![]() ![]() ![]() Macy uses this as a metaphor for the difficult but necessary work that many - but not nearly enough - people are performing of harm reduction on local, community levels. The title refers to the biblical act of raising Lazarus from the dead: Jesus did it, but it was Lazarus’s friends and family who did the tough, unpleasant work of removing his burial shroud and wrappings, helping to usher him back into life. ![]() In the richest country in the world, treatment of the sickest, neediest people fell to volunteers risking arrest to give out homemade tinctures discovered in the Middle Ages. The tack Macy takes in Raising Lazarus is to focus on harm reduction methods the scientific research that supports their use and successful outcomes as opposed to previously used methods, like abstinence rehabs, prison, or just ignoring the problem and the people who are doing that work in their communities, often illegally. I haven’t really seen this new book get as much attention yet as I think it deserves, so I hope that changes soon. Journalist Beth Macy, who has been on the forefront of chronicling the opioid epidemic in the US for years, recently released her follow-up to 2018’s Dopesick. Raising Lazarus: Hope, Justice, and the Future of America’s Overdose Crisis, by Beth Macy ![]()
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