Harm Reduction

Counterpoint's services are based on the principle of harm reduction. The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health defines harm reduction as:

Harm reduction is any program or policy designed to reduce drug-related harm without requiring the cessation of drug use. Interventions may be targeted at the individual, the family, community or society.

The primary aim of Counterpoint (The AIDS Committee of London's Needle Exchange Program) is to reduce the transmission of HIV (the virus associated with AIDS) and other blood-borne infections among individuals who use drugs, and beyond into the larger community.

At Counterpoint we educate service users about the health risks associated with drug use and provide them with the information and materials necessary to practice safer drug use and safer sex. And, for those who want to stop using drugs, we provide referrals to drug or alcohol treatment services.

Because Counterpoint provides people with information on how to use drugs safely, the assumption is often made that the program, and/or those who run them, see drug use as acceptable. This is incorrect. Needle exchanges see drug use as an accepted fact, as opposed to "acceptable".

Whether or not injection drug use, or any drug use, is "acceptable" is a moral judgment. Such judgments are of little or no value in health promotion or in developing effective educational strategies that result in behaviour change. The simple fact is that some individuals are, for whatever reasons, injecting drugs and that some methods of injection drug use put people at a high risk of contracting HIV and other blood-borne infections.