The Biden administration gave $51,098 to a Texas university to study how police officers can use harm reduction strategies when working with drug addicts.
Funded through the National Institutes for Health (NIH), the study was launched this month by the University of Texas at Austin.
Entitled “Harm Reduction Policing? A Qualitative Study of Police Culture and Enforcement Practices Toward People Who Use Drugs Amidst Efforts to Align Public Health and Public Safety Systems,” it will explore how harm reduction initiatives can be utilized by police officers in Baltimore, Maryland.
Harm reduction is an increasingly popular drug-use response strategy that involves dispensing overdose medication and other resources to drug addicts. The approach intends to deemphasize drug criminalization in favor of initiatives to treat drug addiction and reduce overdoses.
“This research will inform ongoing debates over drug policy and the role of law enforcement in harm reduction, as well as identify barriers and avenues for widespread and enduring police reform that facilitates police enforcement practices that are in alignment with, not antithetical to, public health,” the project description states.
“Punitive enforcement of drug offenses remains central to the institution of policing,” the UT project description notes, claiming, “True harmonization of criminal justice and public health systems requires broad changes to well-established cultural and institutional norms.”
Drug overdose deaths have hit record highs in recent years. There were an estimated 109,680 overdose deaths last year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This was a slight increase from the 107,622 overdose deaths in 2021. The pandemic year of 2020 saw a 30% increase in drug overdose deaths compared to the previous year.
The Biden administration launched the first-ever federal harm reduction grant program in 2022 through the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The three-year program sends nearly $30 million in taxpayer money to local harm reduction organizations and government institutions to distribute resources for drug users. Some of those resources include drug paraphernalia, like clean needles and even crack pipes.
High-ranking Biden administration officials, such as HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra and then-White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, denied reports that the program would fund the distribution of crack pipes through its listed “smoking kits” that qualified for grant funds. But one Texas organization that received nearly $800,000 from the federal harm reduction program distributes crack pipes, according to an investigation by The Dallas Express.
Two grant recipients in Maine also distribute crack pipes, according to the Washington Free Beacon, although they provide them separately from their smoking kits.
The Los Angeles County Public Health Department receives grants through the HHS program and distributes crack pipes as well, as Fox News reported. The Daily Caller reported on New York Harm Reduction Educators, another organization that receives HHS funding and distributes crack pipes.
A harm reduction organization in Baltimore, the locus for UT’s study, also distributes “smoking kits” with crack pipes, according to the Free Beacon. The group even gives participants an “Authorized Harm Reduction Program Participant Card” to show to police officers if needed because drug paraphernalia is illegal in Maryland.
The study, which gets its funding from the NIH’s National Institute on Drug Abuse, will end in August 2025.
It will entail researchers interviewing Baltimore Police Department leadership and riding along with street-level officers, according to a description.
“[T]his research aims to qualitatively explore, 1) how police leadership integrate[s] harm reduction approaches to drug enforcement into the department’s organizational approach to [people who use drugs], and 2) street-level officers’ beliefs, attitudes, and enforcement practices towards [people who use drugs],” the study description states.
“Analysis of interview transcripts and observation fieldnotes will be conducted using an abductive approach, drawing on theories and concepts from studies of organizations and organizational change, police culture, risk environments, and structural determinants of health.”
Neither the NIH nor the principal investigator in the study, a doctoral candidate in sociology at UT named Bradley Silberzahn, responded to a request for comment.
