ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the emerging discourse of governing drugs through harm minimization. It examines this development not so much in terms of how far the changes are being implemented or resisted in practice – an important but separate issue – but rather in terms of the way in which government plans and blueprints effect a re-imagination of what it is to govern drug consumption. Risk managerial models focus on governing through the calculation of risks and the distribution of harms. In harm minimization discourses, the governmental status of any behaviour is determined by the aggregate level of risk that it generates. One of the most crucial issues considered by harm reduction is that the chemical effects of the drugs also are often regarded as less important than the risks of collateral harms. In some respects, 'free will' and 'compulsion' are displaced in harm minimization by two parallel but distinct terms – 'choice' and 'risk'.
