Grant: Project Grant

This project tracks, theorizes and evaluates an emerging trend in law and public policy to seek workable agreements in areas associated with moral controversy through the frame of harm reduction. Harm reduction refers to policies, practices or interventions designed to minimize negative health and social consequences associated with a given behaviour, without requiring its cessation and without moral condemnation. It has its origins in grassroots movements and public health. Recently, an expanding range of actors have begun to integrate harm reduction approaches into law and policy in areas ranging from drug use, abortion, physician-assisted dying, and sex work, among others. This project will probe the ethical foundations of harm reduction in these new contexts and consider how this growing reliance on harm reduction can be a way for law and policy to meaningfully address social determinants of health.