British Drug Policy and the Modern State: Reconsidering the Criminalisation Thesis

Abstract

Recent developments in the drug field have prompted claims that criminal justice has displaced health from its formerly dominant position and have also been used to support general claims about the criminalisation of social policy. This article critically assesses such claims and offers an alternative interpretation, arguing that British drug policy has been shaped and reshaped by the broader workings of the modern state. Early controls reflected the influence of medicine and public health over emerging forms of state interventionism, while subsequent arrangements were consistent with the penal-welfare tradition that dominated criminal justice for much of the last century. More recently, it is the transformation of this tradition that has played a key role in reshaping the drug field, producing evidence of both continuity and change. What others have attributed to ‘criminalisation’, therefore, is said to reflect broader changes in the nature of criminal justice itself. Whilst the transformation of penal-welfarism helps to explain the development of more punitive and coercive forms of drug control, this is only part of the story. As with criminal justice more generally, the limitations of the sovereign state have given rise to various adaptive strategies and it is here that considerable continuity can be seen, particularly in relation to the on-going importance of drug treatment and harm reduction.

Drug policy reform and the reclassification of cannabis in England and Wales: A cautionary tale

“…The new arrangement that accompanied the reclassification of cannabis draws on two of the main adaptive strategies that help to maintain the viability of the criminal justice system by limiting the demands placed upon it -'the rationalization of justice' and 'defining deviance down ' (Garland, 2001; see also Shiner, 2013). Street warnings and penalty notices for cannabis possession offences illustrate the general trend towards greater 'on-the-spot' decision-making at the 'shallow' end of the criminal justice system in order to ease pressure on the courts.…”

Drug policy constellations: A Habermasian approach for understanding English drug policy

“…They operate within the framework of international law (as laid out in the UN drug conventions), and under the influence of other countries. An example is the effective pressure that the USA placed on the UK government in 1990 to restrict the OST and harm reduction services provided in the north-west of England by Dr John Marks (Dean, 1995;Shiner, 2013). More recently, we have seen attempts, by the Liberal Democrats, public health bodies and other actors, to import the Portuguese model of decriminalisation (Jones, 2017;Royal Society of Public Health, 2016).…”

Dangerous drugs, dangerous mothers: Gender, responsibility and the problematisation of parental substance use

“…The release, in 1995, of the first overarching, cross-governmental drug strategy (Home Office, 1995), was also significant. Stressing the criminal consequences of drug use, it arguably represented a departure from the political emphasis on health and harm reduction that dominated responses to the HIV crisis of the 1980s (Monaghan, 2012;Shiner, 2013). In the strategy, there is no mention of parental substance use, although access to public health services is promised for the families of drug misusers (Home Office, 1995: unpaged).…”