{"id":15,"date":"2020-05-11T18:58:07","date_gmt":"2020-05-11T18:58:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/speakingout\/?page_id=15"},"modified":"2020-05-15T15:18:31","modified_gmt":"2020-05-15T15:18:31","slug":"harm-reduction","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/speakingout\/harm-reduction\/","title":{"rendered":"Harm Reduction"},"content":{"rendered":"

Harm Reduction<\/i><\/b>– any program, organization, or action which attempts to mitigate the negative side-effects of drug usage. This can include housing programs, safe injection sites, or diversion programs.<\/span><\/p>\n

Pre-Arrest Diversion<\/i><\/b>– refers to city programs where people can avoid getting convicted of drug-related crimes. This often involves demonstrating enrollment in rehabilitation programs.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Paul<\/strong><\/em>:<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0 That\u2019s a position that we face in terms of\u2026 \u2026 deprivation that exists in the schools and in the jobs and the opportunities, mass incarceration, and now they want to be, now they want a lighter approach to drug users<\/a> and they want to do harm reduction, they want to open up an overdose prevention site.<\/a> Which seems good, but it doesn\u2019t get to the problem. What are your feelings, what are your specific feelings, and then the feelings of people in your world?<\/p>\n

Moses:\u00a0 <\/strong><\/em>I\u2019m for harm reduction, I\u2019m completely for harm reduction. My family, immediate family and most of my family is for harm reduction<\/a>. The ones that understand what harm reduction is, a lot of people have a misconception. They don\u2019t understand harm reduction. People aren\u2019t dumb\u2026 \u2026but they\u2019re not always highly educated. So when you talk to them with really big words and they don\u2019t understand it, and the first thing they say is, \u201cYou just want to let them do drugs. That\u2019s all you want to do.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

So to me, in order to break it down, you\u2019ve got to just break it down to them in layman\u2019s terms. I feel that harm reduction is necessary, because it\u2019s going to save lives. It\u2019s going to save families. It\u2019s going to bring awareness. For people that don\u2019t understand that and if you don\u2019t expand from that, they\u2019re going to think that it\u2019s just about people shooting up, it\u2019s just a place where people are going to shoot up and kids are going to see they\u2019re shooting up, they\u2019re going to think it\u2019s okay. Not understanding that they have a disease, a disease of addiction, and it just so happens that they may shoot up heroin. That\u2019s their addiction, so we need to help them not hurt themselves. Because it\u2019s harm reduction, we\u2019ve got to help them<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Paul:\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>When we\u2019re talking about tax dollars, people need to be educated. I can\u2019t see it totally. What are your views of some of the hypocrisy of our state? How do you come to harm reduction, even though there are so many things?<\/p>\n

Moses :\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>The things that made me want to work with harm reduction and why I believe in harm reduction is because my family members. The ones that didn\u2019t get the chance to have a place to go where they would have resources, like you can talk to a counselor or take a shower. At our house, they weren\u2019t allowed to take a shower. I wish that there was something like this for my uncles, because two of them would be alive right now. I had a girlfriend a few years ago\u2026 \u2026who died of an OD, she was addicted to prescription pills and she died. So that\u2019s it. To me, it\u2019s so close to me that I can\u2019t see why I wouldn\u2019t want to help people that were suffering<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Because even, you look now at people in North Philadelphia, a lot of people pop pills. They don\u2019t see that as an issue<\/a>. They\u2019re addicted, they have an addiction problem. A lot of people die from Xanax, nobody goes, \u201cThey were addicted to Xanax, maybe they needed help.\u201d They go, \u201cHe was just popping pills,\u201d like it\u2019s something normal. But the addiction stems from the fact that they\u2019re young, until they get older, some of them just live through it and some don\u2019t. But it starts early, it starts early in their life with some of the things like Xanax. When I was in the Army, before I retired, I got diagnosed with PTSD. So they put me on this regiment of opioids that had me silly for about two years.<\/p>\n

When I got out, they had me on the same opioids, I didn\u2019t even know I was addicted to Xanax, I was addicted to pills, had no clue until they took me off medication. When they took me off medication, I started having withdrawals and that\u2019s when I knew I couldn\u2019t take \u2026 Even to this day I don\u2019t take, the most I take is Tylenol, because to me, I\u2019m afraid that I\u2019m going to get addicted again and given our family\u2019s history, I don\u2019t want to go to anything that\u2019s strong to feel better. But I do think marijuana should be used as a key for fighting addiction, because it\u2019s helped me out, that\u2019s what I do. I don\u2019t take pills, I smoke or eat edibles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Harm Reduction– any program, organization, or action which attempts to mitigate the negative side-effects of drug usage. This can include housing programs, safe injection sites, or diversion programs. Pre-Arrest Diversion– refers to city programs where people can avoid getting convicted of drug-related crimes. This often involves demonstrating enrollment in rehabilitation programs. Paul:\u00a0 That\u2019s a position […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1548,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"template-annotationspace.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-15","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/speakingout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/15","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/speakingout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/speakingout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/speakingout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1548"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/speakingout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/speakingout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/15\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":584,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/speakingout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/15\/revisions\/584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/speakingout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}