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Final Program


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Aaron Ferguson, BSW

Harm Reduction Coordinator - Leadership Team-Methadone Liaison
National Survivors Union - Community Medical Services
Austin, Texas

Aaron Ferguson, (BSW) is a Harm Reduction Coordinator with Community Medical Services (CMS). CMS is a national provider of medications for people with opioid use disorder. Aaron is a person with lived experience of criminalized drug use and MOUD, and works to advocate for and implement methadone and buprenorphine reform and access to treatment in jails, prisons, inpatient settings, and communities at large. Aaron is also on the Leadership Team of the National Survivor’s Union (NSU), a national group of people with living experience of substances use who are also fierce advocates for drug user health. Aaron serves as a Methadone Liason to NSU as well. Most of what Aaron knows about harm reduction and drug user rights he learned during 15 years of living on the streets of California as a child after escaping the Children of God cult that his parents cofounded. Aaron works tirelessly to help communities accept the overwhelming evidence for harm reduction and MOUD, and to fight stigma against people who use drugs with his life and wishes Americans to begin seeing people who use drugs as humans, rather than immoral or diseased subjects. As a hobby, Aaron produces a long-standing harm reduction podcast called “Narcotica”, spotlighting past and current events in the war on drugs. Aaron is a happily married father of 3 who encourages skepticism, reason and science as the paths to enlightenment. When Aaron is not working, he enjoys running marathons, producing music, scuba diving and most of all spending quality time with his wife and two kids.

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