Drugs, Criminalization, and Public Health: Social Justice as Harm Reduction

Drugs, Criminalization and Public Health: Social Justice as Harm Reduction
San Gabriel B, Lobby Level
Harm reduction is often defined in terms of practical strategies to reduce the negative consequences of drug use, especially overdose and disease transmission. Yet many of the harms drug users experience result directly from the criminalization of drug use. Public health researchers and advocates are increasingly turning their focus to understanding the health and social consequences of criminalization and incarceration. What are the links between drug user health and the criminal justice system? What can we learn from efforts to reduce the harms of legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco? And what roles can harm reduction practitioners and public health advocates play in dismantling the war on drugs?  

Moderator: Laura McTighe, Faculty Fellow, Department of Religion, Columbia University

• Holly Bradford, Founder/Technical Advisor, Korsang, Cambodia
• Che Gossett, Queer Activist and Prison Abolitionist, Philadelphia, PA 
• Thomas Kerr, PhD, Director, Urban Health Research Initiative, British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, Associate Professor, Dept. of Medicine, University of British Columbia Kasia Malinowska-Sempruch, Director, Global Drug Policy Program, Open Society Foundation, Warsaw, Poland 
• Gabor Maté, M.D., physician and author, In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction, Vancouver, Canada