Those who advocate for harm reduction—a Biden-endorsed policy that prioritizes users’ safety over their sobriety or abstinence—say they’re helping fix the problem. But when I visited Kensington last month, Bingham and almost a dozen other residents told me that the activists are actually the ones causing it. ...

A growing chorus of Kensington homeowners, entrepreneurs, and even a city council member—many of them lifelong Democrats—told me that for too long, Philadelphia has offered harm reduction as the single solution to its opioid crisis. On one end of the spectrum, harm reduction can mean doling out free syringes, Narcan, and fentanyl test strips. But it can also mean “safe injection sites” and even supplying addicts with “medical grade heroin,” which Canada has been doing since 2020 as part of its “safer supply” program. There, as in Kensington, overdose rates have continued to reach record highs since instating these protocols. 

But now, all across America, even in the bluest of cities, constituents are pushing back against harm reduction, saying that the very philosophy that purports to help addicts stand on their own two feet actually keeps them down—and ruins entire neighborhoods in the process.