Harm
Reduction
Conference
in
Cleveland
10/09/98
This week (10/6-10) activists, health care workers, researchers, former and current drug users, people living with AIDS and HIV and public health officials from across North America gathered in Cleveland, Ohio for the second annual Harm Reduction Coalition conference. This diverse group discussed such issues as syringe exchange, HIV services and prevention, drug treatment, housing issues and the further development of policy initiatives which can reduce the harms associated with substance use and society's responses to it. Proponents of harm reduction point to real world successes, such as the low rates of HIV among injection drug users and their families in parts of the world which adopted syringe exchange early, as well as the proportionately large numbers of people who enter treatment as the result of being brought into stable systems, rather than being chased underground by punitive policies designed to punish, rather than help people in need. Allan Clear, Executive Director of the Harm Reduction Coalition, told The Week Online, "One of our goals in holding this conference is to bring together a wide assortment of constituencies who are impacted by substance use and by drug policy, either in their work or in their lives. The conference provides a wonderful learning experience and has led, we believe, to better communication and more effective advocacy on all fronts. "It is especially significant that we have city and state health officials from all over America in attendance, as they, more than the politicians in Washington, are really on the front lines. They see the shortcomings in our current policies, they see what works, what impact AIDS and other diseases have had on their cities and their budgets, and they are interested in being part of rational solutions. The rhetoric is all well and good until you are confronted by the actual human beings who are impacted. Everyone here has an overarching concern for public health and for community health and for reducing the destruction that we see all around us. I think that it's wonderful that the harm reduction movement has gained so much momentum here, as America has lagged so far behind much of the rest of the developed world in really addressing these issues in a pragmatic and effective way." (Day-by-day conference newsletters will be posted online at http://www.drcnet.org/hrc-cleveland/ available sometime Friday afternoon. The Harm Reduction Coalition can be found on the web at http://www.harmreduction.org.)
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