Thread by @HappyWarriorP

I have this re-occurring nightmare where the harm reductionist & patients rights side gets pushed back into obscurity as the prohibitionist's side takes over again

This comes from I think my subconscious mind clicking into the fact that harm reduction & patient freedom are at the moment associated with a certain political faction

& when this faction becomes incredibly unpopular again it will take harm reduction w/ it

At the moment harm reduction is libertarians, some classic liberals & progressives cheerleading this movement

& if the new-right pro-government movement takes control with say, a new Trump presidency, that this would be very bad for the support of these pro-freedom ideas

I wouldn't say most Trump supporters are prohibitionists,

mostly they don't have an opinion & willing to support whatever their team goes with,

Last time around, Trump made friends w/ prohibitionists in medicine but libertarians in criminal reform

so it could go either way

Like in South Dakota, legalizing Marijuana was EXTREMELY popular,

But the political class didn't like it, & so they undid it & their republican supports in SD mostly just shrugged their shoulders at the change🤷‍♀️

reason.com/2021/11/28/sou…

so from what i can tell,

for these ideas to make progress they need to make serious inroads with conservatives & red-staters so that these policy changes can happen

But most advocates in Harm Reduction are left-leaning & have no desire to do this whatsoever

when I say @ShellenbergerMD has a point that harm reduction policies become tied up w/ extremely unpopular social justice-based criminal reform & might endanger support

They look at me like I'm trying to tell a goldfish about string theory
quillette.com/2021/10/31/mad… #harmreduction

not a political bias situation as much as U are fighting against an entire worldview

I believe if they could detangle these pro-freedom ideas from the progressive demands list they could make serious progress in unfamiliar cultural territory

I know many serious thinkers in harm reduction & disability patients rights would be willing to do this,

but the organizations like @DrugPolicyOrg
or the @AmerMedicalAssn would never contemplate such a thing cuz its taboo

quillette.com/2021/11/30/wha…

Similar problem on the right,

No one wants to admit some ideas are more or less palatable than others

there's a "my way or the highway" type of thinking that seriously discourages any type of meaningful reform in any sphere of policy
#politics #health #medtwitter #chronicpain

This is why there is no more compromise in our politics,

cuz no one is willing to make progress on their issue base while being unable to get every single policy thing they want

Which means nothing gets better & we all stay made at one another

@threadreaderapp unroll