First, Do Less Harm

This text brings together established and emerging scholars (including graduate students) from multiple disciplines (primarily law and social sciences), frontline organizations working in the area of harm reduction, and persons with lived experience of substance use and harm reduction.

As a result, the chapters are written from a range of different disciplines, and share best practices from the harm reduction responses to different substances from Canada and elsewhere in the world. Developing a shared understanding of harm reduction, and in turn a deeper appreciation of how harm reduction can be approached in different ways serves to create a stronger foundation for effective policies and laws.

The focus of the book is on three substances: opioids, tobacco and cannabis. Harm reduction has been a high-profile element of the legal/policy response to all three, but has manifested in very different ways. For opioids, the “opioid crisis” has highlighted issues such as providing access to safe consumption sites and tools such as naloxone. For cannabis, the legalization and regulation of a formerly illegal product subject to criminal sanction offers a powerful harm reduction case study of the merits and pitfalls of Canada’s pioneering approach.

Harm reduction is also at the centre of a key debate in the area of tobacco: how to address new technologies, such as e-cigarettes, that offer smokers a less harmful alternative, but may also create new issues such as how to address health concerns arising from the uptake by young people without discouraging their harm reduction potential.