In this week’s State of the Union address, Biden became the first president to mention harm reduction and millions of people heard the phrase for the first time.

The White House issued a follow-up fact sheet about MOUD/MAT outlining priorities to reach universal access to methadone and buprenorphine by 2025, to remove unnecessary barriers, to extend COVID-related SAMHSA regulations (including telehealth and take-home), to support mobile MOUD, and to expand access to medication in federal prisons.

Too often our wins come tangled with losses. A historic federal investment of $30 million was inaccessible to many grassroots programs that need it most and because of recent political backlash, the HHS retroactively banned funding for sterile smokeware from the grant.

More than 100,000 people died from fatal overdose in the first year of the pandemic. Biden did not acknowledge the impact of historic overdose deaths compounded by COVID experienced by people who use drugs and their communities. The continued silence around our losses from people in power can complicate our grief.

Biden said: “There is so much we can do. Increase funding for prevention, treatment, harm reduction, and recovery. Get rid of outdated rules that stop doctors from prescribing treatments. And stop the flow of illicit drugs by working with state and local law enforcement to go after traffickers.” From a harm reduction lens: Harm reduction doesn’t target drug sellers. There is so much overlap between people who use drugs and people who sell drugs. Many people who use and sell drugs work in survival economies because of a history of substance use, treatment, or arrests that can leave them without real options in the legal economy. Harm reduction turns the idea of local “drug sellers” around by seeing them as part of the community who can become secondary distributors of naloxone, sterile supplies, and information about safer use.

Biden said: “We should all agree: The answer is not to defund the police. The answer is to FUND the police with the resources and training they need to protect our communities.” From a harm reduction lens: Police are not keeping people who use drugs safe. The safest communities don’t have more police, they have more resources. The U.S. has already invested more than $1 trillion in a failed drug war that has always been racist. When we invest in the idea that police are the only way to keep people safe— our communities get new police stations but not more access to transportation, food, housing, or quality care.

Biden said: “At our border, we’ve installed new technology like cutting-edge scanners to better detect drug smuggling.” From a harm reduction lens: No border violence in our name. Drug sellers and smugglers can be easy targets for fear-mongering and scapegoating America’s home-grown overdose crisis. That fear is used to sell border protection and to present smugglers as foreign predators targeting Americans who wouldn’t use drugs if they weren’t available. The drug war is used to detain and deport, to separate families and target communities, and drug convictions can mean migrants are barred for life from reentry.

The power of our movement is not in the president, it’s in the people who have kept one another safe for decades despite the state and in the drug-user led organizing that got us here.

Biden called for Congress to increase funding for harm reduction. To do this, advocates are urging the president and Congress to appropriate $150 million in 2023 to fund harm reduction services and to pass the MAT Act, which would eliminate barriers (the “X-waiver”) to prescribing MOUD.

NHRC needs your support. It’s a critical time for allies and advocates to show up for people who use drugs. We put every donation to work to build capacity and scale access to harm reduction strategies and solutions. Your tax-deductible donation helps provide:

National organizing and advocacy that saves lives and promotes social change
Low-cost trainings to community members across the country
Free resources for the entire community to support growth of the harm reduction movement
Reduced rates and scholarships for NHRC regional and national conference attendees

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