 Thank you Olga for a very passionate speech and on outlining the harm that criminalization causes Okay, so our final speaker last but not least is Deborah Peterson small Deborah is the executive director of break the chains, which is public policy research and advocacy organization Committed to addressing the disproportionate impact of punitive drug policies on economically marginalized communities of color Break the change was founded on the belief that community activism and advocacy is an essential component of progressive progressive policy reform Good morning everyone. I Cannot tell you how happy I am to be here I was thinking about the first time I attended a harm reduction conference, which was back in 1999 and it was the first time I was ever at an event where people were able to speak Openly and honestly about being part of a community of people who use drugs And so I want to affirm this space as a place that's always been a safe space for that and a place that for me Has been a source of so much of my learning over the last 20 years And so I want to start by telling you all I have no slides and I'm not going to be talking to you about The specifics of harm reduction in the US and North America because there are so many people in this room Who are much more expert in that arena than I am? What I do want to talk about are three things That I think are important for the broader context of the work that we're going to be doing over the next three days So first I want to start by talking about what we're talking about and what we're not talking about When we first started this work and we talked about it in terms of reducing the harms of drugs I think that was appropriate and necessary in order to create an environment For the work that we wanted to do But I think it's really clear or at least to me that what we're not talking about is Reducing the harms caused by drugs of addiction What we're talking about is reducing the harms caused by drug prohibition and that is an important distinction That we really need to stay focused on Because if we were talking about the harms caused by drugs of addiction, we'd be talking about tobacco We'd be talking about alcohol. We'd be talking about sugar We'd be talking about the things that are addictive and harmful, but all those drugs are legal Though so those harms don't count in our world What we're talking about here are the harms that are directly the result of prohibition and I want to assert That we actually don't know right now What the harms are just a related to addiction to these substances because we've never had the Opportunity to see what that would look like outside of a prohibition context and so our Advocacy from my point of view has to make it clear to people that what we're really reducing is the harms of drug prohibition Not the harms of drugs and and to me one of the other ways that you know that or one of the other things That we don't talk about that is important to me that relates to prohibition is that we've had a lot of Conversation about the numbers of deaths from overdoses But we've not talked about the number of people who've been murdered under the umbrella of the drug war Mexico is now the second deadliest country in the world after Syria. I Want people to think about what that means? We all focus on the fact that there's an active war going on in Syria that my country and other countries are Involved in bombing people etc But we don't talk about what happens in Mexico as a war and yet that war Has killed over the course of it more people than have died in Syria and last year was Accounted for more deaths than the wars in Afghanistan Iraq Somalia and Sudan So that to me those deaths count just as much as the people who die from overdoses So when we talk about the harms of prohibition We have to include all of it and not just the people who were murdered But the people who died prematurely because their lives were halted by stints in prison by lack of access to health Care by lack of access to all of the things that they should have that they don't have because they've been Criminalized because of their drug use that has nothing to do with the drugs they take it has everything to do with the policies of Prohibition that our countries have put in place and continue to hold on to even though it's clear that they don't work the second thing that I want to Say and acknowledge is that success generates suffering and We talk about our work, but we don't always talk about the fact that we are actually part of a movement and It's a movement for human rights for social justice For correcting many of the ills of society around income inequality because the truth is when we talk about the people Drug users whose lives are difficult, etc. We're not talking about the majority of drug users We're talking about drug users who belong to marginalized communities and to me that's also an important distinction to keep making you know When I was growing up in the US most people in our communities thought that they knew who the LGBT people were and They would say that they thought they knew who they were based on how they dressed or how they talked or whatever and it wasn't until you had a movement of people who came out and Affirmed their identities to the world that folks got to see like hey the universe of folks is much much bigger than what we thought it was Drugs are the same way The universe of drug users is much bigger than we have any idea of the people that we see The people that we serve are the people who are above at the top of the iceberg The ones who don't have the privilege or the ability to keep their drug use hidden the people who don't have the facility To keep the government out of their lives But they don't represent the majority of drug users or even the majority of problematic drug users And so part of our work has to be about creating an environment where we actually do know Who the drug users are because they feel free to out themselves? They feel free to share who they are they feel free to acknowledge that that's part of their experience without fear of reprisal and Because we are part of a movement for that Our success will generate backlash So what we're experiencing now and will continue to experience because I believe that we are entering a period Where we will see a ratcheting up of many of the policies and practices that we've been working against for the last two decades and I tell you I go back and forth between being Incredibly sad and incredibly mad But I tend to stay on the mad side because the fact of the matter is one Sadness doesn't get me anywhere and two of these people are just so Mad is the appropriate response But I really think it's important to take a historical view and to understand that when movements Coming close to achieving success. That's when they experienced the worst backlash I had to think about that because in the abolition movement in the United States It was at the very Time when they had built a lot of support that they passed the fugitive slave laws that turned the entire country into slave catchers Which actually was one of the things that led to the Civil War which led to the end of slavery similarly, you know the worst repression against labor organizers came just before the depression Where people were literally bombed by the police for trying to organize and round it up and put in concentration camps We've forgotten that history, but it's true And I would also remind people just talking for a quick digression on history that personally I'm actually Exhausted at having to have conversations about people researching things. We already know the US had 20 years of experience with Clinical morphine maintenance in the early days of prohibition So the idea that we have to have all these trials before we can have heroin maintenance programs again is BS when the US started their first drug prison in 1935 they used pharmacologically assisted treatment in 1935 that was before they even had methadone So the idea that we have to have studies that we have to have trials that we have to prove that this stuff works is BS and we have to actually resist the BS and recognize That in that resistance We are going to get a lot of pushback, but we should not see that as something that discourages us We should actually see the pushback that we get as indications of our success So the fact that people are working over time to take the money away from the programs that we've created is an Indication of the fact that they're afraid Does that mean that people will not suffer? Absolutely not. I think we're in a Katrina moment right now for those I'm talking hurricane Katrina in the US where our focus has to be on saving people Because our governments will not come to our aid and they will not rescue us but if you look at the arc of history and this will bring me to my third point the arc of history from my Viewing of it is that you we reach inflection points Where it's really clear that there is a need for major structural change We are at one of those points Our governments are no longer able to actually fulfill on people's needs And I think that there is a real recognition that the Western way of life has failed to make people happier or better and it actually can't and The things that need to change are much bigger Than the work that we do and the things that we're talking about now But it's all part and parcel of that same thing and this is the yin in the yang of it The yin is that I know that change will come But the yang of it is that history shows me that we only seem to be able to make those changes Inside of a pool of death and destruction it seems like it takes a hell of a lot of of Dying and bloodshed to have us do the things that we know that we should do so I Believe that we are at one of those times and That the level of death and disease and dying that we see is only going to increase exponentially But I also believe that the people who are doing this work 20 years from now who will be meeting in places like this 20 years from now are going to be having a Conversation about reducing the harms of drugs not reducing the harms of prohibition and the reason that they will be having that Discussion which is the thing I want to leave you with is because what we have to do now is resist I Find that the the fact that people are using the word and the term Resistance to talk about what how we should respond to the face of what we're addressing is really important The last time we heard of a resistance was in the face of World War two Where people continued to organize in the face of what looked like unbearable odds of victory But that resistance is what made this current modern world possible. It was the belief in democracy It was the commitment to affirm human rights It was the belief that we would not support or never allow Genocide again something we failed to live up to but all of those beliefs and Commitments were what fueled the resistance what kept it going what empowered it and what ultimately made it successful So I leave you with this one word resist resist the desire to punish instead of protest Resist the need of people to promote profits over people and Remember that the most important thing that we can do is love and support each other