Scientists, advocates, and practitioners deployed a value-free rhetoric to justify their endorsement of harm reduction, shunning values in favour of cost-benefit-driven, evidence-based rigour. Although harm reduction began as a moral and political crusade to advocate for the rights and health of drug users, it was later incorporated into a much less openly moral model that emphasised economic arguments for drug treatment in order to justify them publicly and politically (Roe, 2005). A rhetorical shift away from a formal commitment to harm reduction–which entails reducing drug-related harm to users–and towards promoting abstinence and recovery–which entail abstaining from drugs and reaching sobriety–has reinserted elements of morality that had remained latent in UK and Australian drug policy (Home Office, 2010 Berridge, 2012 Lancaster et al., 2015). The concept of harm reduction, and particularly its proclaimed moral ambiguity, is reflected upon. A more nuanced discussion is in order, but for the sake of brevity, the focus will remain on evidence of effectiveness of given interventions as a matter of political priority. Evans ( 2003) suggests that evidence hierarchies have mostly been constructed through an exclusive focus on effectiveness of an intervention. Evidence is organised hierarchically (Petticrew and Roberts, 2003), and although there are some differences across fields of inquiry, evidence hierarchies tend to culminate with systematic reviews of Randomised Controlled Trials. Throughout the paper, the term evidence refers to scientific evidence, or evidence which has been produced by deploying established scientific methods in a given field. The concept of morality is deployed as a framing device for understanding harm reduction debates in drug policy. This article transcends this dualistic view by introducing another element–that of morality. In this characterisation, evidence is portrayed as the clean, scientific, neutral and value-free solution to a dirty, partisan, ideological, and value-laden politics. Too often, support for evidence-based drug policy has been framed in terms of opposites. Using tools from disciplines such as moral psychology is relevant to the study of the politics of evidence-based policymaking. This paper aims to develop better tools for analysing the role of morality in decision-making. Evidence advocates might thus benefit from devising strategies to morally and emotionally engage audiences. And yet, morality, values, and emotions underpin all stakeholders’ views, motivating their commitment to drug policy and harm reduction. Whether stakeholders decide to go with the evidence or not seems contingent on whether they embrace a view of evidence as secular faith a view that is shaped by experience, politics, training, and role. Participants’ accounts suggest that although evidence can help focus discussions away from values and principles, exposure to evidence does not necessarily change deeply held views. Can evidence sway individuals from their existing moral positions, so as to “neutralise” morality? And if not, then should evidence advocates change the way in which they frame their arguments? To address these questions, analysis of N = 27 interviews with stakeholders actively involved in drug policy and harm reduction debates in England, UK and New South Wales, Australia, was conducted. Focusing on harm reduction provides useful ground to discuss a further opposition proposed by evidence advocates, that between evidence and morality. The drug policy debate has largely been characterised in terms of an opposition between evidence and politics. It is common to argue that politicians make selective use of evidence to tacitly reinforce their moral positions, but all stakeholders combine facts and values to produce and use research for policy.
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