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Abstract: North America''s first official safe injection facility has begun to generate substantial evidence attesting to the harm reduction benefits of supervised injection. Reductions in morbidity, mortality, and crime rates have strengthened the resolve of local advocates and even influenced the views of some original detractors. Many status quo defenders are unwavering, however, in their condemnation of initiatives like InSite. The term ‘drug den’ has been used in right-wing media and some opponents of the programme say the evidence is biased. In their view, harm reduction advocates are really ‘legalisers’ in the guise of scientists and public health professionals. Providing services for people with drug problems sends the message that some use of drugs is normal, rather than affirming that drug use is the problem. Abstinence, prevention, and enforcement are the only acceptable and morally legitimate solutions. Harm reduction''s muted stance on morals, rights and values prevents proponents from engaging criticisms of this nature in terms other than the evidence or science. The case of InSite in Vancouver, however, the authors argue, demonstrates the value of asserting human rights claims that do not rest on evidence per se. Scientific arguments are insufficient in themselves to move beyond the status quo on drugs. Rights-based moral warrants in support of harm reduction require far more extensive and explicit cultivation if they are to be discursively established and maintained. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: An affinity between the evidence and arguments for drug normalization and the policy and programme directions favoured by harm reduction is often assumed but seldom critically examined. This commentary looks at parallels and contradictions emerging with respect to different cultures, social settings, types of problems and responses where the match is less than perfect. Mounting evidence of normalization has also led to backlash in some countries and the mobilization of forces reaffirming prohibition. We call for further research on normalization that focuses on substance use, risks, harms, and social context across a broader spectrum of the population, and in a variety of cultures. By emphasizing the most serious harms experienced by persons in the smallest segments of drug using populations, harm reduction often has neglected broader research and policy suggestions that might be implemented to benefit controlled, recreational drug users. Future policy development with respect to normalization will require more research and more serious discussion of its implications for informing the transition toward a global public health approach to substance use. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Introduction: Canada is experiencing a new era of harm reduction policymaking and investment. While many provinces and territories are expanding access to these services, harm reduction policy and policymaking varies across the country. The present study, part of the Canadian Harm Reduction Policy Project (CHARPP), described policy actors' views on formal harm reduction policies in Canada's 13 provinces and territories.Methods: As part of CHARPP's mixed-method, multiple case study, we conducted qualitative interviews with 75 policy actors, including government officials, health system leaders, senior staff at community organizations, and advocates with self-identified lived experience of using drugs. Interviews were conducted in English or French, and recorded and transcribed verbatim. We used latent content analysis to inductively code the data and generate main findings. NVivo 11 was used to organize the transcripts.Results: Participants expressed divergent views on formal provincial/territorial policies and their impact on availability of harm reduction programs and services. While some identified a need to develop new policies or improve existing ones, others resisted bureaucratization of harm reduction or felt the absence of formal policy was instead, advantageous. Instances where harm reduction was advanced outside of formal policymaking were also described.Discussion: Previous CHARPP research documented wide variability in quantity and quality of formal harm reduction policies across Canada, and characterized official policy documents as serving largely rhetorical rather than instrumental functions. The present findings highlight diverse ways that actors used their discretion to navigate these weak policy contexts. Participants' views and experiences sometimes referred to strengthening policy support, but institutionalization of harm reduction was also resisted or rejected. Results suggest that actors adopt a range of pragmatic strategies to advance harm reduction services in response to policy vacuums characteristic of morality policy domains, and challenge assumptions about the utility of formal policies for advancing harm reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: It is now commonly accepted that there exists a form of drug supply, that involves the non-commercial supply of drugs to friends and acquaintances for little or no profit, which is qualitatively different from profit motivated 'drug dealing proper'. 'Social supply', as it has become known, has a strong conceptual footprint in the United Kingdom, shaped by empirical research, policy discussion and its accommodation in legal frameworks. Though scholarship has emerged in a number of contexts outside the UK, the extent to which social supply has developed as an internationally recognised concept in criminal justice contexts is still unclear.Methods: Drawing on an established international social supply research network across eleven nations, this paper provides the first assessment of social supply as an internationally relevant concept. Data derives from individual and team research stemming from Australia, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, England and Wales, and the United States, supported by expert reflection on research evidence and analysis of sentencing and media reporting in each context. In situ social supply experts addressed a common set of questions regarding the nature of social supply for their particular context including: an overview of social supply research activity, reflection on the extent that differentiation is accommodated in drug supply sentencing frameworks; evaluating the extent to which social supply is recognised in legal discourse and in sentencing practices and more broadly by e.g. criminal justice professionals in the public sphere. A thematic analysis of these scripts was undertaken and emergent themes were developed. Whilst having an absence of local research, New Zealand is also included in the analysis as there exists a genuine discursive presence of social supply in the drug control and sentencing policy contexts in that country.Results: Findings suggest that while social supply has been found to exist as a real and distinct behaviour, its acceptance and application in criminal justice systems ranges from explicit through to implicit. In the absence of dedicated guiding frameworks, strong use is made of discretion and mitigating circumstances in attempts to acknowledge supply differentiation. In some jurisdictions, there is no accommodation of social supply, and while aggravating factors can be applied to differentiate more serious offences, social suppliers remain subject to arbitrary deterrent sentencing apparatus.Conclusion: Due to the shifting sands of politics, mood, or geographical disparity, reliance on judicial discretion and the use of mitigating circumstances to implement commensurate sentences for social suppliers is no longer sufficient. Further research is required to strengthen the conceptual presence of social supply in policy and practice as a behaviour that extends beyond cannabis and is relevant to users of all drugs. Research informed guidelines and/or specific sentencing provisions for social suppliers would provide fewer possibilities for inconsistency and promote more proportionate outcomes for this fast-growing group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Access to harm reduction interventions among substance users across Canada is highly variable, and largely within the policy jurisdiction of the provinces and territories. This study systematically described variation in policy frameworks guiding harm reduction services among Canadian provinces and territories as part of the first national multimethod case study of harm reduction policy.Methods: Systematic and purposive searches identified publicly-accessible policy texts guiding planning and organization of one or more of seven targeted harm reduction services: needle distribution, naloxone, supervised injection/consumption, low-threshold opioid substitution (or maintenance) treatment, buprenorphine/naloxone (suboxone), drug checking, and safer inhalation kits. A corpus of 101 documents written or commissioned by provincial/territorial governments or their regional health authorities from 2000 to 2015 were identified and verified for relevance by a National Reference Committee. Texts were content analyzed using an a priori governance framework assessing managerial roles and functions, structures, interventions endorsed, client characteristics, and environmental variables.Results: Nationally, few (12%) of the documents were written to expressly guide harm reduction services or resources as their primary named purpose; most documents included harm reduction as a component of broader addiction and/or mental health strategies (43%) or blood-borne pathogen strategies (43%). Most documents (72%) identified roles and responsibilities of health service providers, but fewer declared how services would be funded (56%), specified a policy timeline (38%), referenced supporting legislation (26%), or received endorsement from elected members of government (16%). Nonspecific references to 'harm reduction' appeared an average of 12.8 times per document-far more frequently than references to specific harm reduction interventions (needle distribution=4.6 times/document; supervised injection service=1.4 times/document). Low-threshold opioid substitution, safer inhalation kits, drug checking, and buprenorphine/naloxone were virtually unmentioned. Two cases (Quebec and BC) produced about half of all policy documents, while 6 cases - covering parts of Atlantic and Northern Canada - each produced three or fewer.Conclusion: Canada exhibited wide regional variation in policies guiding the planning and organization of Canadian harm reduction services, with some areas of the country producing few or no policies. Despite a wealth of effectiveness and health economic research demonstrating the value of specific harm reduction interventions, policies guiding Canada from 2000 to 2015 did not stake out harm reduction interventions as a distinct, legitimate health service domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]