Apr 29

Apr 29 Harm Reduction Rant + Repost: The Latin Times, "RFK Jr. to End 'Godsend' Narcan Program"

From Narcan to Neglect

It’s no secret I’ve spent half my life volunteering with harm reduction groups. Growing up in Florida in the 90s, I saw addiction in its rawest form: families torn apart, bright kids becoming zombies, and entire cities numbed by opiates and benzos. Later, as a (mostly sober) raver, I bore witness to an endless parade of drug-induced agony and ecstasy. I saw people having the time of their lives, next to people convulsing on dance floors, catatonic ravers dusted with grainy white powder around their nostrils, unable to form words. I watched people inject while visibly in pain, chasing relief. I’ve seen enough to know: humanity is losing the war on drugs.

I’ve never been mistaken for a narc. I’m short, I don’t wear hiking boots or steel-toed shoes (a giveaway for undercover police), and I’ve always carried a certain anti-authoritarian energy. I know how to slip into the sweaty pits of festivals, where even responsible people pass out from dehydration. People on drugs trust me more than people in uniform. So I joined safety crews like DanceSafe and “Star Teams,” worked alongside policy advocates at Release UK, and met the founders of cannabis legalization and police reform movements.

My goal was simple: reduce harm. Prevent death.

That said, I was not the person to push recovery. I did not drag people to rehabs or host interventions. And the bottom line is that harm reduction without recovery prolongs the war on drugs, rather than fight against the users’ demand.

I’m not the ultimate authority on drugs, but I’ve read Erowid like some people read the Bible. I’ve done clinical research using animal models. I had friends at the NIH studying recreational drug use in humans, close enough friends to admit where their data was misrepresented to get another grant. The deepest knowledge came from the streets. I’ve helped people to med tents and kept them out of them. I’ve been the voice of trust for many who couldn’t trust themselves, whether they were subconsciously suicidal or just completely lost under the influence. I’ve seen people prosper post-rehab and many more succumb to their ailment.

Around 2015, harm reduction groups began pivoting hard toward Narcan distribution, sidelining education and testing. Narcan is the emergency opioid reversal drug. A person revived by Narcan often wakes up screaming, flooded with pain from receptors they thought they’d buried. Fentanyl related deaths were skyrocketing, so giving out this expensive product made sense. Narcan does save lives.

Narcan isn’t just for people in the hood pouring milk on a friend who’s already cold and lifeless. It’s for wealthy parents managing back pain with opiates, when, G-d forbid, a child finds the bottle. It’s for finance bros who take a mislabeled substance. It’s for the tragedies no one saw coming. But Narcan isn’t everything.

Harm reduction has lost touch. It has lost site of building a better community. Narcan treats symptoms, not root cause. Without honest conversations about moderation or recovery, harm reduction is just survival management. Harm reduction has become a movement of telling people to get cut, then apply a band-aid, rather than to simply avoid getting cut in the first place.

Healthy community can be far more valuable in treating depression, anxiety and other health issues than drugs. But the recovery-minded communities are being bashed by the Narcan-enthusiast community, who may save lives temporarily, but also destroy them long term.

A movement I once loved has felt less medical focused and more like a team of shamans. It’s a Band-Aid factory, shouting unethical opinions as righteous. They aren’t sking why people are using or helping them stop. They were patting themselves on the back for keeping people alive with $50 inhalents.

And that’s why I seldom associate with harm reduction today. I can not accept, “Great job! Only one person died. Only twenty had nightmarish experiences. Only thousands decided to use drugs for the first or hundredth time. So many more might have died without us.” I will still volunteer helping people at festivals, but as an outsider, who may get some flack for telling someone to seek a therepeutic community.

In the most frustrating moments, I saw well-intentioned harm reduction advocates post things like, “I understand if you have to use today” in response to real-world disappointments, like Trump winning an election. And my instict was to tell them about real problems, before remembering that one person’s problems shouldn’t be compared to another. Some experience more pain than others from minute things. Then I wanted to reply, “You’re being reckless.” But I remembered that any pushback to liberal echo chamber chants brings social wrath, not discussion. Complaining to my friend would mean losing them as a friend, endless people blindly insisting I’m wrong, and little chance of conversation. So I said nothing.

Narcan, needle injection sites, various kits etc are not a cure to overdose or addiction. They can only be a stepping stone towards getting someone to a cure or people who want to help. Drugs are a gamble in themselves. And if you are gambling, you better hope it’s in a house that throws you out when you lost enough money, start talking to bad actors and before you lose it all.

I’ve lost too many friends to drugs.

So I don’t believe in numbing pain with substances. Medical professionals may advise short term analgesics or opiates for severe pain, but they also know the dangers of extended use and addiction. Most involved in harm reduction know the pain of addiction, but have built a community uncomfortable discussing the very issue they mean to fight against.

In the last month alone, I lost two friends to what may be attributed to drugs, may be attributed to underlying illness. They were the type who’d advocate “responsible use,” like if Trump won an election and you had to cope, or you were at a music fest trying to get to a higher level. One died of a heart attack at 32. He was not high at the time, yet years of drug use stacked the odds against him. His obituary mentioned his harm reduction efforts, and how young his family died, but not his use. The other friend was shot by police during a psychotic episode, triggered by a relapse, after years of clean living. People flocked to (rightfully) attack the police involved, but, again, none mentioned the research chemicals he was experimenting with..

These two deaths came after a decade of losing friends to questionable causes. Were they suicidal? Or did they just want a pill to help them sleep? Who knows?

Then there’s the friends senselessly murdered in sloppy robberies, completely avoidable if drugs were sold on legal markets. And those who landed in prison after drug-induced choices.

In every case where drug use was, at the very least, a factor in death, it was left out of the obituaries and subseuqent conversation. Even with the people who dedicated their lives to harm reduction. With any other controversial topic—from income inequality, mental health issues, policing—nothing is taboo. Apparently, when it comes to drug use, only the need for narcan and positive vibes can be discussed.

At 18, I remember hearing about Amy Winehouse’s death back when I lived in London. The papers said alcohol poisoning, while a friend tossed out heroin he’d bought from her dealer. At 22, I saw Tim Berg (Avicii) overdose at a Miami nightclub. His pin needle pupils were absent from the papers, alleging he had to cancel his Ultra performance for an emergency gallbladder surgery. That incident prompted me to write an essay for a friend’s blog insisting that musicians will die if we can not responsibly discuss their substance use. Thousands of strangers read it, but if any had a real influence, they didn’t care about a random raver’s personal account enough to echo the sentiment. Drug abuse remained a well known secret.

[PS The person who published my essay on Avicii’s drug addiction wound up also dying from an overdose.]

We simply don’t talk about drugs honestly. Nobody does. The world missed the mark with Reefer Madness, but they’re swinging too far the other way with “Addiction? Who cares!” style campaigns. We need to break the cycle of everything being addiction or trauma related and introduce nuance. Caring friends and mental health professionals should focus on finding the nuance that leads to recovery, not chanting slogans.

I still support harm reduction. I still will try to carry Narcan at every U.S. festival or Burn, though I am sober. I still believe drug test kits and fresh needles should be widely available. I will just become more vocal about those normalizing addiction and unhealthy behavior, rather than responsible use or abstinence.

I’m angry with the culture I helped build, that romanticizes survival while avoiding the hard conversation about change. Harm reduction volunteers hand out test strips and say, “Have fun!” when they should say, “Be safe. If you ever need someone to talk to, we’re here, and we will support your sobriety.”

For me, the sight of one of my junky neighbors—a beautiful girl covered in track marks, cysts and hideous scars from lifelong addiction—was the most sticking anti-drug PSA.

Maybe harm reduction tents need to hang pictures of all the lost friends, and encourage users to talk more before handing over a can. Maybe they need to have people in recovery. I don’t know the answer.

Maybe needle exchange sites shouldn’t be close to skid row, but rather affluent areas, Christian neighborhoods, and areas where people will step in to help. Again, I don’t know

Harm reduction has to evolve. Narcan should come with a number for those seeking recovery. Booths at festivals should be a place of sober connection, not just first aid, connecting the rehabilitated to the lost.

There’s too many in the harm reduction community quietly falling apart, while preaching safety.

We don’t need wook cheerleaders. We need counselors.

If someone’s using so often that it’s hurting them, their dealer should be the one pointing them to rehab. But street dealers are far more likely to think about consequences for reporting drugs than their client’s health. So we can’t track when casual use turns to addiction.

Harm reduction is doing the best job towards policy change. Legalization, one aspect of harm reduction orgs, would save more lives than Narcan ever could. Regulating substances means purity standards, better labels and, in turn, less deaths. Taxes should be used to offset negative externalities (cigs in some states have an $8 tax!). Without legalization, we can’t tax drugs to fund rehab. We can’t put warning labels on containers. We can’t build the recovery centers in areas that need them.

Right now, without legalization of all drugs, we can’t even have an honest discussion about their dangers.

Original article. It’s a short one. No clue why Latin Times is one of the few papers picking up this important story.

I’ll be writing more in a short book. But because I lost two friends this month, I wanted to give a teaser above. And protesting RFK Jr’s wildly ignorant decision is important right now. I don’t care if people can buy Narcan, since I know the people who need it wont.

RFK Jr. to End 'Godsend' Narcan Program That Helped Reduce Overdose Deaths Despite His Past Heroin Addiction

M.B. Mack / Apr 29 2025

Despite his own history of overcoming heroin addiction, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is backing plans to end a federal Narcan distribution program credited with helping drive a steep drop in U.S. overdose deaths.

Narcan, the widely-used overdose reversal drug, has played a major role in reducing opioid-related deaths, particularly amid the fentanyl crisis.

A $56 million annual grant program through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) has funded the distribution of Narcan to first responders across the country, training over 66,000 individuals and distributing more than 282,500 kits in 2024 alone. Recent CDC data shows a nearly 24% drop in overdose deaths for the 12 months ending September 2024, the sharpest one-year decline in decades—an achievement partly attributed to widespread naloxone access.

Speaking at the Illicit Drug Summit in Nashville on Thursday, Kennedy reflected on his personal struggle with addiction and emphasized the importance of community, treatment, and hope in solving the drug crisis, USA Today reported. However, behind the scenes, the Trump administration's draft budget includes major cuts to addiction programs, including the termination of the Narcan grant, according to The Independent.

"Narcan has been kind of a godsend as far as opioid epidemics are concerned, and we certainly are in the middle of one now with fentanyl," Donald McNamara of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said. "We need this funding source because it's saving lives every day."

Though Kennedy has previously praised interventions like Narcan as critical to saving lives, he now frames the crisis as one requiring deeper, spiritual and societal change rather than relying solely on "nuts and bolts" medical solutions.

The proposal has drawn swift condemnation from addiction specialists and public health advocates, who warn that cutting Narcan funding could reverse the progress made against overdose deaths. Critics argue that removing life-saving tools while broader societal fixes are slowly pursued would leave vulnerable communities at risk.

While national overdose deaths have declined, experts warn the epidemic is far from over, especially in states still experiencing surges. Ending federal Narcan support could slow or even reverse recent gains.

There have been other proposals to reduce harm reduction spending. LEAP, an org I love, recently posted the following and invited their followers to share: