The Harm Reduction Gap: Helping Individuals Left Behind by Conventional Drug Prevention and Abstinence-only Addiction Treatment [Hardcover]

Introduction  1. Just Say No and the Harm Reduction Gap  2. How the War on Drugs Created the Harm Reduction Gap  3. What Is Harm Reduction?  4. What Are Harm Reduction Tenets and Beliefs?  5. Why Harm Reductionists Embrace the Drug, Set, and Setting Model  6. Treatment and the Harm Reduction Gap  7. What Harm Reduction Is Not  8. Conclusion: Moving Beyond Drug (and Drug User) Exceptionalism

Sheila P. Vakharia, PhD, MSW, is a nationally recognized harm reduction expert with over 15 years of combined experience in addiction treatment, harm reduction, higher education, research, and drug policy reform. She currently works at the Drug Policy Alliance, a national advocacy organization fighting to end the war on drugs.

This long-awaited book teaches how harm reduction can be a safety net for people with substance use disorders that our current addiction treatment rejects, abandons, and leaves behind.

This long-awaited book teaches how harm reduction can be a safety net for people with substance use disorders that our current addiction treatment rejects, abandons, and leaves behind.

Harm reduction is an approach to helping people who engage in high-risk activities to develop the skills and strategies to keep them and their communities safe. This can include the provision of sterile equipment, low-threshold and low-barrier care, and the acceptance of non-abstinence goals in treatment. In this novel guide, Dr. Vakharia discusses the shortcomings of the dominant Just Say No drug prevention messages and abstinence-only treatment approaches, introduces harm reduction strategies and technologies borne from people who use drugs themselves, and suggests various policy options available as alternatives to the current policies that criminalize drugs, drug-using equipment, and the settings in which plã¨