By Adam Zivo

Canada’s policy of deferring to the “leadership” of drug users has proved predictably disastrous. The United States should take heed.

[This article was originally published in City Journal, a public policy magazine and website published by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research]

Progressive “harm reduction” advocates have insisted for decades that active users should take a central role in crafting drug policy. While this belief is profoundly reckless—akin to letting drunk drivers set traffic laws—it is now entrenched in many left-leaning jurisdictions. The harms and absurdities of the position cannot be understated.

While the harm-reduction movement is best known for championing public-health interventions that supposedly minimize the negative effects of drug use, it also has a “social justice” component. In this context, harm reduction tries to redefine addicts as a persecuted minority and illicit drug use as a human right.

This campaign traces its roots to the 1980s and early 1990s, when “queer” activists, desperate to reduce the spread of HIV, began operating underground needle exchanges to curb infections among drug users. These exchanges and similar efforts allowed some more extreme LGBTQ groups to form close bonds with addicts and drug-reform advocates. Together, they normalized the concept of harm reduction, such that, within a few years, needle exchanges would become officially sanctioned public-health interventions.

The alliance between these more radical gay rights advocates and harm-reduction proponents proved enduring. Drug addiction remained linked to HIV, and both groups shared a deep hostility to the police, capitalism, and society’s “moralizing” forces.

In the 1990s, harm-reduction proponents imitated the LGBTQ community’s advocacy tactics. They realized that addicts would have greater political capital if they were considered a persecuted minority group, which could legitimize their demands for extensive accommodations and legal protections under human rights laws. Harm reductionists thus argued that addiction was a kind of disability, and that, like the disabled, active users were victims of social exclusion who should be given a leading role in crafting drug policy.

These arguments were not entirely specious. Addiction can reasonably be considered a mental and physical disability because illicit drugs hijack users’ brains and bodies. But being disabled doesn’t necessarily mean that one is part of a persecuted group, much less that one should be given control over public policy.

More fundamentally, advocates were wrong to argue that the stigma associated with drug addiction was senseless persecution. In fact, it was a reasonable response to anti-social behavior. Drug addiction severely impairs a person’s judgement, often making him a threat to himself and others. Someone who is constantly high and must rob others to fuel his habit is a self-evident danger to society.

Despite these obvious pitfalls, portraying drug addicts as a persecuted minority group became increasingly popular in the 2000s, thanks to several North American AIDS organizations that pivoted to addiction work after the HIV epidemic subsided.

In 2005, the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network published a report titled “Nothing about us without us.” (The nonprofit joined other groups in publishing an international version in 2008.) The 2005 report included a “manifesto” written by Canadian drug users, who complained that they were “among the most vilified and demonized groups in society” and demanded that policymakers respect their “expertise and professionalism in addressing drug use.”

The international report argued that addiction qualified as a disability under international human rights treaties, and called on governments to “enact anti-discrimination or protective laws to reduce human rights violations based on dependence to drugs.” It further advised that drug users be heavily involved in addiction-related policy and decision-making bodies; that addict-led organizations be established and amply funded; and that “community-based organizations . . . increase involvement of people who use drugs at all levels of the organization.”

While the international report suggested that addicts could serve as effective policymakers, it also presented them as incapable of basic professionalism. In a list of “do’s and don’ts,” the authors counseled potential employers to pay addicts in cash and not to pass judgment if the money were spent on drugs. They also encouraged policymakers to hold meetings “in a low-key setting or in a setting where users already hang out,” and to avoid scheduling meetings at “9 a.m., or on welfare cheque issue day.” In cases where addicts must travel for policy-related work, the report recommended policymakers provide “access to sterile injecting equipment” and “advice from a local person who uses drugs.”

The international report further asserted that if an organization’s employees—even those who are former drug users—were bothered by the presence of addicts, then management should refer those employees to counselling at the organization’s expense. “Under no circumstances should [drug addicts] be reprimanded, singled out or made to feel responsible in any way for the triggering responses of others,” stressed the authors.

Reflecting the document’s general hostility to recovery, the international report emphasized that former drug addicts “can never replace involvement of active users” in public policy work, because people in recovery “may be somewhat disconnected from the community they seek to represent, may have other priorities than active users, may sometimes even have different and conflicting agenda, and may find it difficult to be around people who currently use drugs.”

The messaging in these reports proved highly influential throughout the 2000s and 2010s. In Canada, federal and provincial human rights legislation expanded to protect active addicts on the basis of disability. Reformers in the United States mirrored Canadian activists’ appeals to addicts’ “lived experience,” albeit with less success. For now, American anti-discrimination protections only extend to people who have a history of addiction but who are not actively using drugs.

The harm reduction movement reached its zenith in the early 2020s, after the Covid-19 pandemic swept the world and instigated a global spike in addiction. During this period, North American drug-reform activists again promoted the importance of treating addicts like public-health experts.

Canada was at the forefront of this push. For example, the Canadian Association of People Who Use Drugs released its “Hear Us, See Us, Respect Us” report in 2021, which recommended that organizations “deliberately choose to normalize the culture of drug use” and pay addicts $25-50 per hour. The authors stressed that employers should pay addicts “under the table” in cash to avoid jeopardizing access to government benefits.

These ideas had a profound impact on Canadian drug policy. Throughout the country, public health officials pushed for radical pro-drug experiments, including giving away free heroin-strength opioids without supervision, simply because addicts told researchers that doing so would be helpful. In 2024, British Columbia’s top doctor even called for the legalization of all illicit drugs (“non-medical safer supply”) primarily on the basis of addict testimonials, with almost no other supporting evidence.

For Canadian policymakers, deferring to the “lived experiences” and “leadership” of drug users meant giving addicts almost everything they asked for. The results were predictably disastrous: crime, public disorder, overdoses, and program fraud skyrocketed. Things have been less dire in the United States, where the harm reduction movement is much weaker. But Americans should be vigilant and ensure that this ideology does not flower in their own backyard.