To the editor:
Re: "Home Sick," July 8.
Your article does a great job of highlighting Welcome Home's excellent work, and raises some important points about accountability and public funds. However, it implicitly mischaracterizes the nature of "harm reduction" services as anti-abstinence. Harm reduction operates on a spectrum that ranges from tiny steps to improve general health, up to and absolutely including total abstinence. In fact, I think everyone would agree that abstinence is the ultimate way to reduce harm to addicts. There is no harm reduction organization I'm aware of that would not help a client achieve total sobriety via abstinence-based treatment, if that is what the client wanted. But people need to enter these services voluntarily. What would happen to individuals who were not ready for abstinence treatment-or who get kicked out of treatment-if harm reduction organizations did not exist?
Put simply, while "cold-turkey" abstinence works for some people, and has saved countless lives, it doesn't work for everyone at every stage of life, for every type of addiction, in every time and place.
Harm reduction-based services focus on keeping their clients as safe as possible, as often as possible, and help to build the kind of self respect and dignity that could lead to more people making positive decisions about their addictions and their future.
David Newberry,
Vancouver
