Breaking Barriers

Video Transcript
Note: All WP Saskatchewan video transcripts are edited for flow and readability.

(Narrator) Before you head out in your vehicle to go somewhere, you put on your seatbelt. A learned behaviour, since the 1950s. A seatbelt reduces the likelihood of being harmed in a motor vehicle collision. It’s harm reduction.

Bars and licensed restaurants, (pause) it’s no secret that alcohol is consumed regularly at these establishments.  Grown adults, who have been deemed responsible enough to consume alcohol, a high-risk substance, are given spaces to do so in leisure, with proper safety parameters in place. The provisioning of a place to consume alcohol is, in fact, a form of harm reduction, and it too has been an accepted part of our society for decades.

Today, we hear the term harm reduction in a different context. It refers to policies, programs and practices that aim to minimize the negative health, social and legal impacts associated with drug use, drug policies and drug laws.

It is grounded in justice and human rights. It focuses on positive change and on working with people without judgement, coercion, discrimination, or requiring that people stop using drugs as a precondition of support.

Melissa is a harm reduction worker in Regina, SK, and on a daily basis she deals firsthand with offering harm reduction to those in need.

(Melissa) “This is kind of a new thing that Regina has kind of taken on and that Saskatchewan has taken on. It’s helping to serve all of the people who are in this in-between of homelessness and housing and addiction and sobriety. And it’s just making sure people are really cared for. So harm reduction to me is really exploring what we try to not look at a lot of the time, the darkness that is an act of addiction is sometimes like drugs and drugs that we’re not really comfortable with.”

(Narrator) Much like a bar, or the seatbelt, these strategies are in place today to remove the unrelenting stigma and prejudices that have surrounded this subject for years.  Humans have a right to freedom, and choice, but it is recognized that also having the safety to do so is ultimately paramount. But it hasn’t always been like that.

(Melissa) “What we were trying before was a very tough love, punitive approach to addiction. So that is how addiction has been treated for a really long time, is just like, ‘Let’s cut them off from their relationships, from services until they agree to get sober and then like maintain that sobriety for a long time’. Instead of doing that, we’re trying to do this other approach leading with compassion and love and support and just caring for other people in whatever state they’re in at the time and whatever state their lives are in, trying to mitigate as many harms as we can. So focusing on not transmitting diseases and safe supplies and safe sex supplies and regular testing and regular medical checkups so that they are just as safe as possible.”

(Narrator) But as Melissa says, it’s not that one approach is wrong, and the other is right. It’s more complex than that.

(Melissa) “It all exists on a spectrum. And I think any abstinence-based support should also be supporting harm reduction because that is a pathway to sobriety. Same with harm reduction. They should be also supporting abstinence. So there’s room for abstinence and harm reduction support when we’re dealing with substance use and substance users.”

(Narrator) In cities around our great province there are people of all types. A spectrum of qualities differentiates them, yet one commonality connects them all in their afflictions. They are human beings. Their resiliency and willpower is often questioned and doubted by those at a distance on the perimeter.  Melissa knows it’s not just as easy and simple as saying “Why don’t you just stop?”

(Melissa) “I think that that’s a pretty common understanding of addiction. And I think even in addiction services and even in recovery, we still kind of have this idea that you will be like fighting this thing day in and day out for the rest of your life. And with the way that we’re treating addiction now and we have started using trauma informed care and women-centered approaches, and evidence-based approaches when we’re thinking about like, this thing is like a weak will. I think when we give adequate evidence-based addiction treatment we see really really great outcomes. We just need to be able to give people that.’”

(Narrator) It is that evidence and positive impact within this community that continues to drive the province’s harm reduction efforts forward. As more and more people become familiar with how harm reduction works, and how to effectively offer assistance and help to those in need, the results will be felt province wide, and the seeming gap that separates it all will begin to close.

Credits:

Harm Reduction Worker – Melissa Burdon

Filmed in Victoria Park and various other locations around Regina, Saskatchewan.