Setting goals for drug policy: harm reduction or use reduction?

A Plea for Harm Reduction Policing Involving People Who Use Drugs

When in a drug epidemic should the policy objective switch from use reduction to harm reduction?

A heated debate in drug policy concerns the relative merits of ‘‘harm reduction” (e.g., reducing drugrelated HIV/AIDS transmission) vs. ‘‘use reduction” (controlling drug use per se). This paper models whether shifting emphasis between these goals over the course of a drug epidemic might reduce social costs relative to pursuing one or the other exclusively. Results suggest different answers for...

Chapter 1 Harm reduction and the mainstream

Harm reduction encompasses interventions, programmes and policies that seek to reduce the health, social and economic harms of drug use to individuals, communities and societies. We envisage harm reduction as a ‘combination intervention’, made up of a package of interventions tailored to local setting and need, which give primary emphasis to reducing the harms of drug use. We note the enhanced ...

HIV/AIDS policy agenda setting in Iran

Background: HIV/AIDS control are one of the most important goals of the health systems. The aim of this study was to determine how HIV/AIDS control was initiated among policy makers’ agenda setting in Iran.   Methods: A qualitative research (semi-structured interview) was conducted using Kingdon’s framework (problem, policy and politics streams, and policy windows and policy...

Incarcerated Women and Drug Abuse: an International Perspective

The climate of domestic drug policy in the United States as it pertains to both women and men at the beginning of the 21 st century is the criminalization mode of regulation—a mode that is based on the model of addiction as a crime and one that is used to prohibit the use of currently illegal drugs. In Canada, drug policy is based mainly on the harm reduction model, a policy or program directed...