Mapping the world drug problem: Science and politics in the United Nations drug control system

Hallam, Christopher; Bewley-Taylor, David

doi:10.1016/j.drugpo.2009.10.007

Cited by 15 publications

(13 citation statements)

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“…The marketing of drugreferenced material has created a contradiction at the centre of macro drug policy. The problem for the UN is that the message that drugs are dangerous may be understood as hollow while corporate companies manipulate drug meanings to sell their commodities (Hallam and Bewley-Taylor, 2010). This is how normalisation has disrupted drug policy.…”

Section: Legitimation Crisis In Drug Prohibitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Youth subcultures, normalisation and drug prohibition: The politics of contemporary crisis and change?

Blackman

2010

Br Polit

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This article provides a new reading of the crossover between youth subculture and drug consumption, and seeks to demonstrate that drug prohibition has entered a legitimation crisis in social and political policy (Habermas, 1975). This article argues that contemporary drug normalisation is at the centre of the apparent failure of drug prohibition to understand and respond to the growth in oppositional messages derived from digital communication and the use of drug representations by mainstream capitalism to sell everyday commodities for profit. At the same time, UK and US newspapers have questioned the validity of the 'war on drugs' owing to political corruption and human rights abuses in Mexico, Afghanistan and Colombia. The article considers that drug normalisation has disrupted drug policy because intoxicants have become incorporated into everyday culture, and in particular youth subculture. Within the recent literature, young people's drug use has been theorised within a generalised framework of postmodernity. This article argues that drug normalisation theory is not a postmodern concept. It is a theory derived from the work of the Chicago School articulated by Alfred Lindesmith, Howard Becker and David Matza, who in turn influenced the UK National Deviance Conference and the subsequent CCCS theory of subculture. This created the theoretical opportunity to interpret substance consumption as a condition of normalisation separate from crime.

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Section: Legitimation Crisis In Drug Prohibitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Youth subcultures, normalisation and drug prohibition: The politics of contemporary crisis and change?

Blackman

2010

Br Polit

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“…This UNODC report illustrates the complexity of the research/policy nexus in the international drug control regime, 78 a realm in which the functioning of the established bureaucracy does not seem favourable to indepth scientific debate, let alone critical thinking. 79 The dual role of S87 UNODC, which acts both as centre for research and dissemination and as outlet for political messages, is partly to blame for this`hopeful constructivism' the purpose of which is to reconfigure reality.…”

Section: Aims Of Comparisonmentioning

confidence: 98%

Fixing Transnational Drug Policy: Drug Prohibition in the Eyes of Comparative Law

Colson

2019

Journal of Law and Society

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Drug prohibition allows us to study over a significant period of time how penal provisions framed at a supranational level flow, settle, and unsettle across different countries. At a time of growing doubt about the benefit of criminalization of drug use, it also provides a case‐study as to how epistemic communities may rely on comparative research to identify best practices and promote them as normative alternatives in the face of a long‐entrenched legal dogma. In order to explore these issues, this article looks at the UN drug control system from the perspective of comparative law. It shows how the concept of legal transplant provides a useful tool to understand the limits of transnational criminal law designed on a global scale to tackle the ‘drug problem', and it clarifies the various types of legal comparison that might contribute to addressing this failed transplant.

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“…34 The impact of most drug strategies are currently assessed by the level of crops eradicated, arrests, seizures and punishments applied to users, growers and dealers. In fact, arresting and punishing drug users does little to reduce levels of drug use, taking out low-level dealers simply creates a market opportunity for others, and even the largest and most successful operations against organized criminals (that take years to plan and implement) have been shown to have, at best, a marginal and shortlived impact on drug prices and availability.…”

Section: Establish Better Metrics Indicators and Goals Tomentioning

confidence: 99%

Re: Ny kurs for rusmidler

Dahl¹,

Siem²

2017

Tidsskriftet

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Mapping the world drug problem: Science and politics in the United Nations drug control system

Cited by 15 publications

References 1 publication

Youth subcultures, normalisation and drug prohibition: The politics of contemporary crisis and change?

Youth subcultures, normalisation and drug prohibition: The politics of contemporary crisis and change?

Fixing Transnational Drug Policy: Drug Prohibition in the Eyes of Comparative Law

Re: Ny kurs for rusmidler

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