Allan Clear is Executive Director of the Harm Reduction Coalition. He was interviewed at the International Conference on the Reduction of Drug Related Harms in Warsaw, 2007.

The Harm Reduction approach is based on compassionate pragmatism instead of moralistic idealism. It recognizes that a minority of people have always abused alcohol and always will. It doesn't condone this behavior, but seeks to reduce its incidence and the harm it causes.

Early exit (drop-out) from drug treatment can mean that drug users do not derive the full benefits that treatment potentially offers. Additionally, it may mean that scarce treatment resources are used inefficiently. Understanding the factors that lead to early exit from treatment should enable services to operate more effectively and better reduce drug related harm.

If you are not willing to take the big leap and abstain from the destructive behavior, then it's an obvious choice to try a harm reduction approach.

Unlike models that aim to foster abstinence, a harm-reduction model, as its supporters like to say, meets people where they are. It eliminates judgment and values progress toward the alteration or elimination of behaviors that cause harm to the individual and society.

There is a continuum of alcohol/drug use: Instead of seeing alcohol or drug use in black-and-white terms of using or not using, the idea of a continuum recognizes that there are different levels of use, from occasional, to regular, to heavy, and on to chaotic use. In general, the closer you are to the low-use end of the continuum, the more harm you are reducing.

A harm reduction strategy seeks pragmatic solutions to the harms that drugs and drug policies cause. It has been said that harm reduction is not what's nice, it's what works.

One of the earliest instances of the harm reduction approach was an educational program implemened by Dr. Duncan and his colleagues in 1971 in Houston, Texas... No further deaths occurred after this program went into effect..

A feed from Dr. DeLuca's website.

Harm reduction methods are based on the assumption that habits can be placed along a continuum ranging from temperate to intemperate use along with associated risks for harm.