Another intangible hack offered by harm reduction leaders was the idea of what one called “sugar” and “bass”. What they meant was ways to use tone, inflection, and voice to help diffuse and reinforce the impact of enforcing community agreements or boundaries.

“Sugar” would purposely soften their words, while “bass” would drop their voice to convey firmness. Both techniques are deployed depending on the situation.

There are certain things that may not seem intuitive that, nevertheless, cleanup many harm reduction organizers felt were essential to creating harm reduction spaces and services free of escalation. These included cross-training and ”Proceduralization”.