Harm reduction for stimulant users: a Mainline-GIZ study

News

Harm reduction for stimulant users: a Mainline-GIZ study

13 October 2017

With the support of the Global Partnership on Drug Policies and Development (GPDPD), a project implemented by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, a team of three Mainline researchers conduct a study into effective harm reduction interventions for stimulant users. The study includes a detailed description of eight best practices in different world regions.

The need

As most harm reduction interventions are funded under the umbrella of HIV, most of the research and project funding also goes to analyse the effectiveness of HIV/AIDS strategies. This means that both programmes and the evidence focus on those drug users who inject their drug and they leave out those who smoke, snort or swallow. The people who can benefit from harm reduction interventions are most often injecting opioid users, and harm reduction often becomes associated with heroin use alone. At the same time, people using stimulants may face somewhat different problems, regarding health as well as psychosocial and legal circumstances. As this leaves many marginalised stimulant users underserviced, there is a need for the harm reduction field to broaden the scope and to structurally include stimulant users.

Click here to read the full article.