Two futures of British drug policy

This talk discusses two potential futures for British drug policy: a US-influenced emphasis on abstinence and welfare restriction, or progressive decriminalisation, as proposed in my book on 'Drugs, Crime and Public Health'.

Welfare and injecting drug use

This graph is taken from chapter 7 of my book 'Drugs, Crime and Public Health'. It shows the negative international correlation between welfare support (measured by decommodification: an index based on rates of unemployment benefit, sickness pay and state pensions) and injecting drug use. Countries with lower welfare support tend to have higher rates of injecting drug use. The correlation if -0.62 (p<0.05).

Drugs and offending: thinking the unthinkable

This talk was given to an interesting audience of judges, magistrates, mayors, police officers, prison officers, drug treatment workers and volunteers, at the invitation of HACRO. It critically examines four elements of common knowledge about drugs and offending: that drug use causes addiction; that drugs cause half of all crime; that drug treatment ordered through the criminal justice system can significantly reduce overall crime rates; and that decriminalisation would lead to increases in drug-related harm.
Hat tip to Jock Young for the quote from Quetelet.
The oxymoronic title of the talk was not chosen by me.

Does drug policy matter? A comparative analysis.

Different countries have tried different mixtures of penal, public health and other measures to limit the harms associated with the use of illicit drugs. This paper draws some lessons from these various attempts, with a specific focus on drug policy and its outcomes in the USA, Sweden, the Netherlands, Portugal and England & Wales. It compares the available figures on the effects of drug policies against the aims of reducing drug use and the harms associated with it. The policies examined include mass incarceration in the USA, decriminalisation and treatment expansion in Portugal, the Swedish aspiration for a drug-free society and the bifurcatory developments in 21st century British drug law enforcement. The talk argues that - through all the specificities of national culture, politics and policy - two general propositions stand out. The first is that drug policy appears not to be the most important determinant of levels of drug use or problems, although it can affect the harms related to drug use. The second is that levels of inequality and social support are probably more important in alleviating drug problems than drug policy is. Both propositions will be tested against the available data. It is shown that there is a significant and negative correlation between national levels of social support (decommodification) and indicators of the level of problematic drug use.

Telling Policy Stories: An Ethngraphic Study of the Evidence-Policy Link

With notes. Based on a forthcoming article in 'Journal of Social Policy'

Based on participant observation in a team of British policy making civil servants carried out in 2009, this paper examines the use that is made of evidence in making policy. It shows that these civil servants displayed a high level of commitment to the use of evidence. However, their use of evidence was hampered by the huge volume of various kinds of evidence and by the unsuitability of much academic research in answering policy questions. Faced with this deluge of inconclusive information, they used evidence to create persuasive policy stories. These stories were useful both in making acceptable policies and in advancing careers. They often involved the excision of methodological uncertainty and the use of ‘killer charts’ to boost the persuasiveness of the narrative. In telling these stories, social inequality was ‘silently silenced’ in favour of promoting policies which were ‘totemically’ tough. The paper concludes that this selective, narrative use of evidence is ideological in that it supports systematically asymmetrical relations of power.