Slate has a couple of dispatches on “Vancouver’s experiment with helping addicts get high“
A commentary accuses opponents of “contempt for science”
I don’t oppose harm reduction but, like this blogger, I see no reason why a recovery orientation could not be introduced in every harm reduction service.
The zeal for insite and contempt for critics make me wonder what their feeling would be about programs that distribute sleeping bags to homeless people to prevent frostbite and exposure deaths? These programs exist and there’s one in my community.
Of course, there’s one important difference. They engage in considerable advocacy, and not for more sleeping bags or tents, but for housing.
UPDATE: Peapod mentioned “evidence” below. Along the lines of his comment, we could produce studies and reams of evidence that sleeping bag distribution prevents frostbite and reduce exposure deaths, right? Does that make it the right thing to do? Maybe. Does that make it an adequate response? No. Does that mean that, in the establishment of priorities, it should trump other responses? No.
Recovery Review 
Jason, the analogy of harm reduction in homelessness is well made and I am very likely to steal it (with a source citation).Again and again when speaking with harm reduction colleagues I come up against the same issues. The first is an absolute conviction about the practices based on a robust faith in "the evidence". The second is something akin to a blindness that there might be something more to offer.A third issue is that their clients or patients are just "too bad" to achieve abstinent recovery.Finally that abstinence is "dangerous" becaues of risk of loss of tolerance and the risk of relapse causing overdose.Sometimes I get frustrated, then I spend some time with recovering people which always helps.
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In Australia (where I live) harm reduction comes in various forms, from needle exchanges to a legal and medically supervised shooting room to the methadone program. Each is there to help preserve an addicts health and life long enough for them to find a way to address their drug problem whether it takes weeks, months or years. For those who never overcome their habits, the provision of harm reduction services mean that diseases such as Hepatitis C and AIDS are not transmitted between addicts and then on to the wider community (of which they are – like it or not – an interacting part). Supplying methadone to addicts who cannot quit also reduces and often eliminates crime that is much more costly to society than that of providing methadone itself. Many addicts have used methadone and related pharmacotherapies such as suboxone and buprenorphine as a legal bridge out of the grip of opiate addiction. Stabilised on a program of this type is sometimes the only way an addict can regain the social and economic security and mental clarity needed to attend counselling and psychiatric sessions regularly in order to address the problems that led to their addiction in the first place. There is no automatic clash between eventual healing and harm reduction in the meantime – in fact they complement each other to bring the best possible long-term result, whatever that might be for each individual addict. What is wrong with distributing sleeping bags as a temporary measure to help the homeless survive the cold of winter by sleeping in something warmer than newspapers until the political will and resources become available to do something more substantial? An all or nothing approach is the mantra of 'The War On Drugs' and has already led to immeasurable amounts of preventable death and needless suffering.
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