Excerpt from Coming to Harm Reduction Kicking & Screaming, 2nd Edition: 

Stories of Radically Loving People Who Use Drugs.

A LITTLE HISTORY (OF AN OFTEN-OVERLOOKED PART) OF THE HARM REDUCTION MOVEMENT

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Whoever saves a single life is considered by scripture to have saved the whole world.

 …Jewish saying from the Talmud 

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Note: Since we often discuss the history of harm reduction through the lens of academia and white culture, I thought it would be more interesting here to view it through others’ lenses. What follows is terribly incomplete and brief, but I hope it gives you a taste of some of the other important contributions of BIPOC, 2SLGBTQIA and other overlooked communities to the origins of HR. 

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In Midland, MI, in the early 1970s, I was part of a small group of teens being trained in how to handle “bad trips” by local psychologist Dr. Don Crowder (who was also my doctor). Dr. Crowder wanted to open a safe space for teens who were experimenting with drugs—mainly hallucinogens (plus alcohol of course)—as well as train a few teens to help their friends. Teens were using such large amounts that they were at risk for reoccurring, lifelong problems in this mainly white, upper middle-class to high socio-economic town, (please know that my hometown was, and is, the international headquarters for Dow Chemical—Saran Wrap, Ziplock bags, and napalm bombs. Go Dow!). Dr. Crowder understood these well-off kids had the resources, i.e., time and money, to be using drugs far more often and in greater amounts than those not in those wealthy circles. (My dad was one of the few in town who didn’t work for Dow). When the City Council heard what Dr. Crowder had planned, they quickly shut him down, saying, “We don’t have a drug problem in Midland, Michigan!” Right. No one wanted to listen to his prescient pleading. Sadly, this training to reduce the potential harm to teens never got beyond that initial effort, but it left an impression on me even though I had been using drugs since age twelve. It took me nearly twenty years more to realize that this was early harm reduction work. Midland was a town of about thirty thousand in those days, and not a great example of harm reduction overall (as you just read). It was also mainly white. I can recall precisely when the first two Black families moved in. They worked for Dow. The son of one family beat me out for Class President at Northeast Junior High; the other became members of our church, Midland United Church of Christ, where I taught their sons Sunday School. Slowly it made me wonder if other communities, especially where drug use was even more prevalent, were able to hear those early messages of reducing harm for their residents engaged in risky behaviors and using illicit substances? What was happening in the big cities, which were now predominately populated by People of Color and others marginalized? Surely they would heed these messages of help. According to the National Harm Reduction Coalition (NHRC)1, harm reduction has its roots in many different causes and organizations: The Black Panthers, who started a free breakfast program for children, as well as advocating for healthcare for all. These, and other progressive concepts, were designed to not only keep their communities alive but to help them thrive and be the next generation to propel this “radical work” forward, assisting people who have been oppressed for so long. The Young Lords Organization (YLO) is another group credited for influencing NHRC and spreading harm reduction in the US. Founded in Chicago in 1968, YLO saw its NYC branch create a program of acupuncture for “addicts” living in the Bronx2. According to the website of the Museum for the City of New York3, the Young Lords were a multi-ethnic, Puerto Rican-centered group originating after the garage workers strike in NYC in 1969. Here is more on the group from its website: It was the summer of 1969, and the group had blocked traffic on 110th Street with piles of garbage to protest inadequate sanitation services. They had already asked the city for brooms to clean their neighborhood’s streets and, when refused, they went ahead and took them. The “garbage offensive” was the first campaign of the city’s Young Lords Organization, a radical “sixties” group led by Puerto Rican youth, African Americans, and Latinx New Yorkers. New York’s Young Lords, although originally part of a national organization, reflected the lived experiences of Puerto Ricans in New York City. The group mounted eye-catching direct action campaigns against inequality and poverty in East Harlem, the South Bronx, and elsewhere.4 Other groups of repressed peoples are also seen as foundational to the harm reduction movement for drug users. For example, the drive toward better healthcare for women particularly in sexual health, increasing 2SLGBTQIA+ rights and treatment for queer folx in particular, during the HIV/AIDS epidemic, was also crucial to establishing NHRC values and how we view harm reduction today. These prior activist movements also helped the national harm reduction movement’s growth in other areas, such as learning concepts of organizing, ways to motivate others into action, and how to interact with the public—sometimes radically—to gain political and media notice.5 These various groups of historically resilient people carried the lessons of their ancestors about harm reduction; it was and is in their blood (though it wasn’t called harm reduction then. It was called survival). Groups with a history of being oppressed always know a lot about survival and therefore they have always known harm reduction.