Part Four: Harm Reduction: The Direct Action Movement that Changed How We Understand Addiction
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff
Cool Zone Media and iHeartPodcasts
4.7 • 902 Ratings
🗓️ 20 May 2026
⏱️ 43 minutes
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Summary
In part four of this series, Margaret tells you more about the story of the punks, hippies, and poets in Vancouver, Canada who pioneered the modern harm reduction movement
Sources:
Fighting for Space, Travis Lupick (https://firestorm.coop/products/11537-fighting-for-space.html?referral=killjoy)
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personal correspondence
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https://www.drugpolicy.ca/insite-vigil-poem-by-the-late-bud-osborn/
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https://uppingtheanti.org/journal/article/20-you-get-exactly-what-you-fight-for-and-nothingmore
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https://www.cbc.ca/radio/outintheopen/out-in-the-open-on-july-9-2016-addiction-1.3663909/harm-reduction-worker-by-day-fentanyl-user-at-night-one-man-s-story-of-recreational-opioid-use-1.3663917
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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.5 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:06.0 | CoolZone Media. |
| 0:09.2 | Hello, and welcome to cool people who did cool stuff. |
| 0:12.4 | Your weekly reminder that I don't know what the word weekly means. |
| 0:17.6 | I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and this is a podcast that comes out twice a week where I remind you |
| 0:23.6 | that no matter how bad things get, they can always be worse. No wait, we keep them from getting |
| 0:31.5 | worse. We get down on ourselves about having not solved everything with our activism. And yet, we make things better |
| 0:39.5 | all of the time because the more you read history, the more you know that things can always get |
| 0:45.2 | worse. And the fact that they don't is because we work at it. Anyway, I started off episode three, |
| 0:53.4 | the last episode that you heard. |
| 0:55.1 | I presume you're listening in order. |
| 0:57.1 | By telling you some more that I'd learned about the downtown east side, oh wait, what are you doing here? |
| 1:02.8 | This is a series of episodes about harm reduction, specifically harm reduction in Vancouver, Canada, and British Columbia, where so much of what we have today comes from. |
| 1:15.3 | Anyway, a lot of that is specifically one neighborhood, the downtown east side. |
| 1:20.8 | And I started off episode three by telling you about how I learned a bunch about the downtown east side |
| 1:27.4 | in the 80s and the 90s from listeners, |
| 1:29.4 | and here I am today doing the same thing because I have learned even more. |
| 1:35.9 | Thank you all so much for the added context. |
| 1:39.7 | You know I love context. |
| 1:42.3 | I'm always nervous when I have to be like the expert on a new topic every |
| 1:46.5 | week, especially topics that include the lived experiences of my listeners. I really genuinely |
... |
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