Professor in Criminal Justice at the University of Kent. President of the International Society for the Study of Drug Policy. Member of the UK Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs.
Drugs, Crime and Public Health provides an accessible but critical discussion of recent policy on... more Drugs, Crime and Public Health provides an accessible but critical discussion of recent policy on illicit drugs. Using a comparative approach - centred on the UK, but with insights and complementary data gathered from the USA and other countries - it discusses theoretical perspectives and provides new empirical evidence which challenges prevalent ways of thinking about illicit drugs. It argues that problematic drug use can only be understood in the social context in which it takes place, a context which it shares with other problems of crime and public health. The book demonstrates the social and spatial overlap of these problems, examining the focus of contemporary drug policy on crime reduction. This focus, Alex Stevens contends, has made it less, rather than more, likely that long-term solutions will be produced for drugs, crime and health inequalities. And he concludes, through examining competing visions for the future of drug policy, with an argument for social solutions to these social problems.
Crossing Frontiers encourages readers to think about different international approaches to the tr... more Crossing Frontiers encourages readers to think about different international approaches to the treatment of drug users to inform their own understanding (and application) of practice in the UK. The text encourages providing a range of services, including newer approaches, which respond to the needs of users as unique individuals, empowering and supporting them to 'break the barriers' created by their drug use thus improving their lives.
The chapters include: - Introduction: crossing frontiers in drug treatment - Multisystemic therapy with substance using adolescents: a synthesis of the research - Effective services for alcohol and drug abusing youth: perspectives from Sweden - Heroin-assisted treatment in Europe: a safe and effective approach - Drug consumption rooms: between evidence and opinion - Establishing North America's first safer injection facility: lessons from the Vancouver experience - Quasi-compulsory treatment in the Netherlands: promising theory, problems in practice - Quasi-compulsory treatment in Europe: an evidence-based response to drug-related crime? - Involved, represented, or ignored: the place of user involvement in British drug treatment.
This drug policy guide was compiled in 2009 through research and consultation with our network of... more This drug policy guide was compiled in 2009 through research and consultation with our network of experts. It aims to provide our regional and national partners with a resource that they can use to conduct reviews of the national drug policies and programmes in their areas, and engage with policy-makers to work towards policy and programme improvements. The guide will be updated annually to reflect changes in global evidence and experience.
Co-authored with Caitlin Hughes. This is a pre-proof, pre-translation version of an article publi... more Co-authored with Caitlin Hughes. This is a pre-proof, pre-translation version of an article published in French, in the journal Mouvements (2016, issue 86, pages 22-33), under the title 'Dépénalisation et santé publique : politiques des drogues et toxicomanies au Portugal'
A critique of the 1995 proposal to implement mandatory drug testing in British prisons, focusing ... more A critique of the 1995 proposal to implement mandatory drug testing in British prisons, focusing on the probable negative consequences (including incentivising prisoners to switch from cannabis to heroin). Published in 1996 in Criminal Justice Matters
This paper uses data from the Global Drug Survey totest the hypothesis that there is social bias ... more This paper uses data from the Global Drug Survey totest the hypothesis that there is social bias in the policing of drug users, in the form of stop and search for drugs. The Global Drug Survey is a self-report, internet survey. In 2012, it included a non-random sample of illicit drug users in the UK (n=5,919) and Australia (n=5,707). We discuss previous research on social bias in policing. We argue that an intersectional approach is necessary in order to analyse patterns of 2 stop and search for drugs across drug users who have various social statuses. In order to analyse the influence of various patterns of drug use, we create an inductive typology of a wide range of drug use types and temporalities, using latent class analysis. We use these latent classes, frequency of past month drug use and indicators of drug dependency alongside sociodemographic variables in binary logistic regressionanalyses of the odds of reporting being stopped and searched for drugs in the past year. Weuse these models to test both consensus and conflict perspectives on the policing of drug users. We find support for both perspectives in both countries. Patterns of drug use do significantly predict the odds of sampled drug users reporting police stop and search, as expected by the consensus perspective. But drug users who were younger, male and of less advantaged social status (as measured by education in the UK sample, and by minority ethnicity, income and unemployment in the Australian sample) also had significantly higher odds of reporting stop andsearch. This supports the conflict perspective on policing and our hypothesis that there is evidence of social bias in the policing of drug users in the Global Drug Survey sample.
One of the barriers to drug policy analysis and reform is uncertainty as to the effects of possib... more One of the barriers to drug policy analysis and reform is uncertainty as to the effects of possible policy changes (Shanahan & Ritter, 2012). This paper will use datafrom the Global Drug Survey to examine potential effects of policy changes in both the UK and Australian drug markets, based on responses on intended behaviour changes from a sample of over 6,500 self-reported drug users (aged over 16) in each country.
The Global Drug Survey is an independent online survey that accesses large samples by collaborating with global media partners such as The Guardian, Mixmag and Gay Times in the UK and Fairfax Media in Australia. It asks respondents to report their drug use and includes questions on how people would change their behaviours in response to three potential policy scenarios which are based on: decriminalisation; legalisation of possession; or legalisation with sale by government monopoly.
The paper presents information on the demographics of GDS respondents. It uses latent class analysis to group these respondents according to classes of drug use type that underlie the data. It then analyses the extent to which GDS respondents reported an intention to increase use in response to the different policy scenarios. It analyses differences in these intentions to increase drug use across the policy scenarios and across the classes of drug user. Finally, it uses multinomial regression analysis to test the predictors of observed differences in intentions to increase drug use.
These analyses suggest that a minority of GDS respondents would increase their illicit drug use (and reduce their alcohol use) under more lenient policy scenarios. Intentions to increase drug use tended to increase under progressively more lenient policy scenarios. People whose pattern of substance use is ‘alcohol only’ (i.e. the largest group in the general population of both UK and Australia) were less likely to report an intention to increase their drug use. GDS respondents in both countries who were male, gay or bisexual, or young were more likely to report an intention to increase drug use.
Textbook of Addiction Treatment: International Perspectives, 2015
This section focuses on the English experience of developing integrated drug treatment services. ... more This section focuses on the English experience of developing integrated drug treatment services. It discusses the principles that underlie an integrated approach to the treatment of drug dependence, presents possible methods for integration and argues that there is no inherent conflict between providing services that both keep people alive through harm reduction and also help them to overcome dependence. Treatment services can maximise the benefits that they offer by providing a coordinated continuum of care that ranges from low threshold, harm reduction services to higher threshold services that give them the help they may need to make lasting changes to their patterns of dependence and to achieve abstinence. Evidence-based principles that may help people move along this continuum are presented.
Page 1. Review of Knowledge on Juvenile Violence: Trends, Policies and Responses in Europe Marian... more Page 1. Review of Knowledge on Juvenile Violence: Trends, Policies and Responses in Europe Marian FitzGerald, Alex Stevens and Chris Hale November 2004 Contract number JAI/B/1/2003/01 Final report Page 2.
Abstract This paper seeks to prompt discussion of the rational basis for drug policy debates. It ... more Abstract This paper seeks to prompt discussion of the rational basis for drug policy debates. It uses Gewirth's (1978) rationalist argument for a hierarchy of rights in order to develop a prototype rights-based framework for policy comparison.
Drugs, Crime and Public Health provides an accessible but critical discussion of recent policy on... more Drugs, Crime and Public Health provides an accessible but critical discussion of recent policy on illicit drugs. Using a comparative approach - centred on the UK, but with insights and complementary data gathered from the USA and other countries - it discusses theoretical perspectives and provides new empirical evidence which challenges prevalent ways of thinking about illicit drugs. It argues that problematic drug use can only be understood in the social context in which it takes place, a context which it shares with other problems of crime and public health. The book demonstrates the social and spatial overlap of these problems, examining the focus of contemporary drug policy on crime reduction. This focus, Alex Stevens contends, has made it less, rather than more, likely that long-term solutions will be produced for drugs, crime and health inequalities. And he concludes, through examining competing visions for the future of drug policy, with an argument for social solutions to these social problems.
Crossing Frontiers encourages readers to think about different international approaches to the tr... more Crossing Frontiers encourages readers to think about different international approaches to the treatment of drug users to inform their own understanding (and application) of practice in the UK. The text encourages providing a range of services, including newer approaches, which respond to the needs of users as unique individuals, empowering and supporting them to 'break the barriers' created by their drug use thus improving their lives.
The chapters include: - Introduction: crossing frontiers in drug treatment - Multisystemic therapy with substance using adolescents: a synthesis of the research - Effective services for alcohol and drug abusing youth: perspectives from Sweden - Heroin-assisted treatment in Europe: a safe and effective approach - Drug consumption rooms: between evidence and opinion - Establishing North America's first safer injection facility: lessons from the Vancouver experience - Quasi-compulsory treatment in the Netherlands: promising theory, problems in practice - Quasi-compulsory treatment in Europe: an evidence-based response to drug-related crime? - Involved, represented, or ignored: the place of user involvement in British drug treatment.
This drug policy guide was compiled in 2009 through research and consultation with our network of... more This drug policy guide was compiled in 2009 through research and consultation with our network of experts. It aims to provide our regional and national partners with a resource that they can use to conduct reviews of the national drug policies and programmes in their areas, and engage with policy-makers to work towards policy and programme improvements. The guide will be updated annually to reflect changes in global evidence and experience.
Co-authored with Caitlin Hughes. This is a pre-proof, pre-translation version of an article publi... more Co-authored with Caitlin Hughes. This is a pre-proof, pre-translation version of an article published in French, in the journal Mouvements (2016, issue 86, pages 22-33), under the title 'Dépénalisation et santé publique : politiques des drogues et toxicomanies au Portugal'
A critique of the 1995 proposal to implement mandatory drug testing in British prisons, focusing ... more A critique of the 1995 proposal to implement mandatory drug testing in British prisons, focusing on the probable negative consequences (including incentivising prisoners to switch from cannabis to heroin). Published in 1996 in Criminal Justice Matters
This paper uses data from the Global Drug Survey totest the hypothesis that there is social bias ... more This paper uses data from the Global Drug Survey totest the hypothesis that there is social bias in the policing of drug users, in the form of stop and search for drugs. The Global Drug Survey is a self-report, internet survey. In 2012, it included a non-random sample of illicit drug users in the UK (n=5,919) and Australia (n=5,707). We discuss previous research on social bias in policing. We argue that an intersectional approach is necessary in order to analyse patterns of 2 stop and search for drugs across drug users who have various social statuses. In order to analyse the influence of various patterns of drug use, we create an inductive typology of a wide range of drug use types and temporalities, using latent class analysis. We use these latent classes, frequency of past month drug use and indicators of drug dependency alongside sociodemographic variables in binary logistic regressionanalyses of the odds of reporting being stopped and searched for drugs in the past year. Weuse these models to test both consensus and conflict perspectives on the policing of drug users. We find support for both perspectives in both countries. Patterns of drug use do significantly predict the odds of sampled drug users reporting police stop and search, as expected by the consensus perspective. But drug users who were younger, male and of less advantaged social status (as measured by education in the UK sample, and by minority ethnicity, income and unemployment in the Australian sample) also had significantly higher odds of reporting stop andsearch. This supports the conflict perspective on policing and our hypothesis that there is evidence of social bias in the policing of drug users in the Global Drug Survey sample.
One of the barriers to drug policy analysis and reform is uncertainty as to the effects of possib... more One of the barriers to drug policy analysis and reform is uncertainty as to the effects of possible policy changes (Shanahan & Ritter, 2012). This paper will use datafrom the Global Drug Survey to examine potential effects of policy changes in both the UK and Australian drug markets, based on responses on intended behaviour changes from a sample of over 6,500 self-reported drug users (aged over 16) in each country.
The Global Drug Survey is an independent online survey that accesses large samples by collaborating with global media partners such as The Guardian, Mixmag and Gay Times in the UK and Fairfax Media in Australia. It asks respondents to report their drug use and includes questions on how people would change their behaviours in response to three potential policy scenarios which are based on: decriminalisation; legalisation of possession; or legalisation with sale by government monopoly.
The paper presents information on the demographics of GDS respondents. It uses latent class analysis to group these respondents according to classes of drug use type that underlie the data. It then analyses the extent to which GDS respondents reported an intention to increase use in response to the different policy scenarios. It analyses differences in these intentions to increase drug use across the policy scenarios and across the classes of drug user. Finally, it uses multinomial regression analysis to test the predictors of observed differences in intentions to increase drug use.
These analyses suggest that a minority of GDS respondents would increase their illicit drug use (and reduce their alcohol use) under more lenient policy scenarios. Intentions to increase drug use tended to increase under progressively more lenient policy scenarios. People whose pattern of substance use is ‘alcohol only’ (i.e. the largest group in the general population of both UK and Australia) were less likely to report an intention to increase their drug use. GDS respondents in both countries who were male, gay or bisexual, or young were more likely to report an intention to increase drug use.
Textbook of Addiction Treatment: International Perspectives, 2015
This section focuses on the English experience of developing integrated drug treatment services. ... more This section focuses on the English experience of developing integrated drug treatment services. It discusses the principles that underlie an integrated approach to the treatment of drug dependence, presents possible methods for integration and argues that there is no inherent conflict between providing services that both keep people alive through harm reduction and also help them to overcome dependence. Treatment services can maximise the benefits that they offer by providing a coordinated continuum of care that ranges from low threshold, harm reduction services to higher threshold services that give them the help they may need to make lasting changes to their patterns of dependence and to achieve abstinence. Evidence-based principles that may help people move along this continuum are presented.
Page 1. Review of Knowledge on Juvenile Violence: Trends, Policies and Responses in Europe Marian... more Page 1. Review of Knowledge on Juvenile Violence: Trends, Policies and Responses in Europe Marian FitzGerald, Alex Stevens and Chris Hale November 2004 Contract number JAI/B/1/2003/01 Final report Page 2.
Abstract This paper seeks to prompt discussion of the rational basis for drug policy debates. It ... more Abstract This paper seeks to prompt discussion of the rational basis for drug policy debates. It uses Gewirth's (1978) rationalist argument for a hierarchy of rights in order to develop a prototype rights-based framework for policy comparison.
SUMMARY Most governments make strong statements about the need to maintain, and often increase, p... more SUMMARY Most governments make strong statements about the need to maintain, and often increase, police activity and penal sanctions for drug users. This is based on the idea that strong enforcement, and widespread incarceration, will deter potential users and dealers from becoming involved in the illegal drug market.
This article explores the linkage of criminal harm to drug use and challenges prevalent overestim... more This article explores the linkage of criminal harm to drug use and challenges prevalent overestimations of the proportion of crime that can be causally attributed to drug use. These estimates often use data from surveyed arrestees. This article uses data from the British Offending, Crime and Justice Survey to test the hypothesis that drug users are over-represented in arrestee samples, compared to other offenders.
Slides from a talk at the Nordic Alcohol and Drug Researchers Assembly, Helsinki, September 2016.... more Slides from a talk at the Nordic Alcohol and Drug Researchers Assembly, Helsinki, September 2016. The talk uses ideas on the social construction of policy target groups and moral foundations theory to discuss: why harm reduction has been so controversial (despite evidence of its effectiveness); the debate between harm reduction and abstinent recovery; and the possibility for a shared moral basis and practical integration of these two approaches. Hat tips to Kari Lancaster and Giulia Zampini for introducing me to some of these ideas.
Text of a talk given to the Canberra satellite of the 2016 conference of the International Societ... more Text of a talk given to the Canberra satellite of the 2016 conference of the International Society for the Study of Drug Policy, organised by ATODA at the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, Australia on 20th May 2016.
These are the slides for a talk at the Australian National drug and Alcohol Research Centre on 4t... more These are the slides for a talk at the Australian National drug and Alcohol Research Centre on 4th February 2016. The talk uses England as a case study in the explanation of the content of drug policy. It uses the stories of the absorption of recovery, the absurd Psychoactive Substances Act and the 'silent silencing' of heroin related deaths to illustrate how English drug policy is produced from the ongoing competition and collaboration between groups who support public health and social control as the appropriate ways of conceptualising and responding to the 'drug problem'.
These are the slides for a talk on QCA at the UNSW Law, Criminal Justice and Criminology Cluster ... more These are the slides for a talk on QCA at the UNSW Law, Criminal Justice and Criminology Cluster & Criminal Justice Research Network in Sydney on 3rd February 2016. It introduces the basis and process of QCA and applies fuzzy set QCA to the analysis of the potentially configurational, social causes of national rates of adolescent cannabis use.
Talk given at the HIT Hot Topics conference, Liverpool, November 2015.
I argue that the rise in ... more Talk given at the HIT Hot Topics conference, Liverpool, November 2015.
I argue that the rise in NPS deaths is being misused to support ineffective policies, while effective measures to reduce the larger (and faster rising) number of deaths related to heroin are not being taken. I suggest that this is because of who these people are: aging 'new heroin users' - members of the post-industrial working class whose living conditions and deaths are considered less worthy of attention by politicians and the press.
This talk presents a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) of the potential social c... more This talk presents a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) of the potential social causes of low and high levels of corruption at the national level, using the 2014 Corruption Perception Index. It was presented at the conference of the European Society of Criminology in Porto, September 2015.
This graph is taken from the 2011 Annual Report of the European Monitoring Centre on Drugs and Dr... more This graph is taken from the 2011 Annual Report of the European Monitoring Centre on Drugs and Drug Addiction. It was created by Brendan Hughes and colleagues.
These are the slides for a talk I gave at the 2012 conference of the Society for the Study of Add... more These are the slides for a talk I gave at the 2012 conference of the Society for the Study of Addiction. With thanks to David Courtwright and James Mills for the historical section, and to Fiona Measham for contemporary insights.
In the talk I showed that the Portuguese policy of decriminalisation combined with treatment and ... more In the talk I showed that the Portuguese policy of decriminalisation combined with treatment and welfare expansion has been broadly successful in reducing drug related deaths and HIV infections, while not leading to the feared explosion of drug use. On the other hand, Sweden has often been cited as an example of restrictive drug policies leading to low rates of drug use. But the evidence shows that most of the fall in drug use prevalence in Sweden took place before the introduction of restrictive policies. And there are concerning increases in drug related deaths and HIV infections in Swedish cities in recent years. I finished by arguing that we need to look to broader policy analysis, including welfare and imprisonment policies, to find policy levers that can affect drug related harms.
This talk discusses two potential futures for British drug policy: a US-influenced emphasis on ab... more This talk discusses two potential futures for British drug policy: a US-influenced emphasis on abstinence and welfare restriction, or progressive decriminalisation, as proposed in my book on 'Drugs, Crime and Public Health'.
This talk was given to an interesting audience of judges, magistrates, mayors, police officers, p... more This talk was given to an interesting audience of judges, magistrates, mayors, police officers, prison officers, drug treatment workers and volunteers, at the invitation of HACRO. It critically examines four elements of common knowledge about drugs and offending: that drug use causes addiction; that drugs cause half of all crime; that drug treatment ordered through the criminal justice system can significantly reduce overall crime rates; and that decriminalisation would lead to increases in drug-related harm. Hat tip to Jock Young for the quote from Quetelet. The oxymoronic title of the talk was not chosen by me.
Different countries have tried different mixtures of penal, public health and other measures to l... more Different countries have tried different mixtures of penal, public health and other measures to limit the harms associated with the use of illicit drugs. This paper draws some lessons from these various attempts, with a specific focus on drug policy and its outcomes in the USA, Sweden, the Netherlands, Portugal and England & Wales. It compares the available figures on the effects of drug policies against the aims of reducing drug use and the harms associated with it. The policies examined include mass incarceration in the USA, decriminalisation and treatment expansion in Portugal, the Swedish aspiration for a drug-free society and the bifurcatory developments in 21st century British drug law enforcement. The talk argues that - through all the specificities of national culture, politics and policy - two general propositions stand out. The first is that drug policy appears not to be the most important determinant of levels of drug use or problems, although it can affect the harms related to drug use. The second is that levels of inequality and social support are probably more important in alleviating drug problems than drug policy is. Both propositions will be tested against the available data. It is shown that there is a significant and negative correlation between national levels of social support (decommodification) and indicators of the level of problematic drug use.
Based on participant observation in a team of British policy making civil servants carried out in... more Based on participant observation in a team of British policy making civil servants carried out in 2009, this paper examines the use that is made of evidence in making policy. It shows that these civil servants displayed a high level of commitment to the use of evidence. However, their use of evidence was hampered by the huge volume of various kinds of evidence and by the unsuitability of much academic research in answering policy questions. Faced with this deluge of inconclusive information, they used evidence to create persuasive policy stories. These stories were useful both in making acceptable policies and in advancing careers. They often involved the excision of methodological uncertainty and the use of ‘killer charts’ to boost the persuasiveness of the narrative. In telling these stories, social inequality was ‘silently silenced’ in favour of promoting policies which were ‘totemically’ tough. The paper concludes that this selective, narrative use of evidence is ideological in that it supports systematically asymmetrical relations of power.
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Books by Alex Stevens
The chapters include:
- Introduction: crossing frontiers in drug treatment
- Multisystemic therapy with substance using adolescents: a synthesis of the research
- Effective services for alcohol and drug abusing youth: perspectives from Sweden
- Heroin-assisted treatment in Europe: a safe and effective approach
- Drug consumption rooms: between evidence and opinion
- Establishing North America's first safer injection facility: lessons from the Vancouver experience
- Quasi-compulsory treatment in the Netherlands: promising theory, problems in practice
- Quasi-compulsory treatment in Europe: an evidence-based response to drug-related crime?
- Involved, represented, or ignored: the place of user involvement in British drug treatment.
Papers by Alex Stevens
in the policing of drug users, in the form of stop and search for drugs. The Global Drug Survey
is a self-report, internet survey. In 2012, it included a non-random sample of illicit drug users in
the UK (n=5,919) and Australia (n=5,707). We discuss previous research on social bias in
policing. We argue that an intersectional approach is necessary in order to analyse patterns of
2
stop and search for drugs across drug users who have various social statuses. In order to analyse
the influence of various patterns of drug use, we create an inductive typology of a wide range of
drug use types and temporalities, using latent class analysis. We use these latent classes,
frequency of past month drug use and indicators of drug dependency alongside sociodemographic variables in binary logistic regressionanalyses of the odds of reporting being
stopped and searched for drugs in the past year. Weuse these models to test both consensus and
conflict perspectives on the policing of drug users. We find support for both perspectives in
both countries. Patterns of drug use do significantly predict the odds of sampled drug users
reporting police stop and search, as expected by the consensus perspective. But drug users who
were younger, male and of less advantaged social status (as measured by education in the UK
sample, and by minority ethnicity, income and unemployment in the Australian sample) also
had significantly higher odds of reporting stop andsearch. This supports the conflict perspective
on policing and our hypothesis that there is evidence of social bias in the policing of drug users
in the Global Drug Survey sample.
The Global Drug Survey is an independent online survey that accesses large samples by collaborating with global media partners such as The Guardian, Mixmag and Gay Times in the UK and Fairfax Media in Australia. It asks respondents to report their drug use and includes questions on how people would change their behaviours in response to three potential policy scenarios which are based on: decriminalisation; legalisation of possession; or legalisation with sale by government monopoly.
The paper presents information on the demographics of GDS respondents. It uses latent class analysis to group these respondents according to classes of drug use type that underlie the data. It then analyses the extent to which GDS respondents reported an intention to increase use in response to the different policy scenarios. It analyses differences in these intentions to increase drug use across the policy scenarios and across the classes of drug user. Finally, it uses multinomial regression analysis to test the predictors of observed differences in intentions to increase drug use.
These analyses suggest that a minority of GDS respondents would increase their illicit drug use (and reduce their alcohol use) under more lenient policy scenarios. Intentions to increase drug use tended to increase under progressively more lenient policy scenarios. People whose pattern of substance use is ‘alcohol only’ (i.e. the largest group in the general population of both UK and Australia) were less likely to report an intention to increase their drug use. GDS respondents in both countries who were male, gay or bisexual, or young were more likely to report an intention to increase drug use.
The chapters include:
- Introduction: crossing frontiers in drug treatment
- Multisystemic therapy with substance using adolescents: a synthesis of the research
- Effective services for alcohol and drug abusing youth: perspectives from Sweden
- Heroin-assisted treatment in Europe: a safe and effective approach
- Drug consumption rooms: between evidence and opinion
- Establishing North America's first safer injection facility: lessons from the Vancouver experience
- Quasi-compulsory treatment in the Netherlands: promising theory, problems in practice
- Quasi-compulsory treatment in Europe: an evidence-based response to drug-related crime?
- Involved, represented, or ignored: the place of user involvement in British drug treatment.
in the policing of drug users, in the form of stop and search for drugs. The Global Drug Survey
is a self-report, internet survey. In 2012, it included a non-random sample of illicit drug users in
the UK (n=5,919) and Australia (n=5,707). We discuss previous research on social bias in
policing. We argue that an intersectional approach is necessary in order to analyse patterns of
2
stop and search for drugs across drug users who have various social statuses. In order to analyse
the influence of various patterns of drug use, we create an inductive typology of a wide range of
drug use types and temporalities, using latent class analysis. We use these latent classes,
frequency of past month drug use and indicators of drug dependency alongside sociodemographic variables in binary logistic regressionanalyses of the odds of reporting being
stopped and searched for drugs in the past year. Weuse these models to test both consensus and
conflict perspectives on the policing of drug users. We find support for both perspectives in
both countries. Patterns of drug use do significantly predict the odds of sampled drug users
reporting police stop and search, as expected by the consensus perspective. But drug users who
were younger, male and of less advantaged social status (as measured by education in the UK
sample, and by minority ethnicity, income and unemployment in the Australian sample) also
had significantly higher odds of reporting stop andsearch. This supports the conflict perspective
on policing and our hypothesis that there is evidence of social bias in the policing of drug users
in the Global Drug Survey sample.
The Global Drug Survey is an independent online survey that accesses large samples by collaborating with global media partners such as The Guardian, Mixmag and Gay Times in the UK and Fairfax Media in Australia. It asks respondents to report their drug use and includes questions on how people would change their behaviours in response to three potential policy scenarios which are based on: decriminalisation; legalisation of possession; or legalisation with sale by government monopoly.
The paper presents information on the demographics of GDS respondents. It uses latent class analysis to group these respondents according to classes of drug use type that underlie the data. It then analyses the extent to which GDS respondents reported an intention to increase use in response to the different policy scenarios. It analyses differences in these intentions to increase drug use across the policy scenarios and across the classes of drug user. Finally, it uses multinomial regression analysis to test the predictors of observed differences in intentions to increase drug use.
These analyses suggest that a minority of GDS respondents would increase their illicit drug use (and reduce their alcohol use) under more lenient policy scenarios. Intentions to increase drug use tended to increase under progressively more lenient policy scenarios. People whose pattern of substance use is ‘alcohol only’ (i.e. the largest group in the general population of both UK and Australia) were less likely to report an intention to increase their drug use. GDS respondents in both countries who were male, gay or bisexual, or young were more likely to report an intention to increase drug use.
I argue that the rise in NPS deaths is being misused to support ineffective policies, while effective measures to reduce the larger (and faster rising) number of deaths related to heroin are not being taken. I suggest that this is because of who these people are: aging 'new heroin users' - members of the post-industrial working class whose living conditions and deaths are considered less worthy of attention by politicians and the press.
Hat tip to Jock Young for the quote from Quetelet.
The oxymoronic title of the talk was not chosen by me.