Principle #10: Stop participating in or supporting prosecution in cases related to drug use or overdose

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SUBSECTIONS

Why This Principle?

Invitations to Action

Reflection Questions

Reflect

Research

Practice

Imagine

Further Resources for Reflection and Discussion

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Why This Principle?

  • Punishment for people who supplied drugs that result in an overdose death (commonly referred to as drug-induced homicide laws) has shown no promise for reducing overdose deaths. Instead, prosecutions have caused unnecessary harm, leading people to fear calling for help for someone who is overdosing and exposing themselves to risk of arrest and prosecution.

  • Health care providers are often called on to participate in such prosecutions by offering evidence, expert opinions, and testimony regarding cause of death, toxicology reports, and drug sources.

  • Safer use, overdose prevention, harm reduction, and naloxone distribution programs are currently under attack while criminalization and state violence in the context of the drug war is on the rise.

Invitations to Action

  • Do not support, provide information for, or participate in the prosecution of cases related to drug use or overdose.

  • Support overdose prevention programs rooted in Liberatory Harm Reduction and take steps to mitigate the likelihood of drug-induced homicide prosecutions.

  • Work to change laws around drug use and overdose criminalization. 

Reflection Questions

    • Think about the implications of prosecuting such cases on people who use drugs, their families and loved ones, and communities. 

      • What are the negative impacts? How might the threat of prosecution prevent people from seeking help when they see someone overdosing?

      • How might race/ethnicity, citizenship status, disability, and/or conviction history impact someone's ability to seek help? 

    • How might health care providers be involved or implicated in prosecutions for drug overdoses? 

      • Have you ever been involved in or aware of such a case in your practice or health care setting? What were the circumstances and what was the outcome?

    • Beyond aiding in prosecutions, in what other ways are health care providers enlisted in policing and surveilling people who use drugs?

    • Look up cases of overdose-related prosecutions in your community:

      • What patterns do you notice about who was prosecuted? 

      • How were health care providers involved? What could they have done differently?

      • Read about why drug-induced homicide laws are counterproductive and inhumane in this fact sheet from the Drug Policy Alliance. How do prosecutions in your community reflect these harmful outcomes?

    • What efforts, if any, are drug user and harm reduction groups leading in your community to eliminate or mitigate the impacts of drug-induced homicide laws?

    • Check out this toolkit from the #ReframeTheBlame campaign, led by people who are targeted and directly impacted by the war on drugs. How might you imagine incorporating some of the tools in your practice or health care setting? 

      • Who could you invite to do the same?

      • What obstacles might you face and how might you overcome them?

    • Check out the National Harm Reduction Coalition’s Overdose Prevention & Response online training offerings and learn how to prevent and intervene in an overdose in non-coercive, supportive ways. 

      • Host a training for colleagues and co-workers!

      • Support naloxone distribution efforts in your community!

  • How might we approach drug use in ways that effectively prevent and interrupt overdoses, ensure safer drug supplies, and offer healing and accountability for all involved in cases of fatal overdoses? Let your imagination run wild — nothing is off limits (think free and easily accessible drug testing stations, safe(r) use facilities, accessible and non-judgmental harm reduction-based education about drug use, etc.)!

    Read pages 136–140 of Shira Hassan’s Saving Our Own Lives: A Liberatory Practice of Harm Reduction on the “Risk, Set, and Setting Model for Overdose.”

    • How does Liberatory Harm Reduction think about overdose differently?

    • What’s one step you could take now to move towards this vision of harm reduction?

Reflection Questions

If you or your group get stuck or want to go deeper on any of the questions above, check out the invitations and readings below!

#ReframeTheBlame campaign, Death By Distribution

“The truth is that these laws, once intended to target major cartel dealers, are presently used to prosecute friends and loved ones of the individual who has lost their life due to a fatal overdose... All too often, these individuals selling have few options for procuring a sustainable income due to their criminal records... which further removes them from operating in the mainstream economy.”

Shira Hassan, Saving Our Own Lives: A Liberatory Practice of Harm Reduction

“Liberatory Harm Reduction is a philosophy and set of empowerment-based practices that teach us how to accompany each other as we transform the root causes of harm in our lives. We put our values into action using real-life strategies to reduce the negative health, legal, and social consequences that result from criminalized and stigmatized life experiences such as drug use, sex, the sex trade, sex work, surviving intimate partner violence, self-injury, eating disorders, and any other survival strategies deemed morally or socially unacceptable. Liberatory Harm Reductionists support each other and our communities without judgment, stigma, or coercion, and we do not force others to change. We envision a world without racism, capitalism, patriarchy, misogyny, ableism, transphobia, policing, surveillance, and other systems of violence. Liberatory Harm Reduction is true self-determination and total body autonomy.”