Stop Hijacking the Harm Reduction Movement
I've had enough of the saviors, charlatans, and grifters infiltrating and causing harm
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The harm reduction movement has gotten to the point where people are egregiously shoe-horning at worst, or are passionately getting involved without malicious intent at best, but still taking up so much space and using up so many resources with their savior complexes. It pushes the most marginalized with lived experience into the margins of the (re: our) movement. In some cases, it completely changes the trajectory of what's happening from a service standpoint, projects/initiatives that are addressing drug use and drug policy reform/legislation, and what’s happening to the most vulnerable populations of people who use drugs. There are 8 principles of harm reduction (sometimes 4) and these bozos can unlikely recite a single one.
Drug Checking Won't Save Us
About a week ago, I was informed about an Indiegogo product that was raising money to build a low cost "consumer friendly" raman spectroscopy drug checking device. It's hard to know where to begin when discussing this topic, as this is nowhere near the first, nor the last, group of folks completely uninvolved in any harm reduction or drug policy reform …
My experiences have accumulated from years of working with harm reduction agencies and advocates alongside other activists, organizations, and companies that work in a space related to drug use—whether that's drug policy reform, cannabis reform, psychedelics movements, researchers, drug/equipment companies, etc. They’re all groups which, in theory, should be in alignment with and not in opposition to or at odds with the harm reduction movement and its objectives. However, due to misunderstandings of what harm reduction is, or people lack the historical context and mindset to take appropriate actions that make positive changes in the lives of people who use drugs, people who sell drugs, and any communities that would be subject to (whether directly or indirectly) to consequences that come from the war on drugs and an unreliable, increasingly dangerous drug supply.
For example, there was legislation that was being worked on for New York state with Senator Gustavo Rivera around all drug decriminalization (which started at least 4 years ago). Out of all the people involved in spearheading this committee and move the decriminalization bill forward, none of them were actually involved in harm reduction. They did try to recruit harm reduction advocates like myself to be involved, but many left (honestly, most of us don’t have time for unpaid [policy] work), and then it felt as if I was carrying the majority of the responsibility in shaping the language in the bill, because despite their hearts being in the right place—they really didn’t know how to advocate for harm reduction. It shouldn’t even include anything about decriminalizing drugs so that plant medicines/psychedelics are accessible to “cure additions”, it also doesn’t need to when there’s plenty of data that supports decriminalization. However, if that’s the type of language folks want to use in order to tell policymakers what they need to hear—by all means, do it. However, that’s not harm reduction. I’m sure there’s another name for it.
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It’d also be nice if folks would just be honest that they want to do their drugs of choice without consequence. Psychedelics or cannabis is not some panacea. Psychedelics are great and all, but they’ve not been proven to be THAT effective beyond very specific contexts, and researchers tend to obfuscate inconvenient details or stretch the benefits.
It's not just drug policy reform folks—it's people in health care and people who might work in recovery services. Then there's the people who get involved when they have friends, family, whatever loved ones impacted by drug use or incarceration related to drug use or drug trafficking, etc. but they blame the drugs or some other failure that isn’t the system that create and perpetuate these harmful cycles, taking many pages out of the Reagans’ racist, classist, and homophobic playbook unconsciously.
What these people rarely have are the experiences of the most marginalized population of drug users. While they might have proximity to this, that doesn't necessarily mean they understand the needs, all of the nuances around the challenges of being a person who uses drugs that might be poor, of a marginalized racial identity, a young person, very old person, a poly drug user, an injection drug user user, opioid, crack, or methamphetamine user, sex worker, etc. These are all heavily stigmatized types of drug use and heavily stigmatized groups of people that engage in other heavily stigmatized, high risk activities. So, there's a lot of people involved in making shit happen—or attempting to make shit happen—who just unfortunately don't really know what they're doing, but yet they have all the visibility, are granted most of the funding, have upward career mobility with or without having any involvement in this space, and other privileges.
When they are trying to be more inclusive of people who use drugs in their missions and movements, like my experiences working on a decriminalization bill, the labor and expectations that's placed on individuals with lived experience and other specific harm reduction expertise, is disproportionate and inequitable. They end up relying very heavily on this experience and expertise as someone who’s much more immersed in a specific type of drug culture they’re addressing. They have a much broader knowledge of legislation around drugs outside of cannabis, psychedelics, or [cherry-picked] “plant medicines”, for example. Even worse when they have no drug knowledge or experience at all outside of what they might have learned in some textbooks as part of their educational curriculum, which we all know is very incomplete, not current with the latest drug trends, and often rife with misinformation—and even disinformation. Not only are these groups and individuals leaning on those who have the experience and/or expertise, they are not compensating them fairly (if at all), or creating accessible, sustainable, and gainful long-term opportunities for folks like myself. Policy work is very rigorous and it's not a short endeavor getting anything through to a Senator, the White House, or in front of any legislator's or politician’s eyes.
In peer/popular education settings of harm reduction (like nightlife-centered harm reduction), volunteers and improperly classified contractors are relentlessly exploited. People who have the least amount of time and resources to be involved heavily in labor intensive work are being asked for time and expertise that typically is compensated fairly in any other context and are not being compensated, despite heavy burdens being placed on these individuals. I’ve witnessed and experienced this with a number of organizations in the harm reduction space. Some institutions, organizations, and for-profit companies have exploited this type of labor from myself and others, where they are not compensating them fairly (if at all), or creating accessible, sustainable, and gainful long-term opportunities for folks like myself. I may feel accomplished briefly that my work was being recognized in a more impactful context, but quickly realize I’m being tokenized for others’ personal gain.
I won’t even get into the shitshow that was the authoring of some kind of psychedelic harm reduction manual for Zendo or MAPS—I can’t recall which. Somewhere deep in my archives, I likely have screenshots of several areas where I corrected sometimes harmful misinformation written by people who have expertise in things that are NOT harm reduction. I gave up about 3 chapters in. I believe the manual was published a year or two later, but if it continued the way it had started, I would not vouch for the use of that manual as guidance for harm reduction in any context. In the psychedelic space, harm reduction is too often reduced to managing challenging mental/emotional states while utilizing psychedelics, or conflated with being a pathway to recovery (using psychedelics as the medium for recovering from those other “icky” drugs).
I have been on panels, spoken on large stages at conferences, and represented large organizations in many ways without any compensation, accommodations covered, per diems or reimbursements, and job opportunities. I’ve even slept on hotel room floors just to participate. After all is said and done, I have very little to show for it—maybe a credit somewhere buried deep in a byline or acknowledgement that no one will ever read in the preface of some document, or buried in the bibliography or citation section of a journal—if even that much. I've had a lot of my work, knowledge, and expertise ripped off entirely. I know I’m not the only person this has happened to. A panel talk authored by a comrade was presented at the Harm Reduction Conference in 2022, by an organization that had turned its back on them after essentially wrongfully firing them.
People have built their entire careers off of information that I've taught them or inspired them to pursue. Yet, I still find myself in a position of not having my material needs met while still working in an industry where there's more jobs than ever to do this work, more roles where I and many of my peers are highly qualified, but we get the lowest paying jobs that often have high responsibilities and are very emotionally taxing, if any job at all.
Never once have I been promoted into full-time, salaried positions when they become available with these organizations after busting my whole ass working for very little or free, while greatly contributing to the success of the organization. The expectation seems to be that we labor tirelessly out of the goodness of our hearts because our participants’ lives matter—but so do ours. We have to be able to survive as well. How is hiring or involving PWUD in an exploitative manner in alignment with any of our values?
Many want us to be able to operate in a context that is very hostile towards people who use drugs providing services in a way that is very unsustainable for anybody, let alone someone who’s at poverty levels of income, has disabilities, mental health disorders, and possibly a drug-using habit that is intertwined with the latter.
It’s become clear to me over the last few years, especially with the Opioid Settlement Funds, that money for harm reduction is being exploited by entities that have far more resources and credentials to apply for and be awarded with these funds. As a result, these entities full of professionals from other fields who recently entered this line of work and rarely have any idea what they’re doing when it comes to harm reduction, have essentially become competition to established grassroots organizations and organizations that adhere closely to the Principles of Harmreduction (which still has far less mainstream popularity than advocating for recovery services, and usually offer more controversial and sometimes illegal services like clean/safer use supplies, consumption spaces, drug checking services and/or supplies, and refuse the use or distribution of harmful tools like high dose naloxone for overdose reversal).
I believe most of it’s unconscious. I don't think any of it's intentional or malicious, but they're not aware which is why I'm calling it out. When professionals from other industries enter and dominate the space, I’ve noticed that they operate in a way that implies that only they are capable of making a positive impact, hence PWUD/PWLE being put in such low-level positions with little to no upward mobility (if they’re involved at all).
There’s a sense of entitlement that comes with this at times as well. I have been involved in projects where I have witnessed organizations apply for grants and funds they actually do not need because they have access to so many other funding sources. These organizations and companies are often awarded these funds because I believe that most funders want to back entities that are considered “low risk” and don’t have very radical or ambitious objectives. Why should a faith-based organization led by folks that only promotes recovery and abstinence even be considered, let alone be given funding for harm reduction initiatives? It’s because it looks and sounds way better than appearing to enable or condone people using drugs, or because of implicit biases that folks hold when they believe that someone with a formal education, no criminal record or history, no institutionalizations, etc. is more competent and capable of the tasks at hand. How many psychedelic drug recovery programs do we need, and why are law enforcement agencies getting any of that money? There has been quite a bit of gross misappropriation of funding, there’s too many instances to recall or know of.
In my experience, these organizations are often predominantly (if not ALL) white and affluent, especially the executive staff and/or board (if applicable). They even have the audacity to apply to funds that are designed to support predominantly BIPOC communities and/or majority BIPOC led organizations that serve their local communities. I have seen tax returns, budgets/proposals/work plans that confirm this, and I always do due diligence on the makeup of organizations, so I’m not speculating. Some of them are aware of it, too, because they will obfuscate the demographic makeup of their organizations to make it seem less white and more diverse than it is.
This issue I’m calling out is that everybody wants to be a hero in harm reduction right now and are rarely authentically and equitably involving any of the community that harm reduction was built by and also serves. When they are involving the community, it's rarely in leadership or executive level roles, yet these organizations could not have the impact that they have without these staff members that are the most overworked and underpaid. For example, the mobile van workers, social workers, the harm reduction specialists, etc.—the people who have to interact with these very vulnerable populations, see or experience some of the most traumatizing things you’ll ever see or experience because you're working in conditions and with certain types of people in situations that are prone to being chaotic—it's not going to be pretty (break up fights, get assaulted while doing your job, experience threats and violence with and without weapons first hand, experience sexual misconduct, be continuously exposed to substances you may have/have had issues with, etc.).
People are not aware that this is very problematic behavior, and if we're going to progress and have drug user solidarity and progressive drug policies, then people need to recognize these patterns that push people out of the space that are very valuable to the space, or do not properly integrate the talent and expertise that they have into the process. Some positions’ duties virtually anyone could perform with the right training and exposure, however, in the application process these entities expect quite a robust background that requires specific levels of education, certifications, and/or professional experience in formal settings such as Public Health, yet will still offer a part-time wage of like $17/hr, which in New York City is literally $2 above minimum wage.
Individuals and organizations guilty of these behaviors I believe do have the ability and capacity to do better—and some have, which is why I’m being very intentionally vague about many details. The intimate details of these incidents are not particularly important to my point. Everyone involved has moved on in various ways, but incidents like this have caused immense trauma and destabilization and dragging up names would probably be counterproductive. Instead, I’m naming these occurrences, as I usually do, to raise awareness of issues and teach important lessons.
If anyone recognizes this may be an issue for them or their affiliations, I’m always happy to help or point folks in the right resources so they can course correct. I’m not interested in arguing about the validity of my statements. I feel no motivation at this juncture of my life’s work to keep wasting my time trying to prove to skeptics who are probably part of the problem that white supremacy exists in these spaces, even when they have EEO and DEI clauses all over their website, job applications, and even in the mission statement in their bylaws.
(P.S. You don’t have to be white to [unconsciously] subscribe to white supremacist bullshit)