harm reduction – Page 6 – Matters of Substance

When we hear the term “harm reduction,” we often think of supervised consumption services, needle exchanges or clean crack pipes. These are all important, life-saving measures, but is there a way harm-reduction can be applied to more casual substance users, such as the student who takes MDMA at a music festival, or the guy who likes to have a few beers after work or on the weekend?

About 15 years ago, I moved to Victoria from a small town in northern Canada to go to university. Almost immediately, I was introduced to the electronic music community. Soon, I was spending many a weekend dancing the night away at bush parties, sweaty halls or cramped basements. The scene was vibrant, welcoming and offered opportunities to experience all kinds of new things—including drugs I had never heard about before. Suddenly, I was seeing people ingest things with names I couldn’t spell or pronounce. I had a lot of questions: what did these drugs do? Where did they come from? Were they safe?

Luckily, there was an easy way to get some answers. At almost every one of these parties, there was a booth decked out in Christmas lights and beaded bracelets. A hand-painted banner was draped across the front that read “IslandKidz.” Modeled after the Dancesafe movement emerging around the same time in the U.S., the booth and its tireless volunteers were on hand to give out balanced information on various substances, hand out safe sex supplies, test pills or powders for adulterants, or just be a sober person to talk to if you were feeling overwhelmed or needed a safe space. They weren’t there to condone or condemn you for using drugs; it was your choice, and they believed you had the right to accurate information in order to make an informed decision.

An old photo of the IslandKidz booth in action.

I couldn’t believe that a service like this existed. (And, it turns out, we were lucky to have it; many other similar organizations weren’t able to operate with the relative ease that IslandKidz did at the time.) It made me feel empowered and respected, not vilified or dismissed—as many in that subculture often felt, whether they chose to use drugs or not. I didn’t know it then, but this would be my first encounter with harm reduction—and it would be far from my last. I would eventually end up volunteering for IslandKidz, driving down countless logging roads and spending many a late night chatting with partiers, handing out info flyers, and scraping mystery pills to see what they might contain.

Harm-reduction organizations like this appear to be making a comeback these days; look at groups like Karmik in Vancouver, ANKORS in the Kootenays, DanceSafe across the U.S., or Toronto’s TRIP Project. But they are far from the only harm-reduction measure trying to reach recreational substance users. In this series, we will hear about a website offering safer-use limits for illicit drugs developed by users themselves, a report that became a touchstone for almost every media article on festivals this summer, and some advice on ways to possibly avoid “bad” ecstasy. We hope these pieces help expand your idea of what harm reduction can be.

Author: Amanda Farrell-Low, Research Assistant, Centre for Addictions Research of BC

**Please note that the material presented here does not necessarily imply endorsement or agreement by individuals at the Centre for Addictions Research of BC

When I try to explain the kind of work that I do for CARBC, I often use the analogy of being a farmer. I am the Coordinator of the Changing the Culture of Substance Use Project, a multi-year project to build a vibrant community of practice on BC’s post-secondary campuses. But my work is similar to the farmer; I research, prepare and plan what we should grow, examine the growing conditions, help plant the seeds, and then I, along with my team, continuously encourage their growth so that we will have a fruitful harvest. Of course, our seeds are very different from the farmer’s. Ours are the seeds of thought as to how we might change a culture of substance use in a growing campus community of practice. And what we hope to eventually see is the changing norms, attitudes, programs, policies, and practices that reflect this kind of thinking on campus.

Education with respect to culture change is a unique challenge. When the goal is culture change, education becomes about engagement. We need to think about whom we engage in this learning, how we engage them and what we engage them about. We are not necessarily concerned with equipping these folks with the tools to manage their own patterns of use (although that may be a by-product of the process). Rather, we hope that they will become part of a larger concerted effort to co-develop efforts on campus that have the power to significantly impact generations of students.

So who should we engage in this kind of learning? We engage those who are intrinsically interested and motivated to be part of a culture change effort on campus. These could include counselling staff, health practitioners, faculty members, students, access and support services, deans, as well as many others. Our basic premise is that all members of a campus community can potentially be or become leaders in culture change.

And how do we engage them? Our engagement is constructivist and collaborative. We harness the expertise in the room and in this field around what might change a culture on a particular campus. Campuses will learn from each other and pick up tools and techniques that have been successful for others for adaptation. For instance, Selkirk College recently developed an innovative Dinner Basket program that encourages students to share a meal and discuss substance use in a nonjudgmental manner. Several other campuses are now adapting this approach for their own contexts.

And what do we engage about? Often it is a combination of a wide variety of topics. These topics generally focus on how we go about shifting a culture. For instance, we might begin with some discussions on the role of culture in influencing behavior around substance use. As we become more familiar with the topic, we look at mechanisms for changing a culture, such as community of practice building, motivational approaches or situational assessment. The goal is to build the toolbox campuses have at their disposal with the best in current thinking and see what takes hold. This may sound haphazard, but it allows us to avoid being prescriptive in what we endorse and encourages campuses to identify their own goals, resources, areas of strength and required efforts in this process.

This type of work is not easy or simple. Much like the farmer’s work, it requires patience, flexibility, responsiveness and the ability to see the forest for the trees. It also requires the ability to release control and allow the community to grow and develop, guided by a caring hand. With dedicated, strategic and consistent efforts, we are hopeful for a plentiful harvest.

To learn more about the Changing the Culture of Substance Use Project and/or how to join our community of practice, please check out this article in CMHA-BC’s Visions Journal or visit our website at www.healthycampuses.ca.

Author: Catriona Remocker, Research Associate, Centre for Addictions Research of BC; Coordinator of the Changing the Culture of Substance Use Project

**Please note that the material presented here does not necessarily imply endorsement or agreement by individuals at the Centre for Addictions Research of BC.

Tag: harm reduction

Harm reduction in recreational settings

Plant the Seeds and See What Grows: Education and Culture Change