Four positions

Harm reduction says reduce the externalised damage. Clean needles, supervised sites, overdose reversal, decriminalised possession. Right that condemnation narrows the corridor further and that the floor is owed at the present state. Stops short by treating widening as separate from the coupling’s continued running. Harm reduction is the floor. The structure requires the levels above it too.

Criminalisation says sanction. Right that some coupling crosses the boundary and the structure has authority there. Wrong to collapse the response into punishment. Above the line the correction hierarchy applies — minimum intervention for maximum restabilisation. Criminalisation that does not restabilise is parasitic at the institutional resolution.

Medicalisation says treat. Right that the changes are real and that clinical intervention at the substrate is legitimate. Wrong to reduce the person’s authority to the clinical frame. Sovereignty includes deciding whether, and how, to engage treatment at all.

Personal responsibility says the answer is the person’s own commitment. Right that recovery without it is nothing. Wrong to treat it as sufficient. The commitment is operating in a narrowed corridor, and without the floor supplied at level one it is being asked to do the structure’s work.

Four positions. The test is a fifth.

This is the short edition of Ø Applications — a summary. Where a step is compressed here, the original carries it in full. The original book (PDF) · This edition (PDF)

The same page on the420code.org: the420code.org/models/applications/07-cognitive-sovereignty-and-addiction/