This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, January 24th, 2020.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Harm reduction is a concept well known to physicians, but strikes fear in the heart of many

politicians because it can connote a tolerance for drug use and other socially

disfavored activities. Cato's Jeff Singer sat down with former U.S. Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders ahead of Cato's conference on harm reduction.

Unfortunately, one of the unconventional views in this country towards substance use and addiction is the concept of harm reduction.

And historically you've been an advocate for harm reduction not just in the area of drug use, but in the area of public health in general,

since as far back as I can remember.

So would you talk about how harm reduction is a general principle of public health?

Well, if we think about public health, I think, you know, we have to think about what

of the causes and what harm does it cause and the consequences and what can we do about

it. And the important thing that we want to do is we want to, we're about prevention and we want to reduce harm.

I was years ago when I first started I was really about working hard with things like teenage pregnancy, but I wanted to reduce unplanned

pregnancy and I wanted every child to be a planned wanted child. I've never felt

when we talked about drugs and alcohol. I never felt that our jails was the right approach.

What we did was we made the United States the world's badest jailer.

Yes.

And I think that and we didn't reduce the use of drugs. And of course the young people that it most affected

that bothered me the most of course was young especially young black males that was much harmed by our laws related to drugs and alcohol and especially marijuana.

I recall back in your days as Surgeon General you were talking about when it came to sex

education in the schools that I think didn't she

wants to refer to insisting on abstinence as a form of child abuse? Yes and I and I

...