Handling the drug abuser is not simple, not as easy as saying ABC, eventhough the retailer has been captured or has been punished maximally. Once a drug user has become addicted, then it will be a long life struggle for him/her to be total abstinence.
Harm Reduction is one of the three major approaches used to control drug use /dependence, instead of Supply Reduction and Demand Reduction. Harm Reduction is a halfway stage to achieve the drug-free ideal, and the employment of strategies to decrease the risk of health and social consequences of drug use as an intermediate goal. If each approaches stands alone or apart, then these three major approaches will not regard effectively. In other words, if they could be applied simultaneously, then they can complete each other in order to become a strong strategy. Such strategy not only will retain the increasing of using drug, but also will limiting the harmful effect to the drug abuser 's health specifically, and the community's health generally.
Harm Reduction does not mean to legal the intravenous drug injection or allow to converse with any other substitution, but it is rather to control the harmful effect of those drugs toward the drug user and to adherence the therapeutic-relationship between the drug user and the health provider. In many countries, the concept of harm reduction has also been proven effectively in changing the drug user's behaviour, in limiting the spread of HIV /AIDS and other infectious diseases, as well as in saving the health insurance for the government. |