The only popular global journal majoring on harm reduction has gone bust.
Filter was started in 2017 by New York-based Will Godfrey. Its stated mission was “to advocate through journalism for rational and compassionate approaches to drug use, drug policy and human rights”.
Will has posted a valedictory statement on the website:
We wanted to challenge stigma and misinformation by platforming important voices, stories and issues that are routinely ignored
In subsequent years, Filter expanded its coverage of harm reduction to include tobacco harm reduction.
Will wrote:
Filter has also stood out by centering tobacco harm reduction—concerning the world’s biggest source of drug-related deaths—and showing why it’s crucial to integrate it with wider public health and human rights causes. Back when we launched, it was highly unusual for “drug” harm reduction organizations to do this, though thanks in part to our advocacy that is now changing.
One of the board’s final tasks has been to arrange for Filter to stay online for some years after we end our operations, as a community resource. So if you’re here at some unknown point in the future, I hope you’ll dig through the archives and benefit from what you find.
At one point in my career, I was editor of Druglink, then the UK’s leading popular magazine on drugs and highly influential, not least because the phrase "harm reduction" made its first appearance in print in the magazine in 1987. Druglink too closed in 2015 with the demise of DrugScope, so I have a sense of how bad Will must be feeling right now. But like Filter, we did manage to transfer the legacy magazine content and other resources to a new site at drugwise.org.uk.
What is especially galling is that the NGO opponents of tobacco harm reduction are wallowing in richly undeserved ‘philanthropic’ millions while a small publication actually trying to do some good in the world rather than perpetuate harm cannot survive. But hopefully a phoenix can rise from the ashes.