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Harm Reduction: pragmatic strategies for managing high-risk behaviors G. ALAN MARLATT New York, The Guilford Press, 1998 390 pp., USD$40.00 ISBN 1 57230 397 2
This book provides an introduction to the "harm reduction" approach to managing substance use problems from a North American perspective. It is intended for use by policy makers, researchers, students and health care professionals. The editor, Alan Marlatt, is in many ways ideally suited to the task given his long-standing work on relapse prevention, arguably one of the earliest harm reduction approaches. Marlatt has contributed to five of the ten chapters, and he strongly criticises the current US "war on drugs", which he argues is being escalated to a global level by US advocates. He believes that the harm reduction approach (HR) provides a "safer and saner" method of dealing with drug and alcohol problems, and that the war on drugs should be relegated to a "historic list of failed wars". He has produced an interesting text, which may have a significant impact on the U.S. policy directions in due course, but it is also useful for an international audience.
The book contains four sections: "Overview of harm reduction", "Applications...