Drug Policy Analysis

This section of the Release website will explore drug use and the policies which contemporary societies have developed in response to it. Alongside the undoubted problems which some forms of drug-using behaviour have brought in their wake, it is our contention that the present set of policies generate problems of their own, and have often exacerbated rather than alleviated the harms of illicit drugs. While our major focus will be on the UK, the drugs field is one of the most globally connected of domains—a domain of which it is impossible to make sense without taking into account the international dimension. Drugs, like foods, ideas and microbes, have spread around the world with the movements of human beings, and continue to encircle the globe in an immense if prohibited network of international trade. The range of drugs presently available to UK citizens is a direct result of these interconnections across time and space.

A similar point may be made with regard to the history of drugs. Different cultures at different times have defined certain types of intoxicant use as acceptable or unacceptable, licit or illicit. Our own is no exception. Many people believe that drugs appeared in the 1960s, and that the present legal classification of drugs reflects a sort of natural order: that alcohol is legal because it is safe (if used sensibly), while opium, cannabis and cocaine are illegal because they are unsafe, and that there is no sensible or safe way of using them. It is one of the objectives of our analysis here to unpack this seemingly "natural" or "common-sense" way of looking at the problem, and to assist in generating a more informed and nuanced policy debate. Drug history should not be viewed as irrelevant to policy: attitudes to drugs, the ways in which they are used, perceived, controlled, defined, desired and reviled are all consequences of historical processes that, in their effects, remain fully alive and active in the present moment.

The present also carries within the seeds of the future. As we understand how the past has shaped our contemporary responses, and as we examine the effectiveness or otherwise of those responses, we can begin to get a sense of the range of alternatives which may be open to us. Present ways of thinking about drugs, and the polices which stem from them, do not represent fixed and timeless laws like those of gravity, but rather an historically contingent set of beliefs and practices, as can be seen from the picture below, which was 'natural' 30 years ago but would today be unthinkable. We can see from historical evidence that this is the case, and that it's possible to approach drugs differently. This means that we can forge more benign and effective arrangements for dealing with the perennial human affinity for making use of mind- and mood-altering substances.