Is Harm Reduction Culturally Appropriate in Malaysian Drug Policy?

In his recent article 'Harm Reduction and the American Difference: Drug Treatment and Problem-Solving Courts in Comparative Perspective' (2010) in the Journal of Health Care Law and Policy, James L. Nolan Jr. draws a correlation between jurisprudential culture of different culture of different countries and their willingness to adopt harm reduction as a method to tackle drug problems domestically. Now, I've spoken about harm reduction in the previous blog entry but just as a recap, it is increasingly more favoured in drug policy, as opposed to the traditional prohibitionist approach, which has failed - and failed catastrophically at that - to reduce drug addiction rates. Harm reduction is essentially a public health approach whereby instead of incarcerating drug offenders, it seeks to reduce harm done to the addict and the society, while increasing access to drug rehabilitation programs. Examples of harm reduction policies are the use of methadone maintenance therapy to help heroin addicts and needle and syringe exchange programs.

Nolan states: ' ... a harm reduction philosophy is more in keeping with the careful, moderate, and reserved jurisprudential sensibilities of the five common law countries outside of the U.S., while the demand reduction approach (along with the popularity of such treatment modalities as self-help therapy groups) is commensurate with the more optimistic, bold, and enthusiastic tendencies of contemporary American legal culture.' (at 46) [Emphasis added.]

This quote got me thinking.

The first thing I thought about is the fact that these optimistic, bold and enthusiastic American policies are all failing spectacularly. Secondly, Malaysia is currently slowly but surely working towards a more harm reduction-based approach, but politically and jurisprudentially it will take some time to get anywhere near where Australia is. At the moment we still hang offenders for possession offences and local news programs still proudly show clips of numerous packages of coke, methamphetamines and heroin that the police confiscate in drug busts, which are supply reduction approaches. Although I think that the demand/supply reduction and harm reduction approaches are not mutually exclusive, I do think that the recent increased advocacy of harm reduction is a step in the right direction. In light of the above quote from Nolan's article, I am just thinking of how Malaysia can create drug policy that best suits its jurisprudential and socioeconomic culture. In my view, we are certainly more careful and moderate like the Australians rather than optimistic and bold like the Americans, and that is perhaps a tick in favour of harm reduction.

However, that's just one tick in a field of questions and considerations. Many Malaysians' views of drug offenders are still rooted in moral 'badness' instead of the idea that drug addiction is a medical problem. Publicly advocating harm reduction is going to require slow and steady release of information into the public sphere about methadone treatments and other harm reduction approaches and public discussions of how the prohibitive drug policies have failed. HIV is ever increasing among intravenous drug users too. The first thing we have to do is disseminate information to reduce the perception that HIV is a disease for sinners and follow up with the introduction of harm reduction policies.