Originally published at: ‘Ugly Language’ and Nervous Funders: Inside the Trump Administration’s Attack on Harm Reduction - TPM – Talking Points Memo
When President Donald Trump’s administration began its shakeup of the federal government, purging online data sets and demonizing previous federal policy, Laura Pegram saw that her organization could be in danger. She, along with others at the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors, or NASTAD, moved to restructure their website. “We very intentionally…
Trump has taken the worst elements from Nixon and St. Ronnie and has made them policy
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To a large extent I agree with the conclusions of the Pegram and NASTAD. If the cost of keeping valuable working programs up and running is changing what you call it, that’s what you do.
I also appreciate the wasteful and functionally useless churn this creates in a community already under resourced. Taking time away from providing a life saving and life changing services to add to the administrative overhead and cost just to reword how the programs sound to the higher ups has a very Newspeak vibe. The first step to controlling behavior is controlling what people can think.
Sure, call it whatever you want if it means the positive functional outcome can continue, but not at the cost of preventing the science and knowledge of how to improve outcomes from continuing.
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the administration’s targeting of the term “harm reduction”
This is perfectly understandable as it directly conflicts with the universally observable phenomenon that “Everything Trump Touches Dies” (ETTD).*
*h/t Rick Wilson
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We have great models of harm reduction in treatment of addition. Switzerland for one.
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I have one, big suggestion for “Harm Reduction” for the United States of America. It is self-evident and resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
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It’s amazing how unprepared this country was for this orange-dyed a-hole.
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Project 2025 plans the concentration/work camps for people suffering addiction too…
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Coming soon, new treatment pathways in blood letting!
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Quite simply, they don’t want to reduce harm. They want to harm more people.
Given that Americans on average spend over 5 hours a day staring a screens, and a third of the US population suffers from compulsive smartphone use, maybe a bit of harm reduction is in order. Look at the harms already suffered nationally and internationally from the re-election of Trump, an event largely driven by social media manipulation. I believe that a few centuries from now the addiction accomplishments of giant American corporations will tower over the late-19th century successes of the East India Company, which only managed to turn 10% of the Chinese population into full-time opium addicts. Diddly-diddly!
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