Isabelle Fleming
READING TIME: 3 MINUTES
On January 14th, UNB announced that Naloxone spray kits will be available at emergency locations on campus, reaffirming a commitment to encouraging wellness in the UNB community. Naloxone is a medication that can be used to temporarily reverse the effects of opioid overdoses, providing valuable time to access emergency medical care. The spray kits are available on both campuses, and more information can be found about them here.
Naloxone saves lives. Opioid use in Canada in recent years has been on the rise. The overdoses from opioids, such as fentanyl and heroin, has been labelled a national public health crisis. In order to combat the opioid crisis, more initiatives (like the accessibility of Naloxone) focused on harm reduction have become prevalent.

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chad Hipolito
Harm reduction focuses on reducing the danger of harmful activities (in this case, opioid use), instead of the traditional approach of trying to cut out the activity entirely. For people experiencing a substance use disorder, abstinence used to be the only acceptable path forward. Many people still hold that opinion.
Some believe that harm reduction only encourages individuals to keep engaging in behaviour society has deemed as deviant, or some may be against harm reduction because they believe that drug use must remain criminalized.
However, harm reduction recognizes that sobriety is not a realistic or attainable goal for everyone. Even if someone is ready to cease their drug use completely, supports for doing so are often inaccessible to the populations that would benefit from them the most. Some individuals are not ready to cease their drug use, either. Harm reduction recognizes the dignity and humanity of the individual engaging in drug use, and encourages safe practices to mitigate any negative effects. Harm reduction acknowledges that the traditional methods have not been successful in reducing opioid-poisoning and death caused by overdose.
Groups who oppose the implementation of initiatives for harm reduction often forget (or conveniently ignore) that substance use disorders are a multifaceted issue, not a personal failure of the person afflicted. The reasons why someone is dependent on drugs are often complex, typically pointing towards unresolved trauma in formative years. Additionally, severe substance use disorder is correlated with homelessness and access to stable housing is a key determinant of health. If abstinence is the unwavering goal, it requires looking at broad systemic issues. Including addressing the lack of affordable housing, the inaccessibility of healthcare (mental health supports as well as primary care physicians), and evaluating failures in institution and policy. We cannot afford to look at substance use at the individual level when working to put a stop to the opioid crisis.
Even in a hypothetical dream world where it was possible to address and fix all those issues with haste, I do not believe it is productive to push a narrative that total abstinence is the only acceptable form of recovery. Going cold-turkey may work for some, but for others it creates an impossible objective and makes them not want to attempt recovery, or sets them up to feel worse about themselves when they do not achieve it.
Harm reduction in the context of the opioid crisis is a wide umbrella. Initiatives can range from providing easy access to Naloxone to safe supply to managed consumption sites. Harm reduction sites also have an implicit social function of connecting individuals struggling with services that can help them.
Harm reduction saves lives. It’s that simple. With so many people struggling with, and dying from, opioid use, we cannot overlook any method that can help prevent more opioid-related deaths.