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In this hour-long documentary, the Lower East Side Harm Reduction Center shows how harm reduction services such as needle exchange programs not only reduce drug-related harms for communities and for individual drug users, but also how these programs can be a gateway to connect drug users with mental health services, substance use treatment services, and much more. Harm reduction experts Scott Kellogg, Ethan Nadelmann, Stanton Peele, Maia Szalavitz, and Andrew Tatarsky talk about how engagement tools such as syringe exchange work to reduce harms and increase motivation to engage in higher threshold services and LESHRC staff demonstrate these services in action. Topics covered include syringe exchange, outreach, and peer delivery programs, harm reduction psychotherapy, harm reduction housing, overdose prevention and reversal with Narcan (naloxone), HIV testing, and more.

The film takes us through one day in the life of eight people, from seven cities, in seven different countries of the world, from morning until night. They all have something in common - all of them use drugs. But these people are not defined by their drug use. All of them have their unique personalities, stories, and social networks. And the environment in which they live, the attitudes they face, the laws that regulate drug use, and the health services available to them have an enormous impact on their lives. This film is not only about drug users - it was also produced by drug users. It strives to challenge our common myths and preconceptions about drugs and the people who use them. It gives a voice to those representing one of the most marginalized communities of our world, to tell stories untold about hate, love, suffering, and happiness. It shows how they engage in social activism to break the silence and fight the stigma that shadows their days.

In recent years active users of illegal drugs have banded together in several American cities to form unions and engage in organized activism. “We ARE the People” (WATP) introduces the five original user unions in the United States and demonstrates how the War on Drugs is in actuality a War on People. The film explores the harms associated with, and stigma behind, many of the terms often used to describe people who use illegal drugs, including “drug abuser,” “addict,” “drug misuser,” etc. WATP also illustrates some of the ways that drug user unions not only provide support for their members but also actively fight against the stigma associated with drug use, and the war on drugs that sustains it. “We ARE the People” features the leaders and supporters of this new American movement as they aspire to transform the dominant cultural perspective that shapes what it means to be a user of illegal drugs in the United States. This past autumn the original five drug user unions in the U.S. convened at the International Drug Policy Reform conference in Denver, Colorado.

This video by radical lawyer and activist Dean Spade provides a little background on what we mean by “mutual aid”.

This 2006 film offers a tutorial for drug injectors and those who work to assist them in achieving “any positive change.” The film’s objective is to provide viewers with real-life examples of practical, realistic techniques for reducing the risk of acquiring and/or transmitting hepatitis B/C during the drug injection process. The film breaks the drug injection process into stages or steps. For each step, we feature actual injections (heroin &/or crack cocaine) that demonstrate unsafe/high-risk technique followed by injections that show improved/lower risk technique. Ultimately this video is best used as a tool for drug injectors and harm reduction outreach workers to talk about and/or experiment with making the kinds of minor changes in drug injection technique that will yield large changes in personal and community health and wellbeing. The film also serves as a resource for healthcare providers who rarely, if ever, get to observe their drug injecting patients’ self-medicating practices in situ.

This documentary-style training film, made in association with Chicago Recovery Alliance (www.anypositivechange.org), provides instruction on how to recognize an opioid overdose and respond effectively using a combination of rescue breathing and injectable naloxone, a pure opiate antagonist. An actual overdose caught on film in November 2008, provides the narrative framework in which the opiate overdose rescue process is illuminated. For more information on Sawbuck Productions: www.sawbuckproductions.org. (about 13 minutes)

Full-length documentary: Greedmont TV presents a documentary by Corey Davis on a group crack users in Atlanta who live outside in a small cove behind a Texaco, infamously dubbed as the “Living Room.” They share their stories and tell us what it’s like to battle with a deadly addiction to crack-cocaine.