Forum: Harm reduction offers better outcomes than prohibition

Published 1:30 am Saturday, July 26, 2025

By Don Dillinger / Herald Forum

Thanks to The Herald, I learned for the first time of some intriguing ideas emanating from a state committee, the Substance Use Recovery Advisory Committee.

This committee has studied our drug abuse policies and recommended we abandon the “usual and customary approach” and try a radically new one, which has been used in many other countries with dramatically better outcomes. We have been applying the “prohibition” model to the drug problem, with awful results, for more than 100 years. The result of this policy has been identical to its result when we tried it with alcohol during Prohibition: the almost instantaneous creation of a massive nationwide criminal enterprise causing enormous additional harm to our communities, hugely increased availability of alcohol, and no reduction in its use.

Todd Welch, a columnist for The Herald, wrote an article (“A plan to supply drugs to addicts is a dangerous dance,” The Herald, July 9) that scoffs at the suggestion that we try this “harm reduction” alternative, with the usual objections to the suggested changes: The state will just become another dope dealer; the cartels will outcompete on price and drug quality; it (harm reduction) neglects the impact of addiction on families and communities; and these programs just don’t have a good track record. He urges that we “double down” on the existing prohibition and “treatment” system.

This “system” has very few treatment successes, while mostly making many other things worse. Our prohibition laws’ most immediate effect is to guarantee a massive profit margin for the drug dealer. High street prices mean the addict must commit crimes daily. Mass incarceration of people for drug-related crime, with the permanent harm it causes to society, people’s employability and housing options, might be a tolerable side effect; if it were working to control drug addiction. It isn’t. If the cartels really did compete by lowering the price and raising the safety, the race to the lowest price would be another plus, reducing petty theft, and if they could produce safer products at lower cost; OMG, truly a miracle!

We already know prohibition doesn’t work. Thoughtful planning which implements “harm reduction” strategies instead of prohibition does not mean we are “condoning” drug abuse. It means we have stopped condoning the rising death toll, incarceration, and hopelessness that prohibition always causes. When and where it has been implemented, results have been encouraging: Sweden and Portugal have long been using this model.

Thanks for printing Welch’s column.

For more on SURSUS go to www.hca.wa.gov. And for a critical review, “Kicking the habit: the Opioid Crisis and America’s Addiction to Prohibition,” go to www.jstor.org/stable/resrep26215.

Don Dillinger lives in Snohomish.