Towards a Sociology of Harm Reduction: A Comparative Study of Drug Policy Change in Canada and the United Kingdom Between the Years 1985 and 201

The primary goal of this dissertation is to advance a sociological understanding of harm reduction policy development and change. Drawing on social constructionism, as well as comparative and historical methodologies, this dissertation accomplishes the abovementioned goal by comparing and contrasting the development of harm reduction policies for intravenous drug use (IDU) in Canada and the United Kingdom (UK). This dissertation addresses a gap in the drug policy scholarship: namely a lack of sociological research using comparative methods to explain similarities and differences in the development of harm reduction policy across geographical locations and over time. While there exists a large, multi-disciplinary literature that explores the development of specific harm reduction programs such as needle exchanges and drug consumption rooms, to my understanding this is the first large-scale study to approach the topic from a sociological perspective. To accomplish the goals set out in this paper, I analyse content drawn from 60 federal Hansard documents, 47 municipal council documents (Vancouver City Council minutes), 32 committee reports and 2,609 newspaper and online news articles from Canada (N=1,866) and England and Wales (N=7443) that were published between 1997 and 2017.