LIST OF PANELS

Harm reduction is a public policy approach that seeks to reduce the harmful risks and consequences of controversial behaviours without moral condemnation or legal prohibition of the behaviour itself. It originated in the context of grassroots activism and local public health practice related to drug policy. While harm reduction may defy precise definition as a public policy approach, its concept components include value neutrality as to the underlying behaviour; humanism and non-punishment, valuing pragmatism over symbolism, and positive construction of the subject as a full citizen with rights, responsibilities and dignity.
 
The language and concepts of harm reduction are increasingly being mobilized in higher reaches of policymaking and law, in a variety of domains.  Harm reduction is most visibly reflected in higher levels of state and international policy in relation to drugs (most notably in relation to the opioid crisis and to cannabis legalization), but it is also increasingly used in policy and advocacy in relation to other areas, including, sex work, abortion, tobacco, mental health, and physician-assisted dying, among others. 
 
In light of this rapid scaling-up, this panel seeks to describe and define how harm reduction is variously understood in policy discourse across these domains and institutions, to examine its normative bases and limitations, and to consider its promise and risks as a public policy paradigm. 
 

This panel invites scholars from a variety of disciplines, including, without limitation, law, social work, policy science, geography, public health, sociology, anthropology, philosophy and bioethics to contribute papers engaging how harm reduction operates as a public policy paradigm across domains and institutions. Areas may include, again without limitation, drug use, sex work, abortion, physician-assisted dying, tobacco, safer sex, environment. Papers may address any issues related to the research questions described above, including:
 
1) How harm reduction as a public policy is understood in different domains and institutional contexts, including its rationales, the practices it seeks to instantiate, and its relationship to competing policy paradigms.
2) How harm reduction ought to be understood as a normative matter, including how relevant harms should be identified, which individuals or communities should be given priority in the minimization of harm and risk, and the centrality of anti-subordination to the paradigm.
3) The normative limits of harm reduction as an approach to public policy
4) Risks and potential of using harm reduction as a public policy paradigm, including its potential to generate consensus or compromise over policy in societies marked by significant moral pluralism; what regulatory practices will be called for by harm reduction arguments, and what is gained and lost when harm reduction is deployed as a public policy paradigm, for example when street-level harm or NGO-based harm reduction practice is translated into the discourse and practice of state institutions.