HARM REDUCTION BETTER THAN NOTHING

Supervised injection sites, legal brothels and legal, liberal
abortion all have one thing in common; namely harm reduction, or
seeking the lesser evil.

In an ideal world there would be no drug addiction, no sex for sale
and no unwanted pregnancies. In our imperfect world, the alternative
to safe injection sites is street injection, the alternative to legal
brothels is street corner prostitution and the alternative to legal
abortion is dangerous, illegal abortion.

In each case the choices have serious flaws and are easy targets for
criticism. Advocates for both positions like to claim the
non-existent moral high ground.

At least those who seek harm reduction are trying to make the best of
a bad situation.

I wish their critics could do better than to insist on unavailable
idealistic solutions.

Ray Ferris

Victoria