Filter Magazine: What Harm Reductionists Think About Sesame Street’s Addiction Representation

“Dinah Ortiz, a parent advocate supervisor at The Bronx Defenders and a Filter contributor, is concerned that Sesame Street’s focus on the disease model of addiction, and not drug use more generally—which ranges from from abstinence to chaotic and out of control—could add fuel to the fire of child-parent separations that target parents of color.

“Sesame Street needs to talk about this realistically,” she told Filter, noting that rehab—which is where the character Karli’s mom went and which triggered her entry into foster care—does not work for everyone, and some people who struggle with chaotic drug use simply do not need it. “We want to stick [the parent who uses drugs] somewhere and keep the cycle going.”

Read the full article here