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"The Drug Policy in the Americas From a Gender Perspective" published on by Oxford University Press.

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"--

This report discusses the Office of National Drug Control Policy Reauthorization Act of 2005 , which would reauthorize ONDCP for five years, through FY2010, and authorize funding in specific annual amounts for the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) Program, the media campaign, a Southwest Border violence study, and several anti-methamphetamine initiatives.

International drug policy is undergoing change, and certain types of lay experts, those who have experienced problems with drug use, are getting a more important role. By drawing on 30 in-depth interviews with representatives from drug users' organizations, bureaucrats and researchers, we explore the rise of lay experts in Norwegian drug policy. We show how these lay experts' personal credibility is based on a history of serious drug problems, in particular injecting amphetamine or heroin, as well as the ensuing stigma. On an organizational level, lay experts' roles as service users or patients generate credibility, even if the background is often the users' experiences of pain and stigma. We document how lay experts have been included and have influenced the Norwegian drug policy process. However, a problem with representativeness remains, as some groups of drug users, for example, young persons, those who mainly use cannabis or benzodiazepines, those involved in crime and those who belong to ethnic minorities, have not been included to the same extent. Thus, the increasing role of lay experts in the Norwegian drug policy process poses some unexpected challenges in terms of the democratization of expertise. This lack of representativeness may be part of the reason why the initially successful reform movement now seems to face a setback.

The increased cooperation between European Union member states in many policy areas has made it increasingly difficult for individual countries to pursue national policies on issues like drugs. The drug policies of the Netherlands, which center squarely on harm reduction, were under severe attack in recent years. Yet a good look at the actual practices in many other countries leaves no doubt that the predominant tendency is towards a harm reduction approach. Debates are also underway in many countries on drug policy reform, and everything from the decriminalization or legalization of cannabis to the legal prescription of heroin have been advocated. Although it is not yet clear just what future policies will look like, the current wave of pragmatism in many European countries has made the liberal Dutch approach less of an isolated case than it was a decade or more ago.

Since about 1994, when the German Federal Constitutional Court effectively decriminalized the possession of small amounts of cannabis, a functional equivalent to criminal law has evolved in the form of traffic laws providing for the revocation of driving licenses in cases of cannabis possession. The historical and legal interpretations of this regulation are described, and its consequences are analyzed. It is postulated that, under the veil of traffic safety, harsh and repressive drug policies are being utilized to counteract legalization tendencies.