The Professional Counselor | Volume 14, Issue 1 53 and justice. Transformative justice aligns with abolitionist praxis in that it is a liberatory strategy that seeks to transform systems and structures that create the conditions for violence (Afuape & Kerry Oldham, 2022). While policing and incarceration focus on retributive justice that assigns inherently violent punishment as a mechanism for change regardless of the harm it causes, transformative justice through abolitionist praxis seeks to create processes of accountability for harm caused interpersonally from criminalized behaviors and systemically from policing and related carceral systems. As a result, abolitionist praxis utilizes transformative justice to create new systems, institutions, communities, strategies, and internalized ways of being that value safety, healing, and justice that are needed to cultivate trauma-informed care and practices for substance use clients. Regarding substance use counseling, an abolitionist praxis seeks to reduce and eliminate violence as a response to substance use, decriminalize all substance use, and eliminate contact between substance use clients, police, and the broader criminal legal system. Similarly, an abolitionist praxis to substance use counseling challenges the logic that criminalization is a needed step in treatment for substance use. For example, in 2001, the Portuguese government enacted nationwide laws to decriminalize all substances, resulting in a decrease in the prevalence of drug use and overdose rates (Castelpietra et al., 2022; James et al., 2020; Pombo & da Costa, 2016; Smiley-McDonald et al., 2023). In 2021, Oregon decriminalized low-level drug possessions and subsequently increased options for substance use disorder treatment and harm reduction programs (Good et al., 2023; Smiley-McDonald et al., 2023). In their study, Smiley-McDonald et al. (2023) found that the Oregon legislation resulted in a decrease in the number of interactions between police officers and individuals who use drugs. Thus, the abolitionist goal of decriminalizing substance use while implementing harm reduction programs may function to both minimize inherently violent contact with police and reduce the prevalence of substance use. Abolitionist praxis would also call for the development of accountability for interpersonal and community harm caused by client substance use that does not rely on legal punishment, or the threat of it, from the criminal legal system (Cullors, 2021). Accountability for harm caused under abolitionist theory entails a developed recognition of wrongdoing and harm, both interpersonally and as mediated by social, economic, and political context, and sustained effort toward intrapersonal, interpersonal, and institutional change that repairs harm (Cullors, 2021; Kaba, 2021). Counselors must re-envision both their clinical practice and engagement in advocacy toward abolition to holistically care for clients who use substances. Clinical and Advocacy Recommendations Given the previously outlined mental health outcomes that are associated with direct and vicarious experiences of police violence that suggest its traumatic impact (DeVylder et al., 2017; Galovski et al., 2016; Geller et al., 2014; Green et al., 2024; Joe et al., 2019; Meade et al., 2017; Motley et al., 2022), a traumainformed approach is essential to working with those who experience police violence as a consequence of anti-drug policing. Counselors seeking to use a trauma-informed approach to treat substance use disorders must infuse abolition into their delivery of services while also engaging in advocacy beyond direct clinical work to better achieve SAMHSA’s six identified principles of trauma-informed practice. We provide an abolitionist framing of these six principles and offer abolitionist re-envisioning for substance use counseling below. Moreover, we adapted the sixth principle of cultural, historical, and gender issues to cultural competence and advocacy to emphasize the professional role of advocacy in counseling for substance use clients who experience anti-drug policing.
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