Letter from the Authors

Are you working? What do you do for a living? Where do you work?

Whether we “work” in the popular use of the word, where we work, and the kind of work we do are important contributors to our sense of personal and social identity. We develop part of our sense of selfworth in relation to the work we do and our employment status gives us a class identity as well.

Our social identity not only impacts the kinds of jobs we have access to, but whether the work we do is actually defined as work. In societies that criminalize the use of certain drugs, the users of those drugs face discrimination, exclusion, and persecution, which greatly impacts the kind of work they can do.

Harm reduction programs and other organizations that provide services to drug users, in particular, would benefit from employing people who use drugs. Hiring people from the target population you seek to reach seems like a no-brainer. Yet, most paid positions at these organizations go to people who do not use drugs, or to people who are better at hiding their drug use.

Drug users have been working to improve the health and rights of their communities for decades—without the benefit of being paid for their efforts. Without their work, methods regarded as essential in saving lives, like HIV and hepatitis prevention, would not have been proven effective in the first place.

It’s time to make our work visible, recognized, respected, and supported.

Although the key goal of this guide is to help harm reduction organizations and drug policy advocates hire and work with active drug users, the ideas we present in this book may be applied to many different settings. Throughout the book, we identify potential challenges facing drug-using employees, and offer guidance for employers to ensure that drug users are treated fairly in the workplace.

In the same vein, we encourage harm reduction programs to assist drug users in organizing themselves and speaking out for positive change. Organizations that provide services for drug users, should also work with drug users. We invite the sharing of skills, knowledge, and resources between users and non-users, so that people who use drugs can become better self-advocates.

We have long been advocates of hiring active drug users, and we have consistently employed them in our own programs. The overwhelming majority of these experiences have been successful, with positive benefits far outweighing negative experiences.

Many of the suggested policies and examples we use in this book come from our own programs in Canada. We recognize that projects in other locations will have to operate in different environments of harm reduction, but we believe that the information here can provide a foundation for building culturally appropriate policies and practices. We leave that work to you.

It is our sincere hope that this book will make a difference, not only to individual drug users, but to harm reduction movements and drug user organizing efforts in general. We want to hear from you, and are happy to respond to any comments or questions you may have.

Good luck to you in your local, national, and international efforts.

Solidarity,

Raffi

Balian and Cheryl White