Skip to Content Subscribe Our Offers My Account Manage My Subscriptions FAQ Newsletters Canada Canadian True Crime Canadian Politics Health World Israel & Middle East Financial Post NP Comment Longreads Puzzmo Diversions Comics NP News Quiz New York Times Crossword Horoscopes Life Eating & Drinking Style Sponsored Play for Ontario Travel Travel Canada Travel USA Travel International Cruises Travel Essentials Culture Books Celebrity Movies Music Theatre Television Business Essentials Advice Lives Told Tails Told Shopping Buy Canadian Home Living Outdoor Living Kitchen & Dining Tech Style & Beauty Personal Care Entertainment & Hobbies Gift Guide Travel Guide Amazon Prime Day Deals Savings National Post Store More Sports Hockey Baseball Basketball Football Soccer Golf Tennis Driving Vehicle Research Reviews News Gear Guide Obituaries Place an Obituary Place an In Memoriam Classifieds Place an Ad Celebrations Working Business Ads Archives Healthing Epaper Manage Print Subscription Profile Settings My Subscriptions Saved Articles My Offers Newsletters Customer Service FAQ Newsletters Canada World Financial Post NP Comment Longreads Puzzmo Diversions Life Shopping Epaper Manage Print Subscription HomeNP CommentAmy Hamm: Professor-activists want 'harm reduction' for Kindergarteners A vague new guideline on drug education for kids insists on anti-stigma approaches for all agesLast updated Jul 07, 2026 You can save this article by registering for free here. Or sign-in if you have an account.A homeless man sits in the rain smoaking with a crack pipe in his hand in downtown Ottawa Friday morning. Photo by TONY CALDWELL, PostmediaA group of academics and researchers is working hard to normalize the idea of radical harm reduction for children as young as four or five.Enjoy the latest local, national and international news.Exclusive articles by Conrad Black, Barbara Kay and others. Plus, special edition NP Platformed and First Reading newsletters and virtual events.Unlimited online access to National Post.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword.Support local journalism.Enjoy the latest local, national and international news.Exclusive articles by Conrad Black, Barbara Kay and others. Plus, special edition NP Platformed and First Reading newsletters and virtual events.Unlimited online access to National Post.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword.Support local journalism.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one account.Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments.Enjoy additional articles per month.Get email updates from your favourite authors.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one accountShare your thoughts and join the conversation in the commentsEnjoy additional articles per monthGet email updates from your favourite authorsSign In or Create an AccountorIn June, the group, which goes by the name Anchoring Change, published a guide on drug education for Canadian youth, beginning in kindergarten, that suspiciously rebrands “harm reduction” as “harm minimization.” The group’s “guiding principles,” listed in the report, included trauma-informed practices; equity, diversity, inclusion and decolonization; culturally responsive practices; student voice and harm minimization.The language used throughout the guide appears to be intentionally vague so as to avoid controversy. While it does not contain explicit descriptions of harm reduction interventions, it is laden with mentions of the importance of “anti-stigma” approaches to drug use and providing “stigma-free information,” and suggests that drug use not be prevented in all cases, but merely delayed or reduced. It describes “age-appropriate literacy” for students without citing examples of what this looks like. Can kindergarteners be shown crack pipes? Who knows, because “developmentally appropriate” can mean drastically different things to different teachers. The guide also mentions “confidential pathways to brief intervention and care,” suggesting that parents may be left in the dark about their children’s substance use.The National Post newsletter that doesn’t hold back, giving readers the unvarnished truth on media, politics and culture.By signing up, you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder.The next issue of Right? will soon be in your inbox.We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try againThe guide has received glowing coverage from the CBC, which indicated that its recommendations were “age-appropriate” and quoted a researcher who offered reassurance that kindergarteners would not be given “detailed drug education.”The groups involved in creating the harm-minimization-for-kids report include Wellstream (a University of British Columbia research initiative on youth substance abuse), the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA), the Canadian Association of School System Administrators (CASSA), Physical and Health Education (PHE) Canada, and the Students Commission of Canada.Emily Jenkins, the scientific director of Wellstream and a nursing professor at the University of British Columbia, told the Post in an email that Anchoring Change deliberately chose the term “harm minimization” because it more accurately describes what its nationwide education standard on drug education is trying to do.” ‘Harm reduction’ in common usage refers to a specific set of services, things like naloxone distribution or supervised consumption, which are oriented toward people who are already using substances,” she said. ” ‘Harm minimization’ spans the full continuum: preventing use in the first place, delaying initiation for those who haven’t started, and reducing harm if use does occur.“In a school setting, where the large majority of students are not using substances, prevention and delay are the primary emphasis. A term tied specifically to services for those who are actively using substances would misdescribe the developmental, whole-population scope of the work, which is why we use this language.”In the academic world, however, the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably. Or, as the Australian government demonstrates, “minimization” is a catch-all term for a drug strategy that includes all aspects of harm reduction, including drug decriminalization and needle and syringe programs. The bottom line: “harm minimization” is an obfuscating term that cannot be separated from the excesses of activist-driven harm reduction programs that have, in Canada, appeared to increase harms. (British Columbia is now seeing a reduction in overdose deaths following the end of Premier David Eby’s failed drug decriminalization experiment, for instance.)If you are in any doubt that “harm minimization” is nothing more than a rebrand of “harm reduction,” consider how the terms are defined. The Anchoring Change guideline states that harm minimization “aims to reduce the negative health, social and educational consequences associated with substance use, encompassing a continuum of strategies from prevention to delayed initiation to reduced harm from use, without requiring abstinence as a precondition for support.”A 2023 Health Canada report, meanwhile, defines harm reduction in nearly identical fashion: “an evidence-based, public health approach that aims to reduce the negative health, social, and economic impacts of substance use related harms, without requiring or promoting abstinence.”It’s clear: activist researchers are attempting to sanitize “harm reduction” for Canadian schoolchildren.If the new standard on “harm minimization” is adopted by educators across the country, parents should expect a wholesale normalization of drug use and harm reduction culture in our schools. Hell, it’s already happening: students in B.C. and Ontario were given “safer snorting” pamphlets and straws in recent years. We have yet to see where this ideology will bottom out. Do we really want to go there?Troublingly, an Anchoring Change brief on “Evidence-Informed Education and Messaging” includes the assertion that “substance use occurs along a spectrum — from no use through to substance use disorder.” This is an absurd proposition because it asserts that all persons, including those who never have or never would use drugs, are on the substance use spectrum. If that’s the case, then why wouldn’t youth believe that drug use is not only permissible but inevitable — only a short slide, a couple of notches, down the spectrum?The same page also dismisses abstinence-based drug programs as having “negligible effects,” and claims that approaches that “embrace harm minimization principles” are effective. It goes on to argue that “punitive and exclusionary response(s) to substance use, such as suspension, expulsion, or law enforcement involvement, are counterproductive….”Nine research papers are provided as references. Of the nine, only one specifies that it’s about harm reduction in schools; despite some findings of success, it concludes that “more studies are necessary to evidence harm reduction efficacy into the classroom.”Two of the studies address punitive school measures, like suspension, but not as a response to substance use (as the Anchoring Change authors suggest), but rather as a factor associated with subsequent drug usage. Several of the studies argue for the efficacy of drug prevention efforts among youth. Naturally, “prevention” did not make the cut as one of Anchoring Change’s guiding principles. I believe it’s not unreasonable for parents to wonder if Anchoring Change talks of drug prevention only as a way to divert attention from what clearly matters more to the group: anti-stigma and harm reduction.The Anchoring Change document, which the authors authoritatively refer to as a capital-S “Standard,” is a textbook example of the activist-academic-to-public-policy pipeline that regularly inflicts far-left, “progressive” values upon Canadian institutions. Parents beware: this guideline on drug education appears to be nothing more than a Trojan Horse to make “harm reduction” a de facto Canadian school policy.National Post Join the Conversation This website uses cookies to personalize your content (including ads), and allows us to analyze our traffic. Read more about cookies here. By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.