How Students Are Using Harm Reduction To Fight The Drug War

By Danielle Corcione


Amidst a opioid overdose crisis while the prosperous money out on a new cannabis marketplace, students today are navigating ways to dismantle the stigma drug users often face, and help communities most impacted by the drug war. Whether they’ve experienced a death of a classmate, have a personalized story of addiction, or have witnessed incarceration in action, young organizers and activists are fighting back using harm loss framework, which is rooted in combating stigma against users.


According to the Harm Loss Coalition, harm loss is defined as a “set of practical strategies and ideas aimed at reducing negative implications regarding drug use …. [And] a movement for social justice add onto a belief in, and respect for, the rights of people who use drugs.” Essentially: If we, as a culture, are more compassionate towards drug users, it’s more likely they’ll ask for help should they require it.


Dominique Coronel, who is a junior at DePaul University and Vice President of the campus Students for Sensible Drug Policy chapter, is aware firsthand how harmful stigma against drug use can be. “I came into this work because of my lived experiences, being orphaned by the War on Contraband, losing my mother to addiction and illegal narcotics [and] my father to incarceration of drugs,” he explained to MTV News.


SSDP is a national drug policy reform company with student-led chapters on university campuses. Their work is the latest extension of the long history of colleges and universities serving as hubs for illegal substances and social movements. In the late ‘60s, students protested the Vietnam war, along with experimented with psychedelics. Fifty years later, the Black Lives Matter movement, which quickly spread to campuses, trim more light onto the racialized War on Drugs.


Right now in Chicago, DePaul SSDP students successfully lobbied for the school’s now-established opioid overdose and response protocol, which launched in January 2019. Moreover to training personnel on overdose reversal by community addiction specialists at the one of the country’s largest Catholic universities, nearly 30 buildings on campus have a kit containing four doses of Narcan, a drug that can reverse an opioid overdose if administered correctly in a timely fashion, making access to the product and training important to reduce overdose-related deaths.


This sort isn’t leaving their advocacy in back of in the classroom, though. “Movements begin on college campuses, although they don’t end on college campuses,” Coronel added.


Given the drug war isn’t exclusive to just opioids, DePaul students are also advocating for cannabis legalization that isn’t just for the prosperous and white. Their work couldn’t come at a higher end time: Illinois lawmakers are currently working on a 533-paged recreational legalization bill focused on social equity, which the Los Angeles Times reports includes a limit of possession of 30 grams for those 21 and over, an expungement program for cannabis-related misdemeanor and Class 4 felony convictions, along with a $20 million low-interest cash advance program to diversify corporation ownership.


“This cannabis bill is one that is going to be legalized not just for the prosperous, the white, and the privileged, however one that is going to have real equity reinvested into communities disproportionately impacted by the War on Illegal substances — Black communities, Brown communities, poor communities,” Coronel told MTV News.


He and his peers are pushing back against a bill provision that still permits those 20 and under to be criminalized for possession. While legislators have insisted cannabis reform could be enforced like alcoholic beverages, with fines and up to a  year of incarceration, Coronel is aware “those sort of laws are enforced differently across different communities and it’s gonna target Black and Brown youth.” It’s an extension of the school-to-prison pipeline, he stressed.


Illinois isn’t alone in the fight, either. Students at the University of North Georgia—Gainesville are focusing on a petition to decriminalize cannabis in Hall County, especially given that Republican Governor Brian Kemp recently signed a bill to enact a medical weed program, allowing residents to consume low-THC oil medically. Although, if you’re caught with only two ounces of pot in the Peach state, you can would be sentenced to up to a decade beyond bars, says the Weed Policy Project.


“Living in Georgia, it’s really hard to get this sort of [decriminalization] legislation passed through because of the fact it is a pretty conservative state in most areas,” Erin Conway, who served as president of the UNGG SSDP in spring 2019, told MTV News.


Conway and her peers expressed fear any time Governor Kemp was elected in 2018; as soon as he approved the state’s medical pot program, the program is limited to cannabis oil. And given that the state has however to launch a legal market with dispensaries, over 8,400 registered patients have still relied on acquiring products illegally, reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Rather than working with lawmakers directly, she finds more value in speaking with constituents and raising awareness about legalization. This summer, they’re gearing to collect petition signatures in popular spots while in the county, like Lake Lanier.


“Slowly although surely, things have been beginning to progress” on the decriminalization front, she added. Some parts of the state, for instance, have already passed their own measures. Leafly reports Atlanta unanimously passed to decriminalize possession in October 2017, right now making an ounce punishable to up to a $75 fine.


Nevertheless, there’s still progress to be made. “We’re in a dense urban environment, meaning it’s not just students, although the community in general,” Hunter Knight, who previously attended UNGG nevertheless right now attends UNG’s Atlanta campus, explained. “Even though [UNGA] itself doesn’t have an enormous party dorm scene, it’s in the middle of a city, so there’s a lot of nightlife.”


Like most higher-education institutions, UNGA requires incoming students to participate in an online liquor course in hopes discouraging a culture of binge drinking. Identically to most U.S. Sex education curriculum, these courses are rooted in abstinence, which research has proven to be ineffective. That’s why the school’s SSDP chapter focuses on educational safer partying strategies in the city’s EDM club scene, like instructing peers on how to test MDMA for harder drugs.


“[Our work is] along those same points, nevertheless without the biased approach of ‘Don’t do this at all’ or ‘You should never mix this and that,’” he elaborated. “We put it through a ‘what if’ regular, because at the end of the day, we all know it’s up to whoever is doing the substance if they’re going to do it or not. You can't tell someone no.”


In states without legal markets, it’s even more important for individuals to speak on their personalized experiences, especially in the absence of customary and organized advocacy groups. While the Lone Star state has nevertheless to legalize, it’s definitely coming — yet with more than a few pushback. According to the Texas Tribune, state legislators are working on a limited medical pot program. Furthermore, the same lawmakers are also working on a decriminalization bill, yet it’s unlikely it will pass into law anytime soon.


because of the prohibitionist climate, Texas Tech senior Kassi Scott experienced criticism as soon as attempting to form a campus chapter of the Student Weed Alliance for Statistics and Transparency, a national network really interested in combating cannabis stigma through education, statistics, and professional development. To be recognized officially by the school, she required a faculty member to commit as an advisor, although even that was also risky for employees sign off on.


as soon as she is working on continuing the legacy immediately after her graduation in three months, she remains a solo student ambassador — although one individual could add to the movement on their own, even in a Red and prohibitionist state. Growing up, she experienced pushback from her Christian household for cannabis use, nevertheless understood the plant’s cultural significance and medicinal advantages through her Jamaican heritage. Ever since, she’s assumed the responsibility of spreading the knowledge and raising awareness among companions and peers.


“I know what [cannabis] does for me, and I know how much better of a life I can survive with it — I use it for my depression and appetite loss,” she told MTV News. As an adult, she saw her companions [consuming cannabis] and she felt moved to educate them on safe consumption, like how to maximize cannabis use without sinking into the couch all day. Right now, they go to her about specific items and their effects.


By being vocal about their own consumption, young people can pave the way towards a cultural shift. While lawmakers feud over policy reform, Scott believes the work is already being done. “I think as the stigma is beginning to break overall, and it’s widely promoted just like anything else in recent years, folks are becoming comfortable with it,” she added.


“The more mainstream it becomes, the far less people around me have [been] thinking of smokers as just ‘stoners.’ In my situation, my companions visualize how efficient and responsible I am, so just witnessing that has flipped a switch for them about what it looks like to be a ‘user.’”