Drug policy,control and welfare

The aim of this article is to understand the recent changes of Danish drug policy, which have changed both the balance between and the content of control and welfare. For this purpose, Danish drug policy is seen as a ‘policy space’ where different political rationalities are articulated and played out against each other. The political rationalities articulated within the realm of drug policy are furthermore seen to be influenced by the political rationalities that dominate penal policy and welfare policy more generally. To account for the policy space of Danish drug policy today the article builds on analyses of legislation, policy documents and research related to the policy process. The article is furthermore built on secondary literature about Danish drug policy. The article finds that Danish drug policy articulates a particular mix of neo-conservative and neo-liberal political rationalities that constitutes the basis for the balance between control and welfare in Danish drug policy today.     

A dawning demand for a new cannabis policy: A study of Swedish online drug discussions

BackgroundThis study examines how online discussions on drug policy are formulating an oppositional cannabis discourse in an otherwise prohibitionist country like Sweden. The focus of the paper is to identify demands for an alternative cannabis policy as well as analysing how these demands are linked to governance.MethodsThe empirical material is 56 discussion-threads from the online message-board Flashback Forum that were active during the first eight months of 2012. Discourse theory was used to locate the discourse, and governmentality theory was used to locate the political belonging of the discourse.ResultsOn Flashback Forum demands for a new cannabis policy are articulated in opposition to Swedish prohibitionist discourse. The oppositional discourse is constructed around the nodal points cannabis, harm, state and freedom that fill legalisation/decriminalisation/liberalisation with meaning. The nodal points are surrounded by policy demands that get their meaning through the particular nodal. These demands originate from neo-liberal and welfarist political rationalities. Neo-liberal and welfarist demands are mixed, and participants are simultaneously asking for state and individual approaches to handle the cannabis issue.ConclusionSwedish online discourse on cannabis widens the scope beyond the confines of drug policy to broader demands such as social justice, individual choice and increased welfare. These demands are not essentially linked together and many are politically contradictory. This is also significant for the discourse; it is not hegemonised by a political ideology. The discourse is negotiated between the neo-liberal version of an alternative policy demanding individual freedom, and the welfarist version demanding social responsibility. This implies the influence of the heritage from the social-democratic discourse, centred on state responsibility, which have been dominating Swedish politics in modern times. Consequently, this study refutes that the demand for a new cannabis policy is strictly neo-liberal.     

Exploring the micro-politics of normalisation: Narratives of pleasure,self-control and desire in a sample of young Australian ‘party drug’ users

This article explores the micro-politics of recreational use of illicit ‘party drugs’ in a social network of young Australians. These young people often engage in extended sessions of concurrent alcohol and other drug use, and regularly emphasise the pleasures associated with this use. However, as well-integrated young people, they are also exposed to the discourses of non-using friends, family and the wider society, which represent illicit drug use as a potential moral threat. Some group members invoked the need for self-control in relation to illicit drug use and had developed a number of strategies to cease or regulate their use. However, they struggled to regulate pleasure and drew on popular understandings of ‘excessive’ drug use as indicative of flawed neo-liberal subjectivity. Other group members rejected the need for self-control, choosing instead to emphasise the value of unrestrained bodily pleasure facilitated by the heavy use of illicit drugs. These co-existing discourses point to the complex ways in which illicit drug users try to challenge the stigma associated with their drug use. Our analysis suggests that future accounts of illicit drug use, and harm reduction initiatives, need to be more attentive to the micro-politics of normalisation. How should harm reduction respond to those who articulate its ethos but pursue pleasure in practice? What should harm reduction say to those who reject regulation on the grounds that it stifles pleasure? Discussing ways to incorporate pleasure into harm reduction should be central to the future development of policy and practice.     

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.     

Turn on, tune in, but don’t drop out: The impact of neo-liberalism on magic mushroom users’ (in)ability to imagine collectivist social worlds

BackgroundBetween 2002 and 2005 fresh or unprepared psilocin-based ‘magic’ mushrooms were legal to possess and traffic in the UK, and commercial sales demonstrated a significant market for this hallucinogenic drug. During and after this time there has been relatively little analysis concerning how magic mushroom users accounted for their drug use, nor on the wider political and cultural discourses that might have shaped this sense making.MethodIn this paper we present a critical analysis of contemporary discourses around magic mushroom use in the UK through a multi-level discourse analysis of focus group data from 20 magic mushroom users (13 male and 7 female, mean age 25 years), taken at a time when magic mushrooms were being legally sold in the UK.ResultsLocating participants’ use of magic mushrooms within the context of a culture of intoxication, neo-liberalism and the legacy of 1960s psychedelic philosophy, we identify six interpretative repertoires in their talk, which were subsumed within two overarching discourses. The first discourse drew on neo-liberal rhetoric, constructing participants as rational risk managing subjects engaged in a form of calculated hedonism that was legitimated as an act of personal freedom and consumer choice. The second discourse, identified as ‘post-psychedelic’, both celebrated and problematised a collective, connected ‘hippy’ form of spirituality.ConclusionThe paper analyses the relationships between identity, consumption and citizenship by arguing that people's ability to imagine collectivist, spiritual or interconnected social worlds has been contained within neo-liberalism rhetoric.     

Making legitimacy: Drug user representation in United Nations drug policy settings

BackgroundThe importance of engaging people who use drugs in drug policy development is increasingly acknowledged including in recent UN documents. Little scholarly attention has been paid to ‘drug user representation’ in the global drug policy setting of the UN such as the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND). This paper examines ‘drug user representation’ in key UN drug policy processes over three decades.MethodA mapping process was undertaken using a corpus of publicly available documents from the UNGASS on Drugs and associated CND processes to identify relevant policy processes from 1987 to 2019 (n = 15) which were then assess for presence/absence of ‘drug user representation’. Those processes with positive evidence of ‘drug user representation’ (n = 9) were critically interrogated across three co-constitutive domains of the subjects, objects and forms of ‘drug user representation’.ResultsOur analysis shows that despite calls for greater involvement, dominant UN drug policy discourses and other practices delimit both the political subjectivities available to people who use/have used drugs and their capacity to bring their voices to bear in this context. The analysis also highlights that human rights-based discourses, employed by ‘drug user representatives’, have emerged as an important practice of resistance against the problematic and delimiting power effects of existing UN discourses, governing practices and modes of engagement.ConclusionsIn addition to the practices of resistance being undertaken by ‘drug user representatives’, we suggest there is a need to improve how ‘drug user representation’ is being made possible and done in the sites of UN drug policy deliberation and, that these sites should be opened for questioning. This we argue will not only have a positive impact on political legitimacy for ‘drug user representation’, but on the health and human rights of people who use/have used drugs.     

Risk environments and drug harms: A social science for harm reduction approach

A ‘risk environment’ framework promotes an understanding of harm, and harm reduction, as a matter of ‘contingent causation’. Harm is contingent upon social context, comprising interactions between individuals and environments. There is a momentum of interest in understanding how the relations between individuals and environments impact on the production and reduction of drug harms, and this is reflected by broader debates in the social epidemiology, political economy, and sociology of health. This essay maps some of these developments, and a number of challenges. These include: social epidemiological approaches seeking to capture the socially constructed and dynamic nature of individual-environment interactions; political–economic approaches giving sufficient attention to how risk is situated differentially in local contexts, and to the role of agency and experience; understanding how public health as well as harm reduction discourses act as sites of ‘governmentality’ in risk subjectivity; and focusing on the logics of everyday habits and practices as a means to understanding how structural risk environments are incorporated into experience. Overall, the challenge is to generate empirical and theoretical work which encompasses both ‘determined’ and ‘productive’ relations of risk across social structures and everyday practices. A risk environment approach brings together multiple resources and methods in social science, and helps frame a ‘social science for harm reduction’.     

Drug consumption rooms and the role of politics and governance in policy processes

BackgroundIn 2012 after more than 20 years of discussion Denmark introduced drug consumption facilities as part of its drug policy. This article investigates the processes that led to this new policy and its implementation in Copenhagen. The aim of the article is to analyze if the new policy and its implementation can be understood in terms of a shift from ‘government’ to ‘governance’ in drug policy. On this basis the aim is also to discuss the possibilities and limitations of ‘governance’ as an analytical perspective for understanding policy change in the field of drug policy.MethodsThrough the use of Kingdon's theory about policy change as following alignments of problem streams, policy streams and politics streams and deployment of Callon's concepts of ‘framing’ and ‘overflowing’ the article presents an analysis of recorded communication from the public debate and national and local policy processes.ResultsPolitics and the authority of government played a key role in the policy change that led to the introduction of drug consumption facilities in Denmark. It was only after a change of government and a change of legislation that a new policy came about. Drug consumption facilities did exist on a small scale before this through acts of civil disobedience committed by civil society stakeholders.ConclusionThe space for governance seems to be limited in a drug policy that is prohibitive, at least when it touches upon issues that concern law enforcement and the sovereign power of the state.     

Assembling the dominant accounts of youth drug use in Australian harm reduction drug education

Education programs are a central element of Australian harm reduction drug policy. Considered less judgmental and more effective than the punitive policies of Australia's past, harm reduction drug education is premised on the goal of reducing ‘risks’ and harms associated with illicit drug use rather than an elimination of use per se. In this article I analyse two sets of key texts designed to reduce drug related harm in Australia: harm reduction teaching resources designed for classroom use and social marketing campaigns that are targeted to a more general audience. I identify two significant accounts of young people's drug use present in Australian harm reduction drug education: ‘damaged mental health’ and ‘distress’. I then draw on some of Deleuze and Guattari's key concepts to consider the harm reducing potential these accounts may have for young people's drug using experiences. To demonstrate the potential limitations of current drug education, I refer to an established body of work examining young people's experiences of chroming. From here, I argue that the accounts of ‘damaged mental health’ and ‘distress’ may work to limit the capacity of young drug users to practice safer drug use. In sum, current Australian harm reduction drug education and social marketing may be producing rather than reducing drug related harm.     

Towards ‘Sensible’ drug information: critically exploring drug intersectionalities, ‘Just Say No,’ normalisation and harm reduction

Abstract

Aim: This article examines the impact of new psychoactive substances (NPS) on drug service interventions using a case study of professional practitioners in South East England. We assess how professionals seek to develop an innovative approach towards providing ‘sensible drug information.’

Methodology: The research methods include observations, and individual and collective ethnographic interviews with 13 professionals who work with young people across the region.

Results: The article theorises sensible because it is a key element in contemporary drug education with a harm reduction approach. Therefore, we take up this challenge and use the ideas of Gilles Deleuze, which according to Mazzei and McCoy ‘prompts the possibilities of new questions and different ways of thinking research’. We identify a series of drug intersectionalities between ‘traditional’ illegal drugs and NPS and through social class differences between young affluent and more socially disenfranchised drug users. This article assesses the delivery of ‘sensible drug information’ as part of a harm reduction approach, which may not always be supported by other agencies. In responding to these challenges we explore Deleuze’s ideas as a foundation for ‘sensible’ drug information which incorporates Matza?s theory of drift, to explain young people?s changing pattern of drug consumption.     

Methadone,a contested substance: Danish methadone policy in the 1970s

BackgroundDuring the 1970s in Denmark, there was a great deal of controversy about the role of methadone in Danish drug policy. At stake were not just epistemological issues about how to explain drug problems or indeed technical issues about the best possible treatment for such problems, but also social issues about how drug problems and drug treatment affected and were affected by social change. The paper uses an analytical framework in which drugs are co-constructed with their social worlds. It uses this framework to investigate how conflicts emerged about the different ways of conceiving of the relationship between methadone and Danish society.MethodsDocumentary data from the archives of a pressure group of parents of children with drug problems, the archives of an addiction doctor, newspaper articles, and policy documents from that time were coded in order to identify and analyze central controversies.ResultsThe methadone controversy of the 1970s was not just about the best treatment methods, but also a matter of the future of the Danish welfare state. The nation debated whether it should medicalise a social problem or solve it through social reform.ConclusionDrug treatment is not just a technical issue, but also a political issue and this needs to be accounted for when making drug policy.     

Risk control and rational recreation: A qualitative analysis of synthetic drug use among young urbanites in China

BackgroundTo fight against the rapid growth of synthetic drugs, the Chinese government has strengthened the controls and regulation, incorporated synthetic drugs into the new detoxification system, and changed the inconsistent governance of synthetic and traditional drugs. This, however, has not stopped the spread of synthetic drugs among young urbanites. While scholars have focused on the loopholes and defects of specific drug control regulations, ethnographic inquiries illustrate how and why control does not work, or is even resisted by young drug users.MethodsIn-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with 28 individuals aged between 20 and 35, recruited from a cohort of synthetic drug users in a Shanghai drug rehabilitation centre. Audio-recorded interviews elicited accounts of their daily experiences of drug use as well as their perspectives on the impact of the government's new drug control policies.ResultsThe main themes voiced by our respondents include: (1) synthetic drugs are not addictive, and are used to feel ‘high’; (2) synthetic drugs are used to achieve their goals, which are otherwise impossible through mainstream means; (3) users are confident that they will be able to manage the use of synthetic drugs without harm to themselves; (4) their worries concern administrative punishment rather than consequences to health.ConclusionThe participants of this study did not support the government's attempts to control the use of synthetic drugs. They viewed their use as rational recreation under the perceived boundaries of ‘acceptable risks’. Even in the context of severe control, synthetic drugs have strong appeal to youths. Drug policy should acknowledge the experiences of users and consider the socio-cultural contexts of youth drug-taking. The personal experience of participants could help improve the Chinese Drug Control Act and regulations.     

Producing the vulnerable subject in English drug policy

The concept of vulnerability is now deeply embedded in English drug policy, influential in governing practices such as prevention and treatment activity but yet to be subject to critical scrutiny. In this article, we offer an appraisal of the vulnerability zeitgeist in contemporary drug policy, drawing upon insights from similar endeavours across a range of policy areas to consider the underlying assumptions and various effects of this conceptual logic. Using an approach to policy analysis which supports the questioning of deep-seated assumptions and implications of particular representations of ‘problems’ in social policies (often referred to as the ‘What’s the Problem?’ [WPR] approach, Bacchi & Goodwin, 2016), we analyse the 2017 Drug Strategy to facilitate a close perspective on the texture of governance in relation to people who use drugs in England. We explore how vulnerability and drug use are in Bacchi’s (2018; 6) terms ‘problematized’ and ‘made ‘real’’ as a specific kind of phenomenon, drawing attention to the presuppositions and potential effects of being labelled (or not) as vulnerable. We argue that alongside bolstering targeted support, the current problematisation of vulnerability in English drug policy supports the operation of subtle disciplinary mechanisms to regulate the behaviour of those deemed vulnerable, underplaying the role of material inequalities and social divisions in the unevenness of drug-related harms. We then use the WPR approach to guide a discussion of the burgeoning multi-disciplinary literature on vulnerability, exploring orientations and effects of alternative representations of the ‘vulnerable’ drug users. Producing the ‘vulnerable’ subject in these alternative ways creates a different and deeper understanding of the ‘problem’ and consequently its ‘solutions’, allowing more space for human agency to be considered and directing attention beyond drug policy towards tackling the diverse multiple social marginalisations which make some people more likely than others to experience drug-related harms.     

From niche to stigma—Headshops to prison: Exploring the rise and fall of synthetic cannabinoid use among young adults

The aim of this paper will be to consider the rise and subsequent fall in NPS use at national and local level with a focus on synthetic cannabinoid products in Kent. We will examine the local practice and policy responses by Kent’s Young Persons’ Drug and Alcohol Service towards a possible change in patterns of NPS drug consumption. The county has seen an expansion in the number of Headshops and we present local media coverage on NPS, and the Trading Standards and Kent Police intervention Operation Lantern to regulate Headshops. Through quantitative and qualitative data sets on socially vulnerable young people and prison populations we explore young adults’ perception of pleasure and harm in the use of NPS. Emergent data suggests young adults are now assessing the differences between NPS and more traditional illicit drugs, with this impacting on decision-making about the substances being used. When ‘legal highs’ first appeared they were associated with a more niche middle class demographic, ‘psychonauts’ and experimental users interested in pursuing recreational drug diversity. We examine macro and micro data to suggest that populations most likely to become involved in NPS use are those with degrees of stigma linked to socially vulnerable young adults suggesting that Spice is no longer a feature of middle class recreational drug use.     

The risk environment of anabolic–androgenic steroid users in the UK: Examining motivations,practices and accounts of use

BackgroundThe numbers using illicit anabolic–androgenic steroids are a cause of concern for those seeking to reduce health harms. Using the ‘risk environment’ as a conceptual framework to better comprehend how steroid users’ practices and perspectives impact on health risks, this paper examines steroid user motivations, patterns of use, and the ways in which these practices are accounted for.MethodsAs part of a wider mixed-method study into performance and image enhancing drug (PIED) use and supply in one mid-sized city in South West England, qualitative interviews were undertaken with 22 steroid users. Participants were recruited from a local safer injecting service, rather than bodybuilding gyms, in order to access a wider cross-section of steroid users. A limitation of this approach is potential sample bias towards those showing more health optimising behaviours.ResultsThe research findings highlight that patterns of steroid use varied according to motivation for use, experience and knowledge gained. Most reported having had little or no knowledge on steroids prior to use, with first use being based on information gained from fellow users or suppliers—sometimes inaccurate or incomplete. In accounting for their practices, many users differentiated themselves from other groups of steroid users—for example, older users expressed concern over patterns of use of younger and (what they saw as) inexperienced steroid users. Implicit in these accounts were intimations that the ‘other’ group engaged in riskier behaviour than they did.ConclusionExamining social contexts of use and user beliefs and motivations is vital to understanding how ‘risk’ behaviours are experienced so that this, in turn, informs harm reduction strategies. This paper examines the ways in which use of steroids is socially situated and the implications of this for policy and practice.     

Polydrug use and polydrug markets amongst image and performance enhancing drug users: Implications for harm reduction interventions and drug policy

BackgroundOver the past two decades, the use of image and performance enhancing drugs (IPEDs) has increased significantly. Once largely confined to professional athletes, IPED use has transcended the elite sporting arena and is now predominantly found among non-elite, recreational gym users. This paper presents research findings from a qualitative study of IPED use and supply in a ‘hardcore’ bodybuilding gym in the north of England. This article makes an original contribution to the field by providing an in-depth account of the use and supply of IPEDs among this population, demonstrating the intersectionality that exists across IPEDs, diverted medication and both licit and illicit substance use and supply.MethodsThe findings are based on the research team’s privileged access to an independent, ‘hardcore’ body building gym in the north of England. Four fieldworkers undertook overt systematic observations, supplemented by 20 semi-structured interviews.ResultsAmongst this sample of bodybuilders, substance use transcended IPEDs to encompass a much broader cocktail of substances all who used IPEDs concomitantly used diverted medication as a means of negating anticipated side-effects, and over half used illegal psychoactive drugs. Furthermore, virtually all of these substances were available to buy via the gym, through fellow gym members and, at times, staff.ConclusionThis article draws three main conclusions. (1) We are witnessing a convergence of IPED use and supply with diverted medication and ‘traditional’ recreational substances. (2) The extensive poly-substance use reported by interviewees in this sample necessitates a review of existing harm reduction advice for IPED users that takes into consideration the full range of substances currently being used. (3) Punitive drug policy reform that aims to reduce IPED markets needs to consider the potential to displace social supply towards more commercially-driven dealing. Harsher drug laws may also risk criminalising and stigmatising IPED users.     

Enlightened hedonism? Independent drug checking amongst a group of ecstasy users.

BackgroundResearch indicates that a body of ecstasy users across the globe employ ‘home’ drug testing technologies to learn more about the content of their drugs – a process referred to throughout this article as independent drug checking (IDC). Whilst a small number of studies offer accounts of this process, they do so through a narrow lens of harm reduction, potentially overlooking wider socio-cultural factors which may affect this. In response, this article draws on Slavoj Žižek's political theory of the cultural injunction to enjoy, situating IDC in the wider political economy of neoliberal consumer capitalism to contextualise and interpret its use as integral to pleasure and leisure.MethodsThis empirical study documents the thoughts and experiences of a group of UK ecstasy users who independently use a privately owned drug-testing kit. Drawing on qualitative data generated through 20 semi-structured interviews, the article considers two research questions; what role did drug checking play in the group's drug journeys and leisure activities?; and is drug checking thought to be purposeful?FindingsFor this group of ecstasy users, issues of safety and self-responsibility interweaved with the pursuit of pleasure as they sought to enjoy their drug consumption, but in a way that navigated potential harms. IDC therefore served to maximise pleasure via its ‘guarantee’ of a prolonged, enjoyable, authentic consumer experience whilst simultaneously safeguarding wellbeing via its premise of more responsible and controlled consumption practices.ConclusionIDC allowed this group of drug consumers to partake in ‘enlightened hedonism’ – demonstrating their conformity to the imperatives of capitalism and its social norms. Despite recognising the limitations of IDC and disclosing potentially harmful outcomes, the group's engagement with capitalist markets provided a belief that investment in your consumer experience can both improve it and make it safer – premises that belie the empirical reality.