia, Japan, and Italy. The latter chose not to side with the European Union (EU) in its favor after the Vatican made a last-minute statement before the session claiming that “so called harm reduction leads to a liberalisation of the use of drugs, to an increase in the number of addicted people and to blurring of consciences,” according to the EU Observer. While U.S. President Obama backs federally-funded needle exchanges for addicts (in a break from the Bush administration’s drug policy), the U.S. delegation opposed the term as used in the plan because it included measures outside U.S. practice.

While these are certainly valid concerns, failing to include harm reduction in the plan ignores the reality of the global drug situation. It would be more useful to narrow the definition of harm reduction than to leave it out of the plan altogether. For years, studies have shown that needle-exchange programs significantly reduce new infection rates of HIV/AIDS and other blood-borne diseases among participants. With up to 30% of all HIV infections outside of sub-Saharan Africa occurring through unsafe drug injection, harm reduction is a way of confronting drug use that is consistent with health and human rights. The Drug Policy Alliance Network asserts that harm reduction demands new outcome measurements: “whereas the success of current drug policies is primarily measured by the change in use rates, the success of a harm reduction strategy is measured by the change in rates of death, disease, crime, and suffering.”

So far, the approach of the U.N. “war on drugs” hasn’t worked. A European commission report concluded that the last ten years of prohibitionist policy have not reduced the global drug problem, and that production and trafficking controls merely redistributed activities. A new strategy for the next ten years should be a more balanced approach supported by the EU that rehabilitates addicts rather than criminalizes them, while working to reduce global demand for drugs.

See also:

Human rights, harm reduction key to drug policy, U.N. rights chief says – UN News Centre, Mar 2009

Obama drug policy to do more to ease health risks – Reuters, Mar 2009

Nations Should Reject U.N. Drug Policy – Human Rights Watch, Mar 2009

Listen to Human Rights Watch on drug policy

Texas Senate Approves Bill to Allow Needle-Exchange Programs – Kaiser Network, Mar 2009

Time Lag in Vienna? – New York Times op-ed, Jan 2009