The
Department of Philosophy is pleased to announce that Philosophy Honors student Lauren Hanon received a Roger S. Smith Undergraduate Student Research Award. "Intended to cultivate and support research partnerships between undergraduate students and faculty," the award provides $5,000 to recipients to fund 15 weeks of research-based activity from May to August under the supervision of a faculty member. Congratulations, Lauren!
Lauren conducted her research project "The Ethics of Harm Reduction: A Normative Foundation" in summer 2013 under the supervision of Prof. Glenn Griener. Her final project report:
"According to the International Harm Reduction Association (now called Harm Reduction International), "'Harm Reduction' refers to policies, programmes and practices that aim primarily to reduce the adverse health, social and economic consequences of the use of legal and illegal psychoactive drugs without necessarily reducing drug consumption. Harm reduction benefits people who use drugs, their families and the community" (2010). Health and community services that are informed by such a philosophy promote education about personal health and safety, and offer resources such as information about treatment programs, assistance and support in societal reintegration, and they also contribute significantly in limiting the spread of disease (Carter & Macpherson, 2013). There is significant opposition to this philosophy, from the Canadian public, and from the government of Canada. Canada's drug policies and laws that are consistent with the values of the international war on drugs are informed by a moral ideology that advocates for abstinence-based approaches to addressing illicit drug use. My purpose here is to attempt to provide the normative ethical foundation for harm reduction in order to promote understanding and support for the practice of this philosophy, in an effort to combat the dogmatic ideology that resists advances in health care. Drawing from feminist scholarship, a significant topic that is central to my argument is the critique of the concept of the autonomous and rational agent as the moral subject. This idea of the nature of individuals, or how their natures ought to be, is what informs certain ideologies, like the war on drugs. Feminist care ethics maintains that people are inherently relational, and that when it comes to social policy and the constitution of social arrangements, such a relational nature ought to be taken into account. Currently, there is a lack of such consideration, and as a result, there is an abundance of social injustices and oppression permeating our society, and it affects primarily those who do not fit into the categories of independent and rational. The focus of this paper is harm reduction and people who use drugs who do not fall into that category. I argue that because the state constitutes itself in such a way as to maintain oppression, it is thus morally obligated to attempt to remedy this situation through means such as providing harm reduction services."