February 20, 2004
Harm Reduction
In my mind, Harm Reduction is taking steps to reduce the actual or potential harm caused by drinking. In my life, that has included drinking slower, lighter, later, and eating well before or during drinking when purely harm-free drinking has not been viable. Read more about that on this page.
As it’s worked for me, harm reduction hasn’t been an optimal long-term solution (I’d rather eliminate harm than reduce it) but it’s a great step when better answers are out of reach.
The UK Harm Reduction Alliance cites this definition from The Reduction of Drug-Related Harm, published in 1992:
Harm reduction is a term that defines policies, programmes, services and actions that work to reduce the:
- health;
- social; and
- economic
harms to:
- individuals;
- communities; and
- society
that are associated with the use of drugs.
The Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse (CCSA) identified these core principles (excerpted here) in 1996:
The main characteristics or principles of harm reduction are as follows:
- Pragmatism: Harm reduction accepts that some use of mind-altering substances is a common feature of human experience…
- Humanistic Values: The … user’s decision to [drink] is accepted as fact… No moralistic judgment is made either to condemn or to support [drinking]…
- Focus on Harms: The fact or extent of a person’s [drinking] per se is of secondary importance to the risk of harms consequent to use…
- Balancing Costs and Benefits: Some pragmatic process of … assessing the relative importance of [alcohol]-related problems, their associated harms, and costs/benefits of intervention…
- Priority of Immediate Goals: …Achieving the most immediate and realistic goals is usually viewed as first steps toward risk-free use, or, if appropriate, abstinence.
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