On September 25, Students for Sensible Drug Policy Executive Director Kat Murti will deliver a keynote address at the 5th Annual New Approaches Summit in New York City, bringing SSDP’s unapologetically evidence-based approach to drug policy to one of the country’s leading conversations on nicotine, tobacco, and harm reduction.

Her keynote, “Depolarizing Harm Reduction: Human Autonomy vs. Prohibitionist Ideology,” will tackle a problem that extends far beyond nicotine policy: what happens when moral panic, political tribalism, and prohibitionist ideology get in the way of evidence?

For decades, the War on Drugs has shown us the consequences of policies built around abstinence, punishment, and the belief that government can eliminate risky behavior simply by banning it. Nicotine policy is increasingly repeating those mistakes.

The reality is more complicated — and more human.

People use nicotine. People have different reasons for using it, different relationships with it, and different levels of risk. Combustible cigarettes remain extraordinarily harmful, while noncombustible nicotine products exist along a spectrum of risk. Treating every nicotine product as though it carries the same risks — or assuming prohibition is inherently protective — does not make people safer.

Effective harm reduction starts by meeting people where they are, giving them accurate information, and respecting their autonomy to make informed decisions about their own bodies.

That is the approach Kat will bring to New Approaches.

Her keynote will examine how increasingly polarized debates around tobacco and nicotine have fractured the harm reduction movement, turned questions of evidence into questions of ideological allegiance, and too often left the people actually affected by these policies out of the conversation. She’ll make the case for a pragmatic, human-centered alternative: one that takes health risks seriously without abandoning individual choice, rejects both industry spin and prohibitionist dogma, and builds policy around evidence rather than moral judgment.

For SSDP, this conversation is also inseparable from the broader fight to end the War on Drugs.

We know what happens when policymakers respond to substance use with bans. Prohibition does not eliminate demand. Instead, it can push consumers toward illicit markets, make product contents and potency less predictable, criminalize people for personal choices, and create new barriers to honest education about relative risk.

Young people deserve better than another generation of “just say no.”

Learn the Evidence: SSDP’s Tobacco & Nicotine Harm Reduction Course

Want to understand the science and policy behind the debate before the Summit?

SSDP offers a free, self-paced Tobacco & Nicotine Harm Reduction course designed to give students, advocates, policymakers, and community members the tools to think critically about nicotine.

The approximately two-hour course explores the history and politics of tobacco and nicotine regulation, the continuum of risk across nicotine products, harm reduction approaches, common misconceptions, and the unintended consequences that can follow when prohibition takes the place of evidence-based policy.

It’s part of SSDP’s broader commitment to Just Say Know: giving people honest information about drugs and empowering them to make informed decisions rather than relying on fear, stigma, or misinformation.

Join Us at New Approaches

The 5th Annual New Approaches Summit brings together researchers, advocates, policymakers, public health professionals, and others working at the intersection of nicotine, tobacco, harm reduction, and public policy.

You can attend in person in New York City or via Zoom livestream. SSDP supporters can use promo code SSDP for 50% off the NGO/Government ticket tier.

We hope you’ll join Kat and SSDP in New York — and join us in pushing for a harm reduction movement grounded in evidence, compassion, human autonomy, and the recognition that prohibition is not harm reduction.