1 - An Introduction to Drug Policy Constellations

Summary

This book is about how policy is made. It uses examples of British policies on illicit drugs to develop and illustrate a new approach to understanding policy making. It is born of a mixture of fascination, curiosity, frustration, sadness and anger, with occasional moments of dark humour.

Drugs are fascinating. The range of pleasures and pains they produce, the lengths some people will go to get them, and the effects of their use on our social and cultural lives have inspired a huge range of academic and artistic work. As a committed drug policy geek, I also find myself fascinated by the process of policy making. Out of the wide range of harms and pleasures that people experience, how do we come to focus our attention on some and not others? From the myriad proposed policy responses, how are some selected for legislation and funding while others are left on the intellectual scrapheap? Why do ‘zombie ideas’ – which have long since been discredited – continue to be so influential (Peters and Nagel, 2020)?

In economics, undead ideas include that markets are inherently efficient, that they tend to equilibrium, that wealth trickles down, and that the economic advantages of the global North are solely the product of the ingenuity and hard work of White men and have nothing to do with the legacy of slavery and colonisation (Keen, 2001; Quiggins, 2010; Hope and Limberg, 2022; Berg and Hudson, 2023). In drug policy, still walking among us are the supposedly inherent difference between licit and illicit drugs, that it is possible to achieve a ‘drug-free society’, and that there is a winnable ‘war on drugs’ (or even a war on drugs at all). Why are these ideas so influential? This is a question I get asked a lot. It was expressed well by one of the people I interviewed for this book, Dr Ed Day, the UK's national Drug Recovery Champion: “I really struggle with … criminalising drugs as an issue because it just doesn't seem to work. I can't see evidence it's worked ever, and it just causes massive harm. And so why do we do it?”