Coss Marte grew up below the poverty line in New York City. He started smoking marijuana at 11, then began selling crack as a teenager to make a living. By 23, he was charged with running a multimillion-dollar illegal drug business and sentenced to seven years in prison.

It was there he lost weight and developed a prison-style fitness method, but with a specific focus: he wanted to start a business that would employ only formerly incarcerated people. His mission to provide wraparound services to people reintegrating into society is exactly what people need, he says, instead of “pushing them to the edge and having them commit another crime to survive.”

Marte’s focus is one of the multifaceted goals of harm reduction—a practice aimed at minimizing the negative health, social, and legal impacts associated with drug use. Examples include creating safe spaces for drug users, clean needle and syringe programs to reduce the spread of illness, sealing criminal records to make employment easier, and housing initiatives that aren’t contingent on sobriety.

Experts in harm reduction envision a future where cutting-edge strategies transform a system that also disproportionately targets Black Americans.

“Although African Americans make up only 12.5% of illicit drug users, 33% of drug incarcerations are Black. This leads to major roadblocks in treatments for substance abuse among the population, as there is a fear in self-reporting,” American Addiction Centers reports.

Here’s how advocates are working to change that.

Read the full article about harm reduction strategies by Alexandra Frost at Shareable.