What is harm reduction? Explain this approach

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

A harm reduction approach involves lessening the harms caused to youths by drug use and by some of the more punitive responses to drug use. Harm reduction encapsulates some of the efforts advanced under community and treatment strategies, but maintains as its primary focus efforts to minimize the harmful effects of drug use. This approach includes the following components:
• The availability of drug treatment facilities so that all addicts who wish to do so can overcome their habits and lead drug-free lives.
• The use of health professionals to administer drugs to addicts as part of a treatment and detoxification program.
• Needle exchange programs that will slow the transmission of HIV and educate drug users about how HIV is contracted and spread.
• Special drug courts or pretrial diversion programs that compel drug treatment.
• Needle exchange programs—providing drug users with clean needles in exchange for used ones—have been shown to maintain the low prevalence of HIV transmission among drug users and lower rates of hepatitis C. Methadone maintenance clinics in which heroin users receive doctor-prescribed methadone (a nonaddictive substance that satisfies the cravings caused by heroin) have been shown to reduce illegal heroin use and criminal activity.
• Student views will vary.