This week in SojoMail we’re highlighting one of our features from the latest issue of Sojourners magazine. Gregg Brekke writes that faith-based harm reduction programs, while sometimes controversial, can help save lives:
“We are in the midst of an overdose crisis,” said Hill Brown, southern director of Faith in Harm Reduction. “We say overdose crisis and not opioid crisis because right now overdose is the crisis. We’ve had opioids forever.”
In 2020 and 2021, during the height of deaths and extreme social isolation from COVID-19, deaths from overdoses surged in the United States before reaching a new baseline. For people 35 to 64 years old, the overdose death rate was highest among Black men and American Indian/Native Alaskan men. Overdoses have become the third largest cause of death among teens 14 to 18 years of age, behind firearm deaths and vehicle collisions, rising to an average of 22 per week in 2022, largely driven by fentanyl in counterfeit prescription pills.
While churches have long hosted recovery groups focused on abstinence from drugs, some faith leaders are exploring how churches and other religious institutions can serve people who use drugs (PWUDs).
Collectively known as harm reduction, these practices were originally envisioned as strategies to curtail the spread of HIV. Some wonder if harm reduction enables drug use more than it keeps people safe. But for leaders engaging in harm reduction work, the approach is much like encouraging the use of seatbelts: saving one life at a time. | 
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