At least some case can be made for the New York City Health Department’s notorious new “harm reduction” ad campaign, which tells New York City subway passengers who use drugs to feel not “ashamed” but rather “empowered that you are using safely.” The ads emphasize that the drug naloxone can save the lives of those suffering an overdose. They alert drug users that deadly fentanyl may be mixed with street drugs not advertised as such. These messages may indeed save lives.
Then again, they might also endanger them, by reassuring users with the comforting but false notion that they can use drugs “safely.” Joe Borelli, a city councilman from Staten Island, where overdose deaths (132 in 2020 alone) have been higher than in any part of the city other than the Bronx, was surely right to tweet that these consumer-protection alerts for drug users are “normalizing injecting deadly, life-changing drugs.”
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