CRM 3314 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Harm Reduction, Hexamethylenetetramine, Medicalization

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Criminology
• Course: CRM 3314
• Professor: Carolyn Gordon

Document Summary

By contrast, opponents of harm reduction often see it as a public relations dummy for drug legislation. When we think of the regulation strategies this far, these might be the type of things that people might say that are implemented to reduce harms. Some of the stuff we questioned at the beginning of the course were a certain biomedical approach to addiction and treatment philosophies that accompany it. We were seeing it as a syndrome of dependence (knusher), rather than a disease of the problem. Predominantly, you"re not using any type of illegal or legal substances that are addicting: we"ve also seen the criminal justice component of this - the criminal justice solution of reducing harm. There"s a sense that once people are addicted, they"re more likely to engage in criminal behaviour and this is where the criminal justice system steps in.