Cannabis decriminalization policies across the globe

Eastwood, Niamh

doi:10.4324/9780429427794-9

Cited by 31 publications

(21 citation statements)

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“…The significance of these findings, however, extend far beyond the parameters of the fieldwork site, for the liminality of drug prohibition experienced by the residents of Thornbridge can be used a metaphor for the contemporary global drug policy landscape. While the war on drugs shows signs of waning (Eastwood, Fox, & Rosmarin, 2016), drug prohibition continues to be evident in most legal jurisdictions across the world. Although enforced with differing degrees of resolve, all approaches have one outcome in common: They continue to cause harm.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cannabis Use in an English Community

Taylor

Wilson

Barrett

et al. 2018

Contemporary Drug Problems

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Cannabis occupies an ambiguous social, cultural, economic, and legal position, meaning that the way communities construct, interact with, and interpret drug markets is a complicated and uncertain process. This article seeks to explain these ambiguities by investigating the place of cannabis use in a UK borough, drawing on qualitative empirical data collated from a sample (N ¼ 68) of practitioners, local residents, cannabis users, and their families. In doing so, the article employs the concept of liminality (whereby individuals and spaces occupy a position at both ends of a threshold) to explore how community behaviors and norms relate to issues of space, harm, and drug policy. The article contextualizes the position of cannabis use within the fieldwork site, exploring a series of competing contradictions that divided participants between the rhetoric and reality of drug prohibition. Drug prohibition suggests cannabis use to be dangerous, which prompted concern. However, the lived reality of prohibition for residents sat in stark juxtaposition: The drug was used commonly and publicly, was effectively decriminalized, and its use (reluctantly) accommodated. This malaise placed residents within what is described here as the liminality of drug prohibition, in which notions of the licit and illicit became blurred and whereby the illegality of cannabis augmented anxieties yet simultaneously proved a barrier to addressing them. In conclusion, the current study provides further evidence of prohibitionist drug policy proliferating rather than mitigating drug-related harms.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cannabis Use in an English Community

Taylor

Wilson

Barrett

et al. 2018

Contemporary Drug Problems

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“…But theoretical work and conceptual discussion can complement policy-oriented empirical studies, deepening and widening enquiry and understanding. Now seems like a particularly good time to try to broaden out research, as over the last 15 years the tectonic plates of global drug policy have started to shift, with experiments in decriminalization and legalization springing up across Europe, South America, North America, Australia, the Caribbean and, most recently, Africa 2 (see Eastwood et al, 2016 for a global survey). New theoretical and conceptual tools can potentially help us not only in making sense of this changing world but also in informing the development of specific law reform initiatives.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Markets, Regulation and Drug Law Reform: Towards a Constitutive Approach

Seddon

2019

Social & Legal Studies

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After a century of international drug prohibition, and amidst growing consensus that it has been a costly policy failure, arguments for drug law reform are gathering momentum globally. Despite a large body of empirically oriented policy research, the area remains underdeveloped conceptually and theoretically. This article seeks to address this gap by assembling some intellectual resources for a critical socio-legal analysis of drug law reform, drawing on insights from regulation studies, economics, political economy and economic sociology. Reframing the problem as one of market regulation, and using Shearing’s constitutive approach, opens up some new ways of thinking about how drug laws function and the possibilities for reform. It also highlights the importance of taking normative thinking about drug policy futures seriously. In conclusion, it is suggested that a new concept of exchangespace may be key to further theoretical development in this field.

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“…However, in recent years, the legislative approaches to the regulation of drugs is increasingly being debated globally, and the “war on drugs,” waged by former U.S. president Richard Nixon at the beginning of the 1970s, is increasingly being discredited (Collins, 2016). The Global Commission on Drug Policy (2011) has repeatedly called for decriminalization since their first report in 2011, as have several United Nations agencies, such as the UNAIDS, the World Health Organization, the United Nations Development Programme, and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (Eastwood, Fox, & Rosmarin, 2016). Consequently, interest and experimentation in legalization and decriminalization has been growing, and several countries are changing their drug policies in this direction.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition to this, several states operate with various forms of “de facto” decriminalization, where drug possession is still prohibited but without this prohibition being fully enforced. As of 2016, more than 25 countries globally have introduced some form of “de facto” decriminalization or removal of criminal penalties, encompassing what has been called a “quiet revolution” in the field of drug policy (Eastwood et al, 2016). An example of such limited, site-specific “de facto” decriminalization is the introduction of official drug consumption rooms (DCRs), also called safe injection sites, as these licensed DCRs usually operate with some kind of exemption from general drug law enforcement.…”

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confidence: 99%

Harm Reduction Policing: From Drug Law Enforcement to Protection

Kammersgaard

2019

Contemporary Drug Problems

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Several drug policy researchers have noted that the concept of harm reduction could be applied to the field of drug policing in order to assess the negative consequences and potential benefits of policing in this area. However, the application of harm reduction principles to drug policing has only been realized to a limited extent in the current responses to drug use and markets. Accordingly, studies that empirically investigate already existing policing practices, which might be described as operating within such a harm reduction framework, are relatively scarce. In order to address this gap, this article provides an investigation of how policing of an open drug scene has been organized in Denmark since drug possession has been partly decriminalized, following the introduction of drug consumption rooms in Copenhagen. The policing of this open drug scene was investigated through document analysis, interviews, and observations with a patrolling police officer. The article argues that decriminalization has resulted in a shift in the “logics” of policing by enabling the production of an alternative “governable identity” for the drug-using subject, where people who use drugs could more readily be perceived as citizens with rights rather than just as offenders. Accordingly, in this new logic, the violence and victimization experienced by marginalized people who use drugs could more readily be identified as proper objects for police action. The study contributes to our knowledge of how the police can become potential allies rather than adversaries in harm reduction initiatives and broader public health concerns.

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Cannabis decriminalization policies across the globe

Cited by 31 publications

References 1 publication

Cannabis Use in an English Community

Cannabis Use in an English Community

Markets, Regulation and Drug Law Reform: Towards a Constitutive Approach

Harm Reduction Policing: From Drug Law Enforcement to Protection

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