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US Chief Executive Ronald Reagan Declared WAR on drugs in February 1982, and pledged his administration to the task of curtailing the burgeoning drug epidemic in the United States. To accomplish this urgent "national security" objective, the federal government rapidly increased expenditures for narcotics control programs during the ensuing seven years of his two-term presidency, reaching $4.3 billion annually in 1988. Enthusiastically backing the president's initiative, the US Congress approved tougher national drug legislation, widened the US military's involvement in the war, supported the administration's drive to intensify interdiction efforts along US borders, and expanded USdesigned eradication, crop substitution, and law enforcement programs in foreign source and transit countries. First Lady Nancy Reagan launched her "Just Say No" campaign, flooding the American educational system and the public media with anti-drug messages. Ostensibly, all sectors of American society enlisted in the war on drugs and the country began mobilizing for battle.

Calls for "evidence-based policy" and greater community "participation" are often heard in the drug policy field. Both movements are in different ways concerned with the same questions about how "drug problems" ought to be governed and the place of "expertise" and "engagement" in democratic societies. However, these calls rely on the assumption that knowledges, publics, expertise, and issues of concern are fixed and stable, waiting to be addressed or called to action, thus obscuring ontological questions about what "participation" (be that lay or expert) may do or produce. There has been limited research in the drugs field that has taken "participation" as an object of study in itself and through critical examination attempted to open up new possibilities for its remaking. In this article, we draw on science and technology studies scholarship that has sought to illuminate the relations between public deliberation and government decision-making in public affairs involving technical claims and the generative capacity of such engagement (including for democracy itself). We describe various rationales for participation and examples of experiments that have sought to remake participatory processes in other policy domains. This literature provides fruitful ground for a reengagement with (and possibly a reconfiguration of) "evidence-based policy" or community "participation" in drug policy. Through this exploration, we hope to recast and more sensitively articulate the concept of "participation" in deliberations about public affairs involving technical claims in drug policy, thus opening up possibilities for experiments and practices that redistribute expertise, "slow down" reasoning, attend to emergent publics, and disrupt consensual claims as to "what counts" and what does not.

In Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to KnowRG, Mark A. R. Kleiman, Jonathan P. Caulkins, and Angela Hawken will provide a comprehensive introduction to domestic drug policy. They will address topics ranging from the basic biology of drug addiction, to the rationale behind drug policies and moves to legalize drugs, approaches to enforcement, drug abuse prevention, treatment, drug-related crime, prevalence of use, medical benefits of drugs, pricing of drugs, international policy, the connection between trafficking and terrorism, and the socio-cultural elements of drug policy

AbstractWhy does the war on drugs continue after 40 years? This article combines theories of policy termination and prospect theory to explain the drug war's persistence. After reviewing the case for termination, the article turns to policy termination theory. As previous case studies have demonstrated, rationality and economic reasoning alone fail to persuade politicians to end existing policies. In the case of the drug war, specific characteristics of the drug policy and the current political environment, as well as typical institutional and bureaucratic constraints, create substantial obstacles to end the drug war. Perceptions of the risks and benefits of drug war termination also create difficulties. The article concludes that a number of factors need to shift before drug war policy termination can take place.

Internationally, illegal drug use remains a major public health problem. In response, many countries have begun to shift their illegal drug policies away from enforcement and towards public health objectives. Recently, both the Global Commission on Drug Policy and the Supreme Court of Canada have endorsed this change in direction, supporting empirically sound illegal drug policies that reduce criminalization and stigmatization of drug users and bolster treatment and harm reduction efforts. Until recently, Canada was a participant in this growing movement towards rational drug policy. Unfortunately, in recent years, policy changes have made Canada one of the few remaining advocates of a "war-on-drugs" approach. Indeed, the current government has implemented a number of new illegal drug policies that contradict well-established scientific evidence from public health, criminology and other fields. As such, their approach is expected to do little to reduce the harms associated with substance use in Canada. The authors call on the current government to heed the recommendations of the Global Commission's report and learn from the many countries that are innovating in illegal drug policy by prioritizing evidence, human rights and public health.

Many people take drugs because they like the feeling they experience by doing so. This is a more extreme version of why some people smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol. Most do so because they like it and most don't become addicts.Because most drugs are illegal, they are traded on the black market, setting their users and suppliers at odds with the law. Because they are illicit and underground, there is little to no quality control, leading to deaths from adulterated or over-strength supplies.Their illegality makes them expensive as suppliers risk prosecution and punishment, as well as considerable price gouging. The profits to be had from their sale leads to violent turf wars, as gangs fight for control of the trade. It echoes what happened in the United States during the prohibition era. People in the UK, especially young people, are killed in the street by members of rival gangs fighting for control of a very lucrative business.Several US states and Canada have joined the growing list of countries that have legalized the recreational use of cannabis. If the UK were to do the same, it would lead to better quality control and enable age checks to be made as the illegal market would dry up if the legal market were allowed to prosper through light regulations and licensing. It would free up much of the logjam on courts and prisons, and end the conflict between recreational users and the police. The Treasury, rather than the criminals, would gain revenue.The legalization of cannabis would take one widely used recreational drug off the black market. The same could be done with cocaine (8.7% of the population) and MDMA (Ecstasy), (1.9% of the population) both in quite widespread use. Their legalization would free up large numbers of police to deal with more serious crimes in which other people are victims.Heroin was once available on prescription to registered addicts to consume at home, and it was seen as a problem that it could circulate to others. This could be resolved by setting up clinics manned by medical personnel, in which hard drugs such as heroin could be obtained for consumption on the premises, after medical inspection and advice. This would treat addiction as a medical, rather than a criminal, problem, and address it by medical personnel instead of with law enforcement officers. It would bring quality control and safety to the fore, and remove the current illicit drugs trade that underlies so much crime.It could be argued that legalization would lead to increased use, just as the ending of prohibition led to increased alcohol consumption. US voters went for repeal because the alternative was Al Capone and his ilk. The UK is in an Al Capone situation with illegal drugs, and could similarly end it by repealing the prohibition of them.