1 — "Just say no" doesn't work

The dominant strategy adopted to protect the public from drug abuse has been to heavily criminalize substance use and adopt a "just say no" attitude surrounding substance use.

Those who use substances often acquire them in dangerous ways, don't know if they are recieving a laced substance, and are unsure of how to use it safely 1, 2 . And every day we fail to address these problems carries a body count.

This has been a decades-long failed experiment: abstinence-only education doesn't work for sex education, and it definitely doesn't work for drug education either. Campaigns of this nature, such as those adopted organizations such as D.A.R.E, have been observed to sometimes cause a net increase in substance usage 1, 2

2 — People should understand how to protect themselves

However, a large amount of educational content, both online and in formal education, remains focused on abstinence over harm reduction. If a substance user wants to know if something they are committed to doing is safe, they will face a challenge finding accurate and relevant information. Resources such as Erowid 1 have contributed massively to harm reduction education, but do not offer streamlined tools for serving this function.

3 — We need easy to use tools for supporting drug eductation

This tool exists to make it easy for users to identify potentially lethal substance interactions. While not every interaction is covered on this website, users should take the listed risks seriously. This tool is meant as a starting point — do your research, and be safe!

Using substances is not a moral failing. And, like it or not, there will always be people who choose to use drugs despite the risks. Knowing this, our goal ought to be to minimize the number of overdoses as well as mitigate other health problems posed by drug abuse.