Distinguishing personal use of drugs from drug supply: Approaches and challenges

Towards a social harm approach in drug policy

In this paper, we explore how the social harm approach can be adapted within drug policy scholarship. Since the mid-2000s, a group of critical criminologists have moved beyond the concept of crime and criminology, towards the study of social harm. This turn proceeds decades of research that highlights the inequities within the criminal legal system, the formation of laws that protect the privileged and punish the disadvantaged, and the systemic challenge of the effectiveness of retribution and punishment at addressing harm in the community. The purpose of this paper is to first identify parallels between the social harm approach and critical drug scholarship, and second to advocate for the adoption of a social harm lens in drug policy scholarship. In the paper, we draw out the similarities between social harm and drug policy literatures, as well as outline what the study of social harm can bring to an analysis of drug policy. This includes a discussion on the ontology of drug crime, the myth of drug crime and the ineffective use of the crime control system in response to drug use. The paper then discusses how these conversations in critical criminology and critical drugs scholarship can be brought together to inform future drug policy research. This reflection details the link between social harm and the impingement of human flourishing, explores the role of decolonizing drug policy, advocates for the centralization of lived experience within the research process and outlines how this might align with harm reduction approaches. We conclude by arguing that the social harm approach challenges the idea that neutrality is the goal in drug policy and explicitly seeks to expand new avenues in activist research and social justice approaches to policymaking.

Challenges for drug checking services in Scotland: a qualitative exploration of police perceptions

Background

The impact of policing practices on the engagement of people who use drugs (PWUD) with harm reduction services is well evidenced. Although the police have traditionally taken an enforcement role in responding to drug use, it is increasingly clear that they can play an important part in multiagency delivery of harm reduction interventions. Despite this, there have been no studies exploring police officer perceptions of drug checking services (DCS), which provide analytical testing of client drug samples alongside harm reduction support and advice.

Methods

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 police officers to explore the policing and legal challenges which could be encountered in the delivery of DCS in Scotland.

Results

Participants expressed general support for DCS and described this support as part of a wider organisational shift towards public health-oriented policing. Participants also discussed different potential approaches to the policing of areas surrounding DCS including: formal limits on police presence around the service and/or stop and search powers in relation to personal possession; the effective decriminalisation of personal possession within a specified boundary around the service; and informal agreements between local divisions and DCS outlining expected policing practices. Any formal limitation on the capacity of police officers to respond to community concerns was viewed as problematic and as having the potential to erode public confidence in policing. Participants also highlighted the potential for frontline officers to utilise discretion in ways which could undermine public health goals. Legislative change, or national strategic guidance from relevant stakeholders, was seen as a means of providing ‘cover’, enabling local divisions to support the operation of drug checking.

Conclusions

Despite a small sample of participants, this study summarises key challenges to be addressed in the implementation and operation of DCS in Scotland, and more widely. The paper concludes with suggested opportunities to develop approaches to policing that can facilitate rather than impede implementation and operation of these services.

Thresholds: First gradually, then suddenly?

Writing in the context of proposal to expand the decriminalisation of illicit drugs in the Australian Capital Territory, Australia's smallest and most progressive jurisdiction, this article explores the key question of the use of quantitative thresholds to determine the level of drug use distinguishing personal use from trafficking. Recent literature demonstrates the use of quantitative thresholds has yielded highly divergent approaches in jurisdictions around the world. The literature also points to the underlying challenges involved in evaluating whether it is appropriate to employ quantitative figures to make that distinction, and if so how and to what ends. Harris (2011) goes so far as to describe 'conviction by numbers' as a 'lazy shorthand' that may exact an 'immeasurable cost of injustice' (3). Yet practices which do not rely on quantitative measures are at real risk of exacerbating discretionary judgments by police and prosecutors that may well result in discriminatory application of the laws. The basis on which the balance between these two countervailing considerations is struck in these discussions is not always clear. The paper focuses first on the merits of adopting an approach based on quantitative thresholds and argues that the implications of applying legally mandated drug quantities is in fact not as cut and dried as many authors have assumed. There is an important 'middle way' between the rote application of quantitative measures and their abandonment. This middle way has previously been ignored. The article then addresses exactly how and on what basis quantitative thresholds should be determined if they are to reflect and advance harm reduction principles. Finally, the paper considers and critiques arguments that quantitative thresholds should be set not only by reference to the consumption patterns of users but also in relation to the relative harm of particular substances. As a whole, the essay aims to contribute to a broader international literature on thresholds, a vexed question which matters not only in Canberra, but around the world.