On the tension between individual health rights and public health responsibilities

Researching harm reduction--care and contradictions

This paper sets out to identify why research is important in realizing the potential a harm-reduction framework has for informing policy and practice in relation to all psychoactive drugs. In doing so it includes examples of research about alcohol and tobacco, since legitimizing the harm-reduction approach requires strengthening the research foundation across both licit and illicit drugs. There are some practical as well as ethical and theoretical complexities in conducting research in this area, some of which are novel or exaggerated using harm-reduction principles. Potential impediments to research are identified. Articulation of these complexities might help to facilitate research which can help to determine the validity of harm reduction. The notion of the researchers "duty of care" might offer a way of deciding among competing accountabilities, but needs further articulation to be useful. [Translations are provided in the International Abstracts Section of this issue.]