Check It: How Drug Testing Programs Can Reduce Overdose Deaths
Check It: How Drug Testing Programs Can Reduce Overdose Deaths
(…) Whether the goal is to prevent overdoses, treat addiction, or stop kids from using drugs, all effective drug strategies require empathy and compassion for human suffering. Even before COVID-19, America had a deficit of these resources, and the pandemic has further stretched our capacity for caring, leaving little surplus for what may seem to many like consequences that result from discretionary and irresponsible individual behaviors. Until we can evolve into a society that is more inclusive of different ways of being and commits to easing human suffering, drug checking technologies offer a means to reduce deaths that result from adulterated drugs. This is good news for a problem that has been intractable for so long. If only we could summon the empathy and compassion needed to garner the will of legislators to embrace the life-saving power that drug checking puts in people’s hands. (Baker Institute, USA, 02.09.2022)
https://www.bakerinstitute.org/research/check-it-how-drug-testing-programs-can-reduce-overdose-deaths