Event Description
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 health service providers remain blind 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 significance concerning drug selling, mixing, adulteration, and transportation to criminal justice agencies, especially the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and local police forces. 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 do the humanities gain when they break away from their almost exclusive focus on the three prototypical figures of leftist thought: the victim, the ‘worthy’ laborer, and the enlightened activist?
Event Information
Free and open to the public; registration required for in-person and online attendance. For more information, please visit the event webpage.
Hosted by the Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University.
