Integrating People Who Sell Drugs into Public Health Research and Intervention

Public health’s commitment to evidence-based policies and interventions has gained renewed significance in the “post-truth” era of MAGA-style politics in the United States. However, many scholars and service providers remain ignorant to some of the key limitations of the evidence they rely on to conduct their work. In the field of harm reduction, the most significant restriction narrowing the scope of research and intervention is the field’s reluctance to engage with people who sell drugs. Focusing almost exclusively on people who use drugs, public health and harm reduction have relinquished key questions of political and public health import concerning drug selling, mixing, adulteration, and transportation to criminal justice agencies, especially the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and local police forces. In other words, public health has been relegated to the downstream management of substance use, while law enforcement agencies monopolize the upstream assessment of narcotics supply chains. What does it entail to incorporate people who sell drugs into harm reduction research and intervention? What can be done both informally at the local level, and formally at the legislative level, to develop a program of “supply-side harm reduction” in the United States?
Speaker:
Fernando Montero, Chief T32 Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies at Columbia University
Recording date: February 22, 2024
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[@NaniFayePalmer]

thank you thank you thank you for this I have often wondered if I am the only one thinking like this! now I know I am not alone!!