Repressive Drug Policies Research Articles

Women Mobilizing for Change: Resisting State Violence from Repressive Drug Policies.

Punitive drug laws have had a differentiated and violent impact on women. State-driven stigma, criminalization, and abuse act as major barriers between women who use drugs and critical services, driving disproportionate health and safety harms. At the same time, women involved in illegal drug activities suffer the brunt of disproportionate drug laws, which exacerbate poverty and intersecting forms of discrimination, and have increased dramatically the global number of women behind bars. Although UN fora and women's rights organizations have paid little attention to their situation, affected women have mobilized to affirm their rights and vindicate their experiences, including at CSW65. From grassroots campaigns to organizations of formerly incarcerated women or peer-led harm reduction programs, women have stepped in to provide the support that States have failed to deliver. Decriminalization, reforms of draconian drug laws, gender-sensitive harm reduction services, and peer-led initiatives are essential to tackle violence against women.

Russian Political Discourse on Illegal Drugs: A Thematic Analysis of Parliamentary Debates

Background Since the beginning of the twenty first century, there has been an intensified political debate about drugs in Russia. The drug problem is now regarded as one of the country’s most serious problems and as an issue of top priority for the Russian government. Objectives: The aim of this qualitative study is to explore how illegal drugs are discussed in Russian political discourse. Methods: The material includes an analysis of 177 speeches made in the lower house of the Russian parliament, the Russian State Duma, between 2014 and 2018. The data were analyzed using qualitative content analysis (CDA). Results: In general, the study found that the debate about the drug problem was characterized by consensus, and there were small differences between the Deputy members in their understanding of the problem. Three main understandings of the drug problem were identified: (1) Illegal drugs as an increasing problem in Russia, (2) Drugs as an external threat, and (3) A need for a more repressive drug policy. Conclusion: There was a general consensus about how the drug problem should be regarded among the politicians, with a focus on a war on drugs and an absence of harm reduction ideas.

The Neo-Patrimonial ‘Use’ of Drug Policy in Electoral Processes

The prohibition of illegal drug production, use and trafficking has resulted in several shortcomings and negative consequences for other global development objectives. According to available evidence, current drug control policies undermine the international community’s commitments to public health, criminal justice, sustainable development, women rights, human rights, poverty alleviation and the reduction of inequalities. This policy comment focuses on the impact of repressive drug policies on state institutions and politics. In a unique conjunction of interests, prohibition allows transnational criminal organisations to weaken state institutions, corrupt civil and military officials and influence control policies because of the entrenched neo-patrimonialism in political life. Therefore, prohibition allows populist and political contenders to stigmatise a minority population—people who use drugs, in opposition to the desires of the majority rule. The use of political emotions, based on fear or promise of change, undermines effective responses to drugs, erodes the rule of law and trust between authorities and populations, and weakens state institutions and democratic governance. This policy comment provides examples from low- and middle-income countries, as well as cases from high-income countries, of the impact of drug prohibition and its illegal proceeds on governance through neo-patrimonialism, clientelism and the weakening of institutions.

Calls for Access to Safe Injecting Supplies as a Critical Public Health Measure During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

: More than 3 decades of research has provided compelling evidence regarding the effectiveness, safety, and cost-effectiveness of needle and syringe programs in reducing syringe-sharing and transmission of HIV, HCV, and other bloodborne infections. However, repressive drug policies and drug law enforcement practices around the world continue to undermine their operations and scale-up, as well as access to harm reduction among people who inject drugs. The COVID-19 pandemic has heightened access barriers to needle and syringe programs, raising concerns about unsafe injecting practices due to inadequate access to safe injecting supplies. This commentary discusses the robust public health responses that are needed at this particularly vulnerable and critical juncture to ensure access to safe injecting supplies and minimize the risk for transmission of bloodborne infections among people who inject drugs.

Making up a new drug user from depenalization to repenalisation of drug users in Denmark

BackgroundIn 2004 the Danish parliament repenalised possession of illicit drugs for personal use after it had been depenalised for 35 years. This article analyses the introduction of a more repressive drug policy in Denmark by studying how drug use and drug users were problematized in two key government whitepapers and how this problematization articulated a more general problematisation of ‘a culture of intoxication’ among young Danes. The analysis also shows how the policy change involved a change of governmentality away from a welfarist and towards a neo-liberal governmentality. The analysis particularly focuses on the implications of these problematisations for the constitution of young drug users a ‘governable subjects’. MethodsThe article takes its inspiration from research that has applied governmentality theory to analyse drug policy and particularly how the governmentalities that drug policies articulate involve different subjectifications of drug users. Within this overall framework the article also takes inspiration from Carol Bacchi's post-structural approach to policy analysis to show the assumptions about young people, drugs and how to govern them before and after the policy change. ResultsThe new drug policy articulated new ways of problematising drug use and the young drug user. Drug use was no longer defined as more or less socially conditioned but as an individual choice made by a rational actor. Punishment for violating the drug legislation should make the drug user responsible for his or her transgressions and deter others from making similar transgressions. ConclusionResearch has shown that neo-liberal discourses can lead to more empowering and harm reduction oriented drug policies. This is not the case in Denmark. Here neo-liberal discourses led to a more repressive drug policy. Briefly accounting for some of the lived effects of the new drug policy, the article shows how socially disadvantaged parts of the Danish population bears the burden on the more punitive drug policy. This more repressive drug policy goes against the trend in several other European countries that have become less repressive. However, even if Danish drug policy has become more repressive, the legal measures taken against drug users in Denmark are still fairly ‘mild’ compared with the legal measures taken against drug users in other countries.

Implementation research to evaluate an educational intervention for people who inject drugs

Abstract Objective In the context of disseminating harm reduction (HR) programmes in Europe, the Eurosider project aims to study the transferability of an effective educational intervention for people who inject drugs (PWID) to four European countries (Bulgaria, Greece, Portugal and Romania). This intervention, entitled Individually-Tailored Support and Education for Safer Injection (ITSESI), has been shown to reduce HIV-Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) risk practices by offering educational supervision during all phases of the injection sequence, from pre- to post-injection. Methods The project employs mixed methods and implementation science. The exploratory first step used qualitative interviews and other available data in each country. The second step consists in implementing and evaluating the intervention using a 6-month study conducted among 300 PWID enrolled in the 4 countries. They are interviewed at baseline and at 6 months. The third step will consist in designing, promoting and disseminating all the tools necessary to transfer ITSESI at the European level. Results Results from the exploratory phase highlighted two main determining factors for the feasibility of implementing ITSESI: funding and a repressive legal context. Preliminary results from a quantitative analysis of data from the second step will provide a baseline description of the 300 PWID. Discussion Findings to date indicate that an exploratory phase is crucial to adapt and transfer the intervention to local contexts and to evaluate it. More globally, the Eurosider project will 1) help understand each local context to adapt the intervention accordingly; 2) assess the feasibility and effectiveness of ITSESI in different contexts; 3) promote and disseminate tools and training to implement the intervention at the European level. Key messages People who inject drugs in European countries report HIV-HCV risk practices and adequate prevention should be provided. The implementation of an innovative educational intervention for people who inject drugs may be one response but requires to take into account contextual factors: funding and repressive drug policy.

HIV/AIDS in Russia: Governmental and Activist Constructions of the Social Problem

The article deals with the constructions of the social problem of HIV/AIDS created by both the authorities and HIV activists in Russia. The work is based on the study of the rhetoric of Russian authorities, participant observations, and interviews with HIV activists. The constructions of HIV/ AIDS that were formed by authorities and HIV activists are significantly different. The Russian President and Prime Minister constructed HIV/AIDS not as an epidemic in the country, but as a “global problem”, representing Russia as a participant in the international efforts to combat AIDS. The authorities problematized the spread of the virus through the rhetoric of endangerment, while at the same time de-problematized HIV in Russia with the strategy of naturalizing the issue (“this is a problem that all countries face”). The HIV activists problematized the violations of the rights of people with HIV in public health institutions, the poor quality of antiretroviral therapy, the practice of late treatment, the lack of HIV prevention that includes sex education in schools, and repressive drug policies. Unlike the authorities’ construction, the problem constructed by HIV activists does not include the rhetoric of moral values. The main discursive way of problematization used by activists is the anti-discriminating rhetoric of entitlement. At the same time, HIV as a threat and a reason for fear is de-problematized by activists through the strategy of disproving stories where HIV activists talk about themselves, and directly interact with people to eliminate their fear of the virus.

Drug policing assemblages: Repressive drug policies and the zonal banning of drug users in Denmark’s club land

BackgroundZonal banning of disorderly and intoxicated young people has moved to centre stage in debates about nightlife governance. Whereas existing research has primarily focused on the use of zonal banning orders to address problems of alcohol-related harm and disorder, this article highlights how zonal banning is also used to target drug-using clubbers in Denmark. MethodsBased on ethnographic observations and interviews with nightlife control agents in two Danish cities, the article aims to provide new insights into how the enforcement of national drug policies on drug-using clubbers, is shaped by plural nightlife policing complexes. ResultsThe paper demonstrates how the policing of drug-using clubbers is a growing priority for both police and private security agents. The article also demonstrates how the enforcement of zonal bans on drug-using clubbers involves complex collaborative relations between police, venue owners and private security agents. ConclusionThe paper argues that a third-party policing perspective combined with assemblage theory is useful for highlighting how the enforcement of national drug policies and nightlife banning systems is shaped by their embeddedness in local ‘drug policing assemblages’ characterized by inter-agency relation-building, the creative combination of public and private (legal) resources and internal power struggles. It also provides evidence of how drug policing assemblages give rise to many different, and often surprising, forms of jurisdiction involving divergent performances of spaces-, objects- and authorities of governance.

The politics of drug control in Nigeria: Exclusion, repression and obstacles to policy change

BackgroundInternational agencies have viewed West Africa as a major player in the global trade in cocaine and heroin and in efforts to control that trade, as there have been reports of escalating arrests of drug smugglers, large-scale drug seizures and ‘narco-states’ in the subregion. It is claimed that a substantial share of the drugs available in Western markets transit through West Africa today and are increasingly used there as well. Notwithstanding this growing alarm, there is little serious scholarship addressing the issue of drugs and drug policy in West Africa. MethodsThe article assesses and challenges some of the existing depictions of drugs and drug policy in West Africa through an empirical case study of drug control in Nigeria – one of West Africa's most notorious ‘drug hubs’ and recently hailed as a policy model by international experts. Based on previously inaccessible government documents, interviews with key officials in Nigeria, as well as ethnographic work at Nigeria's key drug agency, the article provides a unique insight into the politics of drug policy-making and implementation in West Africa. ResultsAfter describing the dominant official narratives of Nigeria's drug control, the article shows how the key political dynamics underlying drug policy remain obscured by these narratives. Nigerian drug policy has been characterised by a highly exclusive policy-making process, repression as the sole means of implementation and a strong bond with international drug agencies. This policy emerged in the 1980s and 1990s and has remained the unchallenged norm until today. The political processes underlying Nigerian drug policy also explain why policy reform has been and will be difficult to accomplish. ConclusionThese domestic political processes have largely been ignored in the existing depictions of drugs in West Africa, as they have mainly focused on externally driven drug threats and foreign policy responses. Most importantly, they have ignored the role played by the state. Rather than being too weak, the Nigerian state has shown a clear tendency towards repressive and coercive drug policy, which has received little popular support.

Mephedrone, assassin of youth: The rhetoric of fear in contemporary drug scares

This article examines how mephedrone, the most popular legal high sold freely in the United Kingdom until its classification as a high-risk drug, in April 2010, was constructed by the British popular media as a moral epidemic that threatened the very symbolic heart of the nation – its youth. News of teenagers committing suicide after taking the drug or dying of overdose had been presented in the pages of tabloid dailies for months when the government decided to ban the substance despite the lack of solid scientific data on the medical and social risks it posed. Drawing on Teun van Dijk’s socio-cognitive approach to critical discourse studies, this article demonstrates how in its attempt to influence national policy the media largely responded to the new drug problem with panic discourses that perpetuated the old ‘war on drugs’ ideology, choosing to frame mephedrone as an agent of death and moral downfall even when its destructive influence was questionable. In this perspective, a blueprint made of multiple layers of historical drug scares and repressive drug policies shaped the metaphors and narratives used by the media to codify a sense of threat and by the audiences to interpret the symptoms of a social pathology.

How to handle legal highs? Findings from a German online survey and considerations on drug policy issues

PurposeThis article aims to discuss the results on prevalence, patterns of use and motivations for the use of legal high products/new psychoactive substances (NPS) and possible consequences for drug policy.Design/methodology/approachThe main results are derived from a non‐representative quantitative online survey in Germany, focused on persons with experience in legal highs use.FindingsThe general prevalence of legal highs varies considerably in different European countries; generally, it is much lower than the lifetime prevalence of illicit drugs. Almost every legal highs user has experience in the use of illicit drugs. Several types of (repeated) users can be identified. “Herbal incense” products are used by many persons in order to compensate for a limited availability of cannabis or to remain inconspicuous for law enforcement. Current research chemicals (RC) users are mainly experienced drug users who seek to expand the range of drugs being consumed with RCs. Repressive drug policy approaches seem to contribute to the use of legal highs as replacement drugs.Social implicationsGiven that many NPS show side effects that are at least as serious as those associated with illicit drugs, and that long‐time risks are unpredictable, repressive drug policy enforcement may lead to increased public health risks regarding drug users.Originality/valueThe survey is the first published quantitative survey focusing on legal highs users. The results have not been published in English yet.

Control and Welfare in Danish Drug Policy

In 2004 the Danish Parliament re-penalized possession of illegal drugs for personal consumption after 35 years of de-penalization. This article presents an analysis of this shift away from a relatively liberal drug policy and towards a more repressive drug policy and places it in a context of the shifting balances between control and welfare in Danish drug policy since 1955. The article analyzes the background for the first penalization of possession in 1955, de-penalization in 1969 and re-penalization in 2004, focusing particularly on how the drug using subject was constructed at these three important moments in the history of Danish drug policy. The article furthermore analyzes the changes in 1969 and 2004 as part of more general changes of welfare policy and penal policy in Denmark. The article is based on analyses of Danish drug legislation and policy documents.

Implementation of harm reduction in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia

Harm reduction (HR) interventions began in Central-Eastern Europe and Central Asia in the mid-1980s with the establishment of substitution treatment (ST) in Yugoslavia. In the mid-1990s, the first needle and syringe programmes (NSPs) opened in selected countries following the outbreaks of HIV among injecting drug users (IDUs). The number of NSPs continues to increase via a combination of international and state funding with large expansions made possible via the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. While ST is still unaccepted in several countries, others have made some progress which is especially visible in South Eastern and Central Europe and the Baltic States. Development of regional networking including Central and Eastern European HR Network and a number of national networks helped to coordinate joint advocacy effort and in some cases sustain HR services. Activism of drug users and people living with HIV (PLWH) increased in the region in the last several years and helped to better link HR with the affected communities. Still a number of challenges remain important for the movement today such as repressive drug policies; stigma and discrimination of IDUs, PLWH, sex workers and inmates, including poor access to prevention and treatment; lack of important components of HR work such as naloxone distribution and hepatitis B vaccination, prevention in prisons; issues of quality control; sustaining services after finishing of major international projects; reaching of adequate coverage and others.

Addiction as accomplishment: The discursive construction of disease

The ubiquity of the disease concept of addiction obscures the fact that it did not emerge from the accretion of scientific discoveries. Addiction-as-disease has been continuously redefined, mostly in the direction of conceptual elasticity, such that it now yields an embarrassment of riches: a growing range of allegedly addictive phenomena which do not involve drugs. This article begins with questions that have been raised about whether “addiction” is a discrete disease entity with a distinct etiology. It then summarizes the historical and cultural conditions under which addiction-as-disease was constructed, the specific actors and institutions who promulgated it, and the discursive procedures through which it is reproduced and internalized by those said to be afflicted. Understanding how the dominance of additiction discourse was accomplished in these ways does not imply that the lived experience of what is called addiction is therefore any less acute or compelling. But it does invite attention to the contradictory uses of disease discourse: a humane warrant for necessary health services and legitimation of repressive drug policies.

The Influence of Drug Policy on Transportation Policy Decisions

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.

What Kind of Science for What Kind of Decision? The Discourse on a Danish Heroin Maintenance Experiment

Following the reports on the Swiss heroin trials, Denmark has experienced a lengthy discourse on a possible Danish heroin experiment. Opponents have criticized the Swiss experiments on methodological grounds: they do not live up to rigid standards of scientific stringency, primarily the demands for a randomized clinical experiment (RCE). The article analyzes the basis for the Danish discourse, maintaining that the RCE design is not adequate for the relevant research questions. Instead, other types of scientific analyses might be applied, e.g., based upon self-selection. It is maintained that the scientific appearance of the discourse is in reality a disguise for moralistic political viewpoints, influenced by the war-on-drugs thinking, which is opposed to any harm-reduction measures that might raise fundamental questions about repressive drug policy. The background for the outcome of the Danish heroin discourse—as opposed to the Swiss and the Dutch—is analyzed in terms of differences in influences and ideology of the national medical “establishments.”

Capitalism, prohibitionism, and the drug policy reform movement: theses on Friedman et al.

The New Left of the 1960s was new in part because it recognized that capitalism was no more the cause of every problem than communism was the solution. The Old Left had been slow to understand that racism, sexism, and many other forms of inequality and inhumanity were not reducible to economic exploitation, and that ‘‘the working class’’ was not always progressive on every issue. Similarly, repressive drug policies are about more than economic inequality and ‘‘the working class’’ is not necessarily a natural ally in the drug policy reform movement. Just as race and gender issues cut across and confound class issues, so does the fear and moralism undergirding prohibition. Friedman et al., 2001 are to be thanked for posing important questions about the relationship between progressive political forces and the harm reduction and drug policy reform movement. The goal of their article – to ‘‘encourage working with broader movements’’ on the Left to protect and strengthen harm reduction – could hardly be more worthwhile. That said, however, I will argue that to speak of political strategy and the future of harm reduction in terms of class politics, as they do, will lead us to misunderstand who we are and what we are up against.

Peer Support as a Method of Risk Reduction in Injecting Drug-User Communities: Experiences in Dutch Projects and the “European Peer Support Project”

This article discusses the central importance in Western Europe of active drug users/injectors working with their peers to combat the spread of HIV and reduce other health problems. The structure and workings of several different peer organizations are described, and an important distinction is made between “self-help” versus drug-user “unions” or “interest” groups. The roots of the first drug-user unions are traced to the junkiebonden that surfaced in the Netherlands in the early 1970s. Now, the European Peer Support Project, which is described, coordinates projects in six different western European countries, supporting several different initiatives, and producing training programs and manuals for users to assist them in their organizing efforts. The underlying premise of drug-user self-organizations is that repressive drug policy, as defined by criminal laws, is not only a fundamentally inappropriate approach to the “drug problem;” repressive drug policy is partly responsible for the creation of the “drug problem” in the first place.