So I want to tell you a story.
Which is a true story.
A long time ago when my two daughters were probably 10 years old and eight years old,
they were playing in the garden on a swing.
But they weren't sitting on the swing and swinging backwards and forwards.
They were leaning over the seats of the swing and they were going around
on the floor like the untwisting the chains of the swing.
Then they'd let their feet off the floor and they'd spin round like that,
and they get off and they were dizzy.
They would say "Oh Dad I'm dizzy looking at this" and they really like this.
I thought as I watch them do it spinning round I notice that Madeleine,
which was her name the daughter that was on the swing,
her head was almost touching these legs of the swing.
But there's oh look at that.
I have to tell them to stop doing that.
But then I thought no, if I tell them to stop
doing it is the minute I go in they're going to do it anyway.
So I thought I know what I'll do.
So I said look Madd,
when you let go and you lift your legs up,
tuck your head because I think you're going to hit the stanchions.
So she did it and they played and I went
in and they probably played and they probably did
it some more then they stopped doing it.
So, what's this got to do with harm reduction?
Basically, it kind of encapsulates the whole thing.
That someone's doing an activity that is pleasurable.
They like it.
It can be dangerous,
but there's also ways of doing it to limit the danger.
That's what harm reduction is.
They like being dizzy and I wanted them to like it but not to harm themselves.
Harm reduction is basically about justice.
Human rights.
That's what it's about and it's about allowing people have made
a choice to do what they do as safe as they can.
So harm reduction is about doing what we know works.
We know we can stop people.
For example, contracting HIV through infected needles, we know that.
We know that we can tell people safer ways of using all drugs.
It's about not doing what we know doesn't work and what we know doesn't work is,
we don't know how to stop people using drugs.
We just don't know.
We don't know how to stop people starting to use drugs.
It's about eliminating stigma from people's lives.
It's about helping people to become part of
the society instead of being marginalized from
societies because this is what happens to drug users.
People who use drugs are stigmatized or
marginalized because they don't use the drugs we want them to use.