Harm Reduction For Drug Users in Moorhead

Moorhead can be proud of an enlightened approached to drug use. An agency there is allowing use of drugs while users withdraw and continue to monitor and allow relapses during the recovery process.

The old method was declare a person "drug free" and at that moment suspend public funding of treatment. That practice, still the go-to standard, has had bad results. Those who need drugs, or have needed them, often require a few years of help before leaving drugs behind. Most often, a tolerance for use while under supervision leads to a successful outcome.

For several years, doctors prescribed or agreed to drug use for both physical and psychological pain. While some doctors were not careful, it appeared a path to solving the problem of an underground drug world and deaths from overdoses.

This was followed by a nationwide crackdown on doctor prescribed drug use. I wonder what the predicted outcome was. I could have predicted what would happen.

I would have predicted that because drugs are easy to produce and profitable there would be willing sellers in the underground world. With people suffering pain of many kinds there would be plenty of willing buyers.

There were two results from this crackdown on prescribed drugs. First, the prices of underground drugs went up creating more hardship for those who needed them. Second, the quality went down so there were more deaths from over doses.

There have been programs like the one in Moorhead for several years in other places. They have been almost universally successful.

They run into trouble, however, because of the leftover myth that alcohol and other drug use is sin and needs to dealt with by the god-based Alcoholic Anonymous program. Hopefully, some enlightened programs are coming everywhere soon.