Guest Editors’ Introduction

Abstract

Introduction: From Criminalization to Informed Use Harm reduction programs emerged out of the need for pragmatic strategies to minimize the risk of HIV transmission among people who inject drugs and evidence of successful needle exchange programs in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Australia in the 1980s (Erickson, Riley, Cheueng, & O'Hare, 1997; although see Seddon, 2010, pp. 86-88, for a discussion of harm reduction in earlier periods). Both as theory and practice, harm reduction evolved as a critique and alternative to controlling drug use and drug users through legal sanctions. Its proponents claim that prohibitionist approaches aggravate both harms to health and society by stigmatizing and marginalizing drug users, in effect turning them into criminals. A wide range of harm reduction programs have evolved since the 1980s, targeting the use of substances ranging from heroin and amphetamines to cannabis, tobacco, and alcohol. Some programs provide users with safer means to administer substances such as clean needles to inject heroin or patches to deliver nicotine. Others promote safer alternatives such as buprenorphine or methadone to replace illegal heroin. Yet other projects create spaces that facilitate safer substance use and disseminate information designed to minimize harm rather than promote abstinence. The success or otherwise of such programs has been reported in regular conferences and a wide range of journals, including a journal dedicated to harm reduction, launched in 2004. Early harm reduction efforts that focused on ''high-risk'' groups such as injecting drug users and sex workers often assumed drug users to be relatively powerless in the face of potent substances, the victims of environments that mediate unsafe and illegal drug use (e.g., Duff, 2008; Rhodes, 2009). More recently, harm reduction efforts aimed at broader publics have called on smokers and drinkers to take responsibility for their own health. Such efforts have been analyzed extensively through the Foucaldian lenses of biopower and governmentality (Campbell & Shaw, 2008).

Chemical 24/7

“…Harm reduction programs, designed to mitigate drug harms, fail to recognize the health risks, including tiredness and sleep problems, related to the widespread use of energy drinks and other legal stimulants by youth (Hardon and Hymans 2016). Instead, such programs focus on risks of recreational drugs such as heroin, cannabis, and cigarettes and their potential for addiction (see also Chapter 9).…”

Chemical Highs

“…Dutch harm reduction programs highlight this need for selfregulation. Celebrate Safe advises youth to drink enough water, use earplugs, wear comfortable shoes, avoid the sun, keep an eye on each other, and help peers who don't feel well (Hardon and Hymans 2016). Their materials give the following advice: "Pace Yourself: Eat, Sleep, Rave."…”

“…One of the central arguments of this book is that the collaborative experiments of young people lead to shared understandings of chemical efficacy; as a corollary, we argue that closely examining how young people manage uncertainty and risks can contribute to novel ways to reduce harm "from below" (Hardon and Hymans 2016;Van Schipstal et al 2016). Harm reduction from below builds on young people's existing interest in mitigating the risks of chemicals, the hybrid nature of the networks in which they experiment with chemicals, and the protective nature of the social networks in which they experiment with drugs.…”

“…This chapter describes how young people in current-day Amsterdam self-regulate to achieve hassle-free highs, using strategies that elsewhere we have referred to as "harm reduction from below" (Hardon and Hymans 2016;Van Schipstal et al 2016). In our research in Amsterdam, we found that our interlocutors came to trust harm reduction workers as sources of accurate information on drugs, even as such workers sought to support youth in self-regulation and keep track of new trends in drug use.…”

Introduction

“…Young people across our field sites used chemicals for three main reasons: to achieve wellness, to enhance work opportunities and capacity, and to try out different kinds gender identities and sexual ways of being in the world. Achieving wellness entailed using products to feel attractive, connected, happy, and healthy, and to experience what we refer to elsewhere as “hassle-free” highs (Hardon and Hymans 2016 ; van Schipstal et al 2016 ; Hardon et al forthcoming, 2020 ). We found that it also involved using chemicals to create and enjoy lean and muscular bodies.…”