Forget the great divide
At heart I'm a harm reduction kind of person. I've spent the last decade working in needle programmes, running a website that provides injecting advice and presenting sessions at conferences promoting harm reduction. For me this work has always had as one of its goals the idea of helping people who want to stop using drugs achieve this. And for the people who don't want to stop, it's been about helping them stay safer and, if I can, 'nudging' them to the idea of stopping at some time in the future.
So the idea that harm reduction and recovery are somehow opposite ends of drugs work has been something I've always found confusing. To me recovery is harm reduction and harm reduction is something that sits perfectly in recovery – even the original ACMD document statement that kicked off needle programmes in the UK had as one of its stated goals 'increase abstinence'.
New video and Creative Commons
This site is copyrighted under 'Creative Commons'. As well as allowing people to freely use all the tools and downloads this allows people to adapt them into new and interesting projects as long as they credit the original and allow others to do the same.
Jamie Billingham as taken advantage of this to produce a lovely film.
My video from IHRA2011
Today Meghan Ralston from the Drug Policy Alliance gave a presentation to the International Harm Reduction Conference in Beirut. Unfortunately because of a technical issue a film that should have been embedded into the presentation was missing.
The video was of me talking about Last years #OD10 campaign and the resulting report. But not one to waste a film I thought I'd put it on here.
Lets stop saying 'clean'
I've been thinking of this for awhile, I want to ban the word 'clean' from drug services, granted it's only a word so you might think I'm just being picky, but words like this carry both a lot of power and a wide range of meanings.
Drug activism shirts
So Christmas is over its time to put those lovely jumpers Aunt Flow knitted for you in a charity bag, and time to get on with the year. But maybe you've still got some Christmas gift money left over and want to find something nice to wear (at least nicer than the jumper).
So I thought I'd just round up the best drugs related Tshirts that you can buy to support some great groups.
