Kantian Harm Reduction
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Kantian Harm Reduction Sarah Hoffman1 Accepted: 5 October 2020 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract The justification for harm reduction as an approach to drug use and addiction is seen by many to be consequentialist in form and it has been claimed that as a deontologist Kant would reject harm reduction. I argue this is wrong on both counts. A more nuanced understanding of harm reduction and Kant shows them compatible. Kant’s own remarks about intoxication reinforce this. Moreover, there is a Kantian argument that harm reduction is not only morally permissible but more consistent with the Kantian duty of respect for autonomy than mandatory abstinence approaches. Keywords Harm reduction · Kantian morality · Deontology · Drug use What does Kantian ethics require of us in relation to the consumption of psychoactive substances? Some applied ethics literature implies the answer is: abstinence, and by implication public policies regarding psychoactive drugs based on prohibition [1]. On the other hand, harm reduction approaches, those characterized by not requiring abstinence, are, this literature equally implies or asserts, the province of consequentialists and virtue ethicists [1, 5, 7]. If, after all, what is motivating your interventions into people’s drug use is reducing harms you must be focusing on consequences, something that cannot be countenanced by a Kantian deontological moral theory. But it is worth thinking a bit more carefully about Kant’s moral theory and about how to properly understand the nature and justification of harm reduction before conceding that Kantians are committed to endorsing abolitionist and mandatory abstinence policies. I consider the claims some philosophers have made that Kantian ethics cannot justify harm reduction and argue that these arise from an inadequate understanding of both Kant and harm reduction. More careful attention to Kant’s moral thinking finds support for harm reduction and the values articulated by its advocates in the moral requirement of respect for autonomy that is foundational to both. * Sarah Hoffman [email protected] 1
Department of Philosophy, University of Saskatchewan, 9 Campus Drive, Saskatoon, SK S7K5A5, Canada
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Health Care Analysis
Generally, what picks out some intervention as a harm reduction effort is that it involves attempting to reduce some harm(s) associated with a risky behavior that is socially disvalued or thought immoral but that it equally does not involve prohibition of the behavior nor even aiming at the behaviour’s reduction. Drug use is a clear case of the sort of socially disvalued behavior that has been the subject of harm reduction efforts. The nature of harm reduction is discussed in more detail in the last section of the paper, but in the first section I understand it to be characterized principally by a rejection of mandatory abstinence (or at least good faith efforts towards abstinence) as a condition of providing information and practical help to persons u
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