Stacey Andrews in Lynn Meyerkord both work at the AIDS Project of the Ozarks, or APO, in Springfield. The organization provides harm reduction tools like opioid overdose reversal medication and fentanyl test strips to people with substance use disorders.
They spoke about the history of harm reduction and how folks may already be using harm reduction techniques in their everyday lives.
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Stacey Andrews: We have all these harm reduction techniques that we use for helping people with tobacco sensation, and we recognize that it's a journey and different people need different things.
Some people do cold turkey, and they're fine. Some people have to stop with a half a cigarette a day to start to work on their two pack a day habit. Some people do patches, gum, medication. There's all kinds of things.
And we've gotten to the point where, I think, as a society, in general, we're good with that, but with drugs – we are not there.
"We're not encouraging them to do anything that they're not already doing, just trying to make it a little bit safer."Stacey Andrews
Lynne Meyerkord: And harm reduction, the term, has typically been used to refer to, for the most part, substance use.
But anybody working in HIV has been doing harm reduction since they started because in the old days, that's all we had.
So, whether that was talking to people about condoms or different types of sexual activities that aren't going to put them at risk – we were doing harm reduction.
And we also recognize, you know, telling folks to stop having sex or using substances or smoking – that's not how it works.
And if you don't have a relationship, and if you don't validate folks, they're not going to come back around.
And if they keep coming back around long enough and they decide they want treatment, then we can make those referrals.
Stacey Andrews: Harm reduction is something that we do in everyday life. Everybody does things that are inherently risky – we drive, we ride motorcycles, little kids ride bikes, we go swimming.
You don't throw a four-year-old in the pool without swimmies or floaties or a life jacket. We require life jackets, even for adults, on boats. Like we have harm reduction for a reason.
Now, of course, there's people who never wear any of those things, but that is their choice. That's the right that they have because they have the dignity to make those choices for themselves.
As a society, we don't typically provide the dignity for people who are using substances to make those decisions, and they need to be allowed to make that decision.
They need to have the education and know what are the options for you to stay safer – here are the tools for you to stay safer. Here's your life jacket, so to speak, and then, if they choose not to use those things – fine,
But then also understanding that that choice can be colored by things like trauma, can be colored by things like your brain being under the influence of all these substances, and it's worth working with someone to get them to the point to understand.
Just like you work with a 16-year-old to get them to put that seatbelt on or you're taking those car keys.
We have to work with people where they're at – that's a big phrase in harm reduction – in order to try and get them to see the validity behind some of the things that we're doing and build that trust.
We're not encouraging them to do anything that they're not already doing, just trying to make it a little bit safer.
