Pub Date : 2020-12-10DOI: 10.1177/0091450920977976
B. Fischer, D. Daldegan-Bueno, P. Reuter
Cannabis control policies in a few countries have recently shifted from criminal prohibition-based regimes to legalization of use and supply. While cannabis’ newly emerging status of legality may suggest a coming “end” for criminology-based interest in the drug, these fundamental changes rather open a window to a new set of criminological research issues and questions, mostly focusing on cannabis use and related behaviors, and their relation to crime and justice. Based on a joint, personal record of several decades of criminological research on cannabis, we briefly review the rationale for five fundamental topics and issues of cannabis-related research associated with legalization. These include: 1) the deterrent effect of prohibition; 2) illicit production, markets and supply in a legalization regime; 3) use enforcement; 4) cannabis-impaired driving; 5) cannabis and crime. This constitutes an—albeit subjectively selective—“post-legalization” research agenda for a cannabis-focused criminology. Other possible areas of research focus or interest within fundamentally different paradigms of criminology (e.g., “critical criminology”) are identified and encouraged for development. Overall, the proposed research agenda for a post-legalization cannabis criminology should both contribute discipline-specific knowledge to improved cannabis-related public health and safety as well as allow for important debate and development in this evolving and important research field while entering a new (“post-legalization”) era.
{"title":"Toward a “Post-Legalization” Criminology for Cannabis: A Brief Review and Suggested Agenda for Research Priorities","authors":"B. Fischer, D. Daldegan-Bueno, P. Reuter","doi":"10.1177/0091450920977976","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0091450920977976","url":null,"abstract":"Cannabis control policies in a few countries have recently shifted from criminal prohibition-based regimes to legalization of use and supply. While cannabis’ newly emerging status of legality may suggest a coming “end” for criminology-based interest in the drug, these fundamental changes rather open a window to a new set of criminological research issues and questions, mostly focusing on cannabis use and related behaviors, and their relation to crime and justice. Based on a joint, personal record of several decades of criminological research on cannabis, we briefly review the rationale for five fundamental topics and issues of cannabis-related research associated with legalization. These include: 1) the deterrent effect of prohibition; 2) illicit production, markets and supply in a legalization regime; 3) use enforcement; 4) cannabis-impaired driving; 5) cannabis and crime. This constitutes an—albeit subjectively selective—“post-legalization” research agenda for a cannabis-focused criminology. Other possible areas of research focus or interest within fundamentally different paradigms of criminology (e.g., “critical criminology”) are identified and encouraged for development. Overall, the proposed research agenda for a post-legalization cannabis criminology should both contribute discipline-specific knowledge to improved cannabis-related public health and safety as well as allow for important debate and development in this evolving and important research field while entering a new (“post-legalization”) era.","PeriodicalId":35813,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Drug Problems","volume":"48 1","pages":"58 - 74"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0091450920977976","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44582132","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-12-01DOI: 10.1177/0091450920955247
Benjamin Scher
Focusing on the role of police as primary actors in the arena of citizen safety, this article examines the impact of policing practices on the daily lived experience of people who use drugs in accessing a supervised consumption site in Vancouver, Canada. The site is located in the heart of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES) neighborhood at a community center that I refer to as the Hawthorne Resource Centre. The method of data collection for this study comprised five months of ethnographic fieldwork, including focus groups and one-on-one interviews with community members accessing the site, site staff and management. Drawing on Foucauldian conceptualizations of power, the findings of this research suggest that governmental modes of power, including biopower and disciplinary power, are pervasively operative in various realms of the day to day lives of the Hawthorne Resource Centre clients. Evidence of the scalable nature of these modes of power are seen within the internal functioning of the Supervised Consumption Site, outside in the methods of community policing in the DTES and in weekly police practices in Oppenheimer Park. As such, this study represents a multiscalar assessment of how these Foucauldian power structures work at multiple levels and locations in the DTES. Driven by the narratives of the Hawthorne Resource Centre clients, the findings of this research illustrate not only the importance of understanding power relations within specific policy interventions, but further, highlight how specific tactics mobilized within “harm reduction policing” would be relevant and applicable to the context of the DTES.
{"title":"Biopower, Disciplinary Power and Surveillance: An Ethnographic Analysis of the Lived Experience of People Who Use Drugs in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside","authors":"Benjamin Scher","doi":"10.1177/0091450920955247","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0091450920955247","url":null,"abstract":"Focusing on the role of police as primary actors in the arena of citizen safety, this article examines the impact of policing practices on the daily lived experience of people who use drugs in accessing a supervised consumption site in Vancouver, Canada. The site is located in the heart of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES) neighborhood at a community center that I refer to as the Hawthorne Resource Centre. The method of data collection for this study comprised five months of ethnographic fieldwork, including focus groups and one-on-one interviews with community members accessing the site, site staff and management. Drawing on Foucauldian conceptualizations of power, the findings of this research suggest that governmental modes of power, including biopower and disciplinary power, are pervasively operative in various realms of the day to day lives of the Hawthorne Resource Centre clients. Evidence of the scalable nature of these modes of power are seen within the internal functioning of the Supervised Consumption Site, outside in the methods of community policing in the DTES and in weekly police practices in Oppenheimer Park. As such, this study represents a multiscalar assessment of how these Foucauldian power structures work at multiple levels and locations in the DTES. Driven by the narratives of the Hawthorne Resource Centre clients, the findings of this research illustrate not only the importance of understanding power relations within specific policy interventions, but further, highlight how specific tactics mobilized within “harm reduction policing” would be relevant and applicable to the context of the DTES.","PeriodicalId":35813,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Drug Problems","volume":"47 1","pages":"286 - 301"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0091450920955247","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49020666","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-10-30DOI: 10.1177/0091450920969200
Tracy R. Nichols, A. Welborn, Meredith R Gringle, Amy Lee
People who are diagnosed with a substance use disorder can experience stigmatizing interactions with health and social service providers, which may decrease both quality and continuity of care. For women with a substance-exposed pregnancy (SEP), this stigma can increase exponentially. Stigmatizing interactions can be difficult to identify due to social sanctions against expressing stigmatizing attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors and because stigma often resides in accepted cultural norms. Examining discourses around care provision can serve to identify instances of social stigma as well as illuminate the cultural norms in which they are embedded. Using data from a seven-year grounded theory study on perinatal substance use service provision, this paper reports on the perceptions and experiences of service providers working with mothers who have an SEP and illustrates complexities behind stigmatizing patient-provider interactions. Data collected included observations at meetings, workshops, and conferences addressing best practices across the continuum of care for perinatal substance use as well as interviews and focus groups with providers. The construct of “good mothering,” or hegemonic motherhood, was identified as an important cultural norm that supported social stigma and was embedded in providers’ interactions with mothers with an SEP. Discursive elements found in providers’ descriptions of perinatal substance use service work are presented and highlight the role of hegemonic motherhood as a stigmatizing agent.
{"title":"Social Stigma and Perinatal Substance Use Services: Recognizing the Power of the Good Mother Ideal","authors":"Tracy R. Nichols, A. Welborn, Meredith R Gringle, Amy Lee","doi":"10.1177/0091450920969200","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0091450920969200","url":null,"abstract":"People who are diagnosed with a substance use disorder can experience stigmatizing interactions with health and social service providers, which may decrease both quality and continuity of care. For women with a substance-exposed pregnancy (SEP), this stigma can increase exponentially. Stigmatizing interactions can be difficult to identify due to social sanctions against expressing stigmatizing attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors and because stigma often resides in accepted cultural norms. Examining discourses around care provision can serve to identify instances of social stigma as well as illuminate the cultural norms in which they are embedded. Using data from a seven-year grounded theory study on perinatal substance use service provision, this paper reports on the perceptions and experiences of service providers working with mothers who have an SEP and illustrates complexities behind stigmatizing patient-provider interactions. Data collected included observations at meetings, workshops, and conferences addressing best practices across the continuum of care for perinatal substance use as well as interviews and focus groups with providers. The construct of “good mothering,” or hegemonic motherhood, was identified as an important cultural norm that supported social stigma and was embedded in providers’ interactions with mothers with an SEP. Discursive elements found in providers’ descriptions of perinatal substance use service work are presented and highlight the role of hegemonic motherhood as a stigmatizing agent.","PeriodicalId":35813,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Drug Problems","volume":"48 1","pages":"19 - 37"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0091450920969200","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44788229","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-09-03DOI: 10.1177/0091450920956395
N. Campbell
Backlit by the flickering nightly display of #NYTough, a beacon projected onto the massive Empire State Government Plaza in Albany, New York, I read these two ethnographic encounters during the COVID-19 lockdown, a surreal experience for a scholar of drug policy, treatment, and science. Meant to showcase New Yorkers’ resilience, the slogan beamed its polysemic “tough love” signal across one of former New York State Governor Nelson Rockefeller’s monumental architectural follies. Far more consequential a folly has been the 1973 Rockefeller Laws, “get tough” drug laws mimicked throughout the United States’ “little Rockefeller laws” (Maggio, 2006). The Rockefeller Laws fueled mass incarceration with lengthy mandatory minimum sentences, and went unreformed until 2009 (Office of the New York State Governor, 2009). These laws provoked a particularly masculinist style of #NYTough law enforcement over more than 40 years’ existence, ensnaring a wide swath of New Yorkers—particularly poor persons of color—within the purview of the criminal justice system (Kohler-Hausman 2010, 2017). Reform set in motion an “evolving process in which a shift from punishment to treatment is occurring alongside a growing demand for treatment providers to meet the requirements of the criminal justice system” (Riggs et al., 2014). While the distinctly nontherapeutic criminalization process—which the Rockefeller Laws exemplify—will remain with the disunited states for a long time to come, experiments in therapeutic jurisprudence have yielded a system of “drug courts,” in which judges may exercise a degree of autonomy in sanctioning, while fostering relationships of emotional dependency with “participants” into whose lives they intrude deeply (Kaye, 2020, p. 66). This essay considers two recent U.S.-based books that reveal the inner workings of drug courts and prison-based treatment programs, situating each within the larger stakes of feminist drug ethnography and historiography. The scope of this review essay widened beyond the contribution each book makes to the ethnographic record to encompass the broader question of how states—those “coldest of all cold monsters” (Nietzsche, 1892/1930, p. 56)—respond to “unloved” subjects who use drugs. My purpose is to
{"title":"Tough Times and the Ethnography of State Intimacies","authors":"N. Campbell","doi":"10.1177/0091450920956395","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0091450920956395","url":null,"abstract":"Backlit by the flickering nightly display of #NYTough, a beacon projected onto the massive Empire State Government Plaza in Albany, New York, I read these two ethnographic encounters during the COVID-19 lockdown, a surreal experience for a scholar of drug policy, treatment, and science. Meant to showcase New Yorkers’ resilience, the slogan beamed its polysemic “tough love” signal across one of former New York State Governor Nelson Rockefeller’s monumental architectural follies. Far more consequential a folly has been the 1973 Rockefeller Laws, “get tough” drug laws mimicked throughout the United States’ “little Rockefeller laws” (Maggio, 2006). The Rockefeller Laws fueled mass incarceration with lengthy mandatory minimum sentences, and went unreformed until 2009 (Office of the New York State Governor, 2009). These laws provoked a particularly masculinist style of #NYTough law enforcement over more than 40 years’ existence, ensnaring a wide swath of New Yorkers—particularly poor persons of color—within the purview of the criminal justice system (Kohler-Hausman 2010, 2017). Reform set in motion an “evolving process in which a shift from punishment to treatment is occurring alongside a growing demand for treatment providers to meet the requirements of the criminal justice system” (Riggs et al., 2014). While the distinctly nontherapeutic criminalization process—which the Rockefeller Laws exemplify—will remain with the disunited states for a long time to come, experiments in therapeutic jurisprudence have yielded a system of “drug courts,” in which judges may exercise a degree of autonomy in sanctioning, while fostering relationships of emotional dependency with “participants” into whose lives they intrude deeply (Kaye, 2020, p. 66). This essay considers two recent U.S.-based books that reveal the inner workings of drug courts and prison-based treatment programs, situating each within the larger stakes of feminist drug ethnography and historiography. The scope of this review essay widened beyond the contribution each book makes to the ethnographic record to encompass the broader question of how states—those “coldest of all cold monsters” (Nietzsche, 1892/1930, p. 56)—respond to “unloved” subjects who use drugs. My purpose is to","PeriodicalId":35813,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Drug Problems","volume":"47 1","pages":"255 - 267"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0091450920956395","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49441934","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-09-01DOI: 10.1177/0091450920943446
D. Moore
{"title":"Rethinking “Change”: Introduction to a Special Focus","authors":"D. Moore","doi":"10.1177/0091450920943446","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0091450920943446","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":35813,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Drug Problems","volume":"47 1","pages":"188 - 190"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0091450920943446","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46859381","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-09-01DOI: 10.1177/0091450920944002
{"title":"Change in Editorship of Contemporary Drug Problems","authors":"","doi":"10.1177/0091450920944002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0091450920944002","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":35813,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Drug Problems","volume":"47 1","pages":"167 - 169"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0091450920944002","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48214941","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-08-31DOI: 10.1177/0091450920953635
A. Ross, G. Potter, M. Barratt, J. Aldridge
Some personal experience of illicit drug use undoubtedly exists within the population of academic drug researchers. But it is rarely acknowledged, and even more rarely reflected upon, in their published work. This is understandable: criminal, professional and social sanctions may follow public admission of illicit activities. However, to not “come out” seems contrary to some core academic principles, such as transparency in data collection and reflexivity in the research process. Coming out may present researchers with an opportunity for improving knowledge of, and policies toward, drug use. In this article, we identify reasons for and against the public disclosure of drug use and the impact of such disclosure across a range of spheres, including research, teaching, policy influence and private lives. Reasons against coming out include the risks of undermining professional reputations and hence the ability to contribute to academic and policy debates, the threat of criminal justice sanctions, and impacts on loved ones. However, coming out can have academic benefit (i.e., improving our understanding of drugs, of people who use drugs, and of drug research) and contribute to activist goals (e.g., de-stigmatization of drug use and demarginalization of people who use drugs). Both the risks and benefits of public drug use disclosure have implications for how research and researchers may influence drug policy. Two key themes, stigma and reflexivity, underpin the discussion. We do not conclude with clear recommendations for drug-using drug researchers; to come out or to not come out is a personal decision. However, we argue that there is clear merit to further open discussion on the role of disclosure and reflection on personal drug use experience among those working in drug research and drug policy—where such reflection is relevant and where such researchers feel able to do so.
{"title":"“Coming Out”: Stigma, Reflexivity and the Drug Researcher’s Drug Use","authors":"A. Ross, G. Potter, M. Barratt, J. Aldridge","doi":"10.1177/0091450920953635","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0091450920953635","url":null,"abstract":"Some personal experience of illicit drug use undoubtedly exists within the population of academic drug researchers. But it is rarely acknowledged, and even more rarely reflected upon, in their published work. This is understandable: criminal, professional and social sanctions may follow public admission of illicit activities. However, to not “come out” seems contrary to some core academic principles, such as transparency in data collection and reflexivity in the research process. Coming out may present researchers with an opportunity for improving knowledge of, and policies toward, drug use. In this article, we identify reasons for and against the public disclosure of drug use and the impact of such disclosure across a range of spheres, including research, teaching, policy influence and private lives. Reasons against coming out include the risks of undermining professional reputations and hence the ability to contribute to academic and policy debates, the threat of criminal justice sanctions, and impacts on loved ones. However, coming out can have academic benefit (i.e., improving our understanding of drugs, of people who use drugs, and of drug research) and contribute to activist goals (e.g., de-stigmatization of drug use and demarginalization of people who use drugs). Both the risks and benefits of public drug use disclosure have implications for how research and researchers may influence drug policy. Two key themes, stigma and reflexivity, underpin the discussion. We do not conclude with clear recommendations for drug-using drug researchers; to come out or to not come out is a personal decision. However, we argue that there is clear merit to further open discussion on the role of disclosure and reflection on personal drug use experience among those working in drug research and drug policy—where such reflection is relevant and where such researchers feel able to do so.","PeriodicalId":35813,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Drug Problems","volume":"47 1","pages":"268 - 285"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0091450920953635","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45432403","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-07-31DOI: 10.1177/0091450920944238
Kevin Revier
With a rise in overdose deaths in the United States, opioid awareness has come in a variety of ways. One of these, as reporters suggest, is obituary writing. Obituaries are considered in news media as offering “brutally frank” depictions of addiction that “chronicle the toll of heroin.” Moreover, obituary sharing by parents and loved ones has increasingly taken place on digital platforms, memorial websites expanding the visibility of overdose death while facilitating the building of virtual grief communities. Not solely commemorating individual loss, obituaries thus contain symbolic power—they reflect dominant social values and shape collective memory. As such, overdose obituaries inform how opioid crisis is framed, represented, and addressed. From a qualitative content analysis of 533 opioid-related U.S. obituaries published on Legacy.com and ObitTree.com, I find that while obituaries reduce stigma associated with drug use, addiction, and overdose, they primarily tell white tales of addiction. In affording a white racial framing of drug addiction, obituary writing corresponds with a larger whitewashing of the opioid crisis while implicitly constructing symbolic boundaries between those memorialized, who are predominantly white and middle-class, and those who are deemed as raced and classed Others. Such storytelling, particularly when popularized in news media and made visible on digital platforms, contributes to ongoing systemic inequality in the prevailing drug war.
{"title":"“A Life Lived”: Collective Memory and White Racial Framing in Digital Opioid Overdose Obituaries","authors":"Kevin Revier","doi":"10.1177/0091450920944238","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0091450920944238","url":null,"abstract":"With a rise in overdose deaths in the United States, opioid awareness has come in a variety of ways. One of these, as reporters suggest, is obituary writing. Obituaries are considered in news media as offering “brutally frank” depictions of addiction that “chronicle the toll of heroin.” Moreover, obituary sharing by parents and loved ones has increasingly taken place on digital platforms, memorial websites expanding the visibility of overdose death while facilitating the building of virtual grief communities. Not solely commemorating individual loss, obituaries thus contain symbolic power—they reflect dominant social values and shape collective memory. As such, overdose obituaries inform how opioid crisis is framed, represented, and addressed. From a qualitative content analysis of 533 opioid-related U.S. obituaries published on Legacy.com and ObitTree.com, I find that while obituaries reduce stigma associated with drug use, addiction, and overdose, they primarily tell white tales of addiction. In affording a white racial framing of drug addiction, obituary writing corresponds with a larger whitewashing of the opioid crisis while implicitly constructing symbolic boundaries between those memorialized, who are predominantly white and middle-class, and those who are deemed as raced and classed Others. Such storytelling, particularly when popularized in news media and made visible on digital platforms, contributes to ongoing systemic inequality in the prevailing drug war.","PeriodicalId":35813,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Drug Problems","volume":"47 1","pages":"320 - 337"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-07-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0091450920944238","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49423986","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-07-13DOI: 10.1177/0091450920941267
A. Whittaker, F. Martin, Anna Olsen, E. Wincup
In 2003, the UK Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs published Hidden Harm, the product of an inquiry that exposed the “problems” of parental drug use and its neglect by professionals. It outlined an extensive program of reforms designed to protect children from harm. Despite its far-reaching influence, it has rarely been subject to scrutiny, with analyses focusing on its impact instead. Drawing on Bacchi’s post-structuralist “What’s the Problem Represented to be” approach, we examine problematizations within Hidden Harm and their implications for the governance of family life. We illustrate how Hidden Harm produced a simplified version of parenting and child welfare within the context of drug use by largely equating drug use with “bad” parenting and child maltreatment and by ignoring the social determinants of health and the wider social ecology of family life. Using a tried-and-tested driver of policy change, Hidden Harm created a “scandal” about the lack of intervention by professionals that was used to justify and legitimize increased state intervention into the lives of parents who use drugs. Hidden Harm proposed simplistic “solutions” that centered on drug treatment, child protection and the responsibilization of professionals to govern “risky” parents. We argue these rationalities, subjectivities and strategies serve to marginalize and stigmatize families further and hide alternative approaches to understanding, representing and responding to the complex needs of children and families who are disproportionately affected by health and social inequalities. By uncovering what is hidden in Hidden Harm, we aim to stimulate further research and theoretically informed debate about policy and practice related to child welfare, parenting and family life within the context of drug use. We conclude with some ideas about how to reframe public discourse on parents who use drugs and their children, in tandem with collaborative responses to alleviate child poverty and inequalities.
{"title":"Governing Parental Drug Use in the UK: What’s Hidden in “Hidden Harm?”","authors":"A. Whittaker, F. Martin, Anna Olsen, E. Wincup","doi":"10.1177/0091450920941267","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0091450920941267","url":null,"abstract":"In 2003, the UK Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs published Hidden Harm, the product of an inquiry that exposed the “problems” of parental drug use and its neglect by professionals. It outlined an extensive program of reforms designed to protect children from harm. Despite its far-reaching influence, it has rarely been subject to scrutiny, with analyses focusing on its impact instead. Drawing on Bacchi’s post-structuralist “What’s the Problem Represented to be” approach, we examine problematizations within Hidden Harm and their implications for the governance of family life. We illustrate how Hidden Harm produced a simplified version of parenting and child welfare within the context of drug use by largely equating drug use with “bad” parenting and child maltreatment and by ignoring the social determinants of health and the wider social ecology of family life. Using a tried-and-tested driver of policy change, Hidden Harm created a “scandal” about the lack of intervention by professionals that was used to justify and legitimize increased state intervention into the lives of parents who use drugs. Hidden Harm proposed simplistic “solutions” that centered on drug treatment, child protection and the responsibilization of professionals to govern “risky” parents. We argue these rationalities, subjectivities and strategies serve to marginalize and stigmatize families further and hide alternative approaches to understanding, representing and responding to the complex needs of children and families who are disproportionately affected by health and social inequalities. By uncovering what is hidden in Hidden Harm, we aim to stimulate further research and theoretically informed debate about policy and practice related to child welfare, parenting and family life within the context of drug use. We conclude with some ideas about how to reframe public discourse on parents who use drugs and their children, in tandem with collaborative responses to alleviate child poverty and inequalities.","PeriodicalId":35813,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Drug Problems","volume":"47 1","pages":"170 - 187"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-07-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0091450920941267","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41423990","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-07-01DOI: 10.1177/0091450920934186
Andrew Childs, R. Coomber, M. Bull
Rational choice perspectives have been the dominant models used for conceptualizing the nature of exchanges in illicit drug markets, but various critiques have found these abstracted assumptions inadequate for understanding concrete illicit drug market activity. Considerably less, however, is known about key aspects of rationality in exchanges within online drug markets. Recognizing the inadequacies of an underlying homo economicus, we instead conceive drug market exchanges as complex assemblages, noting how exchanges are reconstructed in online spaces, and technological affordances may facilitate elements of rationality in drug exchanges. Adopting these notions allows us to argue that aspects of rationality can potentially contribute to an understanding of exchange practices in online markets, and that online channels can afford assumptions of utility-maximization, rich market information to guide decision-making, and anonymity in the exchange. In addition, consideration is given to the structural variability of online illicit drug markets, and that the affordance of rationality should be considered across a spectrum of applicability that takes into account the specifics of each dimension of online drug market (i.e. drug cryptomarkets, illicit online pharmacies, and “app-based” drug markets).
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