Videos

Our panel of mothers who lost their children to overdose called on lawmakers to expand access to medications for opioid use disorder, increase overdose prevention services, distribute naloxone in communities that need it most, and provide evidence-based drug education for youth and adults. Most of all, they spoke out against harsh drug laws that aim to increase punishment and incarceration. If you want to understand the harms of these punitive drug laws and how policies based on public health, Harm Reduction, and science will keep our loved ones safe and alive, then this video is well worth your time.

When a loved one dies of an overdose—and when we worry about protecting our families and communities from the ongoing overdose crisis—it is tempting to divide people into innocent victims and dangerous (often outsider) perpetrators. But such stark lines are inconsistent with the realities of how people acquire and use drugs.

The Black community is being hit hardest by the overdose crisis. The loss of her family members and the continuing loss of life in her community motivates Joy to save lives through Harm Reduction and to fight against punitive drug laws. She knows that these laws destroy lives, devastate communities, and cause more deaths. As Joy states: “The War on Drugs is just the New Jim Crow.”

My son Michael was a pioneer in Harm Reduction in New York City. In many ways, he was my teacher. He taught me about Harm Reduction, that people like him need respect and compassion, and that if something happened to him, he wanted her to continue his work in Harm Reduction to help others like him. This is our story.

There are politically motivated people who attempt to co-opt the grief of a parent who has lost a child to overdose to implement more punitive drug laws. Susan knows these laws cause only more harm and more deaths.

A powerful video from Broken No More with support from Vital Strategies of three women who have lost loved ones to overdose. In this video, they describe the pain and grief of their loss compounded by the unwarranted stigma associated with death by overdose.

This webinar brings together youth and drug policy advocates that are leading the curve to change how we learn and teach about drugs by empowering communities to embrace more compassionate and effective strategies for addressing drug use in the U.S.

This presentation was recorded at the Harm Reduction Ohio Conference where Dr. Sam Snodgrass explains, in an easily understandable manner, that opioid addiction is an acquired disease of brain structure and function and that the molecular and cellular changes within the brain are manifested as starvation for these opioids.

In this interview with Dr. Evan Fewsmith of Straight Talk with the Doc, Aimee Dunkle discusses: what naloxone is, and how the Solace Foundation of Orange County is working to get Naloxone to those who are likely to save a life with this medication.

The death toll of opioid addiction may be finally turning a corner in central Illinois. Efforts in the past year to make opioid use safer for addicts has led to a nearly 30 percent reduction in overdose deaths, said Peoria County Coroner Jamie Harwood.