The Greatest Way To Reduce Harm To Drug Users Is To Empower Them

     The fact is most drug users around the globe have been brainwashed into believing they have no power and are less than human. This is not true. Drug users no matter what or how much they are using can advocate for themselves and each other. We need help and assistance from health agencies, social justice organizations and other allies. What we do not need is to be treated in a paternalistic manner as if we were mentally handicapped children, nor as amoral criminals beyond redemption.     
    We are considered beyond redemption unless we get "clean" and conform to a moral standard that does not exist in reality and also belies ignorance that drug use is an integral part of the human condition. It is time for drug users to escape such bondage and declare that we are through playing the shame game. Released from the mental shackles of shame and stigma we can see each other for who we truly are, human beings capable of much more than we have been led to believe.
   The time has come for the billion plus drug users around the globe to assert themselves and demand to be treated with respect and dignity instead of incarceration, torture, and murder. We do not need any ones permission to advocate and organize for ourselves. Our greatest enemy will be the internalized stigma that has been forcefully ingrained in us by the hypocrites who seek to keep drug users enslaved by their judgemental condemnation.