Experts, Expertise and Drug Policymaking

Abstract

Over the past two decades, policymakers have been encouraged to develop evidence‐based policies in collaboration with experts. Drug policy is unique since it has an established inbuilt mechanism for soliciting expertise via the Advisory Council for the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD). Increasingly alternative mechanisms have been used. Based upon detailed analysis of two case studies of drug policymaking using alternative methods to solicit expertise, we argue that the framing of the policy problem, the mechanisms used to involve experts and the type of evidence actively sought, have continued to marginalise the involvement of the drug user in policymaking.

Governing Parental Drug Use in the UK: What’s Hidden in “Hidden Harm?”

“…Hidden Harm was produced by the ACMD, an expert body whose role is to “carry out in-depth inquiries into aspects of drug use that are causing particular concern […] with the aim of producing considered reports that will be helpful to policy makers, service providers and others” (ACMD, 2003, p. 7). Created by the UK Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, the ACMD comprises individuals appointed by the Secretary of State for their expertise in the drugs field (Monaghan et al, 2018). Members of the ACMD form a small number of sub-committees that focus on contemporary issues and publish their findings.…”

Women as vulnerable subjects: A gendered reading of the English and Irish drug strategies

“…Inclusion of the voices of women who use drugs and those who support them could play a key role in the policy-making process. Their voices are often marginalised in drug policy-making (see Monaghan et al, 2018). Incorporating their experiences could help to ensure that drug policies adequately address the lived realties of women who use drugs rather than assuming they are the same as men's or resorting to stereotypes of gender difference which fail to recognise the diversity of women's experiences.…”

The Politics of Being an "Expert": A Critical Realist Auto-Ethnography of Drug Policy Advisory Panels in the UK

“…In these experiences in the field, I confirmed in practice what many analyses of evidence and policymaking have suggested in print. Information is more likely to become evidence by being accepted into the making of advice and policy if its content and purveyors fit with pre-existing bureaucratic and cognitive structures and interests (Ailsa et al, 2011;Cairney, 2016;Décieux, 2020;Kelly, 2018;Lancaster, Seear, Treloar, & Ritter, 2017;MacGregor, 2017;Masood et al, 2020;Monaghan, 2011;Monaghan et al, 2018;Nutley, Boaz, Davies, & Fraser, 2019;Oliver & de Vocht, 2015;Ritter & Bammer, 2010;Roberts, Petticrew, Liabo, & Macintyre, 2012;Smith & Joyce, 2012;Stevens, 2007Stevens, , 2011c. This is not some random, natural or wholly unconscious process.…”

“…chemists, pharmacists, pharmacologists, social scientists, as well as specialists in law, enforcement, education and treatment). It does not specify that there should be any 'experts-by-experience'(Monaghan et al, 2018), who have themselves experienced harms or pleasures from drugs. When asked, these people tend to have diverse views on drug policy, usually different from government policy, with detailed knowledge of potential advantages and…”