News Feds Announce Funds For Drug Harm Reduction Studies, Including On Decriminalization And Safe Consumption Sites

[thegreenhand]

Feds Announce Funds For Drug Harm Reduction Studies, Including On Decriminalization And Safe Consumption Sites​

Kyle Jaeger
Marijuana Moment
30 Dec 2021

A top federal health agency is seeking to promote studies into the efficacy of a variety of harm reduction policies—including decriminalization and safe consumption sites—as part of a push to combat the overdose epidemic.

While the Biden administration has yet to take a position on policy proposals to authorize safe consumption facilities, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) put out a pair of requests for applications (RFAs) on Wednesday for an effort that will provide funding for efforts to investigate how that and other harm reduction policies could help address the drug crisis.

Specifically, NIH wants to establish a Harm Reduction Network that seeks to “increase our understanding of the effectiveness, implementation and impact of existing and new harm reduction practices to address the ongoing opioid crisis and substance use disorder more broadly.”

Read the full story here.

 

[thegreenhand]

Good stuff from NIH/NIDA. Let’s see how well they listen to the conclusions of these studies…

 

[neversickanymore]

Wow.. that is the first baby step in the right direction

 

[neversickanymore]

@Tronica I hope you are going to look for a slice of this.. could be a tragic results for harm reduction if you slack on this.

 

[thegreenhand]

@Tronica I hope you are going to look for a slice of this.. could be a tragic results for harm reduction if you slack on this.

Unfortunately, I don’t think it’ll be open to non US based researchers

 

[neversickanymore]

Australia is inner family with the US so I’m thinking no problems.. plus Tron is obviously the best woman for the job

 

[thegreenhand]

Australia is inner family with the US so I’m thinking no problems..

Touché

plus Tron is obviously the best woman for the job

That is most definitely true.

 

[neversickanymore]

Also, this better not be some smoke screen where some money is thrown at alternative plans while the whole time intentions are to continue policy that is killing good people at a rate that puts many other wars to shame. We are not going to stand by anymore.

 

[VerbalTruist]

Awesome!

 

[Tronica]

Unfortunately, I don’t think it’ll be open to non US based researchers

Typically the NIH does allow non-US based researchers to get their grants, but with certain conditions. Thanks for the tip @neversickanymore I'll certainly look at it, but with 3 months before I head on maternity leave, a major grant writing stint may not be in my immediate future. It is excellent to see though as I know funding for HR research has been poor for so long from NIH.

 

[Joey]

It's pretty good stuff. I don't fully trust NIDA after reading an account of them by Carl Hart as being very exclusive to what they accept and what they don't regardless of results. But it's still a good move.