ABSTRACT
The following chapter is concerned exclusively with the topic of harm reduction. This summary has been included in recognition that the readership of this text may not necessarily be completely au fait with the politics of harm reduction, especially within the field of injecting drug use. As such, this chapter aims to introduce the reader to some of the key issues that form the underlying, and central, tenets of harm reduction as applied intervention in ‘real world’ settings. In the following sections, harm reduction is defined and its rationale, practice and principles are made explicit. Other sections summarise the political origins of harm reduction and the various modes of standardised, often internationally recognised, intervention. Perhaps most significantly (in the context of this study of street-based injecting environments), this chapter concludes with an overview of what constitutes ‘safer’ injecting drug use from a harm reduction perspective.
