The Minneapolis Times published a provocative column on harm reduction from a writer who previously worked in a social service agency.
Harm reduction made sense to me as a way of managing an immediate danger. Somewhere along the way, it seemed to become an end in itself. The question was no longer only how to keep someone alive long enough to have another chance. It was how to make virtually any decision surrounding drug use safer, with remarkably little professional appetite for saying that some decisions were, in fact, worse than others.
There’s no doubt some will believe the column is biased and distorts the issues involved. However, I read this as a personal reflection on the writer’s personal experience working in the space, and I think she does a pretty good job steel-manning the case for harm reduction. What I find interesting is what I read as an exploration of her dissonance.
…keeping someone alive is no small accomplishment. Sometimes it is the only accomplishment possible that day.
But keeping someone alive is not the same thing as believing there is nothing better to hope for.
There is a difference between refusing to abandon someone because he is destroying himself and becoming so committed to making that destruction safer that we lose our willingness to say he deserves something better.
Meet people where they are. Keep them alive. Treat them like human beings. Reduce the suffering you can today, even when you cannot solve the larger problem.
But don’t become so committed to meeting people where they are that you forget to ask where we’re hoping they might go.
Too many exchanges in our space seek to end conversations through delegitimization or mic-drop posts. I don’t find the title helpful, but I appreciate this column’s both/and approach and hope space for productive dialogue is opening up.
For example, “believing there is nothing better to hope for” fair? In some cases, probably. In many other cases, it’s probably not rooted in belief as much as a focus on making it through the next day or week in the absence of effective and accessible pathways to long-term recovery.
Proctor, C. (2026, September 19). The Harm Reduction Industrial Complex | Minneapolis Times. https://minneapolistimes.com/the-harm-reduction-industrial-complex/
