John Oliver made an excellent case for shifting from a war on drugs to a war on drug related deaths on the March 27, 2022 edition of Last Week Tonight on HBO. You can view it here.

In a little over 15 minutes, Oliver explained the rationale behind the harm reduction strategy: realism. Harm reduction advocates understand we will never attain a drug-free society, and that it therefore makes sense to make illicit drug use safer.

Oliver called for the Food and Drug Administration to make the opioid overdose antidote naloxone an over-the-counter drug, as I have been saying since 2018. In 2019, Cato adjunct scholar David Hyman and I conducted a Capitol Hill Briefing to make the case to congressional staff, which included a naloxone training session.

Oliver debunked the myth, popularized on TV dramas, that even close proximity to fentanyl can cause an innocent bystander to die from an overdose.

He mentioned the benefits of syringe services programs, also referred to as a “needle exchange.” In January 2020, then-Surgeon General Jerome Adams and University of Southern California Medical School Professor Ricky D. Bluthenthal addressed a Cato audience supporting that strategy.

Oliver discussed the benefits of safe consumptions sites and how the so-called “Crack House Statute” prevents them from saving lives in the U.S. I moderated an excellent panel discussion on that subject at a harm reduction event in Cato’s Hayek Auditorium in 2019, featuring Darwin Fisher, the Program Manager of Insite in Vancouver, B.C. (the oldest safe consumption site in North America), former Pennsylvania Governor Edward G. Rendell (a principal of Safehouse, a privately-funded organization attempting to set up a safe consumption site in Philadelphia), and Cato Senior Vice President for Legal Studies Clark Neily.

The U.S. lags well behind much of the developed world in employing harm reduction strategies. (Of course, the ultimate harm reduction strategy would be to end drug prohibition.) But harm reduction is finally beginning to gain acceptance in this country, and hopefully John Oliver added momentum to the cause. As I watched his monologue I almost shouted at the screen, “You complete me.” Instead, I’ll opt for, “You had me at over-the-counter naloxone.” 

h/​t Jerry Maguire.