Search results

The history of United States drug policy is complex, ranging from laissez-faire to strict prohibition. In recent years, there has been little federal interest in drug policy reform and a continuing focus on a prohibitionist deterrence approach. During this period, state initiatives have been in the forefront of drug policy experimentation via ballot initiatives, legislative actions, or judicial and administrative policy decisions. The resulting state-level drug policy landscape includes continued prohibition as well as harm reduction, medicalization, and decriminalization. In addition, there has been considerable state-level policy focus on substance abuse treatment quality. With a new presidential administration, there is some indication that drug policy reform may be a national issue as part of the federal health reform agenda. The authors hope that the results of state policy experiments that provide evidence for the viability of harm reduction, quality treatment, and related approaches can be a viable part of the national policy discussion.

Changes in policy processes have impacted policy participants and stimulated the development of new patterns of action and entrepreneurship, but also the emergence of new entrants claiming authority on 'global' policy terrains. Privately convened 'global initiatives' are proliferating while triggering some conceptual puzzles, blurring the already ill‐defined limits of 'global processes'. To seize the meanings and implications of 'going global', this article explores the empirical scope of such global framing of policy entrepreneurship and why such distinction matters for our understanding of global policy processes. To that end, the case of the Global Commission on Drug Policy (GCDP) is examined.

There is growing recognition that our decades-long "war on drugs" has not only been a policy failure but has made our societal drug crisis worse. This is painfully evident in our response to the opioid epidemic. Efforts at comprehensive policy reform are likely to emerge first at the state and local levels. We collaborated with policy advocates and practitioners to study policy perspectives of registered Maine voters, and to investigate determinants of receptivity to drug policy reforms rooted in decriminalization and harm reduction. Our results suggest that while political ideology still impacts one's perspective on these issues, increased exposure to those with substance use disorder reduces stigma, resulting in increasingly broad, bipartisan support for policy reform. We conclude with a discussion on how policymakers addressing overdose and substance use disorder at the state and local level should consider implementing and funding evidence-based alternative approaches such as decriminalization and harm reduction.

After citing the views of some prominent economists in favor of legalizing drugs, whether their position reflects the broader community of economists is explored. Survey data gathered in 1995 from 117 economists are presented & examined in the context of the demographics of the profession & public opinion polls on drug policy. Demographic characteristics of reformers vs prohibitionists are presented, & it is found that economists tend to resemble reformers in that regard. It is seen as unclear whether being an economist has much impact on the choice between prohibition & legalization. A list of postwar US economists' direct quotations about drug policy is then presented, & while a consensus on what exactly should be done is not clear, there is a broad, if imperfect, consensus on three general issues: (1) Most economists find current drug policy to be somewhat ineffective, very ineffective, or harmful. (2) Most economists agree that current policy should be changed. (3) Most economists agree that policy should be changed in the general direction of liberalization. Disagreement is found to center on direction & degree of liberalization. Tables, References. D. Edelman

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction: Drug Policy with a New Focus -- 1 Toward a Balanced Drug-Prevention Strategy: A Conceptual Map -- 2 Drug Users and Drug Dealers -- 3 Is Addiction a Chronic, Relapsing Disease? -- 4 Is Drug Addiction a Brain Disease? -- 5 If Addiction Is Involuntary, How Can Punishment Help? -- 6 Controlling Drug Use and Crime with Testing, Sanctions, and Treatment -- 7 Limits on the Role of Testing and Sanctions -- 8 How Should Low-Level Drug Dealers Be Punished? -- 9 Reflections on Drug Policy and Social Policy -- Postscript -- Contributors

The national policy responses to the rising drug problem are effectuated by financing a large set of activities aimed at combating drug abuse. This paper provides an analysis of drug-related public expenditures in Croatia. We have examined the expenditures of public sector institutions in Croatia in the period from 2009 to 2012. Our main research goal was to identify the total drug-related public expenditures including the unlabelled ones, and to develop the method of estimating and allocating unlabelled expenditures by the type of drug policy program. The estimated total expenditures according to Reuter's drug program division are allocated into prevention, treatment and social reintegration, harm reduction, and law enforcement. The results indicate which types of drug policy programs public authorities in Croatia are really committed to in the sense that those programs absorb the largest proportions of total drug policy expenditures. The methodology applied could contribute to the development of the international methodological standards in this field. The findings are discussed in terms of future monitoring of public expenditures and policy recommendations, in order to facilitate better design programs and activities carried out by policy makers in fighting drug abuse in Croatia. ; Odgovori nacionalne politike na sve veći problem droga očituju se u financiranju niza aktivnosti suzbijanja zlouporabe droga. U ovom se radu analiziraju javni rashodi za suzbijanje zlouporabe droga u Hrvatskoj od 2009. do 2012. godine, s ciljem utvrđivanja ukupnih, i u okviru toga nespecificiranih, javnih rashoda na području suzbijanja zlouporabe droga. Glavni cilj istraživanja jest razviti metodologiju procjene i alokacije nespecificiranih rashoda prema vrsti programa suzbijanja zlouporabe droga. Procijenjeni ukupni rashodi su prema Reuterovoj podjeli alocirani na prevenciju, tretman i socijalnu reintegraciju, smanjenje štete i kazneno-represivni sustav. Rezultati pokazuju koje vrste programa za suzbijanje zlouporabe droga javne institucije u Hrvatskoj najviše podržavaju, mjereno udjelom izdataka za pojedine programe u ukupnim javnim rashodima. Primijenjena metoda može pridonijeti razvoju međunarodnih metodoloških standarda, a rezultati se mogu iskoristiti za buduće praćenje javnih rashoda i učinkovitosti mjera politike suzbijanja zlouporabe droga u Hrvatskoj.

"Taking the shifting global drug policy terrain as a starting point, this collection moves beyond debates about whether to reform drug policies to a focus on delivering 'drug policy justice' - repairing the damage caused by the war on drugs as a component of reform efforts and safeguarding against future harms in legal markets. This book brings together some of the leading international thinkers and advocates on harm reduction and drug policy to introduce key questions in contemporary drug policy. Across five themes, and with contributions from different regions and disciplines, it explores ethical, legal, empirical and historical perspectives on delivering 'drug policy justice' from supply through to use. Essays cover a wide range of issues, from the effects of COVID on drug policy to securing economic and environmental justice, and from human rights in Asian drug policy to questions of race and equity in cannabis reforms, providing diverse insights on both prominent and overlooked drug policy challenges. Towards Drug Policy Justice is a benchmark text for scholars, students, advocates and policymakers as the book explores new models of global drug policy reform"--

Intro -- Contents -- Introduction: Drug Policy with a New Focus -- 1. Toward a Balanced Drug-Prevention Strategy: A Conceptual Map -- 2. Drug Users and Drug Dealers -- 3. Is Addiction a Chronic, Relapsing Disease? -- 4. Is Drug Addiction a Brain Disease? -- 5. If Addiction Is Involuntary, How Can Punishment Help? -- 6. Controlling Drug Use and Crime with Testing, Sanctions, and Treatment -- 7. Limits on the Role of Testing and Sanctions -- 8. How Should Low-Level Drug Dealers Be Punished? -- 9. Reflections on Drug Policy and Social Policy -- Postscript -- Contributors.

This volume is part of the response to the 2016 UN General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on international drug policy and the emergence of analysis of international drug policy in academic literature. Editors David Bewley-Taylor and Khalid Tinasti, both respected authors in their own right, have collated a rich collection of essays and chapters from a welcomely international list of academic and specialist authors, with significant representation from non-Anglophone and non-Western countries. They have selected authors to provide an analytical critique of international drug policy, evidencing their stance of challenging 'official' literature on the topic. The editors describe current policy as being 'a predominantly supply oriented approach based on prohibition and a reliance on law enforcement, and in some cases military, interventions'.Organised in four parts—'History of international drug control', 'The geospatial dimensions of drug policy' (chapters cover the Americas, Africa, Muslim nations, Asia, Oceania and Europe), 'Emerging tensions within the UN drug control system and beyond', and 'Future challenges'—the variety of authorial backgrounds provides a correspondingly rich collection of themes, regions, countries and political processes, extending the debate on international drug policy and the workings and failings of the UN Conventions. Themes include the origins of international drug policy, access to essential medicines, human rights, the growth of alternative policy and practice and the implicit disregard of the orthodoxy this represents, the emergence of novel psychoactive substances and responses to them, crypto-markets, metrics and the use of international drug policy by some nations as a disguise or justification for internal repression.The editors posit that contradictions and disagreements amongst the international community and international agencies are pulling the 'consensus' in different directions, reform versus prohibition, revealing the lack of reality (and success) in the Conventions' terminology of a drug-free world and societies free of drug abuse and the damaging and destructive impact of the policies and practices which operate under their umbrella.The chapters are the results of research, many portraying geographies and themes that are themselves the result of research and field-work, which will not be welcomed by some regimes. The book is not, though, a handbook of research methodologies: the closest it comes to being so is Measham's chapter on novel psychoactive substances (NPS), describing research practices which have been developed to determine the prevalence of NPS and the chemicals involved in them. This does not detract from the overall breadth and richness of the contents. Nor is it the 'first comprehensive overview … of the drug policy landscape', as the editors suggest, having been preceded byKlein and Stothard's 2018 collection, to which both editors contributed chapters.

"Taking a multidisciplinary perspective (including public health, sociology, criminology, and political science amongst others), and using examples from across the globe, this book provides a detailed understanding of the complex and highly contested nature of drug policy, drug policy making and the theoretical perspectives that inform the study of drug policy. It draws on four different theoretical perspectives: evidence-informed policy, policy process theories, democratic theory, and post-structural policy analysis. The use and trade in illegal drugs is a global phenomenon. It is viewed by governments as a significant social, legal, and health problem that shows no signs of abating. The key questions explored throughout this book are what governments and other bodies of social regulation should do about illicit drugs, including drug policies aimed at improving health and reducing harm, drug laws and regulation, and the role of research and values in policy development. Seeing policy formation as dynamic iterative interactions between actors, ideas, institutions, and networks of policy advocates, the book explores how policy problems are constructed and policy solutions selected, and how these processes intersect with research evidence and values. This then animates the call to democratise drug policy and bring about inclusive meaningful participation in policy development in order to provide the opportunity for better, more effective, and value-aligned drug policies. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of drug policy from a number of disciplines, including public health, sociology, criminology, and political science"--